“No,” I laughed. “I didn’t. Very few women actually do the run, although I think Kelly Osbourne was one of them. I could have if I really wanted to … but no. At first I thought it sounded like a lark, but then I was doing all this research for my story and one click led to another and the next thing I knew I was staring at pictures of people who’d been gored and I just couldn’t get the lurid, bloody sight out of my head.” I shuddered. “I ended up backing out. I never even made it to Pamplona.”
I chuckled under my breath.
No, instead I’d stayed in San Sebastián where I’d spent a lovely weekend in the company of a handsome, dark-eyed Spaniard who led food tours through the Parte Vieja’s pintxo bars.
“Oh, that’s good then. Maureen goes on and on about what a smart girl you are and all I could think was you’d have to be an eejit to do something like that.”
He winked and my heart fluttered.
“Ha!” I laughed, a little too loudly in the small space. Then, steadying my volume, added, “Well, yes. I came to that same conclusion, and when I heard how disgusting the area gets for those eight days, I just didn’t have it in me. Maybe if I’d been 19 or 20, but I’m too old for that sort of thing. Hence, no running of the bulls.”
“What’s your best trip then?” he asked.
Contrasted with my date with the Samuel days earlier, this was exactly the sort of conversation two people who were getting to know each other should be having. But then I reminded myself this wasn’t a date. This was me stuck in a car with a ridiculously hot man I’d once hated who I was now pretty sure my grandma was trying to foist upon me in some nefarious plot to spice up my love life.
Moving right along …
“That’s a tough question to answer. Every time I travel and things are going well I invariably think to myself, ‘this is the best trip I’ve ever been on.’ And of course it’s hard to compare a week in Bora Bora in an over-water bungalow with a few days in Tokyo surrounded by a million people and all those neon lights. They’re just two very different beasts, you know?”
Declan clenched his jaw so quickly that I would have missed the tic if I weren’t staring at him. Inwardly I wondered what it was I’d said that elicited such a reaction.
“Anyway, enough about me. Tell me about yourself.” I said, trying to draw him out.
“Not much to tell, really.”
He shrugged and while the gesture was meant to be an indifferent one, I read the tension in his body nonetheless.
“Except, you know,” I joked, “the part about you being a rugby god.”
He cast a quick glance my way and then back to the road. “There is that.”
He smiled but then his expression sobered.
“Outside of rugby … well, there isn’t anything. Rugby’s my life and I don’t have time for much else beyond that.”
“Surely there’s an off season?”
“Not a long one. I play for both Dublin and the Irish national team,” he explained, a note of pride lacing his words, “so my season’s longer than most. When we’re not playing in tournaments, we’re playing exhibition and test matches. I’ll get a couple of weeks off in late July but then I go back to training in early August.”
“Wow, that must be exhausting,” I observed, taking in his bruising cheek and the cut above his eye. “And painful,” I added, my hand reaching out to touch him.
Realizing what I was about to do, I quickly dropped it to my lap and hoped he’d missed the gesture since his gaze had been on the road. But then his eyes flicked to my face and down to my hand as a small smile tugged at his lips.
So much for him being unobservant.
Hoping to diffuse the strange tension building between us, I continued asking him about himself. I’d never given one thought to an adult Declan, and now that we’d become reacquainted I found myself wanting to get to know him.
“Do you live in Ballycurra then?”
He laughed. “Dear god, no. I have a small house in the city center, close to the stadium.”
My Irish geography was a bit rusty, but I remembered Ballycurra being about 30 minutes outside of Dublin, which was approximately 30 minutes from the airport, pending traffic. If he didn’t live in Ballycurra, I wondered why he’d volunteered for a long day of driving.
“So you’re going to spend about two hours in the car today just to have picked me up?”
Pulling his eyes from the road, Declan stared but didn’t answer.
What was he hiding?
Eventually, dragging his eyes back to the road, he said, “I’ll stop in to my mom’s after I drop you off. I try to see her at the weekend, or every other weekend if I’m too busy.”
“And you don’t have a game tonight or anything?”
“No, that was last night,” he responded, pointing to his face. “These don’t look so bad after two or three days but the day after I usually look like I lost a fight.” He chuckled. “It’s worth it though if it means we won.”
“And did you?”
Declan smirked. “Of course.”
“Congratulations then. Tell me about your match.”
Normally I hated talking about sports, but I didn’t mind hearing him explain the game. Athletes back home—the superstars—tended to be cocky and arrogant which was a huge turnoff. But Declan wasn’t like that. As he spoke, I could tell he really loved playing—from its history down to its mechanics—and that was what drove him, not the number of fans he had, the endorsement deals I was sure he’d made over the years, or the adoring women who must throw themselves at him. You know, all the things the last soccer player I’d met had regaled me with before I could escape him and fade into the background of the party. But Declan never once mentioned any of that. For him, it was all about what went on during those 80 minutes.
Mentally, I went through the list of players on my grandpa’s team and couldn’t help comparing Declan to them. Each and every one of them would have bragged endlessly if they’d been trying to impress a girl.
