“Here”—I pull an apron out of the linen drawer and hand it to him over the counter—“an apron might work better than that little dishtowel.”
Aidan flicks his gaze from the apron dangling from my fingers to the innocent smile on my face.
“Ya must be taking the piss out of me.”
I feign ignorance, thrusting the pink ruffled apron at him. “What’s the matter? You’re not going to let a frilly little apron threaten your masculinity, are you?”
He stares at me.
“Grayson wore an apron whenever he cooked.”
“No shite?” His lips twist in a sardonic smile. “Did he wear it while he was mixing his Fuzzy Navels?”
“I’ll bet Sin would wear an apron if he were cooking me dinner,” I say, unable to resist teasing him.
“But he’s not, is he? I am here, cooking ya dinner, and I have more self-respect than an American ponce and a rawny Brit.”
He looks so fierce, so genuinely affronted, I can’t hold back my laughter. I laugh until my stomach hurts. I laugh until I can’t catch my breath. I imagine Aidan in a pink ruffled apron as wide as a tutu and I start laughing again, hooting like a barnyard owl.
“I am sorry, but I imagined you in one of Mrs. McGregor’s aprons and . . .” I wipe tears from my cheeks. “I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.”
His gruff, grumbly, bear-like mask slips. His lips twitch, his eyes sparkle, and he is that craic-loving boy again, the one who made me laugh with his stories and sigh with his devilish smile.
“Are ya done taking the piss out of me?”
“I think so.”
“Ya think so?” He snatches the apron from my fingers and flicks it at me playfully. “Go on or I’ll take me pot of chowder and soda bread and leave ya with nuttin but Mrs. McGregor’s butter biscuits.”
“That would be bad, right?”
He flicks me again and I hop back, laughing.
We carry our bowls of steaming chowder and plates of bread to the kitchen table and sit across from each other, the steady patter of rain against the windows and the amber glow from the fireplace creating a cozy, romantic ambiance. I ask Aidan about Bánánach Brew. He tells me about the challenges of growing apples in Donegal’s waterlogged soil and salt-laden air, his efforts to grow multiple-budded and hybrid fruit trees, and his desire to create a second line of keeved cider.
“What is keeved cider?”
“Keeving”—he slices off another piece of soda bread and puts it on my empty plate—“is a traditional artisan method for making cider sweetened naturally, using only apples.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Modern cider is made by crushing the fruit and immediately extracting the juices, resulting in a clean, sparkly brew. Keeved cider is earthier, pulpier, and naturally sweeter because the fruit is crushed and then left to ferment before the juice is extracted.”
“The longer a crushed apple is left to ferment, the more pectin leaks out of its membranes.” I tear a piece of bread off and dunk it in my stew. “It seems like you would have a thick jelly layer in your tanks.”
“That’s right.” He looks impressed. “That’s what gives the cider an earthier flavor.”
“Keeving must take longer than modern methods.”
“Keeving does take longer, a lot longer, which is why most cider makers opt for the modern methods. Faster fermentation means greater production.”
“And greater profits.”
He nods.
“You don’t care about maximizing your profits?”
“Some things are more important than profit.”
“Like what?”
“Like respecting tradition and the pride that comes from knowing ya created something extraordinary.”
I think of Sin and his bottom-line mentality and wonder what he would say if he could hear Aidan right now.
“It’s not a popular business model, I know.”
“It’s an admirable one, though.”
Our gazes meet and a frisson of excitement, a thrilling sexual current, passes between us. I feel myself falling into his gaze, plunging deeper and deeper, becoming hopelessly lost in his unfathomable blue-eyed gaze. A woman could swim in those eyes . . . or find herself perilously adrift. Drifting, drifting, drifting ever closer to heartbreak.
We linger over our empty chowder bowls, the conversation flowing like the Santee after a summer storm, freely, easily, sweeping away any debris of awkwardness.
The tall-case clock is striking eleven as we dry the last washed dish. We lock the back door, turn off the kitchen lights, and climb the stairs to our rooms side-by-side, as if we’ve traveled this path together hundreds of times.
