“Tired of looking at towels, huh?”
“You aren’t?”
“I couldn’t be more bored,” he admitted and picked up his coffee for a long drink. “But it’s important that we have everything just as it should be at this new hotel. Even down to the towels.”
While she could admire his attention to detail, it surprised her that the owner of a hotel was taking such personal responsibility for every aspect of his business. “I agree,” she said, tipping her head to one side to watch him. “It’s only that the previous owner never bothered with such minutiae so I’m a bit surprised.”
He set his coffee cup down. “But the previous owner ended up losing his hotel to me, didn’t he?”
“True.”
“I don’t lose,” he said shortly.
She was willing to bet that Brady Finn had never lost anything important to him. What must it be like, she wondered, to live a life so ruthlessly organized? So completely in your control? Aine smiled to herself at the very idea of being so sure of yourself that you could reorder the world around you to suit your needs. She knew all too well that the wealthy had no idea how the real world lived, and Brady’s arrogance only seemed to highlight that opinion. He expected things to go his way, so they did. If he met an obstacle, it was probably his nature to roll right over it. He wouldn’t be stopped. Wouldn’t be changed. Wouldn’t be ignored.
And God help her, she found all of that fascinating. She shouldn’t, Aine knew. But how could she ignore what it was that happened to her when he was near—or on those rare occasions when he actually touched her? A casual brush of his hand against hers. His hand at the small of her back when he guided her through one of the innumerable shops they’d been through in the past several days? The flash of pride she felt when he turned and asked her opinion on something. The look in his eyes when he would stop suddenly and stare at her as if she’d simply dropped from the sky.
All of this and more was what fed the dreams that kept her restless every night and woke her feeling on edge, as though she was standing on a precipice and needed only the slightest push to tumble over. It was pointless to have these feelings, to indulge in dreams that would lead nowhere, she knew. The chasm separating them was too wide, and deep. A woman from a small rural village in Ireland had nothing in common with a multimillionaire.
“Is there a problem?”
His voice, deep, low and somehow intimate, tore her from her thoughts. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“A problem?” he asked. “You went quiet, and the look on your face tells me you’re trying to think your way out of something.”
Wasn’t it an annoying thing, she thought, to not have your thoughts remain your own? “So easy to read, am I?”
One corner of his mouth lifted briefly. “Poker? Not your game.”
“Humiliating, but true enough,” she said on a sigh. Heaven knew he wasn’t the first person to see what she was thinking by studying her expression. Hopefully, though, he wouldn’t be able to suss out exactly what it was she felt when he was close. Her humiliation then would know no bounds. “But no, there’s no problem. I’m only thinking about home, wondering what’s happening while I’m gone.”
“You live with your mother and brother, don’t you?”
She looked at him and saw speculation in his eyes. “Yes, and you’re wondering why at my age I would be.”
He nodded and waited for whatever she had to say next.
Sighing a bit, Aine said, “The truth is, I moved out when I was twenty. Took a flat in the village and loved having my own space.” She smiled, remembering. “I love my family, but—”
“I get it,” he said companionably.
Her smile widened, then slipped away. “But then, five years ago, my father died.”
“Sorry.”
He looked uncomfortable, as most people did when faced with something they couldn’t change or help with.
“Thank you.” Aine smiled at him again, letting him know she was fine. She still missed her father, but the worst of the pain had faded over the years. She could talk about him now, think about him, without a crushing ache settling into her heart. “He was a fisherman and there was a ferocious storm one night. He never came home.” She frowned then, remembering how their family had changed so suddenly. “My mother was wrecked. Shattered without him, as he was the love of her life. They’d been together so long and had been true partners in everything. Without him, she was lost and didn’t want to be found. So I moved back home to help her care for Robbie, who was only twelve at the time and just as lost as Mum.”
“Must have been hard.”
She saw a glimmer of understanding in his eyes and responded to it. “It was, for some time. But things are better now and Mum is not so sad as before.”
“So you put your life on hold for your family.”
She shrugged. “’Tis what you do for those you love.”
He frowned a bit at that, and Aine wondered about it. Did he not understand after all? Had he no one in his life to matter so much? Her heart twisted at that thought.
“You miss it?”
“Ireland, you mean?” Surprised at the question, she said, “’Tis natural, isn’t it? It’s home after all.”
“Right.” He nodded, set his coffee aside and said, “Tell me about it.”
“About Ireland?”
That half smile appeared again and vanished in a blink. “Not all of it, just your part. The village. The castle.”
All around them, people laughed and talked. Waiters moved through the cluster of tables with the easy rhythm of long practice. The hum of traffic from the street became a drone of sound that mimicked the ocean just half a block away. Sunlight slanted through a bank of white clouds and glinted off the glass-topped tables.
As lovely as it was, the scene around her was a lifetime and more from what Aine knew and loved. She took a breath, smiled as she drew up the familiar images in her mind and started talking.
