Hot Whispers of an Irishman

by Dorien Kelly

  Heedless of civilities such as speed limits, on he drove. Within minutes he was nearing Nan’s. As he rounded a bend in the road, an absurd wee dog—part terrier, part possibly warthog—appeared to his right, coming out of a gap in the hedgerow. He was in no danger of hitting it, but out of instinct he checked the rearview mirror once he passed. The dog was gone and standing in its stead was a tall redheaded woman with a flowing green cape of some sort.

  Vi!

  The bend had ended, but with his attention fixed elsewhere, Liam was curving on. His car bounced and shuddered as it skidded into the shallow ditch that marked the border between road and hedge. The vehicle spun in a quarter-circle, ground against something really quite solid, then stalled out.

  Liam smacked the steering wheel with open palms. “Holy slice of shite on burnt toast!”

  He wrenched open his door, stepped out and landed ankle deep in cold, wet mud. It soaked through his running shoe and formerly white athletic sock before he could even react. When he did, the shoe made a squelching sound as he pulled his foot from the mud. For Liam, swearing was an art form, not worth doing unless done with flair. As the mud seemed to have leached all flair from him, he kept silent.

  First, he looked for the objects that had distracted him. Neither woman nor dog was visible, probably still back around the bend. Next, he picked his way through the mud, circling his car to see what he had hit. An initial look showed nothing, but then he found a stray boulder beneath the vehicle.

  Liam squatted down and ran his hand along the trim below the car’s front grille. He’d been as lucky as one could be under the circumstances. A lower portion of the Nissan’s bumper appeared to have taken the worst of the blow. And he’d live with it cracked before he’d pay the rates his cousin Seán charged for auto repairs.

  “Hello? You’re all right, then?” called a woman’s voice. One he hadn’t heard in fifteen years. At least, not while awake. Liam slowly stood. He took a perverse sort of satisfaction that Vi was shocked to see just who had run off the road.

  “Liam,” she said, the perpetual note of good cheer in her voice muted near to silence.

  “Vi,” he offered in return, walking from the shallow ditch to join her on the side of the road. As he did, he marveled that instantaneous hunger and sharp bitterness could coexist in the simple male mind she’d once accused him of having.

  Vi was as beautiful as ever. Tall—perhaps too formidably so for some men, but never for him. Strong-boned—she was no anorectic model. And angry, likely still over his past bad acts—perceived and real—since he’d hardly had time to add anything new. That he knew would change in a matter of days unless she had grown less perceptive. And while he was a lucky man, he wasn’t that lucky.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said, yet just now it felt as if the years had compressed to nothing at all. Aye, he was twenty, hungry, and at a loss for what to do with the woman in front of him.

  Vi drew a deep breath, seeking inner calm. God, she could remember that last moment when she’d walked from him. She could feel the knife-slice of pain as though it were now, here again to eat her soul. She had loved this man beyond time, beyond reason. And that never-to-be-repeated love had almost killed her.

  “It could have been longer,” she replied. And if fate weren’t set on running headlong at her, it would have been.

  “You look the same,” he said, then tipped his head to assess her more carefully. “Taller, maybe.”

  She wondered if that was meant as a dig. When she was seventeen, she’d hated her height. But now she was working her way to twice-seventeen and had come to terms with who she was.

  “All the better to look you in the eye,” she said.

  “And tell me what?”

  She gave him a smile, hoping it would distract. “Why, hello again, of course.” She offered her hand in greeting.

  Liam hesitated. “That simple, is it?”

  “It’s as simple as we make it,” she replied, knowing that the words were far easier to speak than to live. When he took her hand, she made sure the contact was fast and impersonal. Anything more would be dangerous, just now. He was still watching her too carefully for her comfort.

  “Will your car start?” she asked, drawing his attention elsewhere.

  He glanced back at it and frowned. “I don’t know. Let me give it a check.”