Aidan stops at my door and the awkwardness returns. We aren’t lovers traveling a well-trod path of intimacy. We are strangers who once had a . . .
A what? A juvenile flirtation? A summer romance? I still don’t know what we had that summer. I don’t know how Aidan felt about me or what he feels for me now.
I wish my deeply instilled Southern reticence would disappear so I could muster the courage to grab Aidan by his shirt front and pull him into my room. I wish I could be the bold, brazen woman I’ve always wanted to be. That woman, that fearlessly scandalous woman, would already be rolling around in bed, nekked as a jaybird.
My daddy always said, Tara, dahlin’, the most pitiful soul you’ll ever encounter is the one who grew a wishbone instead of a backbone.
Daddy probably didn’t intend for me to use my backbone to seduce an Irishman, but we can’t always control our wishes and wants, now can we?
“Thank you for dinner,” I say, avoiding his gaze. “It was delicious. Just what a body needs after a long day in the cold Irish rain.”
Kiss him. Just kiss him, you poor, pitiful, backbone-wishing woman.
So, with a wicked little voice urging me not to lose my backbone, I press my palms against Aidan’s muscular chest and stand on my tippy toes. I mean to kiss his cheek, to give him an amuse-bouche, a tantalizing sample of what he could have, but he’s obviously hungry for something more. At the last second, he turns his face so I end up kissing his mouth instead of his cheek. He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me against him with a strength that is positively primeval, a strength that says, Me, man. You, woman. It’s like no embrace I’ve ever felt. Confident, commanding, with a barely restrained intensity that has me clutching his shirt to keep from swooning like Jane in Tarzan’s arms.
Breathless, feeling my backbone like never before, I thrust my tongue between his lips while reaching back, fumbling for the doorknob. Aidan growls low in his throat, a sexy, emboldening groan that has me fumbling, frantic to open the door, to unleash the vixen that has been living inside me, that has been desperately trying to claw her way out.
I finally feel the cold iron doorknob against my palm. I grasp it, twist, listen for the telltale click of the lock tumbling. The door opens and I lean against Aidan’s arm. He tightens his hold around my waist, lifting me off my feet. I hear the door close and then we are falling on my bed, arms, legs, tongues entwined. I don’t know how it is possible to be terrified and aroused at the same time, but I am. I imagine it’s the way skydivers feel before their first jump.
I am sick with fear, regretting the folly that has brought me to the brink of disaster, but exhilarated at the possibility of cheating death. Part of me wants to shuffle backward, seek the safety of solid ground, while another part fears the scathing self-recriminations I will endure if I do.
Kissing Aiden is like skydiving. I’m floating through the clouds, looking at the world far, far below, and wishing this euphoric weightlessness could go on forever.
If I have learned anything in the last year, though, it’s that nothing good can last forever and gravity has a nasty way of sneaking up on you.
When Aiden finally stops kissing me, it feels as if a big old chute has suddenly deployed and is jerking me back to reality, violently.
Reluctantly—
with painful awareness of my ragged breaths, my wet, bruised lips—I open my eyes to find Aidan staring down at me, his lips still close enough to kiss.
“I need to know this is really what ya want, Tara.”
Of course I want him here, in my bed, kissing me senseless. Can’t he feel my heart beating, thudding against my ribs something fierce?
“This is what I want,” I say, sliding my hand between us and unbuttoning my blouse.
“I’m no Prince Charming, banphrionsa. I won’t be promising ya happily-ever-after. In fact, the only promise I can make is that if ya let me stay tonight, I will make love to ya like there’s no tomorrow. If ya be needing something more from me, I will go now and we will pretend this never happened.”
“You sure know how to woo a girl.” I twist another button open, and another, exposing the narrow space between my breasts, driven by a reckless desire to feel his lips on my skin again. “Fortunately, I’m not looking for roses and heart-shaped chocolate boxes.”
