"Roberts, Nora - Irish Hearts 3 - Irish Rebel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

"I love you."
"So you'd better. Darling, your eyes are half shut. Why don't you turn this off and come to bed?"
"I'm nearly done, but I can use the break-and the fuel." She ate a cookie before she poured the tea. "I'm only behind because I played this morning."
"From what your father tells me you weren't playing." Adelia took a chair, nudged it closer to the desk. "He's awfully pleased with how Brian's bringing Betty along. Well, he's pleased with Brian altogether, and so am I from what I've seen. But Betty's quite the challenge."
"Hmm." So was Brian, Keeley thought. "He has his own way of doing things, but it seems to work." Considering, she drummed her fingers on the desk. She'd always been able to discuss anything with her mother. Why should that change now?
"I'm attracted to him."
"I'd worry about you if you weren't. He's a fine-looking young man."
"Ma." Keeley laid a hand over her mother's. "I'm very attracted to him."
The amusement faded from Adelia's eyes. "Oh. Well."
"And he's very attracted to me."
"I see."
"I don't want to mention this to Dad. Men don't look at this sort of thing the way we do."
"Darling." At a loss, Adelia sighed out a breath. "Mothers aren't likely to look at this sort of thing the same way their daughters do. You're grown up, and you're a woman who answers to herself first. But you're still my little girl, aren't you?"
"I haven't been with a man before."
"I know it." Adelia's smile was soft, almost wistful. "Do you think I wouldn't know if that had changed for you? You think too much of yourself to give what you are to something unless it matters. No one's mattered before."
Here the ground was boggy, Keeley thought "I don't know if Brian matters in the way you mean. But I feel different with him. I want him. I haven't wanted anyone before. It's exciting, and a little scary."
Adelia rose, wandered around the little office looking at the ribbons, the medals. The steps and the stages. "We've talked about such matters before, you and I. About the meaning and the precautions, the responsibilities."
"I know about being responsible and sensible."
"Keeley, while it is true that all that is important, it doesn't tell you-it can't tell you-what it is to be with a man. There's such heat." She turned back. "There's such a force you make between you. It's not just an act, though I know it can be for some. But even then it's more than just that. I won't tell you that giving your innocence is a loss, for it shouldn't be, it doesn't need to be. For me it was an opening. Your father was my first," she murmured. "And my only."
"Mama." Moved, Keeley reached for her hands. Her mother's hands were so strong, she thought. Everything about her mother was strong. "That's so lovely."
"I only ask you to be sure, so that if you give yourself to him, you take away a memory that's warn and has heart, not just heat. Heat can chill after time passes."
"I am sure." Smiling now, Keeley brought her mother's hand to her cheek. "But he's not. And, Ma, it's so odd, but the way he backed off when I told him he'd be the first is why I'm sure. You see, I matter to him, too."

Chapter Six
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It was amazing, really, how two people could live and work in basically the same place, and one could completely avoid the other. It just took setting your mind to it.
Brian set his mind to it for several days. There was plenty of work to keep him occupied and more than enough reason for him to spend time away from the farm and on the tracks. But he found avoidance scraped his pride. It was too close a kin to cowardice.
Added to that, he'd told Keeley he wanted to help her at the school and had done nothing about it. He wasn't a man to break his word, no matter what it cost him. And, he reminded himself as he walked to Keeley's stables, he was also a man of some self-control. He had no intention of seducing or taking advantage of innocence.
He'd made up his mind on it.
Then he stepped into the stables and saw her. He wouldn't have said his mouth watered, but it was a very close thing.
She was wearing one of those fancy rigs again-jodhpurs the color of dark chocolate and a cream sort of blouse that looked somehow fluid. Her hair was down, all tumbled and wild as if she'd just pulled the pins from it. And indeed, as he watched she flipped it back and looped it through a wide elastic band.
He decided the best place in the universe for his hands to be were in his pockets.
"Lessons over?"
She glanced back, her hands still up in her hair. Ah, she thought. She'd wondered how long it would take him to wander her way again. "Why? Did you want one?"
He frowned, but caught himself before he shifted his feet. "I said I'd give you a hand over here."
"So you did. As it happens I could use one. You did say you could ride, didn't you?"
"I did, and I do."
"Good." Perfect. She gestured toward a big bay. "Mule really needs a workout. If you take him, I'll be able to give Sam some exercise, too. Neither of them has had enough the last couple of days. I'm sure I have tack that'll suit you." She opened a box door and led out the already saddled Sam. "We'll wait in the paddock."
As they clipped out, Brian eyed Mule, Mule eyed Brian. "She's a bossy one, isn't she now?" Then with a shrug, Brian headed to the tack room to find a saddle that suited him.
She was cantering around the paddock when he came out, her body so tuned to the horse they might have been one figure. With the slightest shift in rhythm and angle, she took her mount over three jumps. Cantering still, she started the next circle, then spotted Brian. She slowed, stopped.
"Ready?"
For an answer, he swung into the saddle. "Why are you all done up today?"
"It was picture day. We take photographs of the classes. The kids and the parents like it. Mule's up for a good run, if you are."
"Then let's have at it." With a tap of his heels he sent the horse out of the open gate at an easy trot.
"How are the ribs?" she asked as she came up beside him.
"They're all right." They were driving him mad, because every time he felt a twinge he remembered her hands on him.
"I'm told the yearling training's coming along well, and Betty's one of the star pupils-as predicted."
"She has the thirst. All the training in the world can't give a horse the thirst to race. We'll be giving her a taste of the starting gate shortly, see how she does with it."
Keeley headed up a gentle slope where trees were still lush and green despite the encroaching fall. "I'd use Foxfire with her," she said casually. "He's a sturdy one, with lots of experience. He loves to charge out of the gate. She sees him do it a couple of times, she won't want to be left behind."
He'd already decided on Foxfire as Beth's gate tutor, but shrugged. "I'm thinking about it. So... have I passed the audition here, Miss Grant?"