by Zara Keane
He blinked the image into oblivion. He had to think of something to say, preferably fast. Problem was, he hadn’t a clue how to handle this situation. “Ten minutes till opening time,” he heard himself mumble. “Anyone up for a cuppa?”
His sister put her hands on her hips. “No, I don’t want a fecking cup of tea. I want an explanation.”
Jayme’s startled face regained some of its former composure. “What she said. You owe us answers.”
He exhaled sharply. “Right. No tea. How about a coffee?”
“Ruairí!” they exclaimed in unison.
“Fine, fine. I’ll talk.” He ran a hand through his hair and began to pace. “When I left Ballybeg ten years ago, I cut ties with my family. I had no intention of ever coming back. Frankly, I didn’t think they’d miss me.”
“Not miss you?” roared Marcella. “You daft eejit. Poor Sharon sobbed herself to sleep for months.”
He stopped his pacing. “Months?”
“A few weeks,” she conceded. “Okay, a few days. But still. She was upset. We all were.”
“I should have told you about Jayme when I got home last year,” he said with a sigh. “I was going to but couldn’t find the words. It’s hard to discuss the stuff that matters, and I was still raw from the breakup. Once the letters from Jayme’s lawyer arrived, I figured there was no point.”
“Why did you leave Ireland?” Jayme cut in. “I’m assuming you didn’t move to America on a whim.”
He shifted his focus to her pale face. Hurt lurked in her soft green eyes. He dropped his gaze to her mouth—her sweet Cupid’s bow mouth… Okay, mistake. “Our father… isn’t an easy man.”
His sister snorted. “Which roughly translates to, ‘He’s an abusive prick with ready fists and a drinking problem.’ In other words, he’s an Irish cliché. One of the best days of my life was when Ruairí broke his nose.”
Jayme’s jaw slid lower.
“Marcella, would you mind giving us privacy?” He gave his sister a significant look.
She ignored him. “What you need,” she said to her newly discovered sister-in-law, “is an Irish coffee.”
Jayme gave a wry smile. “I’m not much of a drinker, particularly not at this hour.”
His sister’s grin widened. Ruairí’s heart sank. What devious plan was she concocting this time? “You should take Jayme out to the farm,” she said. “Get Ma to make her one her famous Irish coffees.”
He shook his head. “If she drank one of Ma’s coffees, she’d be legless.”
Jayme frowned in confusion. “I’d be what?”
“Drunk. Very drunk.”
“I would like to meet your mother,” she said in a quiet voice, “but I might pass on the fortified coffee.”
“She’s home now.” Marcella smirked at him. “Better take her earlier in the day rather than later. Da is in Mallow looking at cattle.”
He massaged his temples. Taking his almost ex-wife to meet the clan was the absolute last thing he wanted to do. What would she think of them? What would she say when she saw the state of the farm? “What about the pub?”
“As long as you’re back by lunchtime, I’ll be grand on my own.” She wagged a finger at her brother. “And when you get back, I want to know why you didn’t let on you had a wife.” She winked at him and headed towards the bar, whistling off-key.
The sweat under his collar began a slow trickle down his spine. If he didn’t take Jayme to see his mother before she got wind of his marriage from Marcella, there’d be hell to pay. Having spent the last year trying to rebuild their fragile relationship, he didn’t want to lose the connection with his mother. He’d lose her soon enough. Shutting his eyes, he shoved the macabre notion to the recesses of his mind. Then he looked straight at the beautiful woman he’d married. She stood ramrod straight, tension oozing from every elegant pore.
“Fine,” he said on a sharp exhale. “If you want to meet the rest of my family, let’s go. But trust me, if you weren’t running to divorce me beforehand, you will be after.”
Jayme clung to her seatbelt while Ruairí’s SUV sloshed through the flooded streets of Ballybeg. The brief glimpse she’d had of the town since her arrival was seen through a haze of mist and rain. Despite the deluge, the bright colors of the buildings contrasted cheerfully with the relentless gray sky.
