You'll Always Have Tara

by Leah Marie Brown

  “Aidan, please,” I say, reaching for his hand. “Sit down and hear what Sin has to say.”

  He looks down at me and his hard-as-granite expression softens a smidge. Just a smidge. I walk back to my chair and sit down. Aidan sits in the chair beside mine.

  “For some inexplicable reason, Aunt Patricia wanted to bring the three of us together again.” I look from Sin to Aidan. “We might never understand the method to her mad inheritance plan, but I feel deeply that we should respect it. The thing is, I don’t have”—my voice wavers and I have to dig down to my steely magnolia core to keep from crying—“I don’t have anywhere else to go. There’s nothing for me in Charleston. Not anymore. I never really felt like I belonged there anyway. I don’t know if this is where I am destined to spend the rest of my days, but it is where I will be spending the next ninety days and I would like them to be peaceful.”

  “I feel the same way,” Sin says. “Tásúildun is extremely important to me.”

  I look over at Aidan. I expect to find him staring straight ahead, his brows knit together, a scowl pulling down the corners of his mouth, but he is staring at me with an intense gaze, studying me, really, like he has never seen me before.

  “What about you Aidan?”

  “What about me?”

  “Why are you here? What does Tásúildun mean to you?”

  He looks past me, fixing his gaze on the fireplace.

  “The Gallaghers have lived in the castle’s shadow for generations. When I was a wee lad, I would fall asleep staring at the lights glowing in the towers. After me mam died, Mrs. MacCumascaigh, your aunt, became me surrogate mam, and I spent most of me time here.”

  He continues to stare at the flames in the fireplace, transfixed, transported to another place, another time. I want to continue looking at his face, to study him in this unguarded moment, but I don’t want to break the spell that has transformed him from a scowling beast into a vulnerable man. He clears his throat.

  “Did ya know herself arranged birthday parties for me each year?”

  Aidan looks over at me and I shake my head. There’s a lot I didn’t know about my aunt, it would seem.

  “They were grand parties, grand.” A smile lights his face, before flickering and fading away. “When I left home, she never forgot to send a birthday gift. It meant the world to me that she remembered.”

  “So, we were the children Aunt Patricia never had”—Sin forms a steeple with his fingers and rests his chin on the highest point—“and as such, she has entrusted us with Tásúildun.”

  “You said we need to make economies,” I say. “What were you thinking?”

  “Companies pay me to help them cut the fat. Tásúildun is fat, obese, actually. We need to trim expenditures.”

  “Let’s hear your suggestions,” Aidan says.

  “We must make significant reductions in the workforce, keeping only the essential staff members, those who perform skilled labor.”

  “Like Mrs. McGregor,” I say.

  “No.” Sin shakes his head. “Not Mrs. McGregor.”

  “Mrs. McGregor is the heart of Tásúildun. Without her there will be no pulse, no life.” I shake my head. “No, Mrs. McGregor must stay.”

  “A cook is an unnecessary expenditure. Mrs. McGregor is simply a luxury we can no longer afford,” Sin argues.

  I look to Aidan for support, confident he will join me in the cause to fight for his kinswoman, but he just stares at me with the same infuriatingly inscrutable expression on his face, all flinty-eyes and grim mouthed. I am good at reading people, but Aidan is written in a foreign language.

  “If it comes down to it, I will pay Mrs. McGregor’s salary out of my trust fund,” I argue. “If I budget carefully, I should have enough to pay her salary and my expenses until . . . I figure out what I am going to do with my life.”

  “Be reasonable,” Sin argues.

  “Sometimes loyalty defies reason.”

  “You don’t need a cook.”

  “I don’t need a castle, but here we are.”

  “You’re a trained chef, Tara.”

  I cross my arms over my chest and glare at Sin.

  “Mrs. McGregor stays.”

  “Bloody hell! You are stubborn, Tara Maxwell.” Sin runs a hand through his thick black hair. “Fine. Mrs. McGregor stays.”

