by Sophie Moss
Or were they real? Spirits, ghosts, animals who were showing themselves to her because she’d lost her faith? Because she’d lost her way? Because she needed some sort of proof to believe?
No one else on the island had seen the selkie. No one else had seen the way the seals came to the beach when Tara stepped onto the sand. No one else questioned the legend, or that one day a woman would actually come to the island and set the selkie free.
They simply believed.
Tara dropped her gaze to her hands. She wished she could believe.
When she heard the loud shouting and cheering that burst from the other room, and Kelsey grabbed the cake and skipped out with it, she knew Liam had made his announcement. She heard someone pop open a bottle of champagne—probably Dominic—and the first notes of the fiddle float into the kitchen.
Tara edged over to the window, watching as Kelsey cut into the cake and started passing out pieces. She watched the islanders gather around Liam, congratulating him. And a small ache settled in her chest when she spotted Dominic smiling, pride awash on his handsome face as he clapped his brother on the back and then moved back to the bar to fill the mad rush of drink orders.
Turning away from the window, Tara busied herself by chopping potatoes and after the band’s third song, it was Liam who slipped into the kitchen and spotted Tara, alone by the stove. “Can’t you take a break and join us for a few minutes?”
Tara smiled at the younger, more scholarly version of Dominic. “Maybe a little later.”
She slid sliced potatoes into the boiling pot. “But congratulations on your book. That’s a big accomplishment.”
Tara waited for him to duck back out into the crowded barroom, surprised when he pulled out a stool and settled onto it.
“So, I hear Kelsey’s teaching you how to cook.”
“Everyone’s trying to teach me how to cook. Few are succeeding.”
Dipping a finger in the leftover cake batter, Liam smiled. “It’s good to know someone in the family picked up Grandma’s genes. I know it skipped Dominic and me.”
Tara stole a glance at the sharp angles of Liam’s face, so similar to Dominic’s. His eyes were a shade bluer and framed by black wire rims. The crease between his eyebrows was deeper even though he was a few years younger. It gave him the appearance of someone who was constantly thinking, caught in a perpetual whir of his own ideas and imagination. “Dominic tells me you’re a college professor.”
Liam nodded, sitting back. “I got into teaching so I’d have time to write.” He took a sip of his Guinness and grinned. “You don’t find many jobs where you get three months off every summer.”
His voice was soft, soothing, not quite as deep and rough as Dominic’s. He didn’t have his older brother’s bulk and one of his shoulders hung lower than the other, like he’d been in an accident when he was younger. “How long did it take you to write your book?”
“How long did it take me to write it?” Liam crossed his feet at the ankles. “I don’t really know. I’ve been working on it forever. Since I was a kid.”
“That’s long?”
Liam nodded. “I started compiling stories when I first came to the island and heard them.”
Tara turned. “When you first came to the island? Aren’t you from here?”
Liam studied her curiously across the kitchen. “No.” When Tara turned back to the stove, stirring the pot he could see the confusion on her face. “I’m sorry. I figured Dom would have told you.”
Tara shook her head slowly.
Interesting, Liam thought as he continued to study her. If Dominic hadn’t told her the truth about their pasts, then he must have a reason. He could tell from the way his brother spoke of this woman on the phone that he cared for her. Maybe more than he realized. But he could also tell something was going on between the two of them tonight. He could sense the tension and wondered if Tara had any idea how stubborn his brother could be. “I think I’ll leave that particular story to Dominic.”
Tara nodded, wondering how he could have left out such an important part of his past. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“The island? Living here?”
Liam nodded. “I do miss it. I love my job but living in Galway’s nothing like living here. This will always be my home.”
“What made you leave?”
Liam smiled, taking another sip of his beer. “It wasn’t my choice, really. Dominic was the one who urged me to go to college. I fought him, hard. We didn’t have the money. The banks wouldn’t give me a loan. I didn’t have anywhere to live, or even a way to get to my classes.
“I’d just decided to take up work with one of the fisherman when he came into my room with an application for the university. He made me fill it out, watched me write the essays, watched me seal up the envelope and place it in the outgoing mail at the market.
“He told me that if I got in, we’d deal with the expense, we’d deal with finding me a place to live. That if I got in, we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. He told me that I should never not do something I wanted to, or I believed I could do, because a few walls stood in my way.”
She could see it, Tara thought, picturing Dominic sitting at the bar beside his brother late at night, pushing the papers toward him, listening to Liam’s arguments, and then quietly handing him a pen. Dominic would never give in to the idea that anyone he loved couldn’t succeed at whatever they wanted to.
“I got a letter of acceptance for the fall semester in April,” Liam explained. “Before I could even protest that I couldn’t afford it, he told me he’d been saving up his earnings at the pub and that he had just enough to pay for my books and a full load of classes that fall.”
Tara turned slowly, facing him. “He put you through school?”
