Wild Irish Rose

by Ava Miles

  Love you, indeed. This meant his dad had seen the video now. And likely Connor too. He sighed. His older brother would take it as evidence he was loafing around. Well, he would deal with that if it happened. Right now, he needed to apologize to a lovely lady.

  He didn’t see Buttercup when he scanned the yard, thank God. The sunlight was rich in the bright-blue sky when he exited the back door, and the various shades of green called to mind dark limes and pale figs as he walked across the lawn to the stone building he guessed was the former kitchen. In old homes like this one, it was common for the original kitchen to have been built separately from the house, more due to the risk of fire than the heat they generated, unlike the Southern plantations his mother had made them visit on a family vacation to New Orleans one summer.

  The bright blue door was open, and when he caught sight of Becca, his mouth went dry. He stopped short. She was lifting what looked like a white shirt above her, studying it. Her body was a lush silhouette of feminine mystery with its graceful curves and lines. God, she was beautiful. Touching her last night had been pure magic, and he grew a little angry thinking about that alpaca interrupting them.

  Then he heard a far-off hum, and all the hair on the back of his neck stood up straight. He craned his neck around, but he didn’t see Buttercup. Maybe he’d imagined her call, but he increased his strides to the old kitchen just in case.

  Becca lowered her arms slowly when he entered and closed the door behind him. Her chest seemed to rise with her breath, and he found his nostrils twitching at the raw plant essences in the room. Those earthly scents only added to his desire for her.

  “You’ll need to keep the door open,” she said, all shades of awkwardness. “For ventilation.”

  He propped it back open, noticing all the windows were open too. It relieved him that she hadn’t wanted the door closed because of him.

  “I’m sorry I bolted on you last night,” he said, coming closer. “I thought about sending you a note, but I didn’t know the protocol for being chased away from a date by an alpaca.” Best leave Aileen out of it.

  Her lips twitched in the most enchanting way, and she held out the shirt she was holding. “I washed your shirt this morning as my own apology. But I didn’t want to risk your beautiful jacket—that fine Italian wool must have cost a song—so I sent it to the cleaners in town. Trevor, I couldn’t be more embarrassed.”

  “That makes two of us. So, how about we forget how the evening ended?”

  “That sounds like a grand idea,” she said, a smile cresting her face. “Must be hard to be so irresistible.”

  “That’s exactly what I told Uncle Arthur when he teased me this morning.”

  She winced. “Yes, I’m sorry Aileen mentioned it, but she said she hadn’t seen a chest that sexy since David Beckham modeled in his underwear.”

  “That’s a compliment, I guess.”

  “I’m glad to see you have more shirts and jackets.”

  “I always bring enough. Where did you find my shirt, by the by?”

  She made a face and crossed to the window. Leaning out, she hung it on a drying line covered in clothes pins, accessible from where she stood. “Buttercup has friends, it seems.”

  That news made him very afraid.

  “Don’t ask,” she said.

  He nodded. “So, this is where you dye wool.”

  “Yes, we did a new test yesterday and let it cool overnight,” she said, gesturing to the various metal pots and pans that covered almost every available surface. “It’s from our sheep mostly and some very unique wool from our Angora rabbits and… The alpacas you’ve met.”

  That beast was going to be a sweater or a scarf for someone. Too bad it wouldn’t be dinner on the restaurant menu, ending his troubles. “Tell me more. I know nothing about wool except that it makes a great suit.”

  She laughed. “Do you really want to know? Because I’m warning you. I become very excited talking about this new enterprise of ours. I might talk your ear off, and that’s saying a lot for someone who’s Irish.”

  He didn’t care so long as she kept smiling like she was, with stars in her eyes. “Talk away. As someone who’s part of a large family company with lots of assets, I like to learn about new businesses.” A shadow crossed her face for a moment, and he wanted to kick himself. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t speaking about my family business that way, only that we have diverse interests.” That didn’t sound much better, and he winced. Her land was one of those interests, and suddenly, the heaviness of his mission hung in the air between them.

