“Do you honestly want to know?” he replied.
“Of course.”
He sighed faintly. “I think that you’re in a new place, seeing new things, and that you’re exhausted and emotional from what happened to you. I think that you’re having nutty dreams because your senses have been weakened by everything going on around you. And I further think that somewhere, somehow, you either read or heard those phrases and your subconscious is playing tricks on your tired mind.”
Destry suddenly sat up, looking at him with some disappointment and anger. “You think I made this all up?”
“No,” he said firmly. “I think your subconscious did.”
As he feared, she pulled out of his arms and stood up, unsteadily, her expression exhausted and accusing.
“So you really do think I’m crazy,” she spat, jabbing a finger at him. “Look, Dr. Daderga, I told you I wasn’t crazy. I told you I really heard this stuff and right now, I really dreamed it. I’m not making it up.”
He stood up, holding his hands up to soothe her. “I believe that you didn’t make it up,” he insisted. “But you asked me what I think and I’m telling you. I think you must have heard these phases some time in your life, maybe so long ago that you don’t even consciously remember it, and now they’re coming back to you in dreams.”
She stared up at him, just looking hurt at this point. After a moment, she simply lowered her gaze and reached down to collect her purse.
“I am really sorry to have bothered you,” she said, putting her purse on her shoulder. “Thanks for… well, not calling me crazy in the beginning. At least you waited a little while.”
He moved so that he was standing between her and the door. “Please don’t leave,” he implored softly. “I didn’t call you crazy. And I didn’t mean to upset you; I really didn’t.”
She waved him off but she couldn’t help but notice he was creating a very big barrier between her and the exit. “You didn’t upset me,” she said. “But I know I didn’t imagine being touched out there at Dowth. I know something touched my hand.”
He gazed at her a moment. “You said it was very windy,” he reminded her quietly. “It could have been the wind.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t think I know the difference between a wind gust and a touch?” She went to him and grabbed one of his gigantic hands, holding it up in her warm fingers. “This is a touch, Dr. Daderga. I know what this feels like. What I felt yesterday felt just like this, only there wasn’t anyone there.”
He could only concede that he understood what she was saying. Whether or not he believed it was another matter.
“I don’t have any explanation for that,” he said, holding her hand even as she let his go. “Look; I have a class in a few minutes. Why don’t you go back to the hotel and try to get some sleep. I’ll ring you around noon to see how you are. If the dreams won’t go away, then maybe we need to figure something else out.”
She smiled weakly, pulling her hand from his grip when he wouldn’t let her go. “I appreciate your offer,” she said, “but this isn’t your problem. I just wanted to know if you could figure out what those phrases meant. Whatever is going on with me, I’ll figure it out.”
He regarded her carefully. “You really aren’t going to let me take you out, are you?”
She could read the disappointment in his face. In fact, she was starting to feel some disappointment, too, at never seeing the man again. He had been a spot of brightness and comfort in her darkened world.
With a heavy sigh, she moved to him, stood on her tip-toes, and put her soft hand around his thick neck. Pulling his face down to her level, she kissed him gently on the right cheek and quickly stepped back.
“You’ve been really sweet and incredibly accommodating,” she said quietly. “You don’t know how much it means to me. Right now, I’m going to take your advice and go back to the hotel and see if I can sleep a little. This whole thing has me kind of rattled.”
The kiss to his cheek left Conor with a pounding heart. Had she not moved away from him so quickly, he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her with something more than just a gentle peck. That was kid’s stuff. He wanted to kiss her like a man kisses a woman, deeply and passionately, so much so that his hands were beginning to sweat. He wanted to grab her in the worst way.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he murmured.
“That’s because I don’t really have an answer for you.”
“So there’s hope?”
“Maybe.” She sighed again, slapping a hand against her thigh in a helpless gesture. “Probably.”
His grin returned, as did his complete and utter joy. “Tonight?”
She laughed at his enthusiasm. “Hold on,” she said. “I don’t know about tonight. Let me sleep a little and recover and we’ll go from there.”
“That’s fair. But I’m still going to ring the hotel later on to see how you are.”
Her smile was genuine. “I’d appreciate that.”
Since he knew there was hope in him seeing her again on a social, and perhaps romantic, level, he stopped blocking the path to the door and escorted her out of his office.
“Is there anything else you want to see that hasn’t been included on any of your tours?” he said hopefully. “I’d be happy to be your personal tour guide this weekend.”
She laughed softly. “It’s not just me; it’s Aisling, too.”
“She can tag along.”
Destry grinned at him. “That’s very generous,” she sobered as they came to the door that led from his offices out into the main corridor beyond. She paused, gazing up into his pale, handsome face. “Seriously, you’ve been extremely generous and kind. I can’t thank you enough.”
He dipped his head graciously. “The pleasure has been all mine, Destry Kenna Caldbeck.” He cocked his head. “How’d you get that name, anyway?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “My dad’s an old movie buff. I was named after the James Stewart movie of the same name.” When he grinned, she shrugged lamely. “Hey; it could have been worse. My younger sister’s name is Angel after the John Wayne movie ‘Angel and the Badman’. Mom threw in the good Irish names; Angel’s middle name is Caitlin. That’s what she goes by.”