“The first year, anyway. I got a job at a pub in Galway after that, managed the rest on my own. But I couldn’t have done it without him.”
“But why didn’t he go to college?”
“His place is here. On the island. When we came here—we were only children then, but old enough to work—he promised our grandfather he’d take over the pub when he died. That he’d stay on the island and take care of our grandmother and me.”
“But… he never wanted to leave? He never wanted to break that promise?”
Liam studied Tara’s face closely. “He hasn’t told you about our grandfather?”
Tara shook her head.
“Ask him,” Liam urged. “Tonight.” Pushing to his feet, Liam drained the rest of his beer. “To make a long story short, I went straight into a graduate program after college. When one of the older professors retired, I applied for his job and I got it. That’s why I left the island.”
Liam watched the woman across the kitchen. He wondered if she knew she was still holding the spoon, dripping sauce all over the floor.
The door to the bar swung open and Dominic strode into the kitchen. He paused when he noticed Tara staring at Liam, the ladle frozen in her hand. “What’s this about?”
Liam smiled and walked out of the kitchen, giving his older brother a little nudge toward Tara.
Still upset from this afternoon, Dominic reached for the malt vinegar stored in the cabinet above her head. “Can you make a salad for one of the tourists?”
Tara watched him pocket the vinegar and head back out to the barroom. “Wait,” she called after him.
Dominic paused, his hand on the door.
“I lied when I said I was from Portland.”
When his shoulders stiffened, Tara pressed on. “I grew up in New Orleans with my mother and father. We lived in a house in the woods near the Pearl River.” She spoke quickly, before she could convince herself to stop. “My father worked in construction. My mother grew herbs and sold her herbal remedies at the farmers market on the weekends. I was telling the truth that day outside Brennan’s house.”
When he still didn’t turn to face her, she understood his reluctance to listen to wh
at she was saying. He didn’t trust her. She’d given him no reason to. It was time that changed. “My father used to cook the stew I was making earlier for me when I was a child.” Her gaze dropped to the now congealed dish she’d been working on most of the day. “It was my favorite.”
When his hand stayed on the door, Tara took a deep breath. “I wanted to make this, because I wanted to share it with you. It was my way of sharing a part of my life and my real past with you.” She took a tentative step toward him. “I realize you have no reason to believe me. There are things that I’m still not ready to share, that I’m still not ready to talk about. That I’m not even ready to say out loud. But I wanted to do this. To share this small thing with you in my own way.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because…” Tara struggled for an answer. Why was she telling him this? Why was it suddenly so important for him to know the truth? “I think… because you made Liam go to college.”
Dominic let his hand drop from the door and he turned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“You refused to let him be anything less than what he was capable of. You believed in him, even when he didn’t believe in himself.”
“He’s my brother. That’s what you do for family.”
“No.” Tara took another step toward him. “That’s what you do for family.”
“Tara—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not finished. I had a good family once, too. I used to know what that was like. To know what it was like to have someone believe in you, encourage you, even love you. Unconditionally. I lost that a long time ago.”
She was standing directly in front of him now and he reached for her hand, just the slightest brush of his fingers on hers. “What happened?”
“My mother died when I was thirteen. It was winter. She hit a patch of black ice on the bridge. Most people in New Orleans don’t know how to drive in the ice.”
“What about your father?”
“My father died of lung cancer when I was seventeen.”
Dominic threaded his fingers through hers.
“We left New Orleans after my mother’s death. My father couldn’t stand to be in the same city, to have the memories, to feel her presence around every corner. It hurt me. A lot at first. I didn’t understand why he was taking us away from our home. It’s hard to leave the home you grew up in. But when I got older I realized that sometimes you have to move yourself away from a place physically to get over it emotionally.”
He tipped her chin up and gazed down at her those quiet eyes. “Is that what you’re doing now?”
Tara nodded. “I think that’s part of it.”
He touched his lips to hers, and she felt the tenderness, the compassion spread through her like a warm wash of light, and she rose up on her toes, wrapping her arms around his neck.
When she pulled back, she rested a palm on his cheek. “You have to understand, this is a huge step for me, telling you this.”
“I know,” Dominic said, quietly. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“Not tonight,” Tara admitted. “But there is something I want to know about you. Liam told me to ask you about your grandfather.”
Dominic shook his head, smiling slowly. His little brother was getting crafty. “Fair enough,” he said, letting his gaze drift across the room to where a faded photograph of a large, broad-shouldered man sat propped up on the highest shelf. “My grandfather was more of a father to me than my own ever was. He was… there for me, when no one else was. He was the best man I’ve ever known. Everything I do is measured up against his standards. And if I die even half the man he was, I’ll know I did alright in this life.”
“You must really miss him.”
Dominic nodded. “Every day.”
“Your grandmother must have been a very lucky woman.”
