by Dorien Kelly
“No! Of course not!”
Tension left Liam’s face. He closed his eyes for an instant and exhaled a slow, almost cautious, breath.
“Good, then,” he said.
Vi smiled, though she knew it was a wobbly affair. “You might think of letting go of my hands, though. I won’t hit you or run, I promise. I just need to wipe my tears.”
“Ah, but that I can do for you.” He dipped down and kissed her forehead, then either side of her face, at the wet and salty sensitive skin beneath her temples. Then he set her hands free. “I love you, Vi, and now I’ll make love to you. Do you want me to use protection, or are we safe?”
“Just you inside me,” she said, knowing that all but her heart was safe.
He kissed her breasts and belly, and stroked her between her legs as she caressed him. The afternoon sun spilled onto the bed from the open curtains, and she took pleasure in making Liam move just so, where she could watch the play of light and shadow fall across him.
Together, they were art and subtle miracles. They were the sort of beauty that always stayed just beyond her fingertips. She might not be able to capture it and have it serve her whims, but she could live it. In time, the sheets were a rumpled ridge at the foot of the bed, and Vi and Liam were angled across the mattress.
He entered her slowly, whispering, “My Violet.” It sounded a sweet poem to her, and she considered that her name might sometimes actually suit.
They were totally skin to skin, and it was paradise. She ran her palms up his arms, feeling the strength of muscle and sinew. She drew his head down to hers and kissed him, letting her tongue slide against his.
When Liam began to move, it was such a slight action that at first she thought it might have been her imagination, or perhaps the instinctual rocking of her own hips, which she could no sooner stop than she could will her blood to move more slowly through her veins.
She asked him for more, but he shook his head. “Not yet. Move your legs up around me.” When Vi did as he asked, he said, “Now close your eyes and just feel.”
Vi felt the rising and falling of his abdomen pressing into hers as he breathed. She felt the tiny sting of flesh still relaxing to accommodate him, the pounding of her heart as her passion grew, and the fullness of Liam inside her. The tangy, almost primal scent of their lovemaking surrounded them, and the combined heat of their bodies rippled across her skin, making her feel as though she’d been dancing too close to a bonfire’s flames.
She fixed all these impressions in her mind, for the artist in her was greedy, taking and keeping what was needed to fill creativity’s wellspring. This wasn’t using. It was simply who she was.
Vi opened her eyes and caught Liam looking at her with a tenderness that was enough to break her heart.
“Do you have it now?” he asked.
Her heart jumped, for he knew. In a way that defied reason and experience, he knew her down to her soul.
“This, Vi, is love,” Liam said, then withdrew and returned into her, making her back arch and her breath hitch.
And he did indeed make love to her as he’d vowed, slowly and with a caring that diminished her defenses in a way that a show of breathless acrobatics never could. His words were simple and all bearing the same message—that she was loved. She’d never been so aroused.
Vi came to a shuddering climax and lay trying to regroup her resources before he’d even peaked. Liam withdrew from her, and she clutched his upper arms, trying to stay him.
“Where are you going?”
“Exploring,” he said, then gave her a bold smile before heading south.
Cool air replaced the cover of Liam’s warm skin. She lay replete and pliable as he slid her closer to the mattress’s edge, until her lower legs were dangling. He nudged her thighs wider and kneeling on the floor, settled between them, contemplating her as though he’d never before seen a woman’s body, when Vi knew for certain he’d seen plenty.
“Are we to be here a while?” she asked, earning the chuckle she’d hoped for with her casual tone.
“It all depends,” Liam said.
“Ah, well, if it’s depending on me…”
She reached upward for the pillow she’d left behind, drew it forward, plumped it a bit, and then tucked it beneath her head. Even with the added cushion, she had to work up the energy to lift her head and watch as he brushed his fingertips back and forth across the hair at the joining of her thighs.
“My fire, for certain,” he said, his attention fixed on what he was touching.
