Michelle Vernal Box Set

by Michelle Vernal

  “Why did you come here today?” he asked, not moving aside.

  “You know why I came.”

  He was studying her so intently she had to look away.

  “I came to see Wilbur.”

  “Was it just Wilbur you came to see?” His voice was gruff, belying what really lay behind his words.

  It was then that Jess knew if she were to look up, Owen would kiss her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The intensity of feeling that swept through Jess as Owen’s lips connected with hers took her by surprise and she was glad that his arms had looped their way around her back, supporting her and stopping her from falling. The sounds around them faded out and the only thing she was conscious of was the sensation of his tongue as it gently explored her mouth. Her arms wound their way over his shoulders, snaking up to the back of his neck, where her fingers tangled themselves in his hair. She pressed her body closer to his, feeling his hardness growing.

  The sound of a cough followed by a cheerful male voice saw her eyes snap open.

  “Ahem. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  At the sight of a kindly looking man with unruly grey hair and a stomach straining to be freed from his shirt, they broke away from each other like two cats who had just had a bucket of cold water tossed over them.

  “Um, Jessica Baré, this is Michael Riordan, our local vet.”

  Jess noticed the requisite All Creatures Great and Small brown leather case; of course he was. Michael Riordan held out his hand and Jess took it, receiving a firm handshake.

  “I decided to take your advice after all and give him a call just to be on the safe side.”

  The look that flashed between Michael and Owen didn’t go unnoticed by Jess. She was fairly certain she was being humoured.

  Michael’s prognosis was just as Owen had said: a common cold. He looked at Jess with a twinkle in his eye as he told her that considering Wilbur’s size, he was doing remarkably well. “Aye, he’ll grow into a fine young boar, mark my words,” he stated as they followed him out to his jeep and Jess could have sworn she saw him wink at Owen.

  She was distracted from pursuing this train of thought by the sudden chill that coursed through her. The sun had dropped low in the sky. It must be getting on for four, which meant she was going to have to head away if she was to keep her promise and get the car back to Brianna in time.

  She was tapping her foot impatiently, not knowing what would happen between her and Owen now the moment had passed while he and Michael conferred over by his jeep. Both men suddenly paused mid-conversation, startled by the burst of song emanating from her handbag once more.

  “Sorry, it’s my stupid phone,” Jess said, retrieving it and in her haste to shut it up, she quickly answered, wishing she hadn’t as she heard Nick’s voice.

  “Jess, hi. I am sorry I had to head away so early this morning. I’m on my way back from Cork now and I thought if you were still at my place, I’d stop off and grab us some Thai from the place I was telling you about.”

  Oh shit, Jess thought, taking a few steps away; of all the times for him to phone. “Um, I’m not at your place, actually. I’m in Ballymcguinness,” she squeaked.

  “Where the hell is Ballymcguinness?”

  “It’s in the North, County Down to be exact. I, uh, I am following up on a story I have been working on.” She tried to ignore Owen, who was staring over at her with a perplexed frown. Luckily, Michael Riordan hadn’t finished bending his ear and she was relieved when he focused his attention back on the affable vet.

  She lowered her voice. “Nick, my friend Brianna has invited us around to their place for dinner on Saturday night. It’s short notice, I know, so if...”

  “What was that? Jess, can you speak up? I can hardly hear you—Jaysus, you really must be in the back of beyond with reception like that,” Nick interrupted.

  Jess repeated herself, raising her voice only marginally before adding, “If you can’t make it, I understand.” She was half hoping he would say he was busy, allowing her to delay the inevitable confrontation between him and Brianna but he didn’t. Besides, after what had just happened outside the barn, she no longer knew how she felt about him.

  “There’s nothing I can’t cancel on Saturday. I’d love to come but is there any chance of seeing you tonight? I’ve meetings in Dublin tomorrow then I’m staying overnight in Cork tomorrow night because I’ve got some serious schmoozing with potential investors around the golf course first thing on Saturday morning. I was kind of hoping we could finish tonight what we didn’t really get to start.” He gave an apologetic laugh.

  Jess cringed. She couldn’t believe it had been less than twenty-four hours since she’d been in his bed and that less than half an hour ago, she’d been snogging someone else! What was that saying, feast or famine? And what did that make her? No, she wouldn’t go there, she decided, shaking her head; she had to focus on the fact he was going to come to Brie’s for dinner. That meant she would have to come clean with both of them. It wouldn’t be fair to put either of them on the spot like that. Jess rubbed at her temple. Her head had begun to throb and the one thing she did know for sure was that she couldn’t face seeing Nick tonight. She needed to sort out how she felt.

  “I won’t be back until late and then I have to type up an assignment I’ve been working on; it’s due first thing tomorrow.” The lie tripped easily off her tongue and she noticed that she was once more the focus of Owen’s shrewd gaze. The vet had climbed into his jeep and with a wave and a clunking of gears was heading off down the drive.

  “What’s all that noise?” Nick asked.

  “It must be my phone. You’re right, the reception is bad. Look, I’ll have to go.” She didn’t give him a chance to say goodbye, hanging her phone up and tossing it in her bag as if she had been handling a hot potato, only to fish it back out to switch it off. She didn’t want to talk to anyone else.

  Looking at Owen, she felt suddenly self-conscious at the thought of what would happen now. It was kind of like the nervous anticipation she’d felt as a teenager on a date at the movies, waiting for that arm to slide along the back of the seat to rest on her shoulder. She also felt rather silly at his having dragged the local vet out just to appease her.