“She was. Still is. After he died, she took the money they’d saved up their whole lives to see the places they always talked of seeing, to do some of the things they always talked of doing, and never got to. When I spoke to her last week, she was in Madrid, and she’d met a group of widows like herself who invited her to travel with their group.” He gazed back at Tara, tipping her chin up. “But she’ll come back, like they all do when they get the wanderlust out of their system.”
Reaching around her, he switched off the burners on the stove and, tucking her hand in the crook of his arm, he led her out to join the party. When he drew her in front of him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and resting his chin on the top of her head, Tara ignored the islanders’ stares and let her fingers twine with his as she watched Kelsey tap out a complicated Irish jig in the center of a small crowd.
Leaning down, Dominic’s lips grazed her ear. “I’ve a mind to take you home tonight, Tara.”
When she looked up at him, Tara couldn’t mistake the heat in his eyes. And a thrill that wasn’t fear, but nervous excitement, raced through her.
Maybe it was what Glenna said. Maybe it was because of that faith he had so much of. Maybe it was because whenever she thought of him, she wanted to smile. But whatever it was, she hooked a finger in his collar and tugged that rugged face back down to hers and whispered, “I’ve a mind to let you.”
***
Nerves danced up Tara’s spine as Dominic cut the engine of his truck outside her cottage, left the keys dangling in the ignition. Moonlight danced over the dark shadows and hard lines of his face as he slid his pale eyes over to her.
“Are you sure that Kelsey’s okay with Liam tonight?” Tara asked, nervously.
“She’s fine.”
“Was she asleep when you—”
“She’s fine, Tara.” His knee brushed against hers, sending electric shocks into her system, making her blood race and her skin hot to the touch. “Are you fine?”
She nodded, her breath catching when he tipped her chin up.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded again but his eyes searched her face and saw doubt.
“If it’s too soon…”
“It’s not,” she said quickly.
“They why are you so nervous?”
“I’m always nervous… before.”
He skimmed a thumb over her soft cheek. “I don’t want you to be nervous.”
“I don’t think I can help it.”
He traced a finger lightly along her chin. “Then why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
Her blood hummed when his knuckles skimmed down her throat, his fingers brushing over her collarbone. “I’m not sure I’m very… good at this.”
“At what,” he murmured, dipping his mouth to the spot where his fingers had been.
Her breath caught as his lips brushed her collarbone and then cruised up along the curve of her neck. “At this,” she whispered.
His lips curved against her skin. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”
“Dominic,” Tara breathed, struggling against the need building into heat deep inside her. “I’m not sure I’m… going to be what you… expect.”
He drew her shirt down one shoulder, letting his mouth glide over her bare skin. “What exactly do you think I expect?”
“I don’t know,” Tara whispered, her pulse hammering when he eased the strap of her bra down her shoulder. “Someone else… Someone better.”
Dominic lifted his head, cupping his face with his hands. “I need to know now,” he said, his voice thick with need. “If you’re not okay with this.”
“I’m having a little trouble… thinking at the moment.”
“Good,” he said, fisting his hands in her hair. “Stop thinking.”
“Dominic, I—”
He crushed his mouth to hers, silencing her. “I don’t want anyone else, Tara. You are what I want.”
She gasped as he caught her hips in his strong hands, dragged her into his lap. She felt his obvious desire pressing against her and he dipped his mouth back to hers, nipping
at her bottom lip with his teeth. “Do you believe me now?” he asked quietly.
She nodded, her lips parting for his, drinking in the taste for him, the feel of him. She curled her arms around his neck, pressing her body closer to his. Desperate to be near him, touching him, every inch of him.
He groaned when her hands dipped under the bottom of his shirt, the muscles of his stomach tightening when she slid her hands up and over them. “If it’s all the same to you,” he murmured as her clever hands sent shivers across his skin. “I’d like to make it into the house tonight.”
She let out a breathless laugh and pressed her lips back to his, clamping her legs around him. The cool night air spilled into the truck as he pushed open the door. Her teeth nipped at his neck as he lifted her, climbing out of the driver’s seat with her legs wrapped around him. He had to press a palm to the bumper to keep from dragging them both to the ground, taking her on the grass under the warm breath of the engine.
Her hands were all over him. Desperate for him, sliding under his shirt, raking fingernails down his skin, her mouth like fire on his neck. She pushed her house keys into his palm. She didn’t know how she got them out of her pocket. They were just there, in her hands, and then in his, as he pushed them into the lock.
He had her inside, and in the bedroom, before she could suck in a breath.
“Tara,” he breathed, and backed her slowly, step by step, onto the bed. “I want to see you.” He lifted the hem of her shirt, helped her pull it up and over her head. “All of you.”
His eyes went dark when he saw the swells of pale flesh rising over her simple white cotton bra. And when he lowered his mouth to her breast, she rose up, tugging at his shirt, dragging it over his head, sliding her hands up the hard muscles of his stomach, the hard muscles of his chest, up over the hard planes of his shoulders.
Where had this been before? How had she lived without this? How had she not known she needed this?