Then again, maybe Declan wasn’t trying to impress me.
“We’ll be coming into the village in a minute or two. I’ll take you around back so we can lug your bags upstairs without having to go through the pub. If we’re quiet, you can sneak in and get settled before your gran hears you.”
“Oh, it’s okay. You don’t need to come up. You’ve already done enough, what with driving me out here and all.”
Declan raised his eyebrow. “Do you really think I’m going to let you cart all that upstairs by yourself?”
I raised my own eyebrow in challenge. “Who do you think lugged it down to the cab this morning?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not questioning your ability to do it. I just don’t think it’s polite for me to let you.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
“Well … yes.”
Before I could explain what sexist bullshit that was, he forged on. “You see, my mam taught me lads are supposed to show respect to the ladies and since you fall squarely in that category—” his quick, heated glance told me he very much appreciated that about me “—it’s my sworn duty to help you take your bags up the stairs. Whether it offends your feminist sensibilities or not.”
When he flashed another of his gorgeous, devilish smiles, I sighed in defeat.
“Fine. You win,” I conceded.
“When was the last time you were here?” Declan asked, as the first of Ballycurra’s buildings came into view.
“About five years ago, but I only stayed two nights. I was on my way to London just after I graduated from college.”
I leaned forward and craned my neck to take it all in. A small handful of the storefronts looked exactly as I remembered, but many others had been updated in the past couple of years.
“To be honest though,” I continued while he navigated us down the busy road, “I’m not even sure I left the pub that time. I mean, I probably did, but I don’t really remember the village all that well. In my mind it�
�s still the same as it was in 1999.”
“Some things are the same, but there’s been a lot of changes as well. For one, there’s a lot more money here now,” he remarked, pointing out a shop with a gleaming window that was decorated in a hip gold and black font across the front.
“Old man Donahue—that’d be the butcher—he’s still a fixture in his shop, and will probably work right up to the day he dies, but he’s getting on so his nephew Patrick runs the place now. With him taking over it’s a bit more upscale with fancier cuts of meat and imported sauces and spices and what not. Thank god for it too. I remember growing up you only had a few choices from the old man and dinner every night was pretty much something stewed or roasted. ‘Declan,’ my mom would say, ‘run down to Donahue’s and get me a leg o’lamb.’” He mock shuddered. “God I hate lamb.”
“Oh yeah, I totally remember.” I laughed, recalling how my grandma would send me to pick up lamb for the pub’s stew practically every day. “One day I had to wait as he broke down an entire lamb carcass. I was traumatized. Up until then I’d never really thought of meat in its natural form, but seeing a lamb hacked into pieces put me off it for good.”
“I know exactly what you mean. I won’t eat black pudding for the same reason. I once watched my grandda make it and you do not want to know what goes in that stuff.”
“Confession?” I asked conspiratorially.
“Of course.”
His eyes twinkled and I wondered what he thought I was going to reveal.
“I’ve never eaten lamb after leaving here. I absolutely refuse. When I explained why to a friend from Morocco who pretty much only cooks with the stuff she called me a hypocrite and said if that’s how I really felt I shouldn’t eat meat at all. I can’t say she’s wrong, but damn I love bacon.”
“Then you’re going to love what Patrick’s doing with pork. Have him package up some of his whiskey smoked rashers for you and I swear you’ll never want to go back to that thin, stringy stuff you guys call bacon.”
“Um, I doubt it,” I responded, giving him a look to indicate I thought he’d lost his damn mind.
“Trust me. What have you got to lose?” He smiled and his dimple came out to play. “Unless you know I’m right and can’t stand the idea of me saying ‘I told you so?’”
“Fine. I’ll give it a try,” I promised to avoid an argument about the merits of Irish versus American bacon.
What Declan didn’t know was that my grandma had tried many times to convert me to rashers, but I’d dug in my heels and refused to eat anything but American-style bacon. As far as I was concerned, rashers were just thinner slices of ham.
Tucking all thoughts of pork aside, I watched him survey the street, and I got the impression he wanted to impress upon me that Ballycurra wasn’t as I remembered it. That it was better. That I wouldn’t be miserable here now.
“About two years ago some rich guys from Dublin took over that restaurant on the left—” he pointed to a double-fronted building that had recently been painted and had glowing Edison bulbs hanging in the windows “—and turned it into a place for a fancy night out. White tablecloths and everything.” He said this jokingly, as if no one in Ballycurra had ever eaten at a place with fancy linens. “It got a nice write-up in the paper and everything. Ever since, folks have been driving out here to eat and get some cocktails.”
It certainly looked like a place people would go for a special night. From the exterior alone, you could drop it down in any major metropolitan city in America or Western Europe and it’d be perfectly at home in its surroundings.
“And do you remember that big empty manor house just outside the village? The one all us kids swore was haunted?”
I didn’t, but that was mostly because the kids back then—he and his friends, I reminded myself—hadn’t bothered to include me in their shenanigans. And my grandparents sure as hell wouldn’t have told me about a supposedly haunted manse.
“Nope, can’t say that I do.”