  I glance at Aidan and my heart skips a beat. He is smiling at me and—sweet baby Jesus if he ain’t handsome when he smiles I don’t know who is. Sin is talking, but I can’t make out his words. All I hear is buzzing, like the time a bee got stuck in my hair. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

  Aidan stops smiling and—just like that—the bees clear out of my ears.

  “. . . you must agree with me about Fitzpatrick?”

  “I am sorry,” I say, turning my attention back to Sin. “Who is Fitzpatrick?”

  “Aunt Patricia’s butler and part-time chauffer. He is on holiday visiting his daughter in Boston, but he is due to return next week.”

  “Aunt Patricia had a chauffeur?”

  I can’t imagine my aunt sitting in the backseat of her Range Rover, being driven around Donegal like Miss Daisy. She celebrated her fifty-fifth birthday learning how to drive a tank at the Irish Military War Museum in County Meath and her last birthday climbing Machu Picchu!

  “Old Fitz is a special case,” Aidan says, shifting in his chair. “He lost his wife and son to cancer a few years ago and was having a bad go of it. He was wrapped more times than a bad Christmas present, that Fitz.”

  “Wrapped more times than a Christmas present?”

  “He was a broken man. He spent his time in the Red Horse crying into a pint or making pilgrimages to the stones.” Aidan shakes his head. “Dara worried he would freeze to death up in the hills, so she invented a story about needing a man to help around the castle and with driving.”

  “I’m sorry, who is Dara?”

  Aidan shifts again, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Dara was what I called your aunt.”

  “So my aunt offered Mister Fitzgerald a job to keep his mind off his grief?”

  Aidan nods.

  I look at Sin.

  “We have to keep Mister Fitzgerald.”

  “Tara!”

  I don’t know old Fitz, but when Aidan described a broken man mourning his lost wife with beer and tears, I instantly thought of my daddy sitting in a rocking chair, sipping his brandy, and remembering my momma.

  “He’s a heartbroken old man,” I say, swallowing the lump that formed in my throat when I thought of my daddy all alone on the porch at Black Ash. “Where’s your charity?”

  I feel a thorn of guilt nettle my conscience. Who am I to be preaching like a Baptist minister? Other than fretting about what dress I was going to wear to the South Carolina Aquarium Conservation Gala or the Charleston Symphony Orchestra League Benefit, I haven’t paid much mind to being charitable.

  “We can’t afford charity,” Sin argues.

  “You can always afford to be charitable. Don’t you remember the parable of Jesus and the widow?”

  “No,” Sin says, sighing. “I don’t.”

  “It’s a story in the Bible about an old woman who was poor as dirt and gave her last two coins to Jesus.” I raise my brows and suck in my cheeks, giving Sin the same severe expression my Sunday school teacher gave me when I forgot to memorize the books of the Bible.

  My Sunday school face doesn’t seem to be working on Sin. He looks like one of the sharks on Shark Tank, coolly measuring my worth before telling me to follow the green not the dream.

  “The household funds simply can’t support redundant—”

  “Redundant?” Aidan says, tensing all up like a cat fixin’ to pounce. “What a cold and sterile word to describe a human being. People are not superfluous or expendable.”

  I look at Aidan, startled by the force and eloquence of his words. He is looking at Sin with a stone cold stare that would intimidate most people—most people, but not Sin.


  “My business—the business of rescuing failing corporations—is cold and sterile. It is about calmly, honestly assessing the situation free of passion or personal agenda. It is about quickly determining the ruptures and developing ways to fix the leaks before the enterprise sinks, like talking to creditors, cutting payroll, devising aggressive reinvestment strategies.” He takes a deep breath and releases it in one controlled exhalation. “As you know, Aunt Patricia donated the bulk of her fortune to charity. Without the dividends from her investments, Tásúildun has sprung leaks. Many leaks.”

  I mentally tabulate my trust fund minus my living expenses for the next year to determine if I have what it takes to keep the castle afloat.

  “It will be tight, but I think I could pay Mister Fitzgerald’s salary for the next several months.”

  “What then?” Sin asks.

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “I would be happy to show you the financial documents Aunt Patricia’s solicitor forwarded me, but, in brief, the funds in the house account will pay the taxes and property insurance for the next four, maybe five, years, if we are savvy and less charitable. There is a small amount earmarked for the maintenance and preservation, after that . . .”

