Briarwood Cottage

by JoAnn Ross

  “They must tell it well,” she decided.

  “Enough that so far it seems to be working. Of course, all the farmers and garda who’ve been posted at various roadways to prevent trespassing this week undoubtedly help.”

  “After reading the book and seeing the movie, I’d like to believe in her,” Cass admitted. “And if she does exist, it seems she deserves her privacy.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me. So, does that mean that you’re not going to write about her for your paper?”

  “Probably not. I don’t want to contribute to any more circus atmosphere like what I had to drive through as I was going through town.”

  “Still, it sounds as if this change in career has your writing in a good place… And speaking of your writing, you were talking about spinning off my bar misadventure into a story?”

  “Not about you.” She repeated what she’d told him earlier. “But about the serpent stowaway. I was thinking that when all the crews come ashore in New York, the serpent escapes the port to terrorize the city during Fleet Week.”

  “Along the lines of Jaws terrorizing Amity Island during the resort season.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Jaws was hard to find in the ocean. I can’t see a sea serpent going unnoticed strolling down Broadway. I suppose it’d be too straightforward to just have a SWAT team shoot it?”

  “Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work. Because, having swum in the ocean where nuclear testing had taken place back in the 1950s, he’s not only radioactive, but impervious to weapons of any kind.”

  “Like Spiderman. On steroids.”

  “Exactly,” she repeated. As she turned toward him, her smile actually reached her eyes. “I considered having him fall in love with a Rockette while hiding out in Radio City Music Hall, and when the police try to capture it, it runs away, carrying his true love, and uses its tentacles to climb the lit-up Chrysler Building.”

  “That would certainly be dramatic.”

  “It’s tempting. But I’m worried it’s too over the top.”

  “You said you’re supposed to stay away from anything resembling truth.”

  “True. And it’s not like anything’s over the top at the Buzz. So, while it’s admittedly derivative of King Kong—”

  “Which is why it would work,” he decided as they passed a green fringe-topped pony cart carrying a family of sightseeing tourists. The driver of the cart, an elderly man wearing a tweed jacket over his sweater and wool pants and sporting a pair of tall kelly-green Wellies, waved as they went by.

  “The premise was already set up for you by the movies,” Duncan said. “And, since people have already shown themselves willing to buy that, they’ll probably buy your serpent.”

  “I hope so. Dan definitely likes long-range prospects, so to drag the story out, as my flight passed over the North Pole, I envisioned the headlines, FLEET WEEK CAPTIVE CARRYING ATOMIC SERPENT’S CHILD!! But I’m worried that a woman having sex with a serpent is just too creepy.”

  Duncan rubbed his jaw. His stories had always been meant to leave people uncomfortable, to spotlight injustices around the world. As had hers. Now, it seemed her goal was to entertain and keep people reading. An idea he once would’ve scoffed at. But she wasn’t the only one who’d changed. Although he hadn’t been about to admit it to his godfather, it had occurred to him on more than one occasion the past months that he’d been skating that razor-thin line between dedication to his work and burnout.

  “There is, admittedly, a cringe factor involved in that scenario,” he allowed, putting his own issues aside for now. “But you already told readers your serpent has been affected by atomic waste. So, since everything on earth is made up of atoms, which make the molecules, which turn into cells, why can’t you have the molecules and cells altered in a way that gave him the ability to shape-shift?”

  “Oooh.”

  She twisted a curl in a familiar way as she considered that idea. He remembered when her hair had fallen past her shoulders and how, whenever she’d twist it while thinking, his gaze had automatically drifted down to her breasts.

  Because, hey, even though he might have been approaching burnout, he was still a guy.

  “I suppose I could have him morph into a vampire,” she mused. “Though vamps have been done to death.”

  “No pun intended,” Duncan said dryly, making her groan. “Maybe vampires have waned, but I’ll bet no one’s done a shape-shifting sea serpent vamp. After all, we’ve already established that you’re writing to an audience who enjoys familiar stories.”