“Oh, well. Some investors bought it and they’re turning it into a country house hotel and adding a world-class golf course on the land surrounding it. They’re saying the hotel will open by the end of the year, but I think it’s going to be a bit longer than that. Besides, who’d want to vacation in Ireland in winter?”
I may have forgotten plenty about the two years I’d spent here but the cold, wet winters weren’t one of them. You’d think having grown up in Pittsburgh, I’d have been immune to the temperature, but there was something about the constant damp that had left me cold for months on end. It seemed like for two full years I’d never worn clothes that had been completely dry. I knew that wasn’t actually true, but memories could be a funny thing.
“You won’t hear me argue with that,” I answered. “But I’m surprised someone would want to build a hotel out here. Seems a bit of overkill, doesn’t it, with not much in the way of tourism to support it?”
If there was one thing I knew it was the tourism industry and thinking back to the Ballycurra of my youth, all the village had to draw tourists was my grandparents’ pub and the live musicians who played there regularly. But it had been a number of years since they’d scaled back on their musical acts, which had reduced the number of tour buses that stopped in during their tours. And yes, the village was located on the coast which was usually a huge draw for tourism, but there wasn’t a beach to speak of as all the oceanfront property was taken up by walled-off houses that were occupied only part of the year by investors from during the Celtic Tiger era, not year-round residents who had a stake in the place. And with Dublin having its fair share of five star hotels, there really wasn’t a reason for tourists to book something so far removed. I decided it must be the golf course that would draw tourists. I knew next to nothing about golf, but a few guys I knew—one of my Newport cousins, included—were rabid about it.
Declan threw a quick, annoyed glance my way. Before I could apologize for insulting his precious home, he dragged his eyes back to the road and kept driving.
“Like I said, lots of things have changed. We’re not some backwater village anymore. Your family’s pub was the first tourist draw with its live music—some of the best in Dublin County, by the way—and things have grown from there. Believe it or not, people actually want to spend time in Ballycurra these days.”
Maybe he had a point, but it felt like he was pushing too hard to make it. So some people liked Ballycurra and went out of their way to spend time here? Hurrah for them. I’d come because my grandpa was sick and my grandma needed my help, not because I was thinking about settling down here. As soon as things were set to rights, I’d be on my way.
I kept quiet for the remainder of the drive and Declan quit pointing things out. After several tense moments he turned the car off the main road and drove down a narrow back alley before pulling to a stop in the large gravel parking area behind Fitzgerald’s Pub.
As I climbed out of the car, I noticed the building had a different look and feel about it than the others I’d seen lining the village’s main road. Whereas those all had fresh coats of paint and gleaming windows, the pub appeared weathered and worn down. Paint flaked off the upstairs windowsills and window boxes that I remembered holding bright red, pink, and white geraniums now sat empty, the wood containers faded from neglect. Up close I could see several areas where the stucco had flaked away.
When the car’s trunk closed behind me, I heard the crunch of gravel beneath Declan’s boots as he approached my side. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him survey the building as well.
“They told me they had help here?” I asked from between clenched teeth.
I was mad as hell but I didn’t know where to direct my ire. At my grandparents for hiding they were worse off than we knew? At my mom for not caring? Me for not checking in more regularly? All of us for all those reasons and more?
“They do Sophie, but some things need a bit more money and attention.”
“Why didn’t they tell m
e?” I asked, turning to face him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“And say what? ‘Hey Sophie, I know you don’t really know me, but it’s important I tell you your grandparents are struggling and they’re probably going to lose the pub if something drastic doesn’t happen soon.’ Yeah, I don’t think that’s my place.”
Much as I hated it, he was right. While I wanted to rail at him, tell him that it was his place to have said something, I recognized I was just reacting to the shock of seeing my grandparents’ business so run down. I was also adult enough to admit that had he said something, I would have taken issue with it. With him.
“Okay, fair point. I’m sorry for snapping at you. But tell me something now. How bad is it really?”
“Honestly?” he asked, and I worried maybe I didn’t really want to know. When I shook my head in the affirmative, Declan took a breath and answered. “The place is a mess Sophie. I’ve heard Maureen telling your mom about it while I was here visiting with your grandda, so I’m surprised you didn’t know. They’re not in danger of foreclosure or anything since they own the building outright, but the place is practically falling down around them and they don’t have the money to fix it.”
I ran my hands through my hair and let out a deep sigh. There it was, my mom again. When would that woman think of anyone but herself?
“Yeah, well, my mom and I don’t really talk about important things. If it’s not related to her country club or my half-brothers, we actually don’t talk much at all. Would you believe she didn’t tell me about his heart attack until three days ago?”
Declan dropped his eyes to his boots and that’s when it hit me he’d probably wondered what had taken me so long to get here. He must have thought I was such an unfeeling bitch for not coming sooner.
Confirming my suspicions, he said, “Yeah, I was kind of curious about that. I knew you were running all over the globe, but when your granny started making excuses for why no one was coming to help, I sort of figured you were like your mom and wanted nothing to do with them.”
Trying Sophie: A Dublin Rugby Romance Page 5