“Embers at best,” she said. “You’ve done me in.”
“A challenge, then.”
Vi lay back and smiled, for she knew there was nothing Liam liked better than a challenge. He nudged her legs the smallest measure wider, and she swallowed convulsively as she felt him expose damp and tender bits not accustomed to the cool November air. It might be time to run the furnace and not just occasionally the fireplace, she thought.
And that proved to be the last wander her mind would take, for Liam’s tongue gently flicked against what he’d exposed. As he dallied, pure pleasure worked its way up to her heart, which sped its beat. There was a possibility that she wasn’t beyond rousing.
One particularly wonderful caress had her fully awakened, her toes flexing, then pulling tighter with a pleasurable anticipation that she hadn’t expected to feel. When she begged him to come back and be inside her, he smiled up at her.
“Embers?” he asked.
“Arrogance,” she answered, softening the word with a smile.
Liam crawled onto the bed, moving her upward enough that he could slide home.
“I love you, Vi,” he said, then began to move with determination. “Did always…will always.”
This time when she came, Liam was there with her, and Vi knew that her world was forever and frighteningly changed.
There was no sound like a dog noisily sniffing at the bottom of a closed door.
Liam smiled up at the ceiling as he listened to Roger, who was quite obviously curious about whatever might have taken place on the humans’ side of the door. The dog could remain curious, too.
Liam swung his legs from the bed, then reached for his watch, which he’d left on the small table at the bedside.
“Damn.” He’d slept longer than he’d thought, for it was nearly four-thirty. Soon he’d have to return to Muir House, but he’d hoped for a few more words with Vi before then, as he recalled that he was supposed to pass along an invitation from Jenna Gilvane for Vi to also have dinner at Muir House this evening. She was face-down, though, and closer to comatose than asleep.
Liam rose, gathered his clothing, and made his way to the bathroom he’d earlier been barred from. Once he’d showered and dressed, he checked on Vi again. Other than one finger twitching, she hadn’t moved at all. Roger, though, had apparently made the great leap to the foot of the bed.
“Should she wake, tell her I’ll be in the kitchen,” he said to the hound.
Liam returned to the front room, then paused, thinking perhaps he heard someone upstairs. The noise didn’t return, so he retraced his earlier steps to the back hallway, off which the kitchen sat. Feeling oddly at home, he opened the fridge and was thankful to find three bottles of German lager in the back corner. One could be taken without too much guilt.
He’d opened the bottle, sat at the kitchen table, and was taking a first long drink when a tall, broadly muscled, and very redheaded young man with a bandaged left hand came in. Liam suddenly wished for dry hair and a shirt buttoned to the top instead of three buttons still open.
“You must be either Dan or Pat,” he said once he’d swallowed.
“Pat,” the younger man replied, then reached into the fridge and pulled out a large bottle of still water. He began to uncap it, wincing as he gripped the bottle with his bandaged hand.
“Need some help?” Liam offered.
“It’s just a few stitches. I can fend for myself.” The youth succeeded, then t
ipped back his head and drank. When he was done, he gave Liam a level, appraising look.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Liam Rafferty. A friend of your sister’s.”
“And of her shower, from the sound of things when I got home. Where’s Vi?”
“Asleep.”
“Then you might as well be on your way. She sleeps for days after one of her runs in the studio.”
“I’ll wait a while, thanks.”
Pat shrugged.
“This your beer?” Liam asked, raising the bottle.
“No, it’s Danny’s. Which is why I think I’ll be drinking one later and blaming its disappearance on you, as well.”
“Glad to oblige,” Liam said, then had a swig of his beer.
Pat pulled out a chair and sat opposite Liam. “Have you known my sister long?”
“Since she was ten.”
“She’s never mentioned you.”
“I knew her in Duncarraig, and neither of us has been there in a number of years.”
“Ah.”