  “Let me show you what’s in our dyeing pots,” she said, seeming to shake it off.

  He followed her when she bustled over to the first in the large row of aluminum pots and pans. As he drew closer, he noticed they were all filled with different colors of water with odd bits floating on the top of some of them and what looked like yarn inside.

  “Dyeing wool is like everything else,” she said. “More science than art, as Aileen and I are learning. The colors you end up with are quite surprising sometimes. In fact, they go against what the naked eye sees in many cases. Take this lavender bath here, for example. We thought it would be nice not only because I love the color and smell but because it has a natural antiseptic and can keep moths away from the sweaters and whatnot made with our yarn. But what color do you think we get when we dye the wool?”

  He couldn’t tell. Purple was too obvious, so he went with something else. “Blue?”

  “Good try, but no,” she said, taking a wooden spoon and stirring the water around until he could see the yarn. “Most of the time, we get a yellowish color.”

  The yarn sank back into the bath, but not before he noted it was more of a brown yellow to his eyes. Not an attractive tint to his mind.

  “Now take our fern mixture here. They love our damp Irish weather. Aileen and I thought they’d make for a lovely dye, what with their poetic majesty and all. Can you imagine what color they produce?”

  He tried to lean closer to the pot, but she stepped in front to block his view. “No cheating.”

  He found himself wanting to pull her into his arms right then, what with her pointing at him like a put-out school teacher. “Green, of course, but I’m guessing that’s not the answer.”

  “Green is the hardest color to replicate in a dye. I’ve been beating my head against the wall trying to get the perfect one, and I still haven’t mastered it. Aileen is beside herself as well. I mean, here we are in Ireland with greens all around us. People visit just to see the greens. Even this morning, your Aunt Clara told me she’d never seen so many shades of it, although your uncle says he’s seen his fair share where he lives in Colorado. Oh, the way he talks about the Rocky Mountains made me want to…” The faraway look in her eyes washed away, replaced by something else. Sadness? “I’m getting carried away, aren’t I?”

  He didn’t think so. In fact, it was another confirmation of how much she wanted to see the world. Had she never thought to leave Aileen in charge? The woman seemed very capable, and while he didn’t have Cian’s measure yet, the man was always around, working hard along with the rest of them.

  “Dare Valley where Uncle Arthur and Aunt Clara live is a beautiful town tucked away in the mountains. You’d like it. They have lovely shops on this quaint Main Street. I think there might even be a yarn shop.”

  He wasn’t exactly sure, but if there wasn’t one, there should be. This yarn thing was the kind of eclectic shop people in Dare Valley would like. He might ask J.T. about it. Then he discarded the idea. His brother was already laughing enough over his altercations with Buttercup. He didn’t want to lose his Man Card for good.

  “It sounds like a grand place. I wish…” Becca said, shaking her head as if to recenter herself. She picked up another wooden spoon and stirred the pot with the fern dye, her face in profile. “With our wild ferns here, what with the red stems and the spores, we’re getting a red color for our wool.” She lifted the spoon up to show him, the
n set it aside again. “It’s simply fascinating. And we haven’t even started talking about what happens when you add acid and play with the pH.”

  “I love it when you talk science,” he murmured huskily, making a grab for her.

  She only laughed and shuffled out of reach, facing him, mischief flashing in her eyes. “Did you know that red cabbage is a wonderful natural dye they used commonly during World War II?”

  He stopped short, thinking about his Grandpa Noah and Grandma Anna as he often did when the war came up. “No, I didn’t. My grandma had a victory garden in Chicago during the war. I wonder if she grew cabbage. I imagine she did, what with her being Irish-American. I’ll have to ask my mom.”

  “Your face changes when you speak of your family,” Becca said. “It’s like the sun comes out inside you.”

  He was stunned speechless. No woman had ever noticed that about him. Usually they couldn’t wait for him to get off the phone, and he’d never met anyone he’d wanted his family to embrace, but he could see her laughing with Caitlyn amidst her dyeing pots or showing Michaela her ferns. Those images gave him an odd feeling in his chest.