  “That’s true. Then, give it five or six months, because, fortunately, Buzz readers seem incapable of keeping track of timelines—”

  “And who the hell knows how long an atomic vampire sea serpent’s gestation would be anyway?”

  “Good point… So, after a few weeks or months, I could write the story of the baby’s birth. But, oh, wait!” She clapped her hands, something she’d always done when she’d figured out the slant on a story. “Even better, before the birth, the paper could run a reader poll on whether the baby would be a girl or boy. Or more important, human or serpent/vamp shifter.”

  “Don’t forget atomic or non-atomic.”

  “Absolutely.” Duncan could see the wheels turning in her head. “In fact, what if, like The Hulk, he doesn’t really have control of the change? What if he could be a vampire one day, then change into a huge, scaly serpent with a temper the next?”

  “The possibilities are endless.”

  “Thank you.” The throaty warmth in her voice had him considering pulling the car over. Now. “Being able to discuss it with another writer helped me with just the details I need to weave it all together.”

  “My pleasure.” He reached out his left hand and linked their fingers together over the console as they drove across the stone bridge into town. “We always made a good team. I’d get bogged down in minutia, while you’d always find a way to give a piece a more personal, emotional touch.”

  “We did work well together.” Her eyes turned reminiscent, which, along with her not pulling her hand away, gave him the impression that she was finally remembering some good times between them. “On the rare occasion we were in the same place at the same time.”

  “I’ve wondered about that,” Duncan admitted. “If things would’ve turned out differently if you’d have come to work with me at GNN.”

  And you wouldn’t have been in Egypt. At least without me to keep you safe, like I did the day we met, he thought but did not say. Duncan had considered that possibility countless times over the past months, and even knowing that just wanting to protect his wife hadn’t been any guarantee that he actually could have, he continued to blame himself for not having been there when she needed him.

  “We both know I only received that offer from Winston because I was married to you.”

  Like all journalists, she had her pride. But in this case, she was wrong. “Believe me, I had nothing to do with it. He wanted to hire you because not only does a good-looking woman in a war zone win ratings points, you were a great writer.

  “And still are,” he tacked on, not wanting her to think he was putting down her current work. Especially now that he knew why she’d accepted the job at the tabloid and realized how much time and creative thought went into crafting her outlandish stories. Which wasn’t surprising, since, until Egypt, she’d never done anything halfway.

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” she said softly, demonstrating that he hadn’t been the only one to wonder.

  He shrugged and felt a pang of loss as she retrieved her hand. “Well, we’ll never know, will we?

  “So,” he said, wanting to move the topic away from their foreign work, which inevitably led back to that debacle in Egypt, “getting back to your writing, have you considered picking your novel up again?”

  “I think about it from time to time,” she said as they reached the village.

  In normal times, the tidy fifteenth-century
town with its bright storefronts, artistically hand-painted signs, and stone church could have looked like a poster from the Irish Tourism Bureau. The crowds filling the cobblestone sidewalks and spilling into the street took away from the ambiance, giving it more of a carnival flavor.

  “But it was autobiographical, as most first novels probably are,” she continued as he braked for a portly man laden down with a plethora of professional camera equipment. “And it would probably have a better chance of selling if I kept it that way. But my heart isn’t into writing or even thinking about my journalism days.”

  “That’s understandable.” He was also starting to think that this might be another thing they had in common. “Ireland’s known for its writers and poets. Maybe there’s something in the air that will help you find a new direction.”

  “That’s a thought,” she allowed. Then, as he glanced over at her again, without warning, humor sparkled in her eyes. “Maybe I’ll write about a leprechaun vampire.”

  They shared a laugh as he pulled into a parking space across from the pub and cut the engine. He turned toward her, and as their eyes met, for this one suspended moment, the past dark months spun away, and instead of sitting in a rental car while the Irish rain fell and the fog blew in from the sea, they were standing on a sundrenched beach, so in love Duncan had wondered if a heart could actually burst from an excess of joy.

