Whatever Reilly Wants Read online

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for choosing Silhouette Desire, where this month we have six fabulous novels for you to enjoy. We start things off with Estate Affair by Sara Orwig, the latest installment of the continuing DYNASTIES: THE ASHTONS series. In this upstairs/downstairs-themed story, the Ashtons’ maid falls for an Ashton son and all sorts of scandal follows. And in Maureen Child’s Whatever Reilly Wants…, the second title in the THREE-WAY WAGER series, a sexy marine gets an unexpected surprise when he falls for his suddenly transformed gal pal.

  Susan Crosby concludes her BEHIND CLOSED DOORS series with Secrets of Paternity. The secret baby in this book just happens to be eighteen years old…. Hmm, there’s quite the story behind that revelation. The wonderful Emilie Rose presents Scandalous Passion, a sultry tale of a woman desperate to get back some steamy photos from her past lover. Of course, he has a price for returning those pictures, but it’s not money he’s after. The Sultan’s Bed, by Laura Wright, continues the tales of her sheikh heroes with an enigmatic male who is searching for his missing sister and finds a startling attraction to her lovely neighbor. And finally, what was supposed to be just an elevator ride turns into a very passionate encounter, in Blame It on the Blackout by Heidi Betts.

  Sit back and enjoy all of the smart, sensual stories Silhouette Desire has to offer.

  Happy reading,

  Melissa Jeglinski

  Senior Editor

  Silhouette Desire

  Whatever REILLY Wants…

  MAUREEN CHILD

  Published by Silhouette Books

  America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance

  SILHOUETTE BOOKS

  ISBN 1-55254-327-7

  WHATEVER REILLY WANTS…

  Copyright © 2005 by Maureen Child

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  Visit Silhouette Books at http://www.eHarlequin.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  COMING NEXT MONTH

  Books by Maureen Child

  Silhouette Desire

  Have Bride, Need Groom #1059

  The Surprise Christmas Bride #1112

  Maternity Bride #1138

  *The Littlest Marine #1167

  *The Non-Commissioned Baby #1174

  *The Oldest Living Married Virgin #1180

  *Colonel Daddy #1211

  *Mom in Waiting #1234

  *Marine under the Mistletoe #1258

  *The Daddy Salute #1275

  *The Last Santini Virgin #1312

  *The Next Santini Bride #1317

  *Marooned with a Marine #1325

  *Prince Charming in Dress Blues #1366

  *His Baby! #1377

  *Last Virgin in California #1398

  Did You Say Twins?! #1408

  The SEAL’s Surrender #1431

  *The Marine & the Debutante #1443

  The Royal Treatment #1468

  Kiss Me, Cowboy! #1490

  Beauty & the Blue Angel #1514

  Sleeping with the Boss #1534

  Man Beneath the Uniform #1561

  Lost in Sensation #1611

  Society-Page Seduction #1639

  †The Tempting Mrs. Reilly #1652

  †Whatever Reilly Wants… #1658

  Harlequin Historicals

  Shotgun Grooms #575

  “Jackson’s Mail-Order Bride”

  Silhouette Books

  Love Is Murder

  “In Too Deep”

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Forever…Again #1604

  *Bachelor Battalion

  †Three-Way Wager

  MAUREEN CHILD

  is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. The author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur.

  Visit her Web site at www.maureenchild.com.

  For Kathleen Beaver.

  Thanks for being an emergency reader,

  for always being a friend

  and for never getting tired of meeting me

  for a latte to talk about writing!

  One

  “O ne down, two to go.” Father Liam Reilly grinned at his brother, sitting alongside him, then lifted a beer in salute to the two identical men sitting opposite him in the restaurant booth.

  “Don’t get your hopes up.” Connor Reilly took a sip of his own beer and nodded toward his brother Brian, the third of the Reilly triplets, sitting beside Liam. “Just because Brian couldn’t go the distance, doesn’t mean we can’t.”

  “Amen,” Aidan said from beside him.

  “Who said I couldn’t go the distance?” Brian demanded, reaching for a handful of tortilla chips from the basket in the middle of the table. He grinned and sat back in the booth. “I just didn’t want to go the distance. Not anymore.” He held up his left hand, and the gold wedding band caught the light and winked at all of them.

  “And I’m glad for you,” Liam said, his black eyebrows lifting. “Plus, with you happily married, the odds of my winning this bet are better than ever.”

  “Not a chance, Liam.” Aidan grabbed a handful of chips, too. “It’s not that I begrudge you a roof for the church…but I’m the Reilly to watch in this bet, brother.”

  As his brothers talked, Connor just smiled and half listened. Once a week the Reilly brothers met for dinner at the Lighthouse Restaurant, a family place, dead center of the town of Baywater. They laughed, talked and, in general, enjoyed the camaraderie of being brothers.