In other circumstances, she’d have relished a trip to Ireland. One of her great-grandmothers hailed from Donegal, and she’d always had a hankering to visit. Ruairí’s reluctance to vacation in his native country had been a disappointment. She’d attributed it to his lack of family. Boy, had she been wrong on that score. She stole a glance at his profile, hard and handsome. “Surely your mom can’t be that bad.”
He grimaced. “She’s bossy, but she’s mild-tempered in comparison to my father. Be glad he’s gone out.” He swerved to avoid a pothole. “Feck.”
The rain had increased in the short time Jayme had spent in the pub. The streets of Ballybeg were a few inches deep in water, and the situation was worse once they exited the town proper.
“Gosh,” she said, peering through the window, “the flooding is worse than when I drove through an hour ago.”
“You drove?” His head swiveled toward the passenger seat. “You remembered to ask for an automatic, right?”
“There was no ‘remember’ about it,” she replied tartly. “How was I to know a standard transmission is the norm in Ireland?”
His laughter reverberated off the worn leather seats. “You mean to tell me that you drove a car with gears from Shannon to Ballybeg?”
She folded her arms across her chest and attempted to strike a dignified pose. “Laugh all you want, MacCarthy. I made it, didn’t I?”
“So you did. Well done to you.” His grin was wide. “I’m more used to seeing you hailing a cab than behind a wheel.”
“Frankly, I prefer it that way. The drive was terrifying. Are all Irish roads in lousy condition?”
He laughed. “Many. The roads around Ballybeg were never great. Since the Irish economy collapsed a few years ago, they’ve been left to go to rack and ruin.”
When a car driving on the other side of the road veered into their lane before swerving at the last second, her heart leaped in her chest. “How far is your family’s farm?”
“A twenty-minute drive from the town, but it will take us longer in this weather.”
“Do you live with them or in Ballybeg? The only address I have for you is the pub.”
“I live over the pub. The rooms on the second floor are divided into two apartments. One is mine and the other is Marcella’s.”
They lapsed into a silence taut with tension. This stranger in jeans and a checked shirt was her husband? Where was the stiff and proper stockbroker she’d married three years ago? Had he ever existed? Had it been a carefully calculated act? The man she’d known would never have been content to run a small bar in Ireland. What had happened to make him do a one-eighty?
“I know very little about you, and you know everything about me.” Okay, maybe not everything.
He glanced at her sideways before returning his attention to the road. “I didn’t lie to you, Jayme. I omitted a few facts.”
“A few facts? I’d say you left a lot of stuff out.” Anger, confusion, and hurt warred for dominance in her tone of voice with anger emerging the victor. “What part of the tale you spun me was true?”
His brow furrowed but he didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Nearly everything. I left Ireland when I got my master’s degree. After a brief stint as an intern, I got a job on Wall Street. Seven years and several promotions later, I met you.”
She remembered every fruity detail of that cocktail-flavored night. It was her thirtieth birthday, and she’d gone to an exclusive Manhattan nightclub to celebrate. She’d ordered her third—or was it fourth?—cosmopolitan when she’d caught him staring at her across the dance floor.
If his clothes screamed money, his demeanor roared success. She’
d held his gaze and flashed him a tipsy come-hither smile. He hadn’t hesitated. Within seconds, he’d maneuvered his way through the crowded dance floor and stood before her. The moment she’d heard his Irish accent, each melodious word skittering across her skin in an erotic dance, Jayme had fallen in love.
And she’d assumed he had too. Unshed tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away, dug her French-manicured nails into her palms. “Please, what happened to make you move to another country and never look back?”
He exhaled sharply. “After a massive row with my father, he threw me out and I didn’t return. But the row was the catalyst, not the cause. It was more an accumulation of things. Long story short, I was the only one of my siblings to excel in school. Instead of getting a criminal record, I got a university degree—a good one at that. You come from a family where academic prowess is both expected and lauded. I come from one where the ability to pick a lock is considered an essential life skill. How could I tell you about them? Your family is nothing like mine.”
