BEVERLY BARTON - Her Secret Weapon

“I was looking for someone.”

“A man?”

“No, actually, I was looking for a friend—a girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend, huh? Looking for her to chat her up, I suppose.”

“Yes, something like that.”

“Good friend, is she?” he asked. “Someone you can trust with your problems?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have a friend like that,” he said, his eyes piercing her with their intense stare. “Would you like to be my friend? Just for tonight?”

A hint of tears glistened in his eyes. Unshed tears. Agonized tears. She saw the pain and understood—this man was hurting in the worst way. Hurting as she was hurting. Had someone broken his heart? she wondered.

Without thinking about what she was doing, Callie reached over and placed her hand atop his and squeezed gently. “Yes, I’ll be your friend, just for tonight, if you’ll be my friend.”

It was apparent she wasn’t going to find Enid tonight, and she desperately needed someone with whom she could share her misery. Why not this handsome man, this stranger she would never see again? She’d often heard that it was easier to talk to a stranger. Perhaps it was.

Suddenly Callie felt him tense as he looked at the whiskey. His hand beneath hers balled into a fist. As he removed his hand from hers, she noted a slight tremble.

“Do you really need more to drink?” she asked.

“If I’m going to drown my sorrows, I do,” he told her.

“Can a person really drown their sorrows? If they can, then I’d be willing to give it a try.”

“What sorrows could a pretty young thing like you have?” He lifted the whiskey to his mouth and downed half of it in one swallow. The shiver that went through his body was barely discernible.

“The sorrow of having been betrayed by my fiancé,” she explained, not really understanding why she was pouring out her heart to this man. “He dumped me this afternoon. Seems he’s been having an affair for the past two months with someone he loves madly.”

“Obviously, the man’s a fool.”

“Actually, I’m the fool.” Callie lifted the flute of Chardonnay to her lips. The taste was pleasing on her tongue. She sipped the sharp, dry white wine and decided it was the best she’d ever drunk.

Mr. Lonigan downed the rest of his whiskey. His already flushed cheeks darkened. “Why are you the fool?”

“Because I should have known something was wrong. He’s been acting odd for quite some time now and I chose to accept his rather weak excuses.”

“You were very much in love, I assume. Young girls like you always are, aren’t they?”

“I thought I was. You know how it is. He was charming and attentive and he was the first man I’d…” Callie realized she was about to tell this stranger that Laurence had been her first lover. “Well, I’d never been in love before.”

Mr. Lonigan’s mesmerizing blue eyes opened wide in an expression that told Callie he had understood only too well the meaning of “he was the first man.”

“Love, my girl, is a wasted emotion. Smart people don’t need love. They don’t give it and they don’t expect to receive it. Not from anyone. Not from friends or lovers or—” he paused, sighing loudly “—and not even from parents.”

Callie stared at Mr. Lonigan. He looked directly at her, but she knew he was looking through her. It was so obvious that his mind had drifted away to another time and another place. From the expression on his handsome face, she surmised that his memories were painful.

“Mr. Lonigan?”

“Call me Burke.” He chuckled. “What shall I call you?” When she opened her mouth to tell him her name, he shushed her. “No, no, don’t tell me. I’ll just forget it anyway. I could call you love, I suppose. But that doesn’t suit, does it? Why don’t I call you my darling? Something just as easy to remember.” He inspected her thoroughly. “Besides, you look like a darling to me. So tell me, my darling, what did you do when your fiancé dumped you? Did you scream and cry and call him names?”

“I slapped his silly face and then I resigned my position in the firm where we both worked.”

“Ah, so you’re without a man and without a job.”

“It appears so.”

“Mm… If you’re as smart as you are pretty, you won’t be without either for long.”

Burke excused himself for a trip to the bar, but when he asked if she’d like another, she declined. She watched him staggering as he disappeared into the crowded bar area. He returned within minutes, smiling, another whiskey in his hand.

The moment he sat down, he reached for the Scotch. Callie grasped his hand before he could pick up the glass. “I’ve told you my sad story,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me yours?”

“My sad story?” He lifted his eyebrows as if surprised by her request. “What makes you think I have a sad story to tell?”

She tightened her hold on his big hand. “Because you’re drinking to drown your sorrows and—” she hesitated momentarily “—you look like an unmade bed.”

He tossed back his head and laughed. Genuine, gut-deep laughter.

When he looked at her again, a rather cocky, crooked smile remained in place. “I like honesty in a woman. Unusual quality in most. So, I look like an unmade bed, do I?”

“Yes, you do. And the moment I saw you, I noticed the sadness in your eyes.”

His smile vanished. He knocked her hand aside and lifted the whiskey. This time he downed the entire drink in one long swallow. Afterward he coughed several times.

“Observant little thing, aren’t you?”

“Please, don’t drink any more. You’ve had more than enough.”

