Destry nodded, glancing around at the students who were spread out over the top of the mound, poking around.
“You certainly had their attention with your stories,” she said. “It sounds like you have a pretty cool class.”
His grin grew. “They’re not stories,” he corrected her. “They’re Irish history.”
She laughed softly, displaying her beautiful smile and big dimple in her left cheek. “I believe you,” she said. “In fact, it wouldn’t hurt Aisling or me to learn a little Irish history. Aisling’s parents were born in Ireland and my mother’s parents were both born in Ireland before immigrating to the States back in the nineteen fifties. That’s sort of why we’re here; to get back in touch with our roots.”
Conor was completely focused on Destry, the shape of her face and the soft curve of her lips. He couldn’t seem to look at anything else. “Welcome back.”
Destry grinned at him, giving him a quirky lift of the shoulder. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s good to be back.”
He laughed softly, shoving his hands in his pockets as the wind picked up. “There’s a problem, though.”
“What?”
“You’re lacking a good Irish name like your friend. I’m surprised they let you into the country.”
In spite of herself, Destry was finding herself upswept in his charm. There was something very magnetic about him. “My middle name is Kenna,” she offered, putting up her hand as if swearing in court. “I promise; my mother named me after my grandmother, so there really is Irish in me.”
“Kenna,” he rolled it off his tongue with his heavy Irish brogue. “It means ancient one. But I have no idea what Destry means.”
“It’s of French origin. It means desired.”
He grinned from ear to ear. “Then I approve,” he said. “It suits you perfectly.”
Destry laughed, feeling rather giddy for a woman who had been wallowing in rejected misery for the past two weeks. Dr. Daderga’s compliments were doing something to ease that great big hole where her heart had once been. In fact, his entire presence had an odd effect on her, making her feel light and happy like she hadn’t felt in a very long time. She had seriously wondered over the past several days if she would ever be happy again.
“Thank you very much, Dr. Daderga,” she said graciously, distracted when a big gust of wind suddenly whipped around her and reminded her of the bizarre experience she’d had a few moments before. She couldn’t help but think of the whispers, of the word she heard more than once come from that dark and unnatural tunnel. Since Daderga seemed to be an expert on the site, she decided to probe him a little to see if she’d really been imagining things. “Do you mind giving us a crash course in this site? Anything interesting that the guidebook doesn’t tell us?”
He looked around, watching his students wander around the slick, green hill. “It’s a Neolithic burial mound,” he said. “During the dark ages, the indigenous population used to say that the gods lived under mounds like this. It was their way of explaining away what Stone Age man had built.”
Destry thought of the howling passage, of her experience, and began to get creeped out again.
“Have you ever heard the word ‘Etain’?” she asked, out of the blue.
Conor turned to look at her. “Of course,” he said. “She’s a heroine in Irish mythology.”
A bolt of shock ran through Destry and she glanced uneasily down the hill where the dark passages loomed. All of the effort she had taken to convince herself that the experience had been in her imagination was torpedoed by those eight little words.
“Seriously?” she asked, feeling somewhat sick. “It’s a woman?”
“Absolutely.”
Destry’s sense of uneasiness increased. “Is she evil?” she asked, then quickly clarified because she didn’t want him to think she was some oddball. “I mean, what was her story? Did she live underneath one of these mounds?”
He shook his head. “No,” he replied. “She’s a heroine in some of the earliest Irish Mythology cycles. She appears a few times in a few different stories. Why do you ask?”
There was no way Destry was going to tell him the reason behind her questions. She shook her head, almost too quickly.
“No reason,” she replied. “Just curious. I heard the name somewhere and I was just… curious.”
He bought her explanation, his gaze lingering on her. “I’d be happy to refer you to some books on Irish Mythology that recite Etain’s tales. Or I could tell you the stories myself. Sometime. If you’re not too busy.”
The man didn’t waste any time; he had known her all of two minutes and was already asking her on a date without really asking. As much as he had charmed her, Destry wasn’t ready to visit with or otherwise interact with a man one on one, no matter how attracted she was to him. Too much about her personal life was painful and unsettled, and she didn’t want to complicate things. Problem was, she couldn’t bring herself to flatly turn him down.
“You know all of the Irish mythology stories by heart?” she asked with incredulity, somewhat shifting the subject.
He shrugged, grinning again. “It’s my job to know them,” he said. “Plus, they’re very exciting. Better than the movies.”
“I saw you reciting something to your students earlier, flapping your arms around. Were you telling them some of the stories?”
“Of course,” his grin broadened. “What else would I be doing?”
A sharp whistle suddenly pierced the air and they turned to see one of the male students whistling to the group, rounding them up. Aisling, having been largely ignored throughout the conversation between Destry and Dr. Daderga, tugged on Destry’s arm.
“Come on,” she said. “It’s getting dark and we need to head back. I’m not comfortable driving on the right side of the car on these small roads after dark.”
Destry followed as Aisling began to walk, turning to thank Dr. Daderga for his time but seeing that he was trailing after them. Everyone was traveling in herds towards the slope that led down to the car park on the west side of the mound as the world around them began to dim with the coming night.