  She lowered her eyes then. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m talking silly.”

  “No, I like the way you talk,” he said, his voice pitching lower. “So what colors come from red cabbage? Not red?”

  “Closer to pink in some cases, although we’ve gotten it a little darker if we use a bit more white vinegar and let the yarn rest in the dye longer, which is what Aileen and I are finding we prefer. But wouldn’t you know, we can also get the most brilliant blues with some baking soda, the kind that make you want to take a walk outside after a nasty stretch of wet days.”

  Her eyes took on a dreamy quality again. She yearned to travel, he knew, but it seemed she also yearned for blue skies. He’d have to take her for a walk one of these days.

  Then he remembered he would be leaving soon, and a flash of pain raced across his heart. He didn’t want to leave this woman. The feeling was odd and unwelcome, and he brushed it aside.

  “Aileen also managed a beautiful purple,” she said, pointing to yet another dyeing pot. “We’re sowing more cabbage now to harvest next spring so we can do some more experimenting. Chef Padraig wasn’t happy when I purloined the last of our summer cabbage harvest, let me tell you, but I reminded him there were plenty of other plants he could use for salads and the like in the restaurant.”

  She spoke with a lovely tone of command at times, and he found it charming. She was the boss of a sizable small business, between the actual bed and breakfast and restaurant and this new enterprise. The running of things suited her, he thought. She was firm but fair, the kind of person he preferred to do business with. Then he stopped short.

  No thinking about business, he reminded himself. Not now when she looked so beautiful in a flowing blue cotton dress with a white apron over the top of it.

  “What about roses?” he asked. “This is The Wild Irish Rose, after all.”

  She grinned. “Lovely, magical shades of pinks, the kind that make you believe in fairies and unicorns. It’s going to be our signature yarn if I have to beg the fairies myself for the perfect shades.”

  Laughter spurted out of him. Oh, he loved this side of her. “Show me more of your experiments,” he told her, forgetting about the work he had waiting for him. Forgetting that Connor was likely pissed about the video and his general lack of progress.

  She took him around the large kitchen, and he noted the initials carved in some of the stones with various dates and names from times past. There was a Johnny from 1888 and a Maureen from 1922, he saw. He wondered who they were but couldn’t get a word in edgewise to ask her. She was too busy trying to explain something called a mordant, which bound the dyes they were using. She got very animated, telling him about plants that contained natural mordants like juniper (not only for venison, she joked) and oak galls (which he still wasn’t clear on), and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling outright at her gushing enthusiasm.

  She led him to a battered old desk. A few old, dog-eared books on natural plants and homemade dyeing lay on the surface. She gushed as she showed him charts of her various experiments, and he was impressed with the way she’d laid out her data, everything from the dye ingredients down to the time lapse in the dye pots. Then she started to explain the importance of using a pH-neutral soap, and she lost him. But he didn’t care because she was so animated she was talking with her delicate hands, and sometimes, those hands came to rest on him as a way of both garnering his attention and sharing her delight.

  By the time she wound down, he’d started eating one of the scones in his pocket, and she didn’t even seem to notice, what with showing him her jars of alum salt and natural iron (from boiling old rusty nails, he was amused to discover) and various dried berries like elderberries, which apparently produced beautiful shades of pale gray.

  She rushed over to another pot and held up her hands, almost as though she was throwing them up to the sun. “Isn’t it wonderful what nature can do? It takes my breath away, the way the colors change from one process to the next. And when you make a sweater or a scarf—or even a pair of gloves—out of the yarn you dyed with your own hands, using your very own brain… Well, I feel as though I might simply float out of my body and out into the sky above us.”

  He could no longer fight the temptation to hold her. Reaching for her, he brought her to his body. Cupped her face and sought her gaze. The blue of her eyes made him think of the blues she’d shown him earlier, the ones that reminded her of a sky after a string of rainy days. Had she talked about floating out of her body? Because touching the velvety softness of her cheek made him feel like he was lifting out of his skin.