“The village is small but has everything we need in it. If you’re wanting more of a shopping experience, Galway city is but an hour’s drive.” Her voice softened as she described the country that seemed so very far away. “As I’ve always lived there, I might be a bit biased, but it’s a lovely village and the people are warm and friendly. The roads are narrow, lined with thick hedgerows of gorse and fuchsia—”
He laughed shortly. “Those are plants?”
She grinned. “Yes, fine, heavy hedges that bloom with yellow and red flowers in spring and early summer. You drive down roads so narrow that sometimes it’s a wonder two cars could pass each other. Farms abound, with their stone walls and grazing cows and sheep. There are ruins, of course,” she said, bracing her forearms on the warm tabletop. “Conical towers and the remains of castles long fallen stand near stone dances where, if you listen closely enough, you can hear the echoes of voices from the past.”
Her gaze caught his and she stared into those deep, guarded eyes as she said softly, “The sky is so blue in Ireland you could weep for it. And when the clouds roll in from the Atlantic, they carry with them either fine, soft rain or storms vicious enough to moan through the stones of the castle until it sounds as if souls are screaming.”
A moment of silence ticked past before Brady spoke and shattered the spell she’d woven for herself.
“Souls screaming,” he repeated thoughtfully. “That’ll go well with the guests at Fate Castle.”
“That’s what you heard? Something to help with your business?” she asked, wondering if he ever thought of anything else.
“It’s not all I heard,” he said. “But it’s my main interest. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” he asked with a shrug. “If not for my buying the castle, you’d still be in Ireland trying to think of a way to save the hotel you manage.”
So he’d heard nothing of the magic of Ireland in her description. Only the barest facts as it concerned his latest business. “You’ve a way of boiling things down to their center, don’t you?”
“No point in pretending otherwise, is there?”
“I suppose not,” she said, and knew he was probably reading her expression again. This time what he would see was exasperation, and she was comfortable with that. She might be determined to keep her temper, but the fact that the man could so easily dismiss a hotel that had been in operation for decades—never mind the centuries-old castle itself—was still annoying.
He laughed, and the sound was so surprising she forgot her momentary irritation. “What’s funny?”
“You. You’re insulted on behalf of your castle.”
“As you’ve continually pointed out, ’tis not mine but your castle,” she said more stiffly than she’d wanted.
“And yet...” He tipped his head to one side and asked, “So in all the descriptions of your Ireland, I didn’t hear any mention of a man. No one there for you to particularly miss?”
Now it was Aine’s turn to frown as she realized she was the one doing all the sharing and talking here and he was as much a mystery to her today as he had been in the beginning. But maybe, she thought, by opening up herself, she would find it easier to pry information from him.
“No,” she said at last, “there’s no one now.”
“Now?”
“There was,” she told him. “I was engaged once. Brian Feeny.” She paused and realized that she could remember him now, talk about him now and not feel even the slightest echo of pain or regret. “He’s an accountant living in Dublin. I heard he’s married and happy.”
“Why’d you break up?”
“Why’s that your business?”
“It isn’t,” he said simply.
She laughed shortly. “Fine, then. ’Twas nothing dramatic. It was only that my family needed me and Brian couldn’t understand how I would put them before him. Us.”
“Most men probably wouldn’t,” he told her.
“Would you?”
“I know that if the Ryan brothers needed me, I’d be there no matter what anyone else needed from me.” He shrugged negligently. “Does that answer the question?”
“Aye,” she said, “it does.” She took a breath and admitted, “When it ended, I wasn’t heartbroken or devastated or even really disappointed. And I knew then that I hadn’t really loved him. Not enough.”
She’d wanted to love Brian, but she simply hadn’t had it in her. And maybe she never would know the kind of love her parents had had. But then, loving that deeply, that completely—that carried its own risks, didn’t it? She remembered clearly how broken her mother had been at the loss of her love, and Aine had to wonder if the pain of it was worth the loving.
“Or maybe it wasn’t you at all, and it was just this Brian being a jackass,” Brady said.
Her gaze snapped to his and a slow smile curved her mouth. She’d never really considered it from that angle.
“That’s enough depth for today, I think. How about a walk?” He stood up and held out one hand to her.
Surprise flickered through her again. Aine looked from his eyes to his extended hand and back again. She hesitated only a moment or two before laying her hand in his. Exasperation aside, the man was not only her employer but was currently beguiling her. When her hand met his, heat dazzled her and she fought with everything she had to keep him from seeing her reaction to the connection between them. “I’d like that. I feel as if I’ve been indoors for days.”
“We’ll walk to the pier, then,” he said, folding his fingers around her hand and tugging her along beside him. “You can watch the Pacific and think of the Atlantic.”
Five
Aine knew she’d be hard-pressed to think of anything but him as long as he was beside her, but she was eager for the cold sea wind. Maybe it would help douse the fire inside her.