  Liam folded his tall frame into the vehicle, and Vi moved just enough to keep him in her view. The lines creasing his forehead eased away when the car’s engine caught and purred. He switched it off and stepped out, stretching his long legs to avoid mud at his door.

  “That’s half the trouble,” he said. “Now for the rock she’s hung up on.”

  “Bad bit of luck,” she said aloud. Another thought she kept to herself, that this was exactly the anchoring in spot that he deserved.

  Liam’s preoccupation gave her a chance to watch him unobserved. He’d aged well, but she would have expected no less. At twenty, he’d had a tall, raw-boned strength. In the intervening years he had filled out, not in a running-to-fat sort of way, but with bulk and muscle that made her think his days weren’t spent behind a desk. He remained as potently attractive to her as he’d been all those years ago. More so, perhaps, she thought as he came toward her.

  Their gazes locked. Ah, definitely more so, Vi concluded. She had always loved Liam’s eyes. They were tilted in a most un-Irish way, making him look as though he were savoring a secret. The small lines that now fanned from his eyes’ outer corners only improved his looks. Were she the sort to be jealous over appearances, she might be annoyed. Instead, she’d simply appreciate his beauty, if not what he’d once done to her heart.

  She wondered if at this moment he was remembering the same parts of their past as she. How hungry they’d been for each other…nearly obsessed. That last summer they would sneak off to make love as many times a day as they could. She looked at his broad hands, and recalling how they’d played hot and sure across her skin, she shivered.

  Mouth tightening to a thin line, Liam turned away. Vi smiled. So he was remembering, too.

  Many thanks to Nan, Vi had never been afraid of or embarrassed by her innate sensuality. She had been born to feel deeply and to experience all. So long as she brought no harm to others, there was no sin to living the life for which she’d been formed. As for the other half of the equation—what happened when harm was brought to her—it was far stickier. And the reason that she’d been really quite sparing with her passion.

  None of which she’d allow Liam Rafferty to know, for he had power enough already.

  Liam stood, bracing both hands on his car’s roof. “Looks like the only way out is back over it.”

  Indeed.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Vi said. “And you,” she said to Roger, who was engaged in a round of tire-sniffing, “away from the car.”

  Liam hesitated. “Would you like a lift?”

  She wanted quiet to sort her thoughts. “Thank you, but no. I’m best off exhausting Roger, here, so he’ll let me get my work done.”

  “Work?”

  “I’m sorting through my nan’s house.”

  “Ah.” He looked at the ground, then back to her. “I want to see you again. In fact, I think it’s bordering on a need,” he added with the self-deprecating smile she recalled so well.

  Only fools fight the seasons. And she’d be an even greater fool to deny that she wanted to see him again, too, if only to tidy up her past.

  “Stop out to Nan’s today,” she heard herself saying. “You remember where it is, don’t you?”

  His expression was so serious that it made her heart jolt. “I remember everything, Vi. Everything.”

  And so did she, which was why she and her hound turned away and began the walk to safety. Rog was forced to a full run to keep his short legs alongside her longer ones. Within heartbeats, Vi heard Liam’s car start, then the dreadful grind of rock against metal as he freed it.

  Wincing,
Vi drew her cloak tighter about her. Aye, back over the way one came could be a painful route, but if the journey were taken, one just might come out whole.

  Liam pulled off his right shoe outside his back door, then peeled off the muddy sock, too. Of all the ways he’d imagined having Violet Kilbride see him again, being found ankle-deep in mud was not on the bloody list. Half-shod, he entered his house, intent on a fast shower followed by a longer stay at Nan Kilbride’s.

  “You seem to be short a shoe,” his mother said from her seat at his pine kitchen table.

  Unaccustomed as he was to sharing his house with whoever saw fit to drop in, Liam started at her voice.

  “Grand to see you, Mam. Did I know you were coming for a visit?”

  “Mothers needn’t ask.”

  “Mothers, especially, should ask.”

  “I called your cell,” she said in self-defense.

  Which he’d left upstairs on the bureau in his hurry to get to Vi.