  “Are you saying I am going to lose Tásúildun?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Lord have mercy! I don’t think I could survive losing Black Ash and Tásúildun in one year. Where will I go? What will become of me?

  I know what you are thinking. Poor Tara. How will she survive without her plantation and castle? (Insert #HeiressProblems) Thank God Aidan can’t read my thoughts or else he would be calling me banfarista or banprintsa—whatever princess is in Irish.

  “What I am saying”—Sin leans forward and the firelight gives his skin a gorgeous golden glow—“is that we will have to come up with the funds to pay the taxes and insurance, as well as the maintenance.”

  “What kind of maintenance?”

  “The eavestroughs need repairing or replacing.”

  “How much are we talking?”

  “The estimate for replacing the lead eavestroughs is three hundred and sixty euros.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “Three hundred and sixty euros per square foot.”

  “Mother Fiddle Faddle!” I slap my hand over my mouth to keep from uttering a more colorful profanity. “I am sorry. I just didn’t realize it would cost so much for . . . What is an eavestrough again?”

  “A gutter affixed beneath the edge of the roof,” Aidan explains. “I was here when the roofer presented Dara with the estimate. He would sell ya the eye out of your head. A shyster that one. I know an old fella, Colin O’Ceallaigh, head like a bag of spuds, but hardworking and fair as the day. I’ll speak to him about giving you an estimate.”

  “Thank you, Aidan,” I say, feeling better now that we are all working together.

  “Perhaps now you understand why I suggested reducing the staff.”

  “Some of these people have worked at Tásúildun their whole lives,” Aidan argues. “They rely on the income.”

  “There is no other way,” Sin flatly says.

  “We have to find a way,” I say. “Do you have any suggestions, Sin? Anything that might help plug up the leaks?”

  “We have to make Tásúildun self-sufficient.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Sin shakes his head. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Right,” Aidan says, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows to reveal elaborate tattoos from his wrists to his elbows. “Aislinn is always saying she is so racked from taking care of her wee ones she can hardly make the drive to Tásúildun and Maeve was thinking about applying at Lough Eske Castle.”

  “Aislinn and Maeve?”

  “Two of the maids.”

  “Okay?” The jetlag must be catching up to me because I am having a hard time following the Brit, with his eavestroughs, and the Irishman, with his dropped consonants. “How will that help us?”

  “Mrs. McGregor could do more of the cleaning if you were willing to pick up some of the slack in the kitchen.”

  “Done.” I smile. “I’ve wanted to get back into the kitchen.”

  “Ya don’t mind then?”

  “My dance card is empty.”

  Aidan frowns.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Grand,” he says. “I will mow the lawn, which will save the estate a considerable amount. Since old Fitz doesn’t need to chauffer Tara, he could spend the extra time gardening.”

  “Do you think he will mind?”

  “Fitz loves to garden.”

  “Brilliant,” Sin says. “We are cutting the fat.”

  “What will you do, Oxford?” Aidan asks, fixing his unflinching gaze on Sin. “Unless ya are afraid to roll up your Savile Row sleeves and do a wee bit of manual labor.”

  “It was Cambridge, actually,” Sin says, brushing an imaginary piece of lint from his slacks. “And very little frightens me, Gallagher.”

  I don’t know how these two aren’t bone weary from all the male posturing they’ve been doing. I am a spectator and I am plumb tuckered out!

  I look around the room—at the exposed medieval ceiling beams, the white plaster on the stone walls, the expensive Indian rug on the floor, and the rich velvet upholstered furniture—and realize it is a curious combination of rustic and refined. Rustic and refined, just like Aidan and Sin.

  Then, I look over at Aidan, at his razorblade-wielding streetfighter haircut, tatted up arms, and menacing scowl, and then at Sin, at the designer watch on his wrist, smooth shaved cheeks, and easy smile. Aidan looks like the kind of man I would have crossed the street to avoid back in Austin. Sin looks like the sort of man my daddy would have encouraged me to date/fall in love with/marry.