“Perhaps not, but why would you think I’d judge you for yours?”
He frowned. “Why wouldn’t you? Everyone else does.”
“I’m not everyone else. I’m your wife.” She clasped her trembling hands in her lap. If only he’d told her the truth. Yes, the image of Ruairí belonging to a family of lawbreakers jarred. No, it didn’t fit with the image of the educated, cultured man she’d fallen in love with. But none of that mattered.
“The man you met was a successful stockbroker,” he said, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “That’s what you saw, that’s who you agreed to date, that’s who you married.”
“Bullshit. I loved you. How could you lie to me? You should have told me the truth about your family before the wedding.”
“I was going to tell you. I intended to tell you.”
“But?”
His fingers flexed over the steering wheel. “But I got caught up in the whirlwind of our romance. I didn’t want our perfect bubble to burst. You have to understand—”
“I don’t have to anything. You should have told me. I would have listened.”
“Would you?” He turned slightly in his seat, and their eyes met briefly before he returned his gaze to the road. “Come on, Jayme. You’d have realized we weren’t right for each other. I know it was selfish, but I couldn’t bear the idea of losing you.”
“For heaven’s sake,” she snapped. “You wouldn’t have lost me.”
He raised one dark eyebrow. “Come on, admit it. You’d have run a mile. Would you have knowingly married a man from my background?”
Her mouth opened on autopilot but she swallowed her protest. Did he have a point? Her parents had made no secret of their disapproved of her husband. They’d raised her to assume she’d marry a man who moved in the same social circles as her family. It was an assumption she’d never thought to question. Until Ruairí, she’d always dated guys her parents would consider son-in-law material. Disregarding his lack of WASP connections was one thing. Would she have turned a blind eye to his unsavory Irish relatives?
“Well?” he prompted. “How would you have reacted if I’d told you?”
“I… don’t know,” she admitted. “I can honestly say that I don’t care now. You’re what matters to me, not your background.”
They lapsed into a brooding silence as the SUV continued its precarious journey. They’d left the town well behind and were driving past green fields bordered by ancient stone walls. Every now and then, a house dotted the landscape. Some were modern and encompassed every hue and architectural style known to the western world. Others were older: thatched cottages, manor houses, and sprawling bungalows.
Jayme drank in every detail, anxious to steady her racing mind. “They’re crooked.”
“What?” He slowed when they reached a particularly flooded dip in the road.
“The stone walls. They look like they’ll fall down.”
“Ah, no,” he said with a small laugh. “They’re old, but stable.”
They turned onto the coast road. The sea was wild. It churned like a whirlpool, foam cresting atop high waves.
“Can you swim in this area?” she asked, pointing toward the water. “The sea looks dangerous.”
“Sure you can, once you obey the warning flags. The currents aren’t suitable for swimming on some beaches, but others are perfectly safe.”
Jayme clasped her fingers on her lap and fiddled with her wedding and engagement rings. She’d lost so much weight since the operation that they now slid up and down her finger with alarming ease. She glanced at Ruairí’s large hands at the steering wheel. He was no longer wearing his ring, but the indent where it had once been was still visible. Acid gnawed at her stomach lining. Knowing he considered their marriage to be over shouldn’t come as a surprise. And it certainly shouldn’t make her soul ache. But it did, and it hurt so damn much.
She returned her attention to the landscape. “How many siblings do you have?”
He slid her a glance. “Three sisters, three brothers.”
Her jaw dropped. “Seven kids? Your poor mother.”
“Indeed.” A smile tugged at his mouth. “Actually, she has eight if we count my father.”
He flipped on the indicator, and they turned onto a narrow dirt road. Ramshackle farm buildings were visible to the left, and a small house nestled on a hill to their right.
Ruairí pulled the car to a stop outside the house and killed the engine.
