Running Back nyl-2

by Allison Parr

  To my surprise, Paul dropped down beside me. “Don’t want anything stronger?”

  “Isn’t it too early?”

  He gave a dry half smile. “It’s never too early to drink in Dundoran.”

  I almost agreed with him. “What’s the story between Maggie and Kate? And the brothers, for that matter.”

  He tilted his head. “You don’t know?”

  I watched him carefully. Paul was interesting. If he shared stories with me, I wouldn’t attribute it to a love of gossip, but a desire to stir up trouble. “No.”

  “Your boyfriend’s not very open.”

  “He’s not really my boyfriend.”

  He scanned me in an overtly insulting manner. “That so?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Mike’s not even here to see that.”

  His lips split in a sudden, genuine grin. “True.” He shrugged. “Patrick was orphaned young and had to take care of his younger brother. Too much responsibility, too little money. Then he married a woman who didn’t love him. The family farmhouse—there was a house out on Kilkarten, right?—was razed, and then he took a job as solicitor, which wasn’t bound to make him any friends, you know, and he was bitter and angry by the time he died.”

  “That’s sad.”

  Paul cocked his head. “Aren’t most people’s lives sad?”

  Hadn’t I said the same to Mike not so long ago? I didn’t want to be as angry as Paul. “I hope not.”

  We finished our drinks, and then I ducked inside for the bathroom. I passed Mike and Lauren on the way. The middle O’Connor scowled at the elder. “Anna’s eyeing the liquor cabinet with the help of her merry band of local rebels. Your turn to deal with it.”

  Mike groaned. “Dammit. Where’s Mom?”

  “Being interrogated by some great-uncle I’d never heard of, about Dad’s entire life. I don’t think she needs this too.”

  I shot Mike a sympathetic glance and headed up the stairs.

  Coming out of the bathroom, Maggie’s framed wedding picture at the end of the hall caught my attention.

  They were remarkably young—well, I thought so, since they looked around my age. Maybe even younger. Did they look happy? Patrick looked—grimly triumphant. Maggie looked beautiful, if distant.

  More photos, small and dark, covered the wall, and I followed them into the next room, an office with much larger prints. I remembered Anna’s request for pictures of her father, and looked for a second redheaded man. I recognized him instantly. He’d been younger than Mike when he immigrated, so he had to be younger still in these pictures. But they had the same cowlick, the same grin and jaw.

  One picture, in pride of place above the mantel, featured Maggie between the boys. They were teenagers. Her long black hair swept over her shoulders as she laughed on the cab of a beat up Ford. Patrick had his arm around her shoulder. Brian curved his arm around her waist.

  Oh...

  “Can I help you?”

  I spun around, almost slipping on the floor. Maggie O’Connor stood there, solemn and austere in her black dress. “I’m sorry. I just...” I had absolutely no excuse.

  She raised her brows. “You’re nosy.”

  I raised my hands apologetically. “Incurably.”

  Her gaze wandered past me and landed on a round portrait. I turned to face it. Maggie was even younger there, maybe Anna’s age, her cheeks cherub round, her eyes holding dreams. “You were beautiful.” I looked up quickly. “I mean—that’s not to say—”

  She permitted a small smile to cross her lips, and waved away my blunder. “I still see her when I look in the mirror.” Her expression softened. “I was the most beautiful girl in Kilkarten in those days. We had such grand plans then.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “Can’t build castles on cobwebs.” She appraised me. “Patrick was a hard man to like, especially in the later years, and I’ll take my share of the blame. But it was a good thing he did, agreeing to let you excavate Kilkarten. I think it’s wrong of Mike to not let you do so.”

  “Why didn’t your husband leave the land to you?”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to absolve the anger between the brothers. And I would have just left it to Mike, so. No children of my own.”

  “What about Paul?”

  She looked surprised, like she’d never thought of leaving the land to her other nephew. “Wouldn’t have been right. That land always belonged to the O’Connors. I’m sure Patrick didn’t want it out of the family, no matter what.” She shook her head. “We should rejoin the others.”