  “Becca,” he said.

  Her hand rose to stroke his jaw, and she met his gaze head-on. “I like sharing all this with you.”

  Powerful words. He liked that, too, and how she looked in the sunlight soaking through the open windows and door. It picked up the reds and golds in her brown hair, the flecks of blue and green in her eyes. She’d shown him the beauty of color, and now he saw it everywhere. This woman was a beautiful miracle of excitement and heart, and he was falling fast here with no parachute to pull. Even scarier, he didn’t want to pull the parachute and stop the fall.

  “Share everything with me,” he murmured, lowering his mouth until it was a hairsbreadth from her lips.

  He felt her throat move, almost as if she’d had to digest his invitation. Then she pressed her mouth to his, and his heart sung in his chest. She was blue fire, gold fire, every color of fire in his arms, and all he wanted was to be consumed and reborn in it. He let his eyes close, losing himself in the feeling of her.

  A loud cough punctuated his consciousness, and then she was springing back from him.

  “Cian!” she cried, patting her dark hair back in place after his hands had tangled in it.

  “You’re needed back at the main house,” the man said, staring Trevor down from the open doorway.

  He returned the look, unflinching, noting Cian hadn’t apologized for interrupting them. No, Trevor imagined he’d done that on purpose. In his place, Trevor might have been just as protective. He was with his own sisters even though they could take care of themselves.

  “Will you show me the animals if you have time later?” he asked Becca. “Everything but the alpacas, of course.”

  She didn’t laugh at his joke, only yanked on her apron as if to ensure it was back in its place. “I can’t say just now. Thank you for letting me show you our dyes. Please feel free to look around on your own.”

  Since his work was done, Cian disappeared from the doorway, Becca following in his wake. She started pulling on her apron, he noticed, as she reached the threshold. The pulse in her neck was visible as well. Was she nervous they’d been caught together? He didn’t know what her relationship was with Cian, but if he was some sort of surrogate father, Trevor supposed she might be anxious abo
ut his opinion. He realized he didn’t know anything about her family, except that her grandmother was gone. Had she siblings? Where were her parents, and why hadn’t they taken over before her? He found he’d spoken the truth. He wanted her to share everything with him and vice versa.

  “Will I see you again tonight?” he called before she escaped.

  For a moment, he wasn’t sure she’d heard him. But she stopped, her body angled in that same glorious silhouette he’d noticed as he approached her earlier.

  “I’d very much like to,” she said, taking a deep breath, almost a gulp of air, poor girl. Then she was gone, and he noticed how some of the vibrancy in the room had disappeared with her.

  She was wrong about mordants and acid adding vibrancy to color.

  It was her.

  Chapter 10

  Becca was sitting in one of her favorite private rooms in the house with a pot of Barry’s Tea. She didn’t care what Aileen said—and the woman had very strong opinions on this topic, so much so they debated it once a month—Barry’s was better than Lyons.

  She’d needed some time for reflection after her surprise encounter with Trevor in the old kitchen. When she’d learned Aileen had told Trevor’s aunt and uncle about seeing him shirtless in the house, fleeing Buttercup, she’d wanted to pull her hair out. She’d feared he’d be out of sorts with her. But Aileen was delighted Becca was getting along so well with the fine American fellow, what with all her talk of magic afoot. It certainly had been in the old kitchen. Aileen seemed to have forgotten all about Trevor’s true purpose, and truthfully, Becca was starting to forget too.

  Even more so after he’d listened to her so intently as she rambled on about dye and yarn. He’d seemed genuinely interested—in her, in what she did and loved. It had bolstered her spirits, which were already soaring from the excitement of her new discovery: it was easier to leave the main house for the old kitchen because she knew something special awaited her there. Her excitement swung the scales in a happier favor, and the normal anxiety, while still present, only pressed at the edges of her mind. There was something to this new discovery. Perhaps if she were excited enough about what lay outside the main house, she would be able to more easily step toward it.