He managed one strangled groan, then lost himself in the pleasure of being attacked by a wet and willful woman. She was pressed against him. Jesus, plastered against him, and her body was like a furnace. He wondered that her clothes didn't simply steam away.

Her heart was racing, or maybe it was his. He felt the frantic, nervous beat pound and pitch between them. She smelled of the rain and tasted of his whiskey, and he wanted her with a fervor that was like a sickness. It crawled through him, clawed at him, reeled in his head, burned in his throat.

Dimly, he heard his brother's voice, an answering laugh, the faint tune played by a young boy. And he remembered, barely, where they were. Who they were.

"Jude. Wait." The blood was roaring in his head as he tried to ease her back. "This isn't the place."

"Why?" She was desperate. She needed something. Him. Anything. "You want me. I want you."

Enough that he would easily imagine reversing their positions and mounting her where they stood like a stallion covering a ready mare. With fire in the blood, and no heart at all.

"Stop now. Let's catch our breath here." He stroked a hand over her hair, a hand that was far from steady. "Tell me what's the matter."

"Nothing's the matter." Her voice cracked and proved her a liar. "Why does something have to be the matter? Just make love with me." Her hands shook as she fought with the buttons of his shirt. "Just touch me."

Now he did reverse positions, pressed her against the door and firmly took her face in his hands to lift it. Whatever his body was telling him, his heart and mind gave different orders. He was a man who preferred following the heart.

"I might touch, but I'll never reach you if you don't tell me what's troubling you."

"There's nothing troubling me," she hissed at him. Then burst into tears.

"Oh, there now, darling." It was less worrisome to comfort a woman than to resist one. Gently, he gathered her in, cradled her against his chest. "Who hurt you, a ghra?"

"It's nothing. It's stupid. I'm sorry."

"Of course it's something, and not stupid at all. Tell me what's made you sad, mavourneen."

Her breath hitched, and desolate, she pressed her face into his shoulder. It was solid as a rock, comforting as a pillow. "My husband and his wife are going to the West Indies and having a baby."

"What?" The word came out like a bullet as he jerked her back. "You've a husband?"

"Had." She sniffled, and wished her head could be on his shoulder again. "He didn't want to keep me."

Aidan took two long breaths, but his head still reeled as though he'd swallowed a bottle of Jameson's. Or been clobbered by one. "You were married?"

"Technically." She fluttered a hand. "Do you have a handkerchief?"

Staggered, Aidan dug in his pocket, handed it to her. "I think we'll start back at some beginning, but we'll get you some dry clothes and some hot tea before you catch a chill."

"No, I'm all right. I should-"

"Just be quiet. We'll go upstairs."

"I'm a mess." She blew her nose savagely. "I don't want people to see me."

"There's no one out there who hasn't shed a few tears of their own, and some right here in this pub. We'll go out and through the kitchen and up."

Before she could argue, he took her arm and pulled her to the door. Then even as the first wave of embarrassment hit, he continued to pull her, into the kitchen, where Darcy looked over in surprise.

"Why, Jude, whatever's the matter?" she began, then closed her mouth as Aidan gave a quick shake of his head and nudged Jude up a narrow staircase.

He opened a door at the head of it and stepped into his small, cluttered living room. "The bedroom's through there. Take whatever works best for you, and I'll put on the tea."

She started to thank him, apologize, something, but he was already moving through a low doorway. There was enough tension in his wake to bow her spirits even lower.

She stepped into the bedroom. Unlike the living room, it was neat as a pin and sparsely furnished. She wished she had the time, and the right, to poke about a bit. But she moved quickly to the little closet, giving herself time only to scan the single bed with its navy cover, the tall chest of drawers that looked old and comfortably worn at the hinges, the faded rug over an age-darkened wood floor.

She found a shirt, as gray as her mood. While she changed she studied the walls. There he had indulged in his romantic side, she thought. Posters and prints of faraway places.

Street scenes of Paris and London and New York and Florence, stormy seascapes and lush islands. Towering mountains, quiet valleys, mysterious deserts. And of course, the fierce cliffs and gentle hills of his own country. They were tacked up edge to edge, like a fabulous, eccentric wallpaper.

