Brynn was standing, mortified, only about two feet away, but nobody needed to know that the clean rain-and-grass scent of her hair was giving Sean all sorts of thoughts, few of which were entirely innocent.
“Okay, that’s enough from both of you,” she said, making a break for the booth the farthest from Olaf’s window.
She dropped her backpack on the red leather seat and started to slide in next to it, but Sean touched her arm to stop her.
“I’m sorry, but I need to sit on that side,” he said, indicating the seat and the wall behind it. “Unless you want to sit next to me?”
“But why—oh. Can’t have your back to the door?” She bit her lip, but then she nodded and took the other seat.
He’d expected it, but still found himself a little disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to feel the warmth of her body next to him, her legs stretched out next to his.
“Is that a firefighter thing?”
He was watching her seductive lips move as she spoke, and it took him a beat to catch up with what she’d actually said.
“No, it’s an O’Malley thing. My dad drummed it into us from the time we could walk. ‘Me boyos, you always scan the room for danger and protect the women and children.’ I asked him once, wasn’t I the child in the room?” He shook his head at the memory.
She leaned forward a little, resting her folded arms on the spotless Formica tabletop. “What did he say?”
Sean laughed. “He knocked me down and told me to stop asking him stupid questions. Then my four brothers jumped on me and pounded on me for a while.”
Brynn tilted her head, watching him as if he were a strange, rare specimen of animal at a zoo. Which was almost funny, considering she’d been the one swimming around in a fountain wearing nothing but feathers, but he could see her point. A lot of people reacted like that when he told them anything about his rather boisterous childhood. That’s why he’d quit doing it years and years ago.
So why was he suddenly telling tales about his family to a woman he’d only known for an hour?
Loneliness.
The word popped up, unbidden, from deep inside him, the place where he shoved words like that. Words like regret and isolation and sorrow. He’d been surrounded by beautiful, tempting women from the day he’d turned sixteen and started working in the bar, but even in a crowd, he’d always felt alone. There’d been plenty, male and female, human and not, who’d wanted to play with one of the O’Malley boys, but there’d never been anyone who wanted him for himself. His mom had always said that the perfect woman for him would come along, but now his mom was dying slowly from an enemy Sean couldn’t battle, leaving him with no faith in miracles. He swallowed hard and pushed the anger and bitterness away, yet again.
“You were the only one, weren’t you?” Her blue eyes held understanding and something else. Something he hoped wasn’t pity. He damn sure didn’t want pity from her.
“The only one who questioned the orders? The others wouldn’t have pounded on you, otherwise,” she continued, and he realized what that glimmer of emotion was in her eyes.
Not pity. Compassion.
A dizzying wave of heat swirled through him, and he looked down in case the demon glow made an appearance in his eyes. The sensation put him on guard at the same time as it threw him off balance. Rage was the emotion that catalyzed him into heat mode. Fear—terror—could do it, too. But a gentler emotion never had before, and yet he could feel his skin temperature rising way too high.
Brynn might be dangerous to him, he realized, and the thought only made him want to get closer. A lot closer.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I was the only one who ever questioned, at least until after Dad died. We were O’Malleys, so we would grow up in the pub, work in the pub, and take over the pub. Liam, Blake, Oscar, and Yeats—they all mostly followed the party line. Me? Not so much.”
“Order up, O’Malley,” Olaf shouted, banging a metal spoon against a pot.
“We didn’t even order yet,” Sean said, startled.
Brynn laughed. “Sometimes he’s like that. You get what he feels like cooking for you. Trust me, it’s always good.”
Sean walked back to the counter to pick up the tray, which included a mountain of food, two mugs of steaming hot coffee, a carafe of more of the same, and, luckily for his rising temp, two glasses of ice water. Olaf refrained from threatening him again, but he did wag his finger in the vicinity of Sean’s chest.
“I understand why you want to protect her, Olaf. She’s definitely someone to be cherished,” Sean said, not even knowing where the words were coming from, but knowing that he meant them.
The little demon’s face relaxed out of its scowl, which was an improvement, at least, and Sean headed back to their table with enough food to feed an army of shapeshifters.
“Ooh, pancakes,” Brynn said, all but moaning.
She proceeded to take both plates of pancakes, consolidate them into one enormous pile, and slather them with butter and enough syrup to put out a small fire, while Sean watched in awed disbelief.
“You’re going to eat all that?”
“And bacon,” she said, snatching a crispy piece from the platter. “Hey, I worked up an appetite swimming around in the cold and singing. We can ask for more if you want some. So, you’re all named after Irish poets?”
“What else? Yeats had it the worst. People always want to call him Yeets when they see it written, instead of pronouncing it Yates. Drives him nuts.”
Brynn raised an eyebrow. “And Oscar didn’t get hot-dog jokes?”
“How’d you guess? He pretty much pounded everybody who tried, but O-S-C-A-R followed him around a lot when he was a kid,” Sean said, grinning at the memory. “We’d all jump in and help, of course. Not too many wanted to take on the O’Malley boys.”
“No sisters?”
Sean’s smile faded as he remembered the time he’d come across his mother kneeling in the attic next to a large trunk, tears running down her face. She’d been folding a tiny pink lace nightgown. He’d been a kid then, afraid to intrude on his mom’s privacy. Since he’d grown, he’d wondered sometimes if she’d miscarried the daughter she’d always wanted, but he hadn’t known how to ask. Hadn’t wanted to resurrect her sorrow.
“No sister,” he said abruptly. “You? Brothers or sisters?”
“No. My mother didn’t even want to have me,” she said, frowning. “She was trying to break the curse. No daughters means no daughters have to turn feathery.”
Sean took a long sip of his coffee, wondering how to ask the obvious question. Finally, he settled on the simplest way.
“Why? How?”
Brynn’s face lost its happy glow, and he bitterly regretted mentioning it. “Forget it. None of my business. Let’s eat, and we can talk about anything but fires or swans.”
Her smile was the best reward he could have gotten. “Yes. I agree.”
She took a big bite of pancake and closed her eyes in bliss. “Mmmmm.”
She was absolutely glorious. Desire sparked in Sean like tinder to a blaze, and he suddenly wanted to lick maple syrup off her body, or at least spend the next month doing nothing but eating breakfast with her and watching her smile.
He lived his life surrounded by people, and yet he was always so alone. For the first time in forever, he felt a connection, and he had no intention of letting her get away before they could explore it.
“After we finish the pancakes and bacon, we can have waffles,” she said, grinning like a child at Christmas, and he smiled right back at her, basking in the warmth of her obvious enjoyment.