He snorted. “I’m the last one to laugh at names,” he said. “My birth name isn’t Conor Daderga. It’s Conor Peter O’Farrelly. I legally changed it when I got into college and became obsessed with Celtic mythology. I’ve always felt so misplaced, as if I was born in the wrong time, as if I belonged back in the days when Cuculainn roamed the earth. I wanted to pattern myself after the Irish high warriors so I adopted a true Irish name.”
“And O’Farrelly isn’t?”
He shrugged. “It is, but there’s an old Irish tale called Togail Bruidne Dá Derga, or the Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, a tale I might add that involves the lovely Etain. I changed my name after reading that tragedy; even as I read the words, it was as if I could picture myself right in the middle of the story. It changed my life and focused me on the true value and richness of my Irish heritage.”
He was very passionate in his speech, an animated man with a gift for storytelling. She appreciated that quality, something rarely seen where she came from. Conor was a true anomaly in the world, something she was increasingly coming to appreciate.
“You’re the most authentic Irishman I’ve ever met, that’s for sure,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, extending her hand to him. “Thanks again for everything.”
He took her hand, dwarfing it, his eyes never leaving her beautiful face. “Slán, sweetheart.”
She cocked her head. “What does that mean?”
“Farewell. At least until I ring you later on.”
She smiled, almost shyly. “Thanks again.”
He should have let her go; he really should have. But he couldn’t; impulsively, he grasped her face with his enormous hands and slanted his lips hungrily over hers. He could feel her pulling away out
of shock, but very quickly, she stopped pulling. The harder he kissed her, the less her resistance. He could feel her caving against him, her soft body melding to his. Conor’s hands left her face as his enormous arms wrapped around her body, pulling her tightly against him. What was meant to be a short, sweet kiss turned into something heated and sexual very quickly, broken up by the sounds of students entering in the corridor for morning classes.
Before they realized it, they were standing about three feet apart. Conor had no idea how they got so far apart; last thing he remembered, he was tasting her sweet musky flavor with a hint of cherry lip gloss and loving it. Now they were standing a few feet apart and staring at each other as students began to walk by, filling the old corridor as classes prepared to commence. Conor looked at her apprehensively.
“Should I apologize for that?” he whispered.
Destry stared at him a moment, nodding, then shaking her head. She threw up her hands. “I have no idea,” she hissed.
“I don’t want to apologize for something that good.”
Destry licked her lips, tasting him on her flesh, unbalanced by the entire circumstance. She averted her gaze as she began to walk away.
“Have a good day, Dr. Daderga,” she said as she passed him.
He reached out and grasped her arm, forcing her to stop. She wouldn’t look at him as he spoke. “I probably shouldn’t have done that but I’m not sorry I did, if that makes any sense. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t.”
From her stiff stance, he wasn’t buying it. “I… I don’t know what came over me,” he insisted softly. “It’s just that you’re so… and I’m so attracted to you that… Destry, I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry if I offended or upset you. I swear to God I’m not trying to get you into bed. I just wanted to kiss you. I’ve never wanted to do anything so badly in my life.”
She did look at him, then, forcing a weak smile. “Don’t worry about it,” she patted the hand on his arm and he reluctantly let her go. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She took a few steps away before coming to a halt, turning to see if he was still standing there. He was, looking at her, anxious and distressed. Destry could feel herself easing.
“If it makes any difference, I liked it, too.”
With that, she turned and continued down the hall, very quickly. Conor stood there, watching her perfect butt in her tight jeans and the sexy slope of her torso. He could have watched that woman’s butt for the rest of his life. But she eventually disappeared from view and he went back into his office, struggling to compose himself before his class. Try as he might, he just couldn’t shake her. It made for an interesting class when his students couldn’t figure out why the normally unflappable Dr. Daderga seemed so scatterbrained.
Promptly at noon, he rang the hotel only to find out that she had gone missing.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I went on that tour this morning of religious sites around Dublin,” Aisling said. “She was supposed to come with me but she said she wasn’t feeling well. And you said that she came to see you this morning?”
Conor and Aisling were in Conor’s ten-year-old Vauxhall wagon that had seen better days, tearing north on the M1 motorway from Dublin to Drogheda in the midst of a pouring rainstorm. They were nearly to Drogheda and then Dowth was another few miles to the east of the city.
“She did,” Conor held tight to the steering wheel as the rain pounded. “Like I told you earlier, she told me that spirits or ghosts talked to her when she was out here yesterday and she had bad dreams about it all night. She came to see me because these ghosts, or whatever they were, were speaking to her in a language she didn’t understand. She thought I might. She was upset about it and something tells me that she might have come back out here again.”
Aisling watched the weather ominously. “But why?”