  “So, do you know what else you’re missing this morning?” his mam asked, then sipped at the tea she’d apparently made herself.

  Missing? Breakfast…sanity…uninterrupted time to research the family legend of lost gold—the list was long.

  “No, I don’t,” he said.

  “Have you seen your daughter this morning?”

  “Of course I have. She was drinking my coffee not an hour ago. I offered her a lift to school but she said she’d rather walk.”

  His mother’s brows rose and she tapped one manicured finger on the edge of her teacup. “Did she, really? I’ve not seen her voluntarily walk in the three weeks you’ve been here. I’m thinking in America she must drive from room to room.”

  “It’s not all that bad,” he protested.

  The look she gave him said “a lot you know.” Liam sat opposite his mother and pulled off his other sock and shoe. That done, he stood, thinking Mam or no Mam in the kitchen, it was time to go upstairs and shower.

  “You might want to know that St. Brigid’s is short a Rafferty this morning,” she said.

  Liam froze. He didn’t much like the amused glint in her eyes. “Meghan?”

  “Of course, Meghan. Why else would I be sitting here drinking your tea, old as it is? You need to come home more, Liam.”

  Mam could work a lecture into nearly anything. “Have you looked for her?”

  “Your child…your chase. But I did see a wee face in an upstairs window of the carriage house,” she added.

  Liam pulled aside the lace panel over the window above the kitchen sink. The carriage house. Grand. Every time they argued, Meghan went there, which meant it was well on its way to becoming her residence.

  “Oh, and you’ve had a delivery down to the market this morning. You’d best pick up your package before you offend Nora’s sense of order.”

  “I will.” Liam knew it was the ground-penetrating radar rig he’d ordered, though just now the excitement at having a new tool to help with his research was dampened by his daughter’s troubles.

  “Well,” said Mam, “round the girl up and get her to school.”

  “It’s more the keeping her there I’m worried about. I’m too damn big to be fitting in one of those desks beside her. Any words of wisdom?”

  She smiled, looking far younger than her fifty-odd years. “You’ve got two choices, son…muddle through or fail miserably.”

  The third option, that of having Mam bail him out for the next six months, was growing more remote by the day.

  “Don’t forget. Supper tonight back home,” she said on her way out.

  “Might I bring a guest?” Liam asked impulsively.

  Mam stopped in the doorway. “Vi Kilbride?”

  He nodded. “How did you know?”

  “It was no great challenge. In fact, you lasted nearly twelve hours longer than I thought you would once you heard she was about.”

  “So I can bring her?”

  His mam gave a resigned shake of her head. “If you must.”

  “That’s invitation enough for me,” Liam said.

  “As would have been a flat no,” she said, then left Liam to play a game of seek-the-truant.

  Liam hurried through his shower and a change of clothes, even though he knew Meghan was wily enough that she’d not be leaving her lair.

  As he’d expected, once he’d dressed, he spied Meghan perched on the window seat in the carriage house’s upper bedroom, looking out at the November remains of the courtyard herb garden that his sister Nora had started. He didn’t mind Nora using the place. In fact, he’d had it converted from web-ridden, antiquated garage to guest quarters with the hope that eventually he’d persuade one sibling or another to manage the property during tourist season.

  Duncarraig didn’t get the seasonal buses bulging with souls, but still enough individual travelers made their way through town on the way to Jerpoint Abbey or Kilkenny Castle that it made some sense to have spent the money for the improvements. And soon a more local site, Castle Duneen, would be reopened after nearly a decade of renovations. Last he’d visited, it had lacked a roof among other niceties. His sister Catherine’s husband, Tadgh, had worked there as a stonemason. Mam was in a holy terror that they’d move away once the job was done. She still hadn’t quite forgiven Liam for having moved away fifteen years before. Liam had seen no option. As there was none right now.

  Steeling himself, he crossed the cobblestone courtyard to the red-painted door of the carriage house.

  “Meghan?” he called as the door swung open.

  “She’s not here,” answered a hostile voice from above.