  But for the last month their conversations had pretty much centered around The Bet.

  A great uncle, the last surviving member of a set of triplets, had left ten thousand dollars to Aidan, Brian and Connor. At first, the three of them had thought to divide the money, giving their older brother, Liam, an equal share. Then someone, and Connor was pretty sure it had been Liam, had come up with the idea of a bet—winner take all.

  Since the Reilly triplets were, above all things, competitive, there’d never been any real doubt that they would accept the challenge. But Liam hadn’t made it easy. He’d insisted that as a Catholic priest, his decision to give up sex for a lifetime was something not one of his brothers could match. He dared them to be celibate for ninety days—last man standing winning the ten thousand dollars. And if all three of the triplets failed, then Liam got the m
oney for a new roof for his church.

  Connor shot his older brother a suspicious look. He had a feeling that Liam was already getting estimates from local roofers. Scowling, he took another sip of his beer and let his gaze shift to Brian. A month ago the triplets had stood together in this bet, but now one had already fallen. Brian had reconciled with his ex-wife, Tina, and, now there was just Connor and Aidan to survive the bet.

  “Don’t know about you,” Aidan said, jamming his elbow into Connor’s rib cage, “but I’m avoiding all females for the duration.”

  “No self-control, huh?” Liam grinned and lifted his beer for another long drink.

  “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” Connor glared at him.

  “Damn right I am,” Liam said laughing. “Watching the three of you has always been entertaining. Just more so lately.”

  “Ah,” Brian said, “the two of them. I’m out, remember?”

  “Didn’t even last a month,” Aidan said with a slow, sad shake of his head.

  Brian’s self-satisfied smile spoke volumes. “Never been so glad about losing a bet in my life.”

  “Tina’s a peach, no doubt about it,” Connor said, just a little irritated by Brian’s “happy man” attitude. “But there’s still the matter of you in that ridiculous outfit to consider.”

  Not only did the losers lose the money in this bet, but they’d agreed to ride around in the back of a convertible, wearing coconut bras and hula skirts while being driven around the base on Battle Color day…the one day of the year when every dignitary imaginable would be on the Marine base.

  Brian shuddered, then manfully sucked it up and squared his shoulders. “It’ll still be worth it.”

  “He’s got it bad,” Aidan muttered, and held up both index fingers in an impromptu cross, as if trying to keep Brian at a distance.

  “Laugh all you want,” Brian said, leaning over the table to stare first at one brother, then the other. “But I’m the only one here having regular—and can I just add—great, sex.”

  “That was cold, man.” Aidan groaned and scraped one hand over his face.

  “Heartless,” Connor agreed.

  Liam laughed, clapped his hands together, then rubbed his palms briskly. Black eyebrows lifting, he looked at his brothers and asked, “Either of you care to back out now? Save time?”

  “Not likely,” Aidan muttered.

  “That’s for damn sure.” Connor held out one hand to Aidan. “In this to the end?”

  Aidan’s grip was fierce. “Or until you cave. Whichever comes first.”

  “In your dreams.” Connor’d never lost a bet yet and he wasn’t about to start with this one. Of course, the stakes were higher and the bet more challenging than anything else he’d ever done, but that didn’t matter. This was about pride. And he’d be damned if he’d let Aidan beat him. Besides, “No way am I gonna be riding in that convertible with Brian.”

  “I’ll save you a seat,” Brian said, grinning.

  “Oh, man, I need another beer.” Aidan lifted one hand to get the waitress’s attention.

  Another beer would be good. All he had to do was not look at the waitress. Connor’s gaze snapped from Aidan to Brian and finally to Liam. “This game’s far from over, you know.”

  “There’s two, count ’em, two long, tempting months left,” Liam reminded him.

  “Yeah, well, don’t be picking out roof shingles just yet, Father.”

  Liam just smiled. “The samples are coming tomorrow.”

  The next morning Connor sat in the sunlight outside Jake’s Garage and sighed heavily. South Carolina in July. Even the mornings were hot and steamy. The heat flattened a man until all he wanted to do was either escape to a beach and ocean breezes or find a nice shady tree and park himself beneath it.

  Neither of which Connor was doing. He was on leave. Two weeks off and nothing to do. Hell, he didn’t even want to go anywhere. What would be the point? He couldn’t date. Couldn’t spend any time at all with a woman the way he was feeling. He was a man on the edge.

  Two more months of this bet and he wasn’t sure how he was going to survive. Connor liked women. He liked the way they smelled and the way they laughed and the way they moved. He liked dancing with ’em, walking with ’em and most especially, he liked making love to ’em.

  So he’d never found the one.

  Who said he was looking for her?