  “My daddy used to say”—I walk over to the liquor cabinet, grab a bottle of Bushmills, and tip a wee dram of whiskey into three shot glasses—“Whiskey, women and war, Tara. Three things that have the power to bring men together or tear them apart.” I hand both a shot glass before sitting back down. “You already look like you want to kill each other, so why don’t we raise a toast to Aunt Patricia and see if this whiskey doesn’t bring you together—or, at the very least, make you stop circling each other like a pair of junkyard dogs?”

  Aidan doesn’t wait long before raising his glass and speaking in Irish.

  “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal,” he repeats, this time in English. “Thanks a million for the memories, Dara.”

  “To the memories,” I say.

  “To the memories,” Sin says.

  I raise my glass and take a swig. The amber liquid blazes a path down my throat, into my belly, and I cough until the burning stops. I’ve never enjoyed whiskey.

  Aidan looks at me, one eyebrow arched in concern. Or is it judgment?

  “I am sorry,” I say, coughing one more time. “I just don’t have the stomach for hard liquor—unless, that is, you incorporate it into a dessert, like brownies with rum sauce or maple bacon bourbon cupcakes.”

  “Would ya like me to see if Mrs. McGregor has any Irish Butter Biscuits left? Ya could always dunk them in your whiskey,” Aidan asks, his expression serious.

  “Funny.” I put my half-filled shot glass down on the table between our chairs. “Very funny.”

  “Did I miss something?” Sin asks.

  “No,” I say, smiling sweetly at him while pointedly ignoring Aidan. “You didn’t miss anything.”

  Sin smiles back at me and I swear a little bolt of electricity passes between us. A white-hot bolt that passes through my body, making me feel flushed clear down to my toes.

  “If we are done here,” Aidan says. “I have some things I need to do.”

  I tear my gaze from Sin in time to see the back of Aidan’s partially shaved head as he strides out of the room, leaving me alone with Sin.

  Alone with Sin.

  “Speaking of memories,” Sin says, filling the sile
nce with his British accent. “Do you remember when Aunt Patricia went to Zimbabwe?”

  “The safari?”

  “Yes.” Sin laughs. “She called me the day before she flew to Africa to tell me she was going big-game hunting.”

  “She called me, too,” I say, sharing his laughter. “I asked her why she wasn’t spending her holiday in the south of France, cruising the Mediterranean on her yacht, as she normally did and she said, there comes a time in every woman’s life when she must test her mettle, really test it, and she can’t possibly accomplish that dining on lobster at Hotel Cap-Eden Roc.”

  We both laugh because we know how the story ends. When the moment to pull the trigger finally arrived, my aunt found she didn’t have the sort of mettle required to kill a lion. She said she would have fallen to the ground if not for the marrow keeping her upright.

  We swap stories about our beloved aunt, laughing, our eyes misting over with emotion, until the tall-case clock chimes eleven times.

  “I have quite enjoyed reminiscing with you, Tara.” He stands and for a crazy hot second I think he intends to kiss me, but he only flexes his shoulders. “There’s nothing I would love more than to sit here with you, but I have to be up in a few hours for a conference call with our Tokyo office.”

  “I should be getting to bed, too,” I say, feigning a yawn. “A girl can’t afford to miss her beauty sleep.”

  He reaches over and lifts a lock of hair from my cheek, tucking it behind my ear.

  “Losing beauty sleep is one thing you can definitely afford, Tara.”

  “Thank you,” I murmur.

  “You’re quite welcome.”

  Sin just called me beautiful and played with my hair. He is standing so close I can smell his peppery cologne. And yet, I don’t feel the electrifying jolt of desire I felt when he looked at me earlier. I just feel . . . pleased.

  “Goodnight, then.”

  “Goodnight, Sin.”

  I walk over to the fireplace and wait, staring into the flames and listening as he crosses the foyer, climbs the stairs, and walks down the hallway, his footsteps fading away.

  Pleased? A drop-dead gorgeous guy just flirted with me—at least, I think he was flirting—and the only feeling I could muster was pleased? I am going to blame it on the jetlag. What other reason could there be?