I twist the last button and my shirt falls open. Aidan looks at my nipples straining against my thin, lacy bra and lowers himself down, pressing his chest against my chest, dragging his lips over my lips.
I close my eyes, shivering as his whiskered cheeks graze my chin, my throat, the tender, thin skin of my collarbone.
I will make love to ya like there’s no tomorrow . . .
Aidan uses his chin to push my bra aside, his beard creating pleasure-pain sensations on my skin, and then his lips are on my nipple, gently coaxing it into his warm mouth.
After seeing him in the cage this afternoon—aggressive and amped up—I expect his lovemaking to be equally aggressive, but it’s not. His moves are slow and subtle, his touches deliberately designed to obliterate any resistance, to reduce me to a helpless, trembling. . .
. . . and they’re working.
I reach around and pull his shirt over his head, itching, aching, to feel his skin against my skin, to kiss that tattoo over his heart. He smells like . . . like Aidan. Manly, clean, hot.
My iPhone starts ringing on the nightstand. I keep my eyes closed and will it to stop, stop, stop ringing. Why—why Lord—why didn’t I turn the ringer off? It finally stops ringing, but it’s too late. The mood is shattered.
I won’t be promising ya happily-ever-after.
My phone chimes and I realize I am getting a text.
Aidan lifts his mouth from my breast, leaving it exposed, vulnerable to the cold air, to the encroaching shame. He pushes up on his elbows and looks at me.
“Do ya need to answer it?”
Do I? Is Emma Lee’s latest matchmaking scheme or Callie’s latest Happn hookup more important than letting Aidan finish making love to me like there is no tomorrow?
Supporting himself with one arm, he reaches over and grabs my iPhone off the nightstand. He hands it to me without looking at the screen.
“Thanks,” I whisper, taking it.
I look at the screen.
* * *
Text from Rhys Burroughes:
Business meeting a complete wash. All your fault. Kept thinking about how beautiful you looked walking through Dublin Airport. Make it up to me? Sunday roast and a drive through the country?
* * *
“I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“It’s not,” I say, keeping my tone light. “Sin just wanted to check in.”
Aidan rolls off of me onto his back. We lie side by side, staring up at the ceiling, and I know, with ice-cold certainty, that we won’t be making love tonight, maybe any night.
“This isn’t going to happen, is it?” he says.
I pull my shirt together and roll onto my side so I can look at him and my heart aches for what could have been, for what might never be.
“I’m sorry,” I say, reaching out to run my fingers through his hair. “I want this to happen. I swear I do. It’s just . . .”
“Sin?”
“What? No.” I pull my hand away. “It’s just . . . I might say I don’t care about roses and chocolates, but deep down, I do. I want my Prince Charming. I want a man who wants, truly, madly, deeply wants to give me happily-ever-after, not happy-for-a-night.”
“I hope ya find him.” Aidan stands up, grabs his shirt, and tosses it over his shoulder. “I wish I could be that man, banphrionsa, but I am not.”
He kisses my forehead and leaves. A second later, I hear the lock on the connecting door turn.
Chapter Twenty-one
I am standing in the herb garden, watching the setting sun cover the castle grounds and distant hills in gossamer golden light, and listening for the sound of my aunt laughing with the fairies, when Mrs. McGregor joins me.
“The gloaming,” she says, pulling her shawl around her frail shoulders. “When the day takes its last gasp before slipping into night. The ancients believed the time between sunset and darkness was magical. An tam mianta agus iontas. The time of wishes and wonder.”
“Wishes and wonder. What a lovely thought.”
A skein of black-necked barnacle geese flies overhead, their mournful honks shattering the quiet of the gloaming. We watch their silhouettes move across the sky toward the ever-darkening horizon.
“If ya could make one wish, Tara, what would it be?”
“Just one?” I bend down and pluck a leaf off a peppermint plant, bruising it between my thumb and pointer finger, inhale the minty oil, and a memory sparks to life in my brain of Aunt Patricia serving me peppermint tea to calm an upset stomach. “If you had asked me that question a few months ago, I would have wished for Daddy and Aunt Patricia to be alive.”
