Fiona was as bossy as ever, instructing where everyone should eat and whacking reaching hands with a ready wooden spoon, but there was a glint of humor in her eye.
And something more.
The gypsy, Declan, had taken to spending more and more time at her table. And in her front parlor. And trailing behind her as she went to bring in the goats…
At first glance, Sarah thought they were the ultimate mismatch. The fisherman’s daughter and the gypsy. But listening to them interact had changed her mind. And looking at Fiona’s face when she watched Declan helped change her mind, too. It was hard to argue that something was wrong when it created such a picture of happiness in the beaming face of your best friend.
Mike sat next to Sarah, as he always did. Sarah knew there was a change in their relationship—although it was, of course, unspoken and as yet not acted upon. Partly it was because David was out of the picture, and Sarah knew that. But it was also because of what the two of them had recently endured—for the sake of the other. Now that Sarah was safely back at camp with John she realized she had been trying to get back to Mike nearly as much.
Which did not change the fact that she had a serious bone to pick with him.
After supper, Sarah shooed everyone out of Fiona’s kitchen—except Mike—and turned to the sink full of dirty dishes.
“I’ll be thanking you for recruiting me for the wash up,” he said drily, picking up a dishtowel. “I often wonder how I’ll unwind after a hard day of mending fences, chasing goats around the pasture and breaking up fights in camp.”
Sarah laughed but didn’t speak.
He sighed and reached for a dish. “Let’s have it, Sarah. I know you’ve got something to say.”
“And you know what it is, too,” Sarah said, plunging her hands into the cold soapy dishwater.
He sighed again. “I was hoping you’d let it alone by now.”
“I have to know what happened to her.”
“Some things are best not known.”
“This isn’t one of them.” She turned to him, her hands dripping on the floor. “I can’t leave John again and he won’t let me go alone.”
“And I won’t let you go, period.”
“Oh, so is this Donovan’s Lot the Dictatorship now?”
“My God, woman, it never ends with you, does it? We’re all finally back in one piece and you’re ready to go dig up more trouble.”
“That’s just it, Mike. I’m not in one piece until I find out what happened to her.”
“Even if what you find out is…is…”
“Yes. Even then.”
“Da, let me go,” Gavin coming from the other room where he’d obviously been listening. “I can be to the coast and back in three days. Me and Benjy are dying to stretch our legs a bit.”
Mike hesitated just long enough. “God, the pair of ya, will be the death of me,” he said looking at Sarah and Gavin together. “But the answer’s still no. It’s too dangerous and I’ll not have it. Everyone stays put where I can keep an eye on ‘em. And that’s me last word on the subject.”
Sarah nodded sadly and turned back to the dishes. “I understand, Mike,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to be any more trouble than I already have been. I’m sorry.”
“Ahhh, stop that, now,” Mike said throwing the dishtowel over his shoulder. “Bugger me if I can’t get comfortable for five fecking minutes without someone wanting me to step in front of a bullet or put me hand up a cow’s arse.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that last bit,” Sarah said, fighting to keep the amusement and hope out of her voice, “but I mean, you just said I can’t do it. So…”
“Yes, fine,” Mike said. He looked at Gavin who seemed to be literally jumping up and down at the prospect. “We’ll go. We’ll go. Tomorrow at first light.” He tossed down the dishtowel onto the counter. “I assume this means I’m at least released from KP duty?”
Sarah dried her hands and slipped into his arms, resting her head against his broad chest. When she felt him pull her in closer with one large hand stroking her on her back, she forced herself to step away and turn back to the dishes. The warmth of emotion—and desire—that flooded through her body shocked her with its urgency.
More than that, she realized, blushing and breathless with guilt and longing, was the stunning realization that nothing in her life up to now had ever felt more right than the few seconds she had just experienced in his arms.