“Your family lives here?” Jayme peered through the car window. “Where did you all sleep? The house doesn’t look big enough to accommodate a family of four, let alone nine.”
His jaw flexed making her regret her words. “It’s not large like your family’s house, true, but then most Americans don’t live in a mansion.”
“I know,” she said hurriedly. “It’s just—”
The satyr look was back. “Small?”
“I guess.” Her cheeks burned. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, his lips forming silent words. He unclicked his seatbelt. “Come on. If you’re so keen to meet my family, let’s get it over and done with.”
Chapter Three
RUAIRÍ’S HEART HAMMERED as he guided her to the back of the farmhouse. He was hyperaware of the dilapidated farm buildings and the shabbiness of the main house. Jayme picked her way carefully over the uneven cobblestones in the yard. When they reached the back door, her brow creased in confusion. “Why aren’t we using the front door?”
“The front is only for uninvited visitors. We always use the back entrance.”
“Why?”
“It’s a farm tradition. Avoids filthy boots trekking through the house.” He shoved door open and led her through the tiny mudroom toward the kitchen.
Inside Ma was sitting at the battered old kitchen table, a pen behind her ear and a newspaper in her hand. For as long as he could remember, her midmorning ritual involved a mug of steaming tea and the daily crossword. The illness had turned her complexion gray and waxy, but she looked well, all things considered.
His youngest sister, Sharon, sat opposite their mother, bleary-eyed and slouched over a mug of coffee. A dog-eared notebook lay open before her, containing what he hoped were college notes. Da was nowhere to be seen. Thank feck for small mercies.
“Ruairí!” Ma leaped to her feet when she spied him in the doorframe, grinning as if he were the prodigal son returned. And in way, he was. “And who’s this you’ve brought with you?”
Jayme lingered in the doorway, uncertainty skittering across her pretty face.
“Come in, love,” his mother said. “Don’t be shy.”
Jayme stepped gingerly down the lopsided step, stumbling when she caught her heel on the uneven edge.
Ruairí caught her arm and righted her. “Are you okay?” He could feel her bones through her voluminous raincoat. She’d always been slight, but this was ridiculous. Her frailty made his protectiv
e instincts kick into overdrive. He’d make sure she had a decent meal or two before she flew back to the States.
“I’m fine.” She tugged her arm free from his grasp.
Ma stretched out a hand. “I’m Molly MacCarthy.”
“Jayme King.”
His mother’s large hand dwarfed Jayme’s. “Are you a friend of Ruairí’s?” She put particular emphasis on the word “friend.”
“Actually…” Jayme trailed off and looked at him pleadingly.
“Jayme is my wife.” He focused on the photograph of the pope that hung menacingly over the drinks cabinet. “But we’re getting a divorce.”
Ma’s hands made an instinctive sign of the cross. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You can’t be serious?” She looked from him to Jayme and then back again. “You are serious.” She sank back onto her chair. “When did this happen?”
“Did you elope?” Sharon had lost the glazed look and was fully alert.
“No.” Jayme bristled and pursed her lips. “We dated for six months and got married three years ago.”
“Three years?” Sharon roared with laughter. “You are a dark horse, brother.”
Ruairí wished the cracked linoleum floor would swallow him whole.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Ma demanded. “We’re your family. We had a right to know.”
“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” he said, squirming under their scrutiny.
“And what’s this nonsense about a divorce?” His mother’s fingers fluttered to the crucifix around her neck. “MacCarthys don’t get divorced. We’re like swans. We mate for life.”
A fleeting image of his father’s bullish face floated before him. “In some cases, we should rethink that stance.”
Ma’s crestfallen expression cut him to the quick. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell us. You’ve been home a year.”
“He’s ashamed of us.” Sharon’s words held no rancor, merely resigned acceptance of the status quo. “That’s why he left Ballybeg in the first place. And by the look of the wife, she’s too fancy for the likes of us.”