  Back in the kitchen, I piled my plate high while watching everyone mingle. Nearby, Anna stood with crossed arms in a group of other teenagers. Lauren argued with Paul over by the bookshelves. Kate laughed out loud at something an older gentleman said.

  People kept approaching me to discuss the dig. Everyone knew it wouldn’t take place, but they seemed to think that I was the person who could change that fact, and I had too much pride to blame Mike.

  Well, they also liked to discuss my plate of food. One commended me on my “lively appetite.” One looked alarmed at the amount of cheese I’d taken. The third, Caitlin Riordan, whose family owned the pub, explained how excited she was for the dig and introduced her younger brother as Finn, the sullen bartender Anna kept sneaking glances at. Another, Mrs. Barry from the farm nearest Kilkarten, noted that the she’d made the scone in my mouth, and that it would be no problem for her to make up an equally delicious lunch each day for the workers—and for a small fee, of course.

  Across the room, Mike smiled and nodded as strangers who’d known his father and uncle told stories about their childhoods. But while his lips stayed turned up, the muscles around his eyes stopped moving, and his hands started to shift.

  When he excused himself, I followed him outside. He headed down the road for a long minute, until the laughter faded and the tiny harbor came into view.

  Before him, the sea stretched flat and gray, save the metallic ripple of sun. Above, textured gunmetal blue sky and orange tinged clouds rippled out. Muddied pink and shadowy purple lined the horizon and curved coast. Mike’s hands worked at his neck, yanking the tie off. It dangled in his clenched hand, a vibrant streak of color in the softened world.

  I walked closer. “Are you okay?”

  He jerked and turned. An unfamiliar expression drew his brows down in stark lines, and with the sun setting his eyes were shadowed. “Didn’t I look okay?”

  I hesitated, unnerved by his tone. “Not really.”

  He knotted the tie around his fists as he hung his head back let out a groan and dropped it, reaching for me. The tie fluttered to the ground.

  I took one of his hands and moved close, lifting my eyes to his. They were bright and unblinking. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head and pulled me closer. He kissed me with such desperation that it scared me. I pulled back, but remained within his embrace. My hands rested on his chest. “Mike. Tell me.”

  He dropped his arms and walked away. “My uncle died, that’s what. I never met him. He’s dead, and my father’s dead, and my grandparents are dead, and what the fuck am I doing?” The wind whipped his hair into a mad tangle. “This isn’t me. This hasn’t been me for ten years. I’m so fucking angry with my father, and Patrick, and all these people who know so goddamn much about ‘the O’Connors.’”

  He drove his fingers through his hair. “And I don’t know who I am here. I’ve never had to be my father’s son. And I haven’t spent this much time isolated with my mom and sisters for years.”

  I had no experience with death, but I had plenty with anger and regret and family. “Then be angry. Don’t just keep it trapped.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  I leaned my head back. “I’m mad at my mother for not understanding me. I’m mad at my father for not understanding her. At—at myself for my general incompetence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  That I h
ad let myself get swept away in Mike’s life, and Mike’s family, instead of sticking to the goal and researching Kilkarten. And I was mad at him, too, for not being able to see it my way, and then the anger turned back on myself for being so selfish. “I don’t know. I’m just not always the person I want to be.”

  He tilted his chin toward the earth and cracked a small smile of self-recrimination and frustration. “I want to be the person everyone thinks I am. The charming one.” He looked up, eyes striking right into mine. “You don’t think that’s me.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No.” He folded his hands over his nose. “I want to get out of here.”

  I couldn’t help with everything, but at least I knew where we could go.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We caught the bus back to the inn, and from there took the car Mike’s family had rented. I drove. Mike didn’t ask where we were going; he didn’t even speak, just stared out the window at the gathering dark. So I didn’t say anything either, until the road dwindled into little more than two tracks on a flat path lined by hedgerows. I pulled over to the side of the road and led him up a tiny path between two tall, full trees.