Liam watched as the younger man drank more water and apparently waged some great internal war, based on the expressions passing over his face. Liam was willing to be patient. He didn’t plan to walk from Vi’s life, and having the trust of her brothers was crucial.
“You probably should know that I’m the smallest of Vi’s brothers,” Pat eventually said, stretching the fingers of his good hand as though readying to make a fist.
Liam nodded. “A burden for you, I’m sure,” he replied, thinking the near-boy reminded him of his youngest brother, Stephen, off in Australia. Both still had a rawness about them, and strength both physical and mental yet to be tapped.
Pat frowned, clearly concerned his message hadn’t been delivered. “Here’s what I’m saying, Rafferty…that is your name?”
“My surname. All things considered, you might think of calling me Liam.”
Pat scowled, and Liam decided to pass up any more attempts at humor.
“I just want you to know, Rafferty, that though Vi’s my elder sister and would likely have me by the neck for saying anything at all to you, should you ever make her cry or hurt her in any way, I’ll be hunting you down and bringing my larger brothers with me.”
Liam nodded. “Fair enough. And I want you to know, Pat, that I love your sister and will do my best never to hurt her. But if she should cry—and women do that over programs on the television, you know—ask why she’s crying before you come hunt me down.” He reached his hand across the table, offering a shake. “Agreed?”
Pat mulled the matter a moment. “Agreed.”
Of course he still had enough boy in him that he tried to crush Liam’s knuckles together in a vise of a handshake. Liam masked his wince, for he still had a measure of boy in himself, too.
Once he’d freed his hand, he stood. “It’s been grand meeting you, Pat. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll go say goodbye to your sister.”
With that, Liam took his half-finished beer in his aching hand and left the kitchen, thinking that if Vi had handled his mam, surely he could take on three Kilbride siblings. Or lose a hand in trying.
Chapter Sixteen
Many a sudden change takes place on an unlikely day.
—IRISH PROVERB
Dawn and dusk could look one bloody lot alike to a woman who neither wore a watch nor got enough sleep. Uncertain of the hour, Vi hurried from bed and began a search for her well-worn robe. She found only several unmatched socks beneath her bed.
From her small closet, she pulled one of her many work shirts and a long skirt she’d fashioned from soft jersey years before. Once she was semi-dressed, she ventured forth. Behind her, she could hear Roger’s grunt as he launched himself from the bed and landed solidly on the floor, followed by the click-clack of his nails as he tailed her.
Liam must be in the kitchen, for he’d hardly leave without saying goodbye. Vi straightened the shirt’s collar where it was turned awkwardly at the back of her neck. As she did, she experienced a half-recalled memory—or maybe a dream—of a man’s kisses on her nape and a whispered invitation to dine.
In the kitchen, she found Pat at the table, one empty beer bottle before him and a nearly finished one in his hand, which meant it was likely evening. Her brother knew he’d not live to tell the tale of drinking beer for breakfast while residing in his sister’s house.
Still, Pat had a smug look about him, as though he’d gone one up in his quest for dominance chez Kilbride. Vi, however, knew how to squash her not-so-little brother.
“I’m quite sure that was Danny’s beer,” she said in her keeper-of-the-fridge voice.
“Rafferty drank ’em both. Damn thief,” he said, then drained the bottle in his hand.
“Right, then,” Vi said, figuring that Liam had suffered worse fates than being falsely accused a beer thief. “So where is he?” she asked, looking about as though he might be hiding in her worn cupboard.
“Gone a half-hour and more,” Pat replied.
Grand. She was about to grill Pat for more information when the telephone rang. She hadn’t heard one in so many days that she started at the sound.
She walked to the front room, where the phone waited on its small table, shrilly demanding attention.
“Hello?” Vi said, thinking how much she hated this particular modern inconvenience.
“So you live.”
Vi smiled, forgiving the phone its intrusion, for her beloved Jenna, best friend and veritable prodigy in the kitchen, was on the other end. “I do, though barely.”