  It was a feeling he’d never known until he’d met Cass.

  Their eyes met. And held.

  Duncan dipped his head.

  Cass’s lips parted.

  Heaven was a mere breath away when she drew back and reached for the door handle. “We’d better get going before someone claims our table.”

  He could change her mind. Duncan knew that it would only take a touch here…a stroke of his fingertips there…a long, slow, wet kiss, and she’d be willing to go with him into the mists.

  But he’d come to realize, during his conversations with her cousin, that from the moment they’d met, he’d been the one convincing her to go along with his plans. Now, rather than settle for immediate gratification, he was going to have to play the long game and wait for her to be the one to make the move.

  Hopefully sooner rather than later. Before his balls turned as blue as a Smurf.

  13

  Cassandra felt as if she’d stumbled into a scene from The Quiet Man. Or at the very least, the way the pub was filled to the high-beamed rafters with memorabilia, some of which looked as if it had been new in earlier centuries, an Irish folk museum. One vintage sign announced a Post Office and Radio Service, another recommended Guinness for Strength, and yet another—an obviously newer-era chalkboard hung up beside the coat rack on the wall—read in bold white script, No Wifi. Talk to each other!

  “I like that one,” she said as Duncan helped her out of her coat and hung it up on one of the wooden pegs.

  “The other times I’ve been here, it listed the daily specials,” he told her.

  “That would be Elizabeth Murphy,” a dark-haired man said as he walked past with a tray of pints. He pointed toward a small, birdlike woman who looked as if Willard Scott should be sending her a centenarian birthday card. “She’s been Castlelough postmistress for more years than anyone can remember. She also has a powerful dislike of people reading and texting on their smartphones during a seisiún.”

  “Good for her,” Cass said, smiling at the woman whose raven bright eyes suddenly turned toward her as she tuned up a fiddle that appeared to be even older than she was.

  Elizabeth Murphy did not smile back. But she did put down her bow to wave Cass and Duncan over.

  “You’d best do as instructed,” the man with the pints suggested. “If you’d want to be receiving mail any time in this century.”

  “Do people actually still send mail?” Cassandra asked.

  His smile was quick and warm. “Not as much as they once did. Which may make her work easier, but the cutback on people visiting her office has affected her gossip, which, in turn, has proven a problem because she’s always considered serving as village crier to be part and parcel of her postmistress. Meanwhile, her nemesis, Mrs. Sheehan, who runs the butcher shop and is another who never would keep news, or her thoughts, for that matter, to herself, has been giving her a run for her money.”

  “If what the Castlelough Celtic published in this week’s edition is any indication, they don’t have a great deal of competition,” Duncan said.

  “Aye. That’s true enough.” The man nodded. “Dermott Moroney was once a fine newsman. But he’s not as young as he once was, and with his heart set on trading in our Irish sunshine for the warmer and drier Greek version, it’s obvious to one and all that he’s lost interest in the paper.

  “I’m Patrick Brennan, proprietor and brewmaster,” he belatedly introduced himself to Cassandra. “And you’d be this boyo’s wife everyone has been waiting to meet.”

  “Cassandra Carpenter.” She managed an answering smile even as her fears about Duncan having made them the center of attention seemed to be proving true. “And yes, this boyo”—despite her discomfort, she couldn’t help shooting Duncan a teasing glance—“is my husband.”

  “It’s grand to meet you, Cassandra Carpenter,” Patrick Brennan said.

  “Patrick,” the older woman called out. “Why don’t you deliver those pints and quit bending the girl’s ear, so I can be meeting her.”

  “Aye, Mrs. Murphy,” Patrick called back. “Don’t forget,” he told Duncan, “the snug’s in the back when you want a bit of privacy and quiet.”