* * *
The ride to Boreen on well-rested horses with a full saddlebag full of food and water made all the difference in the world, Mike thought bemusedly. He glanced over at Gavin who appeared happy just to be out in the world, regardless of the weather, the reason or errand. Mike had warned him they would likely come back empty handed—or worse, with news that would not comfort anyone, but the lad seemed as focused on the adventure of it all than the outcome.
They arrived at Boreen by midday and boarded the ferry to Fishguard by late afternoon. Once cross the Channel, Mike gave Gavin the reins to both horses and told him to wait for him. Although clearly disappointed not to be joining his father as he searched the bars and brothels of Fishguard, Gavin wisely, did not openly complain.
There were several reasons why Mike hated this errand, not least of which was the fact that if he found out what happened to the gypsy and it was bad, Sarah would be stricken. And if he found out nothing, the stubborn lass would likely never give up the search.
What do they call that? Lose-lose?
In the first two hours in Fishguard combing the harbor bars, he bought four beers with money he did not have to throw away and questioned dozens of fishermen, tradesmen, travelers and anybody else who looked like they might know something.
Before he stumbled, fuzzy-headed and discouraged, to where Gavin sat with the horses to find a place for the night, he’d been told by no fewer than three people that they’d heard of a little gypsy girl who’d been killed two weeks earlier.
One said he heard she’d been strangled. One said stabbed. The other couldn’t remember.
“Does that mean we know what happened to her?” Gavin asked, finishing off the last of their grub as Mike untacked the horses and brushed them down for the night.
“It’s not proof enough,” Mike said.
“Will you need to see the body?”
“I don’t know what I’ll need,” Mike said truthfully. “I just know that hearsay isn’t enough.”
They slept the night in the stall next to their horses. The next morning, Mike told Gavin not to bothering tacking up. Just stay with the horses until Mike returned.
“Some adventure,” Gavin said. “Here I am in Wales and I’m seeing the inside of a fecking stable.”
Mike chose to ignore the grumbling. “I’ll bring you back lunch,” he said, checking his pockets to see how much coin he had left. Not much.
A light rap on the stall door startled them both and they looked at each other warily.
“Well, you were asking a lot of questions to a lot of people,” Gavin whispered, shrugging.
“Come in,” Mike said, pulling his rifle out of his saddle sheath.
The heavy stable door creaked open and a young boy poked his head through. “Oy, mister? You lookin’ for the gypsy girl?”
Mike put the gun back and beckoned for the boy to enter. “What do you know about her?”
“You related to her or something?” the boy asked, still not completely entering the stable.
“Something like that. Can I give you an American dollar to hear what you know?” The money wasn’t worth anything as far as buying beer but the contents of Sarah’s billfold might be useful in other ways.
“Cor, really? A greenback? Can I see it?”
“If you can tell me where I can find the gypsy girl, you can have it.”
The boy licked his lips and stepped into the stable. “She’s at me auntie Mabel’s place.”
Mike held out the dollar to him but when the boy reached for it,
Mike didn’t let go. “Where is your auntie Mabel’s place, if I may be so bold?”
The boy jerked his head to indicate it was outside the stable. “I’ll lead ya,” he said. “I’ll take ya straight there. But ya gotta be quiet, like. The girls is all sleeping this early.”
“The girls?”
“Blimey, Da,” Gavin said. “He’s taking ya to a whorehouse!”
Mike released the dollar to the boy who examined it closely and then folded it and stuck it in his pocket.
“So she’s alive?”
The boy stopped and frowned. “I’m not sure,” he said. “She was pretty smashed up when they dumped her at me Auntie Mabel’s. But I think she was alive last time I saw her.”
“When was that?” Mike pulled on his jacket.
“A week ago?”
Mike’s stomach muscles clenched, but he nodded to the boy. “Take me there, son,” he said. “And hurry.”
* * *
If you haven’t read Free Falling, Book 1 of The Irish End Games, you’ll want to see how the Woodson family got stranded in Ireland in the first place when a nuclear bomb dropped on the second day of their perfect vacation.