“How long are you both here?” Conor strolled up beside Destry. “Are you doing any tours or just winging it?”
Destry glanced up at the man. “We’re here for another five days and then we head to Paris,” she told him. “We took a tour yesterday in Dublin and tomorrow we’re doing a tour of ancient religious sites on the outskirts of Dublin.”
He nodded casually at the information as his students milled around and behind them, all trudging down to the car park.
“So you’re staying in Dublin?” he asked.
She nodded. “We’re staying at the O’Callaghan Davenport,” she told him.” It’s by the National Gallery.”
He bobbed his head quickly. “I know exactly where it is,” he said. “You’re not far from the college.”
“I didn’t know that.”
He wriggled his eyebrows. “That’s a fairly nice hotel. It’s famous for its Honeymoon Suite, you know. It’s supposed to be very romantic.”
Destry was staring at the ground as she spoke. “It is,” she said softly, then turned to look at him with a forced smile. “It was very nice to meet you, Dr. Daderga. Good luck with your class.”
Conor watched her very quickly make her way down the footpath toward the darkening car park. Aisling was still walking a few feet away from him, her brown eyes focused sorrowfully on her friend. She cast an apologetic glance at Conor.
“Thanks again,” she said politely. “It was very nice to meet you.”
Before she could scoot after Destry, he reached out and stopped her.
“I’m sorry if I said something offensive,” he said, his eyes lingering on Destry at the base of the mound. “I think I upset your friend. I didn’t mean to.”
Aisling gazed down the hill, watching Destry squeeze through the fence and head towards the car. It wasn’t like they were ever going to see Da
derga again so she just told him the truth.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You didn’t know. The O’Callaghan really does have a hell of a honeymoon suite and I was supposed to be her husband.”
“Come again?”
“She supposed to be on her honeymoon right now. But I came instead of her groom.”
Conor got it, sort of. He watched Aisling skip down the trail after Destry, watching the woman slide through the fence in pursuit of her friend. She was supposed to be on her honeymoon, he rolled the words over in his head. It was a sad tale but he couldn’t honestly believe what idiot would refuse to marry that woman; she was absolutely perfect and then some.
While he felt a great deal of sympathy for her, the larger part of him was very glad that she didn’t get married. He had her name and the place she was staying at. Right or wrong, like it or not, he intended to do something about it.
CHAPTER THREE
Conor got the shock of his life the next morning.
It was around six-thirty a.m., a full hour and a half before his eight o’clock class on Early Irish Gaelic. He had some papers to grade and some other work to attend to, so he had come in early. The building his office was housed in was the West Theater, an old building on the campus of Trinity College that was well over one hundred years old. It was built of brick and solid masonry, able to withstand the test of time, and always smelled like moldy old stone.
Conor had his arms full of his briefcase, laptop and lunch bag as he entered his office suite. The door was unlocked and his secretary’s desk empty; she didn’t arrive for another hour. Even so, there was someone sitting in her office.
Destry stood up from the chair she had been patiently planted in as Conor entered the office. His gaze fell on her and he came to a halt, startled. The lunch bag fell to the ground and Destry bent down to retrieve it.
“Hi,” she smiled weakly at him, propping the lunch bag back on top of his briefcase.
He stared at her a moment as if hardly believing what he was seeing. “Hi yourself,” he replied, a baffled but delighted expression coming to his handsome features. “Uh… what are you doing here?”
Destry’s weak smile became genuine. “That’s a very good question,” she said, suddenly putting her hands up. “Don’t worry; I’m not stalking you.”
His gaze lingered on her as he moved for his office door. “I’m disappointed,” he teased. “Are you sure?”
She giggled. “Pretty sure.”
“Can I talk you into it?”
Her laughter grew. “Probably not.”
He opened his door. “Truly unfortunate,” he said, bobbing is head in the direction of his now-open office. “Care to come in so we can discuss it further?”
Smirking, Destry preceded him into his office, standing near his cluttered desk as he dumped the contents in his arms onto the desktop. She watched him unload, noting he looked distinctly different than he had yesterday; the baseball cap had concealed flaming red hair which he had spiked this morning so that it was standing straight up in the air. It was the tallest flat-top she had ever seen, increasing his already substantial height. Given his red goatee and mustache, he looked like a pirate. But his skin was beautiful and milky, and his eyes a clear blue. He was a unique-looking man but absolutely and powerfully handsome.
As he pulled off his jacket, he was wearing a worn collared shirt beneath and when the jacket came off completely, Destry’s eyebrows lifted at the size of the man’s arms and chest; she had noticed yesterday that he was a big boy but she had no idea just how big. The most obvious physical attribute was that he was exceptionally tall; he had to be at least six and a half feet in height. But he was also enormous in breadth, powerfully built like a weight lifter with a massive upper body and a chiseled torso. He also had very big legs – she could see them through the jeans he wore. The shirt he wore was rather form fitting in displaying his powerful physique. In fact, it made her a little hot to gaze at those beautifully massive biceps so she tried not to stare as she spoke.