  As if sensing her nerves, Duncan took her hand as they wove through the crowd that had come to hear the music. Given the number of tourists she’d seen earlier, Cass was surprised that, except for Duncan and her, they all appeared to be locals.

  Elizabeth Murphy was wearing a white blouse with a lacy tie, a green tartan skirt that fell to her ankles, and the type of black lace-up shoes a nun might have worn. She gave Cassandra a long look from the top of her head down to the pointed toes of her red boots, then back up again.

  “You’d be the bride this one made the romantic breakfast for,” she said.

  Deciding not to get into an argument about whether or not she’d considered the breakfast romantic, which, dammit, she actually had, Cassandra merely said, “Last I heard, I was the only wife he has.”

  The stern look dissolved as the woman cackled. “And why would he make any other when he has such a lovely wife? I like your hair. I, personally, am too old to change my ways, so I’ll be sticking with my bun.” She patted the steely bun in question. “But if I were younger, I might let Moira Kelly, the lass who runs Hair Holiday by the harbor, take her scissors to me.”

  “I think you look very elegant just the way you are,” Duncan said.

  “Oh, my. Aren’t you the charmer? Just like my late husband, Doyle,” she said on what came close to a girlish giggle. “You’d best keep him,” she advised Cassandra. “While charmingly cocky men can be a challenge, you’ll never lack for compliments. Not that you don’t deserve them… The pair of you will make beautiful children.”

  The breath backed up in Cassandra’s lungs at that, but as Duncan reassuringly squeezed her fingers, she reminded herself to breathe. Surprisingly, unlike when she couldn’t bear to have him in the same apartment, for some reason she’d think about later tonight, when she was alone and her thoughts weren’t spinning, right now she found his presence eased the loss she’d come to accept would always be a part of her.

  “Thank you,” she said mildly.

  “Well, it’s been lovely to meet you, Mrs. Murphy,” Duncan said as the woman tilted her head and, as if sensing something amiss, gave Cassandra a sharper, more probing look. “But we’d best let you warm up for the session. Hopefully we’ll be seeing you again.”

  “Oh, you can count on that,” Elizabeth Murphy said. “I hope you’ll enjoy the craic,” she tacked on as she went back to tuning the fiddle.

  Just as Patrick Brennan had
promised, the snug door had a reserved sign on it. It wasn’t large—just a booth and a pair of wooden benches that looked as if they might have been reclaimed from one of the many stone churches Cassandra had passed on her drive to Castlelough—but set in the back of the pub as it was, it offered privacy while allowing them to see the wooden dance floor where the musicians were setting up.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said as they sat across from each other.

  Cassandra shrugged. “She had no way of knowing. She was being kind.”

  “But it still hurts.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “It does.”

  “And I suspect it always will,” Duncan said. In the beginning, he’d told himself that he’d suffered in silence in order to not make Cass’s pain even worse. Then, as the days went on, he’d used the excuse of her having retreated even deeper into that remote, icy shell. How could they have a conversation, he’d reasoned, if she refused to say a damn word?

  But he’d belatedly accepted that the reason he’d remained silent was that it hurt too much. And even if she had been willing to talk about the miscarriage, he’d have had not a clue what to say. Especially since the one thing his numbnuts brain had come up, the promise of another child, had only made things even worse.

  He’d told himself when he heard she was coming that he was going to take things slow. Not force her into a discussion that she wasn’t ready for. But he could see for himself that Sedona Sullivan had been right about her having gotten stronger.

  Having vowed, during the long, sleepless night waiting for her arrival, that he was going to be totally honest this time and not hold anything back, he decided the time had come to share something personal that he’d never told anyone.

  “My mother had a miscarriage.”

  She’d obviously been stumbling into telling Cass herself, that night she’d called while sounding as if were making her way through a bottle of Bombay Sapphire. He’d known that her call had been well intended, but her timing and delivery had sucked. Which was why he’d abruptly cut her off before she’d gotten to the crying jag. Which Cassandra so hadn’t needed.