For a woman accustomed to the quiet of a rural Irish village, the constant pound of noise—from traffic and hundreds of people—was distracting. Aine thought she’d become accustomed to the bustle and rush in the past week or more, but when she and Brady walked to the end of the pier, she sighed in relief and smiled to herself. Here there was only the rush of the waves to the beach, the call of seabirds and the creak of the pier itself as it rocked in the water. She took a deep breath of the ocean air and tipped her face back to the sky, letting the sunlight wash over her skin.
“I think this is the first time I’ve seen you relaxed since you got here,” Brady said.
“It’s the sea,” she answered, sliding a look at him. “The waves here are calmer, softer than at home, where the water can rage, but the sound of it, like a heartbeat, ’tis soothing after all the noise of the main street. I think if I had so many people about me all of the time, I might lose my mind.”
“And I think having nothing but quiet around me all the time would do the same.”
Another point to show how ill matched they were, Aine thought, as if she had needed more. “Is that why you’ve not come to Ireland to see your castle in person?”
“Not really,” he said, tucking both hands into his pockets. He turned his face into the wind. “There’s no need for me to be there with you on scene to report.”
“What about the curiosity factor, then?” she asked, plucking her wind-blown hair from her eyes.
He glanced at her. “There isn’t one,” he said. “Not about this.”
Both of her eyebrows flew up. “You’d spend millions on a castle, invest even more in making it into what you’ve imagined and have no desire to see it yourself?”
“If there’s a problem you can’t handle, I’ll consider it.” He cocked his head to one side. “Is there a problem you can’t handle?”
“I’ve not found one yet,” she said.
“There you go, then. I’ve got the right manager.”
“I like to think so.” Yet his attitude still puzzled her. How was it a man could be so involved in a project the size of this one and have no interest in being a part of it beyond writing checks? Then she remembered how he’d denied being Irish in spite of the name that gave away his heritage, and Aine wondered if it was the castle he was avoiding or Ireland itself. The mystery of that question only made her wonder more about Brady Finn.
“I’ve been wondering...”
“Never good when a woman says that,” he mused.
A wry smile touched her mouth briefly. “You said once that the only thing Irish about you is your name.”
He stiffened and a rigid look came over his face. “Yeah.”
“What did you mean?”
She thought for a moment he wasn’t going to answer her at all. His gaze shifted from her eyes to the wide sweep of sea spilling out before them. Aine kept quiet, waiting, hoping that because she had opened up about her own past he would bend and give her a glimpse of the man inside.
“I mean,” he finally said, “I didn’t grow up with the legends of Ireland like you. Or with Irish music and pride of heritage like the Ryans.” His big hands curled over the top bar of the pier railing and he leaned into the wind as it blew his thick dark hair back from his face. “I grew up—” He bit the words off before he could say more. “Doesn’t matter. A name’s just a name. The Irish thing is as foreign to me as America is to you, I imagine.” He was scowling as if he’d said more than he wanted to, even though it was pitifully little as far as Aine was concerned.
“Your family wasn’t interested in their roots? Where they came from?” she asked, more curious than ever now, though she could see clearly he’d no wish to speak of his past.
“I didn’t have a family,” he said shortly, his tone demanding an end to the conversation.
He meant it, that
was plain. She couldn’t imagine it, having no one to call your own. To not have the solid base of a family to stand upon and build a life. Her heart hurt for him, even though she knew he wouldn’t want it to. A proud man he was, and even admitting to that small piece of his past would have torn at him. So she let it go. For now.
“And yet now you own a castle in Ireland,” she said softly.
He shot her a look. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Or, she thought, he didn’t want it to mean anything.
“I’ve noticed a few things about you myself the past several days.” He turned to face her, and with the wide sweep of ocean behind him, he could have been a pirate, with his dark good looks and sharp cobalt eyes. The collar of his black bomber jacket was turned up against the wind and his hair blew around his face like a dark halo.
God help her, he took her breath away.
“What is that?” she asked finally, when she knew she could speak without her voice breaking.
“You’re as focused as I am,” he said, “as determined to get things right. Though it makes you crazy, you’re protecting your castle by changing what you think of as the heart of it.”
She shifted, still uncomfortable at being read so easily. Why was it, she wondered, that he could see so clearly into her when who he was remained a mystery to her?
“Its heart will still be there,” she assured him, “as will its soul. I’ll make sure of it. But no, I’m not fighting you on most of it because what would be the point? I work for you. You own the castle.”
“And if I didn’t?”
“What?” She looked up at him. The sun was positioned right behind him, gilding the outline of his body. His eyes were shadowed, and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. She couldn’t try to figure out what he might be thinking if she couldn’t see his eyes—but on the other hand, not being able to look into those deep blue eyes might help her keep from making a fool of herself.
Having Her Boss's Baby Page 6
