Chapter 6: Miss Finnegan

Donal's POV

I did not sleep on Friday, and on Saturday I ate my supper without tasting it.

She sat at my right hand again, in the green dress, and passed the bread.

Every time she reached across me I smelled flour and lemon on her wrist.

I had run the Dalton family for six years by never wanting anything in front of the men.

I wanted her in front of all twelve of them, and I kept my face the way it always was.

Ambrose watched me from the end of the table, and I let him.

After the plates were cleared she went into the pantry for sugar.

I waited a moment and followed her.

The pantry was a narrow room off the kitchen with shelves to the ceiling and a door that locked from the inside.

She was reaching for a canister on the top shelf, up on her toes, with her dress riding up the backs of her thighs.

I shut the door behind me and turned the lock.

The click went through the room.

She did not turn around.

"I can't reach it," she said.

"No," I said.

"You're going to stand there."

"For a minute."

I could see the back of her neck below the red-brown hair.

There were freckles there that I had never been close enough to see.

I'd been looking at that neck for eleven months from across a dining room.

I had seen her walk down three steps in her mother's dress and put a ring in my hand and told me to count it.

I'd stood in a church full of people and said nothing to her.

I had not forgiven myself for that, and I wasn't going to stand here and say so.

She turned around.

Her eyes were dark and green and angry, and not a little amused.

"Well?"

I crossed the pantry in two steps and put her back against the shelves.

A jar rattled.

I kissed her, hard, and her hands grabbed my belt and pulled.

She tasted of sugar.

I had thought I knew what I would do when I finally had her.

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