He shook his head, frustrated and concerned. “She seemed to think her nightmares centered around Dowth because that’s where everything started. Since you have no idea where she is, and she doesn’t know the city very well, I just have this odd feeling that she’s come back out here to figure out why she seems to be having these nightmares.”
“But what if she’s been kidnapped? Don’t you think we should call the cops?”
“If she’s not at Dowth, then we will.”
Aisling looked at him, feeling rather guilty about the whole thing. “I know she didn’t sleep last night because I woke up in the middle of the night and could see the bathroom light on. When I got up and knocked on the door, she said she was reading in the bathroom because she couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to wake me up. Then, this morning, she said she didn’t feel well so I went on the tour without her.” She shook her head with regret. “I shouldn’t have left her. I should have stayed with her.”
Conor could see their exit coming up, the roundabout to the N51 highway east. His sense of urgency was so great that he was flooring the car when he thought he could get away with it.
“You couldn’t have known,” he replied, though he was feeling some guilt as well. “Maybe I’m the one to blame for this. When she came to see me this morning, she repeated the phrases she had heard in her dreams. I could see how upset she was about it. Maybe…maybe I just should have stayed with her until she calmed down.”
Aisling shook her head again, gazing out at the driving rain. “Why?” she said. “She’s not your responsibility. But you were able to make sense out of those phrases from her dreams?”
He nodded. “Indeed I was,” he replied. “They were form of Old Gaelic. I told her that somewhere, somehow, she must have heard the phrases and tucked them back into her subconscious. She thought that ghosts were talking to her and I told her that there had to be a rational explanation.”
Aisling just shook her head, baffled by the entire event. “I can’t believe she didn’t say anything to me about it,” she said. “I’ve known her since we were ten years old and she tells me absolutely everything.”
Conor thought about the implications of that; his growing interest and concern in Destry prompted him to ask questions he hoped Aisling didn’t consider probing. He tried to be cool about it.
“Has she ever pulled anything like this before?” he asked.
Aisling shook her head. “No way,” she said firmly. “Not Des. It’s not like her to leave and not tell anyone. She’s one of the most normal, down-to-earth people I know. She’s, like, the most perfect person you’ll ever meet. She doesn’t smoke or drink, she even flosses her teeth every night. Did she tell you that she’s a nurse?”
“She did.”
Aisling pointed a finger at him. “She’s not just any nurse; she volunteers her skills to Doctors without Borders and she’s gone to Haiti twice to give free medical care to refugees. She’s like a modern-day Florence Nightingale.” She suddenly shook her head again, looking out of the window as the rain pounded. “What that jerk did to her on her wedding day… I swear, so many people want to kill him. Her dad probably put a contract out on him already.”
Conor was forced to slow down in order to take the roundabout. “How did she meet him?”
Aisling held on to the door handle as they took the circular turn. “He’s a wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers,” she said, looking at him. “Do you know who they are?”
For the first time since getting into the car, he grinned. “Yes, I know who they are,” he said, changing lanes as they entered the N51 motorway. “I’m a fan of American Football.”
“Oh,” Aisling continued with her story, gazing out over the new highway. “Anyway, he was a wide receiver and she was one of the Charger Girls, their cheerleading squad. She only tried out for the squad because some of her friends dared her to but she ended up making it. Boy, was she hot in that little Charger outfit. She got a boob job and she looked like… uh, that was probably too much information, right?”
Conor fough
t off a broader grin. “Not at all. It explains why I… well, that would be too much information, so forget it.”
Aisling snorted. “Well, she was the hottest cheerleader they had, at any rate. She was even on the cover of their calendar last year. She was smoking.”
“She still is,” he cast her a long look before refocusing on the road, causing Aisling to giggle.
“I saw that you noticed,” she teased him. He just wriggled his eyebrows and she continued. “Anyway, I guess he saw her on the sidelines and found out who she was. The cheer squad isn’t supposed to fraternize with the players, but he really pursued her heavily. He was a nice guy in the beginning but really full of himself. It was clear that he put himself before her, in almost everything. I got to the point where I just kind of tolerated him because she was so in love with him, but when he left her at the altar… well, that went beyond even what I thought he was capable of. What an ass.”
Conor didn’t say anything as he read the motorway signs that were coming into view. “Is she into professional athletes, then?”
Aisling gazed out of the window at the wet, green countryside. “Not really,” she said. “She’s dated cops, firemen, salesmen… she even dated an actor once. But she always says it doesn’t matter what he is but who he is on the inside. She seemed to attract all of the superficial guys because of her looks, hardly any that were nice to her just because she was sweet and genuine. But after this debacle, I’m sure she’s sworn men off forever.”
Conor changed lanes again as their exit approached. “That would be a real tragedy.”
Aisling grinned, turning to look at him. “I don’t think she’s dated a college professor before. Do you want me to put a good word in for you, Dr. Daderga?”
He grinned but wouldn’t look at her. “To a woman like that? Only in my dreams.”
Lords of Eire: An Irish Medieval Romance Bundle Page 106