If you want to find out what happens next to Sarah, John and Mike, check out Heading Home, Book 3 of the Irish End Games.
* * *
Here is the beginning of Heading Home.
* * *
The colors from the setting sun streaked across the summer sky in a vibrant display as Sarah stood in the front room of her cottage. She filled a basket with fresh-baked rolls for the upcoming dinner at Fiona’s. The days in Ireland were long and warm in late June. As she looked across the camp, awash with muted reds and yellows from the dying light, her eyes were drawn to the warm glow from inside Fiona’s cottage.
Even from a distance, it looked inviting and cozy. Sarah saw Fiona and Papin moving about the interior, doing the little homey chores necessary for putting a family meal together. She watched them until she saw Mike appear on the porch steps and heard Papin squeal her greeting to him.
She saw Mike open his arms and Papin and Fiona both came to him. Sarah would never forget the day, seven months ago, when Mike rode into camp with Papin cradled in his arms, her broken arm folded against her chest, her eyes wide with hope and expectation. When Sarah ran up to them, he dismounted and carried Papin to Sarah’s cottage. Sarah held the dear broken girl—and the man who had brought her home—and believed her heart would burst from happiness.
Since that day, Mike had stepped easily into the role of father to Papin, and the girl had responded like a Morning Glory to sunlight. Gregarious by nature, Papin slipped seamlessly into the pace and beat of family life as if she’d been born to it. For the first time ever, Papin had a loving family.
One thing everyone knew for sure: the bad times were behind her.
As Sarah packed her basket, it occurred to her that tonight was a typical evening meal with the people she loved most in the world. The anticipation she felt—hearing them share about their day and laughing with them, as she knew she would—filled her with a sense of wellbeing and security she’d never really had up to now.
The truth of it was they were finally all together—all except for David. A shadow passed over her heart as she thought of him, buried beneath a scattering of wild flowers in the far pasture by Deirdre and Seamus’s old cottage. She shook the thought from her mind. Tonight wasn’t the time for reflection or regrets or grief. It was a night for celebration and toasts and joy.
Tomorrow was Fiona’s wedding day.
* * *
Mike Donovan stood at the end of the aisle and watched the bride approach. He had to admit he had never seen her look more beautiful, her face flushed with excitement, her eyes sparkling when she saw him. It was all he could do to mask his quickly misting eyes as he gazed at her.
“You ready, then?” he asked gruffly, holding out his arm to her.
“As I’ll ever be,” Fiona said, grabbing on to his arm.
“Declan’s a good bloke,” Mike said, turning toward the chapel.
“I know.”
They stood at the end of the path as it wrapped around the last hut before entering the camp. It had been Sarah’s idea to have Mike and Fi approach the little chapel from the outdoor walkway. Mike had to admit, it felt even more special to take this walk with Fi, at the end of which he’d hand her over to the man who, in the last seven months, had become his closest mate since his school days.
Hard to believe it had been seven months since Declan and his gypsy gang of fortune tellers, goniffs, and grifters had stormed the little Irish settlement Mike had built and helped rescue them from an English assault. Seven months in which Declan had proved himself to be not only a friend and a capable lieutenant in managing the camp alongside Mike—but the one man in all the world that Mike’s sister, Fiona, would give her heart
“There’s the music,” Fi said, squeezing Mike’s arm. “I don’t know how your Sarah did it, but it really sounds pretty close to Haste to the Wedding.”
Mike grinned. His Sarah. As much as he loved the sound of that, and he knew Fiona only said it as a private gift to him on this special day, he also knew Sarah Woodson—an American stranded in Ireland with her family after an ill-timed vacation—belonged to no one.
It was true enough, however, that she was just about the most resourceful person he’d ever met. After everything that went down last year he had started calling her the female MacGyver.
“Let’s go, Mike,” Fi said, tugging on his arm. “I got the bugger to the altar but there’s no telling how long he’ll stay there.”