  The stones came into view almost immediately, jutting out between the straw colored grasses. “There are around two hundred dolmens in Ireland, and most of them are up north. But Cork—Cork is filled with them too. Standing stones and portal tombs. Whole megalithic complexes.”

  Before us, the landscape sprawled out, a majestic patchwork of rolling greens, of dark bushes and pale grasses and startlingly bright mosses. It looked endless, almost, except you could see the blaze of fire far out over the water.

  Staggered stones rose out of the ground, massive boulders roughly shaped into points. We climbed a small hill and stopped before the portal tomb. A heavy, ancient capstone lay tilted across a handful of backstones, looking like it might slide off any minute and cause a small earthquake.

  Mike traced a ridge in the stone. “When was it built?”

  “Maybe five-thousand years ago. Older than the pyramids.” We slowly started around the monument. “I get why they believed in fairies here.” I glanced over at him. In the darkness, only his hair glinted. His strong jaw and broad shoulders made him look like he’d stepped out of the tales himself. “You’re perfect, actually.” He met my eyes, startled. “Put you in a tunic and give you a torc instead of a tie, and you could have been here for thousands of years.

  “We did a unit on fairytales in seventh grade, and my project was about fairy portals. Rings of stones or mushrooms. I used to daydream about going through one. Ending up in Fairyland. Where everything was beautiful and perfect and magical.”

  He reached out and planted a hand against one of the supporting boulders. And then, before I realized what he was planning, he planted his arms on the stone and swung himself onto the capstone.

  I gasped and grabbed for his leg, but he evaded me easily. “Are you crazy?” My heart beat frantically as he sprawled across the stone. “You have to get off!”

  “Do I?” He grinned down me. Mad, beautiful, just as a fairy king ought to be. He reached down. “Come on.”

  I shook my head resolutely. “No.”

  “Natalie.” A wicked gleam lit his eyes. His hand taunted me. “Now.”

  And then, because I was clearly mad, too, I placed my hand in his, braced my leg and was pulled up onto the capstone. I landed half across him, and he righted me in his lap, his arms at the small of my back. His scent mingled with the summer night, grass and earth and stone. “This is very wrong.”

  He laughed. “Are the fairies going to punish us?”

  I wound my fingers through his hair, admiring the play of silver and fire. “You are very bad at being Irish.”

  He kissed me. His hands slid along my back, pressing me closer, and his tongue met mine in a slow, perfect dance and I no longer cared what was right and who we were. Not tonight, with a dome of fast stars blazing far above us. Not here, on this portal into a different world, a different reality, one that was just us and warmth and beauty. I wanted to have him, for him to have me, to belong to each other here in this wild land on the edge of the world. So I packed my reasons for coming to Ireland away in a little box at the back of my mind, and when he lay down on the cold hard stone, I followed.

  My knees landed on either side of him, my dress rucked up around my waist. I bent my body toward his, needing to be closer, to edge out the air between us until we were a seamless blend of heat. I’d never felt so urgent before, never ached with desire until I felt like my body might combust. Maybe because I’d never slept with anyone who I’d understood so entirely, inside and out, who fascinated me and drew me and pulled me apart. I’d always been so comfortable, so relaxed, like sex was just one more recreational activity that wasn’t so important one way or the other, but I wanted Mike like I’d wanted Kilkarten, and I wanted him now.

  My hair fell in thick, pale waves over my shoulders, dangled down to brush his chest. He kissed me as his hand moved to the zipper of my dress. Cool night air brushed my spine, followed by the warmth of his fingers.

  But. “We can’t.” I sat up, my hands planted firmly on his chest. I wanted to tear off his suit jacket, to rip off the buttons.

  “Why not?” He sat up slowly, his hands holding me at the small of my back. My legs wrapped around his waist as he rose, and my hands slipped up to clutch at his shoulders. I could feel how much he wanted me, feel every hard inch moving against me as we shifted, and I let out a low moan. His lips found mine again and I pressed against him, rocking my hips forward, one hand walling down toward his waist. Pressure surrounded me, enough that I thought I might lose everything there.