  “Ah, then you must be the ghost of a young American tourist. Have you a tragic tale to tell?” Liam climbed the steep oak stairs to the second floor, and then entered the bedroom.

  Meghan’s resemblance to her mother ran deeper than the dark blond hair and brown eyes, for when he stepped inside, his daughter gave him the same thoroughly irked look that Beth had specialized in.

  “Once upon a time, a father dragged his daughter to a town where everyone treated her like she was some kind of freak. How’s that?” she asked.

  Ah, another schoolyard set-to, no doubt. “You’re not the standard fare in Duncarraig, love. Be patient and they’ll come ’round.”

  “Right. Like I care.”

  She did, and it made his heart ache to see her hurt. “You can’t just stay in your tower, Meghan. You have to give them a chance.”

  “I’ve given them a chance. I’m not going back.”

  Liam made a mental note to get in contact with Beth. It was a fine line he’d be walking, trying to see if his child’s mother had ever had a like problem without admitting to his own ineptitude. It wasn’t so much that he cared about his image with Beth. When it came to the mechanics of being a parent, she knew him all too well. He was more concerned about not upsetting her. She had enough on her plate at present.

  “I’m afraid you have to go back. Your mother would have me cooked alive if I didn’t get you to school.”

  “How much longer do we have to be here?”

  Liam had no answer, so he volleyed a question instead. “Do you have your school bag?”

  “Over there,” she said, swinging her foot in the general direction of the bed.

  “Well, let’s get it and be on our way. No point in falling farther behind in your studies.”

  He was lucky that she fought no more, for other than dragging the girl down the stairs and out the door, he was without ideas.

  Five minutes later he had Meghan in the school office, where Mrs. McCormack, the principal, was waiting. Once Meghan was shuttled off to class, she said, “We’re trying to accommodate you, Mr. Rafferty, but there’s nothing we can do if she refuses to work.”

  Liam nodded. “I know, and I thank you for your efforts. I’ll talk to her. Things will improve. I promise.”

  And then he left before the principal’s frown brought rain to this uncharacteristically bright day.

  As he dro
ve to Nan Kilbride’s, he considered his promise regarding Meghan. A vow of improvement was easy to make, for matters could not get much worse. Meghan was far too old to spank, even if he’d been that sort of da, which he wasn’t. He could hardly deprive her of a privilege, for she’d already been removed from friends, sports, and the shopping malls that seemed to be a point of worship in her preteen life. But now that he’d pulled her from her school in Atlanta and made the commitment to Ireland, he could hardly change his mind. Not that he was of a mind to, anyway.

  For the first time in the weeks since he’d realized that the company he’d spent his adult life building was about to implode, he felt something near to a sense of promise in Duncarraig’s crisp air. And the something grew stronger the closer he got to Kilbride land. Promise and Duncarraig were two words that had never in Liam’s life played in the same thought, and he enjoyed the irony of them doing so now. But, he thought as he pulled up to Nan’s house, there were things in life even finer than irony…say, perhaps like indulging in Violet Kilbride.

  Vi sifted through the papers in one of Nan’s boxes, paying half-attention to the contents. A car door slammed, and she set aside the scraps of notes she’d been reading. She didn’t need a look out the window to tell her that Liam had arrived. Roger’s growl was warning enough.

  “I’ll take your opinion under advisement,” she told her dog as she brushed her hands off on her worn blue jeans.

  Rog was generally a fine judge of character. That he’d been less than charmed with Liam was a matter for worry. Of course, she was feeling a bit cautious on the topic of the man, too.

  She opened the front door and gave him a greeting in Irish.

  He responded in kind with a Dia s’Muire duit, but then added, “Don’t go much beyond the weather or you’ll have me sounding a fool.”

  She felt a fool already, as she had no idea how to make up the lag of fifteen years. Chat, she thought. Chat, damn it.

  “No Irish speakers where you live?” she managed to pull from some musty corner of her mind.

  “Boston might have its share, but I’ve not run across them.”