“He’ll stay,” Mike said, as he turned his attention back to his sister and her big day. “You’re not the only one who’s waited a long time for this day.”
* * *
The wedding could not be more perfect, Sarah thought as she dabbed her eyes, if it had been privately catered with a limo waiting for the happy couple afterward. As it was, they cut a homemade wedding cake that, due to the lack of sugar, tasted more like corn bread than cake and said their vows in front of a seriously inebriated justice of the peace in lieu of a proper priest. Just a few more things hard to come by after the bomb changed everyone’s world, Sarah thought grimly.
She turned to her thirteen-year-old son, who was whispering loudly to the bride’s nephew, Gavin. John was growing tall, like his father had been. His eighteen months of living in a world with no electricity, no electronics and no transportation beyond what a horse could provide had transformed him from an indulged child into a young man mature beyond his years.
Which didn’t mean he still didn’t need to be shushed from time to time. “John,” she whispered.
He turned to her, grinning apologetically and mouthed the words, Sorry, Mom.
Sarah turned back to the wedding to see Mike kiss Fiona at the altar in the little chapel that two weeks earlier had served as a granary shed, then go to stand by Declan.
She glanced at the calluses on her fingers. Before coming to Ireland a year and a half ago, she had worked in an advertising office in Jacksonville, Florida. Her major skillset involved the usual office equipment and word processing software.
A lot had changed since then. Nowadays she baked bread and dug in the dirt and milked goats and mended clothes that she wouldn’t have bothered giving to the poor once. Back then she’d had a paralyzing fear of horses. Now, she rode nearly every day and couldn’t imagine her life without the presence of the gentle, forgiving beasts.
Back home. It was a painful image that never got easier for Sarah. When the hydrogen bomb exploded over the Irish Sea eighteen months ago, it detonated an electromagnetic pulse that effectively flung Ireland and the United Kingdom back into the eighteen hundreds.
Sarah’s dreams, her thoughts, her world would always focus on the hope that one day she and John would go back home to the United States.
Papin sat to Sarah’s left. A young gypsy girl, a year older than John, Papin had known only
abuse and prostitution before meeting Sarah in Wales last year.
“Do they kiss when they marry in America?” Papin asked in a loud whisper.
Sarah nodded and looked back at the ceremony. She felt responsible, in part, for Fiona’s happiness, since it was Sarah who’d met Declan and his band of gypsies and urged him to come to Donovan’s Lot. It would never have occurred to her then that the rambling, handsome gypsy who lived off the land—and by his wits—and the fisherman’s daughter would fall in love. It had been a pleasure to watch it unfold over the last months.
Fiona, at thirty-five, had never married. Opinionated, fiery with a wild mane of curly brown hair, she looked like a gypsy queen, Sarah thought. Who would have guessed she’d been waiting for her gypsy king to find her?
As for Declan, his extended family had assumed after awhile that he would not wed and had given him the mantle of the family leader and patriarch—even though none of the many gypsy children that scampered around the camp were his. When it became clear that he and Fiona intended to be together, it was as if Donovan’s Lot had engendered its own William and Catherine love story, so eagerly did the people in the community endorse the match.
Declan, in his suede boots and demi-jacket, turned to Fiona and drew her close to him. Sarah watched Fiona turn to her new husband, her eyes shining, mouth slightly open as if to gasp at the wonder of the moment.
When the couple kissed, Papin gave a loud sigh. “So romantic.”
Several people in the seats in front of where Sarah and the two children sat turned to smile at Papin.
It was romantic. And for sweet, darling Fi to find someone after all this time…Sarah caught her breath at the pleasure and sheer happiness for her dear friend. Her eyes strayed again to Mike, standing solemnly as the couple kissed and the crowd began to clap and cheer.
Were all brothers like this when their sisters got married? Sarah frowned. She would definitely need a word with him as soon as she could get him alone.
Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games Page 27