  His mother, Maggie, had been telling her sons the story of her own whirlwind courtship and marriage to their father since they were kids. They’d all heard about the lightning bolt that had hit Maggie and Sean Reilly. About how they’d shared a dance at a town picnic, fallen desperately in love and within two weeks had been married. Nine months later, Liam had arrived and just two years later, the triplets.

  Maggie had long been a big believer in love at first sight and had always insisted that when the time was right, each of her sons…well, except for Liam, would be hit by a thunderbolt.

  Connor had made it a point to steer clear of storms.

  “Boy, you look like you could chew glass.” Emma Jacobsen, owner and manager of Jake’s Garage, took a seat on the bench beside him.

  Connor smiled. Here was the one woman he could trust himself with. The one woman he’d never thought of as, well…a woman.

  She wore dark-blue coveralls and a white T-shirt beneath. Her long, blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail and braided, falling to the middle of her back. She had a smudge of grease across her nose, and the cap she wore shaded her blue eyes. She’d been his friend for two years, and he could honestly say he’d never once wondered what she looked like under those coveralls.

  Emma was safety.

  “It’s this damn bet,” Connor muttered, and leaned his elbows on the bench back behind him, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles.

  “So why’d you agree to it in the first place?”

  He grinned. “Turn down a challenge?”

  She laughed. “What was I thinking?”

  “Exactly.” He shook his head and sighed. “But it’s harder than I thought it’d be. I’m telling you, Em, I spend most of my time avoiding women like the plague. Hell, I even crossed the street yesterday when I saw a gorgeous redhead coming my way.”

  “Poor baby.”

  “Sarcasm isn’t pretty.”

  “Yeah, but so appropriate.” She smiled and punched his shoulder. “So if you’re avoiding women, what’re you doing hanging around my place?”

  Straightening up, Connor dropped one arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick, comradely squeeze. “That’s the beauty of it, Em. I’m safe here.”

  “Huh?”

  He looked at the confusion on her face and explained. “I can hang out with you and not worry. I’ve never wanted you. Not that way. So being here is like finding a demilitarized zone in the middle of a war.”

  “You’ve never wanted me.”

  “We’re pals, Em.” Connor gave her another squeeze just to prove how much he thought of her. “We can talk cars. You don’t expect me to bring you flowers or open doors for you. You’re not a woman, you’re a mechanic.”

  Emma Virginia Jacobsen stared at the man sitting next to her and wondered why she wasn’t shrieking. He’d never wanted her? She wasn’t a woman?

  For two years Connor Reilly had been coming to the shop she’d inherited from her father when he passed away five years ago. For two years she’d known Connor and listened to him talk about whatever female he might be chasing at the moment. She’d laughed with him, joked with him and had always thought he was different. She’d believed that he’d looked beyond her being female—that he’d seen her as a woman and as a friend.

  Now she finds out he didn’t even think of her as female at all?

  Fury erupted inside her while she futilely tried to reign it in. Not once in the past two years had she even considered going after Connor Reilly herself. Not that he wasn’t attractive or anything. While he continued to talk, she gla
nced at his profile.

  His black hair was cut militarily short. His features were clean and sharp. High cheekbones, square jaw, clear, dark-blue eyes that sparkled when he laughed. He wore a dark-green USMC T-shirt that strained across his muscular chest and a pair of dark-green running shorts that showed off long, tanned, very hairy legs.

  Okay, sure, he was gorgeous, but Emma had never thought of him as dating material because of their friendship. Now, she was glad she hadn’t gone after him. He would have laughed in her face.

  And that thought only tossed gasoline on the fires of anger burning inside her.

  “So you can see,” he was saying, “why it’s so nice to have this place to hang out. If I want to win this bet—and I do—I’ve gotta be careful.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she murmured, still watching him and wondering why he didn’t notice the steam coming out of her ears. Of course, he hadn’t noticed her in two years. Why should he start now? “Careful.”

  “Seriously, Em,” he said, and stood up, turning to look down at her. “Without you to talk to about this, I’d probably lose my mind.”

  “What’s left of it,” she muttered darkly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Right.” He grinned and hooked a thumb toward her office, located at the front of the garage. “I’m going for a soda. You want one?”

  “No, but you go ahead.”

  He nodded, then loped off toward the shop. She watched him and, for the first time, really looked at him. Nice buns, she thought, startling herself. She’d never noticed Connor’s behind before. Why now?

  Because, she told herself, he’d just changed the rules between them. And the big dummy didn’t even know it.

  While the sun sizzled all around her and the damp, hot air choked in her lungs, Emma’s mind raced. Oh, boy, she hadn’t been this angry in years. But more than the righteous fury boiling in her blood, she was insulted…and hurt.