“And now?”
“Now,” I say, tossing the bruised peppermint leaf onto the gravel and wiping my fingers on my jeans. “I accept the cycle of life as one of the more painful details in God’s grand design. I don’t have to like it, but I would be a damn fool to try to change it. No, now I would simply wish to live a life of purpose and passion, one that would make my family proud.”
“She was proud of you, love.” She reaches out and laces her fingers with mine. “She used to say she loved each of her nieces and nephews, but felt a special kinship with ya. Soul connection is what she said it was.”
My throat tightens. “I loved her something fierce.”
“I know ya did.”
“I used to count the days until summer break. I had a calendar stuck to the back of my bedroom door and I would mark off each day with a big old red X.” I blink back tears. “My sisters never understood why I was in such an all-fire hurry to leave South Carolina. They loved Charleston summers. Mandy curled up on the divan on the back porch, sipping sweet tea with lemon slices and reading, reading, reading. I swear the only time she left that porch was to go to church or to take Emma Lee to the beach. Mandy loves swimming almost as much as she loves reading. I never did like swimming much. All that sand in places where sand shouldn’t be!”
Mrs. McGregor laughs.
“If Mandy would have spent a little less time curating her book collection and a little more time cultivating her social circle, she would have been the belle of every ball. She’s our momma’s daughter, sweet, soft spoken, and effortlessly pleasing. I reckon that’s why she was daddy’s favorite,” I say without bitterness. “Emma Lee is the true Charlestonian, though. Charming, clever, and extraordinarily magnetic. People are just naturally attracted to her, like hummingbirds to honeysuckle. She couldn’t wait for summer and her dizzying swirl of social activities. Pool parties, barbecues, clambakes, paddle boarding at Folly Beach . . . A body could get exhausted just listening to Emma Lee rattle off her summer schedule.”
Mrs. McGregor laughs.
“What?”
“I seem to recall feeling knackered watching ya run around with the village kids when ya visited.”
“That was different.”
“How was it different?”
I peer at the distant hills as if the answer to Mrs. McGregor’s question is hidden somewhere in the shadowy valley between
them. How do you explain a vague and baseless feeling you’ve had all your life? It’s like trying to hold fog in your hand. It’s there. You know it’s there. You can see it, feel it, but as soon as you try to grasp it you realize it has no real substance.
“I had loads of friends and a family that loved me, but I never felt like I belonged in Charleston.” I let go of Mrs. McGregor’s hand and wipe a tear from my cheek. “You once told me a story about a baby who was stolen from her crib and replaced by a fairy child.”
“The Changeling.”
“I’ve always felt like a changeling, like I was in the wrong place and living a life not intended for me. In the story, the changeling eventually loses her fairy features and learns how to behave like a human. I have learned how to behave like a proper Southern lady, but I don’t feel like a proper Southern lady.” I sigh. “Shoot, I don’t want to be a proper Southern lady. I don’t want to spend three hours putting on my face just so I can sit on the front porch and gossip with my neighbors. I don’t want to conceal my backstabbing knife behind a plastic smile. I don’t want to burn a hole in my gut worrying I won’t make the perfect match, raise the perfect kids, amass the perfect shoe collection.”
“What do ya want?”
“I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
“Will ya forgive an auld woman with a gammy tooth if she tells ya something ya might not like hearing?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“People are people, whether they’re from South Carolina or South Cork. Do ya think the villagers don’t gossip about their neighbors or fret about their kids?” She turns her watery blue gaze on me. “It wasn’t fairy magic that turned ya into a changeling, Tara love. Ya became a changeling by convincing yourself ya were different and that being different was a bad thing.”
She pats my cheek before shuffling back into the kitchen.
Chapter Twenty-two
Text from Manderley Maxwell de Maloret:
FedEx delivered the box with your cookies twenty minutes ago and already the tin is half-empty! Xavier thinks they are delicious. So do I. Have you thought about selling them at the local markets?
You'll Always Have Tara Page 17