  Except some tiny piece of sanity made me pull my head back. “Pyramids.”

  He didn’t stop kissing me. One hand twined in my hair as he angled my head back. I groaned, and his other hand slipped under my dress. His fingers slid along the curve of my leg while his thumb brushed my inner thigh. Heat shot through me as he teasingly inched his hand higher. “I dunno. Didn’t the Celts have some giant fertility festival? They’d probably cheer us on.”

  “Beltane.” I pushed back as the word fertility sunk in. “No, we really do need to stop. Unless you have a condom in your wallet.” I jumped off the dolmen and looked back up.

  For a minute I just stared at him, disordered and gorgeous and unworldly, but staring wasn’t enough. “Come on.”

  His eyes lit and he jumped down much more gracefully, and we ran with locked hands to the truck. In a minute I had it blazing down the path, still shaking with need and at the withdrawal of his touch.

  He slid his hand over my thigh, and my breath hitched, my hands tightening on the wheel. He traced the hem of my dress, and slowly, slowly pushed it up my thigh with one finger. I reached down with one hand to press his still, then hurriedly let go as the road turned. “You’ll make me crash. Um...” I tried to think. “Anything I should know? About health.”

  “No, I’m good. You?”

  “I am great. As long as we get to the inn alive.”

  I’d barely put us into park before Mike was kissing me. We were cramped and twisted and laughing in the car seats, and then he pulled me to his side and I banged my elbow and my knee. “Ow.”

  We tumbled into his room in a whirl of hands and kisses and skin. “Zipper,” I gasped between kisses.

  “Turn around.”

  I could barely make myself move, but I did, and instead of pulling down the metal tab, he slid his hands over my hips and pressed his lips to the juncture of my neck and shoulder. I rolled my head to the side to give him greater access, and tried to keep breathing as his tongue stroked my skin and his fingers played patterns against my lower stomach. I reached my hands up and behind so I could weave my fingers through his hair, and the motion pushed my breasts high up. He groaned and I let out a tiny huff of laugher, turning my neck and trying to reach his lips with mine. He refused to meet them, and instead traced a lon
g line of kisses from my temple to my ear.

  When he reached the sweet spot behind it, his teeth and tongue pressing and tugging, my knees buckled and I gasped, air coming in little breaks as shudders ran through me. He laughed low, and pressed his body against mine until I was caught up between him and the door. With one hand, he gathered my wrists and pressed them above my head. The wood was cool against my cheek; my breasts and pelvis strained against it as my thighs trembled. Behind me, Mike was hot and hard and strong. I leaned my head back against him, too shaken to move.

  Then he pressed his lips against my shoulder and stepped back. Still, he kept my hands trapped as he slowly, slowly unzipped my dress, the fabric peeling back. “There,” he said softly, and he let go.

  I turned, and he was watching me with fire in his eyes, the kind of liquid flame so strong it could burn on water. Mike O’Connor, charming, good-natured Michael O’Connor, had no masks now, no smiles except that slow, crooked one as I reached for the sleeves of my dress with studied slowness. I didn’t take my eyes off his face as I slid the fabric down, barring each centimeter of skin languidly, until the dress caught for a bare second on my breasts before falling in a wisp of black to the floor.

  “God, you’re beautiful.”

  And my lips rose in the most perfect smile, a smile I felt in my eyes and my head and my heart, because I believed he meant it. I’d never been able to appreciate being found beautiful without getting tangled up in thoughts of my mother and the commodification of beauty. Now, I just wanted to be beautiful for Mike. “Your turn.”

  But he didn’t obey the rules. Instead, he caught me up in his arms, dragging his lips over mine. He was greedy and demanding and I responded in kind, wrapping myself around him until even the thin layer of his shirt was too much between us. I yanked at the cloth, fighting with the abominable buttons even as he unhooked my bra and slid the straps down my shoulders. And then we separated for a bare moment, long enough to turn our clothes to heaps on the floor before we tumbled into bed.