How many of those places had he been? she wondered. Had he been to them all, or had he places still to go?

She let out a huge sigh, not caring that the sound was ripe with self-pity, and carrying her wet sweater, went back into the living room.

He was pacing, and stopped when she came in. She was dwarfed by his shirt and looked small and miserable and not nearly up to dealing with the emotions swinging around inside him. So he said nothing, not yet, merely took her sweater and carried it into the bath to hang over the shower rod and drip.

"Sit down, Jude."

"You've every right to be angry with me, coming in this way, behaving as I did. I don't know how to begin to-"

"I wish you'd be quiet for a minute." He snapped it at her, telling himself when she winced that he wasn't made of stone. Then he stalked into the kitchen to deal with the tea.

She'd been married, was all he could think. That was quite a detail she'd neglected to mention.

He'd thought her to have had little experience with men, and here she'd been married and divorced and was obviously still pining for the bastard.

Pining for some fancy man in Chicago who wasn't true enough to keep his vows, and all the while Aidan Gallagher had been pining for her.

If that wasn't enough to burn your ass, what was?

He poured the tea strong and black and added a healthy drop of whiskey to his own.

She was standing when he came back, the fingers of her hands twisted together. Her damp hair curled madly, and her eyes were drenched. "I'll go downstairs and apologize to your customers."

"For what?"

"For making a scene."

He set the cups down and drew his brows together to study her with as much bafflement as irritation. "What do I care about that? If we don't have a scene in Gallagher's once a week we wonder why. Will you sit down, damn it, and stop looking at me as if I was about to take a strap to you?"

He sat after she did, then picked up his own tea. Jude sipped, burned her tongue, then hastily set her cup down again.

"Why didn't you tell me you'd been married?"

"I didn't think of it."

"Didn't think of it?" His cup clattered as he snapped it down on the table. "Did it mean so little to you?"

"It meant a great deal to me," she returned with a quiet dignity that had him narrowing his eyes. "It meant considerably less to the man I married. I've been trying to learn to live with that."

When Aidan said nothing, she picked up her tea again to give herself something to do with her hands. "We'd known each other several years. He's a professor at the university where I taught. On the surface, we had a great deal in common. My parents liked him very much. He asked me to marry him. I said yes."

"Were you in love with him?"

"I thought I was, yes, so that amounts to the same thing."

No, Aidan thought, it didn't amount to the same thing at all. But he let it pass. "And what happened?"

"We-he, I should say, planned it all out. William likes to plan carefully, considering details and possible pitfalls and their solutions. We bought a house, as it's more conducive to entertaining and he had ambitions to rise in his department. We had a very small, exclusive, and dignified wedding with all the right people involved. Meaning caterers, florists, photographers, guests."

She breathed deep and, since her tongue was already scalded, sipped the tea again. "Seven months later, he came to me and told me he was dissatisfied. That's the word he used. 'Jude, I'm dissatisfied with our marriage.' I think I said, 'Oh, I'm sorry.'"

She closed her eyes, let the humiliation settle along with the whiskey in her stomach. "That grates, knowing my first instinct was to apologize. He accepted it graciously, as if he'd been expecting it. No," she corrected, looking at Aidan again. "Because he'd been expecting it."

It was hurt he felt from her now, quivering waves of it. "That should tell you that you apologize too much."

"Maybe. In any case, he explained that as he respected me and wanted to be perfectly honest, he felt he should tell me that he'd fallen in love with someone else."

Someone younger, Jude thought now. And prettier, brighter.

"He didn't want to involve her in a sordid and adulterous affair, so he requested that I file for divorce immediately. We would sell the house, split everything fifty-fifty. As he was the instigator, he would be willing to give me first choice in any particular material possessions I might want."

Aidan kept his eyes on her face. She was composed again, eyes quiet, hands still. Too composed, to his thinking. He decided he preferred it when she was passionate and real. "And what did you do about it?"

"Nothing. I did nothing. He got his divorce, he remarried, and we all got on with our lives."

"He hurt you."

"That's what William would call an unfortunate but necessary by-product of the situation."