He deliberately pinched his cheek. “I’m afraid I can still feel, so that means I haven’t had enough.”

“Want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Why is it that women always want to poke and probe into a man’s business? If you really want to help me, then why don’t you come closer and I’ll tell you what will really make me feel better.”

She noted that he’d begun to slur his words more and more. Another drink and he might not be able to walk. So, why do you care? an inner voice asked. This man doesn’t mean anything to you. He’s a stranger. But he is a stranger in pain. He needs someone tonight. Someone to ease his pain. And you need someone, too, that inner voice reminded her. Someone to ease your pain.

Callie slid closer to him so that they were shoulder to shoulder. Then she draped her arm around his waist and cuddled to his side. “Don’t drink any more and we’ll discuss what we can do for each other…how I can ease your pain and you can ease mine.”

She had no intention of giving this man anything more than sympathy and caring. The two things they both needed. But first she had to find a way to stop him from drinking, didn’t she?

He grinned at her. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. She’d never had such a strong physical reaction to a man—not even Laurence, and they had been lovers. It was as if she and this stranger, this Mr. Lonigan, were somehow connected. She couldn’t explain the odd attraction she felt for him. Did he feel it, too? she wondered. She thought that perhaps he did. Right now he was looking at her as if he could see straight through her clothes. His intense scrutiny made her feel completely naked.

“Would you come home with me, my darling?” he asked, his voice a deep, sensuous invitation.

“I’ll make sure you get home safely.” She made a counteroffer.

“Will you now?”

Callie’s heartbeat quickened when he stared at her, his eyes twinkling with devilment. “I’m not really into casual sex,” she admitted. “I’ve just lived through one of the worst days of my life and obviously you have, too, so perhaps—”

“No sex, huh?”

“I’ll get us a taxi,” Callie said. “And I’ll see you home.”

Burke glowered at her. “Take-charge kind of girl, are you? Well, I don’t need anyone to take charge of me, thank you kindly.” With that said, he tried to stand. After swaying right and left, he quickly sat. “I seem to be quite blotto.”

Callie couldn’t suppress the giggle that escaped from her throat.

“You won’t get an argument from me. You, Mr. Lonigan, are most definitely blotto.”

Within ten minutes Callie, aided by a pub employee, eased Burke Lonigan into a black cab, then slid in beside him. While she rummaged in her purse for money to tip the young man who had helped her, Burke handed the man an overly generous twenty quid.

“Where to, governor?” the driver asked.

When Burke gave the driver his address, Callie gasped. His home was in Belgravia? Only the extremely wealthy lived here. Multimillionaires. Was her Mr. Lonigan that rich? she wondered. Not your Mr. Lonigan, an inner voice scolded.

Burke slipped his arm around Callie’s shoulders and pulled her against him. His whiskey breath was warm and soft against the side of her face. A tingling shudder rippled up her spine, and her stomach fluttered with sexual awareness.

Burke nuzzled her ear and laughed when she trembled. “You’re as jumpy as a virgin, my darling.”

“I’m not a—”

“Of course you’re not. You had a fiancé, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Engaged long?” Burke asked.

“Nearly a year,” she said. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you married or engaged or anything?”

“Never married. Never engaged. But a great deal of anything.”

His teasing manner helped her relax just a bit. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Depends on your definition of love.”

“I suppose what I’m trying to ask is why you’re so sad tonight. I thought perhaps you had a broken heart, too.” She cuddled against Burke Lonigan’s large, strong body. Oddly enough, being encompassed in this stranger’s arms made her feel safe and comforted.

“Ah, I see.” He released her, scooted her toward the opposite side of the taxi and then laid his head on her lap as he stretched his long legs across the seat. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No.” And she really didn’t. Unable to stop herself, she threaded her fingers through his wavy black hair, which felt incredibly soft and silky to the touch.

Burke lifted his right arm. Reaching up, he caressed the back of her neck with his fingertips. He lowered his left hand to begin a similar maneuver with her knees.

She could stop him. She should stop him! But she didn’t. His touch somehow soothed her as, at the same time, it excited her. An odd combination, but she knew no other way to describe the sensations fluttering inside her body.

“My father died.” Burke’s voice was low and quiet, as if he were talking to himself.

“Oh, I’m so very sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. The old bastard lived to be nearly eighty!”

Callie didn’t understand the bitterness in Burke’s voice or the sudden tenseness in his body. Why would anyone refer to their father as an old bastard? Although she and her father didn’t always agree on everything, they got along rather well. Arthur Severin had been a strict but loving parent who had done his best to bring up his only child after his wife’s untimely death when Callie was twelve.

Burke chuckled. “Actually, I’m the bastard. My parents were never married. He was an older married man and she a young Irish maid. My mother married a Yank soldier when I was ten and we moved to America. I only became acquainted with my real father when I returned to England as a grown man.”

“Did the two of you never reconcile?” Callie asked.