“I’d seen some evidence, but it’s nice to be sure.”
“Evidence?”
“About six-foot-four or five, dark brown hair, blue eyes to die for.”
“Dev would be quite displeased if you died, I’m thinking,” Vi said, referring to newlywed Jenna’s businessman husband, who hadn’t gone lacking in the looks department, himself.
“I’m married, not blind, and don’t try to lure me off topic. Liam Rafferty said he was in Ballymuir to see you. Was he conning me?”
“No,” Vi admitted.
“Good, because I’d hate to think that I had given my very best new suite to a con man.”
“Liam’s staying with you?” Vi said, feeling somehow as though her property were being poached on.
“Liam and his daughter,” Jenna affirmed. “We had a really interesting talk this morning.”
“About?”
Jenna laughed. “You, of course.”
Aye, Rafferty was poaching. It might be unwitting on his part, but best friends were sacrosanct, damn it all. Vi began to pace her small front room.
“So is he your new boyfriend?” Jenna asked. “You’ve always kept them conveniently out of town.”
And for good reason, too. “I wouldn’t be calling him a boyfriend,” she said aloud.
“What, then?”
“A grand entanglement,” Vi replied.
Jenna laughed again, but at least this time Vi knew it was with her, and not potentially at her.
“With the two of you there, this will be the best victims’ dinner I’ve had in a while,” Jenna said.
So she hadn’t imagined the dinner invitation. Victims’ dinners were Jenna’s term for meals made of new recipes she tested on friends before serving to the public.
“You’re coming, right?” Jenna asked.
“I could hardly miss, as someone has to defend my reputation. Are you serving anything without eyeballs?”
“You’re safe. My parents have threatened to show up for Christmas, and my mother has apparently gone vegan. That rules out anything I’d normally serve over the holidays, and if I ship in a box of tofurkey, my reputation will be shot.”
“Tofurkey?”
“Never mind. You’d probably like it. Of course, by the time my mother gets here—if she actually shows up at all—she’ll be on to eating only sushi or whatever the fad of the week is.”
Vi was pleased that Mrs. Fahey
had timed her vegan phase well, for the very thought of sushi made Vi mourn those fish. “What time, then?”
“Six-thirty, which gives you a whole hour to get ready and be here. And come straight to the kitchen, okay? I want the scoop on Rafferty.”
No doubt she did.
Vi pulled on a jacket and went to her car to collect her belongings, which had been languishing there since her Friday return. It was then she discovered that her patchwork bag still waited at her studio. By the time she’d retrieved it, showered, and dressed, six-thirty had passed. It was a blessing that Jenna knew Vi was none too handy with time.
She was about to leave when Danny, now home from work, stopped her. “Vi, the removal company you hired called from Kilkenny early this morning. You can expect your load first thing tomorrow.”
“Damn!” Yet another thing she’d forgotten. “Could you see if you can get the panel van from Michael? We’ve some furniture removing to do at dawn.”
“Furniture removing?”
“Yes,” Vi said as she mentally inventoried what would have to go. “Most everything on the ground floor, I’m thinking.”
Wrapping her scarf about her neck, Vi rushed out the door, leaving behind her brother’s protests. All the more reason to stay out late tonight, for he might just cool by morning.
Vi reached Muir House fifteen minutes tardy, which was very nearly early for her. On the short drive there, a nasty mix of rain and icy sleet had begun to fall. Up in the mountains it might be lovely snow, but not so close to the shore as Muir House. Vi pulled into the car park and readied herself to leave the shelter of her car. Remembering Jenna’s request, she jogged round the grand manor house to the kitchen door.
Aidan, Jenna’s second-in-command, was in back at the broiler. Brushing icy pellets from her hair and shoulders, Vi called a greeting to him. After leaving her jacket and scarf on a hook at the door, she located her friend in the front half of the kitchen. Jenna was fussing around with some wee vegetables, more toy than food.