“I’m really sorry to intrude on you so early,” she said as he hung up his coat. “I was wondering if you could give me a couple of minutes of your time. I won’t take long, I promise.”
He turned around from the coat rack and faced her. “I can give you all the time you need until my eight o’clock class,” he said. “How’d you find me, by the way?”
She shrugged. “You said you worked at Trinity College. I looked you up in the directory and followed the map.”
He nodded faintly, eyeing the woman who only seemed to grow more beautiful with each passing second. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, revealing the beautiful shape of her face, and she was dressed in a sweater and jeans that accentuated a figure he had only seen on the pages of men’s magazines. The sweater she was wearing gave a tantalizing peek of spectacular cleavage but he tried not to let his eyes wander down there. He could have stared at that for the rest of his life. But as he looked at her face, he noticed that she looked exhausted. Her bright blue eyes were somewhat dim. Curious, he indicated the seat in front of his desk.
“Then I’m honored,” he said as he took a seat; his old chair creaked and groaned under his considerable weight. “Are you here to take me up on my offer of telling you more glorious Celtic legends?”
Her weak smile returned and she glanced around his office; artwork of Celtic crosses lined the walls, as did replicas and images of swords and other battle instruments. There was also a great big cape that had some kind of Celtic knot sewn into it, matted to the biggest shadowbox she had ever seen. All in all, it was an office full of rich Celtic relics, something he displayed proudly as a man dedicated to the history of his people.
“Sort of,” she replied to his question, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “I didn’t know who else to ask about this.”
He sat forward, folding his hands on his desk. His blue eyes were intense. “Ask what?”
Destry took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to start this conversation. She’d been trying to figure out how to start it for the past two hours, ever since she decided to seek out Dr. Daderga. She’d been up all night with the dilemma and now, she hardly knew where to begin. But she had to start somewhere. She could only hope she didn’t come across like a madwoman.
“Okay, here goes,” she puffed out her cheeks and fixed him in the eye. “Dr. Daderga, I know you don’t know me but I want to assure you that I’m not an idiot or a drama queen. I’m actually quite normal; I have a master’s degree in Nursing and I’m a shift supervisor in the coronary care unit at the University of San Diego Medical Center. I come from a nice, normal family with a mom and a dad and a younger sister. I don’t drink and I don’t do drugs. I was a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers for a couple of years and I also do charity work, if that makes any difference. Anyway, I’m a normal girl. But I really need to ask you a question.”
His dark blue gaze was glittering at her over the top of his desk. “Ask away. I’m all yours.”
She stared at him a moment before finally shaking her head. “Please don’t think I’m nuts, but I’ve been up all night with terrible nightmares. I haven’t been able to sleep at all. Ever since I left that mound yesterday, I’ve been having all sorts of… well, crazy thoughts. Really crazy things.”
He sat back in his chair. “Like what?”
She threw up her hands and he could see how exasperated she was, almost bordering on tears. “All night, every time I fell asleep, I’d have these dreams that I was back at the mound and people inside of it were talking to me.”
His brow furrowed. “People inside of it?”
She nodded vigorously. “Yes,” she insisted. “It was like they were ghosts or something, and I could hear them, like whispers. They kept trying to talk to me and reach out to me. But I couldn’t understand what they were saying.”
He was trying not to grin at her, thinking that her problem was more than likely just an overactive imagination. Ancient tales a
nd an ancient site could do that to people who were not accustomed to such things. Personally, he didn’t really care why she was here, crazy stories notwithstanding, because it gave him an excuse to see her again. He remained casual in his reply.
“So you’ve come to me to interpret your nightmares?” he said. “That’s really not in my scope of work, but I’ll give it a try. What did they say?”
Destry thought a moment, terrified that if she closed her eyes again to remember the words, then she would start having those visions again. They swamped her all night, faceless wraiths that invaded her dreams and whispered mysterious words to her. Even thinking about them again made her heart pound. She had been so scared that she had sat up most of the night in the bathroom with the light on. She just couldn’t face the dark again. She gazed at Conor with some pain in her expression.
“I hope you can figure it out,” she murmured sincerely, “because I’ve never had anything like this happen to me, ever, and you were the only person I could think of that might know.”
“Like I said, I’ll give it a go. What were the words?”
“I don’t even know what language they were. They sounded like gibberish to me.”
“More than likely, since it was a dream. Do you remember them?
She took a deep breath before haltingly spitting them out. “Fanacht, morrigan, gnáthlá agus oiche og ceanna; tar ar cúl do sinne.”
Conor’s smile vanished with unnatural rapidity. He stared at her, sitting forward in his chair as a queer expression crossed his features.
“What?” he said, as if he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Where did you hear that?”
She looked sick and scared. “I told you,” she said wearily. “That’s what those… those ghosts said to me in my dreams. Do you know what language it is? Is it even a language?”
The longer he looked at her, the more confused he became. He suddenly stood up, moving his big body around the side of the desk, all the while seemingly greatly torn. His expression was full of confusion. Destry watched him anxiously.
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