  “Important call, was it?” He raised an eyebrow and his stance with his hands in his pockets was one of feigned indifference.

  “No, it was nobody.” She knew he knew she was lying and the awkwardness in the air between them grew palpable. Jess decided to change tack. “You didn’t need to do that, you know—call out the vet. It probably cost you a fortune just to be told what you already knew. I would have trusted your judgement.” She inclined her head in the direction of the retreating jeep as it turned on to the main road.

  “Aye, well, Michael’s an old family friend. He doesn’t charge through the nose and the problem is I don’t trust myself.”

  What the hell was that supposed to mean? Jess wondered, looking at the ground and scuffing at the loose shingle with her sneakered toes. She was suddenly aware of what she was wearing—hardly the femme fatale, dressed in her elephant suit and trainers, but then she hadn’t expected to be accosted at the barn door either. Or had she? Was Brianna right about her real motivation for coming here today? And what about Nick? She suddenly felt overwhelmed. She didn’t know what the heck she was doing or what she was playing at. All she did know was that she had to put some space between her and Owen.

  The need to clear her head and get some perspective on what had transpired that afternoon and how it had made her feel was overwhelming. She couldn’t face pussyfooting around Owen and his cryptic mixed messages. “I, um, I have to get going.” Fishing her keys out of her pocket, she jangled them purposefully.

  “Aye, I suppose you do.”

  So he wasn’t going to make this easy for her then, she thought, not knowing why she was surprised. When in the short space of time that she had known him had he made anything easy?

  �
�Right, well, let me know how Wilbur gets on, won’t you? I’ll send you a copy of the paper as soon as it’s gone to print.” She was playing the professional, deliberately re-building the wall between them before he could do the same to her.

  He nodded and Jess turned away, cutting a slow path over to the Golf, half hoping to feel his hand on her shoulder stopping her—making up her mind for her. But as she slid into the driver’s seat, she saw that he was still standing in exactly the same spot he had been a moment earlier, with his hands still shoved in his pockets.

  Well, stuff you! she thought, wrenching the key and, as the car roared into life, she felt as though she had imagined the whole scene in the barn entrance. Pushing her foot down hard on the accelerator and haring off down the drive and out of Owen’s complicated and messy life in a hailstorm of loose shingle, she wondered whether perhaps she had. Jess didn’t see the girl with the black hair rest her hand gently on Owen’s shoulder before he turned and walked heavily back inside the house.

  THE DRIVE BACK TO DUBLIN was non-eventful and Jess pulled into Brianna’s driveway at five fifty-five, pleased to have kept her word in getting the car back on time. Despite heading out to a meeting that evening, Brianna invited her in for a glass of wine, eager to hear how her day had gone.

  “Do you want to stay for dinner? Sure, I don’t have to leave for over an hour yet and we’re not having anything fancy—just Spag-Bog but there’s plenty to go round. I always make enough to feed an army.”

  Jess wasn’t hungry and she wasn’t really in the mood to talk about what had happened, not even with Brianna. Besides, truth be told, she was the teensiest bit peeved that she’d blabbed to Nora about her whereabouts for the day. “No thanks, Brie. I’ll have this and get going.”

  Brianna had poured them both a glass of red from the bottle of pinot noir she’d had opened on the bench. She liked a drop while she cooked and they were sitting at the dinner table, the smell of onion and garlic heavy on the air. The relaxing scene was shattered by a bloodcurdling scream permeating the house. It had come from upstairs and Jess’s eyes swung toward the stairs in alarm.

  Brianna rolled her eyes. “Oh, pay no attention. It’s Harry’s bath time; poor old Pete will be drowned, so he will.”

  Jess managed a small smile but tonight not even Harry’s shenanigans could lift her mood and she quickly downed the rest of her glass. She didn’t want to intrude on the Price family’s weeknight routine. What she really wanted to do was head home, change into her pyjamas, and open up a bottle of red of her own. She pictured herself curled up on the couch with a large glass with which to sip away on while she watched a mind-numbing TV show she would eventually nod off in front of.

  Brianna interrupted her thoughts. “So come on, then, don’t be holding out on me—how did you get on today? How was your pig?”

  For a moment, Jess wasn’t sure which pig Brianna was referring to—Owen or Wilbur?

  “Is he going to live?”

  Ah, Wilbur then. “Yes, I think he probably will.”

  “Why so down then? Did something happen with your man?”

  “He’s not my man and I’m not down. I’m just tired and I had best be leaving you to it,” she answered, standing up and pushing her chair in just as another scream shrilled. Both women looked toward the stairs this time. “That sounded serious—you better go and give them a hand up there.”

  “Harry’s developed this fear of the water since he snuck down the stairs and saw Jaws on the telly a few weeks ago. It’s all Pete’s fault; you know how he loves his old horrors, so he can bloody well deal with it.”

  Jess knew for all her fighting talk, Brianna would be up those stairs, sorting the two men in her life out the moment she’d gone.

  “I’ll phone you tomorrow. We’ll talk then, okay?”

  “Alright then; that sounds good.” Brianna looked hard at her friend. “Are you sure nothing happened today, Jess? Because you look awfully pale.”

  “No, I’m fine, truly—just worn out from the driving. I’m not used to it and thanks again for the use of the car.”

  Brianna followed her to the front door, pulling it open before giving her friend a quick hug goodbye. “Do you want me to get Pete to run you down to the station? He’d be glad of an excuse to escape.”

  “No, it’s only down the road. I’ll be fine.” Jess was looking forward to stretching her legs after having sat in a car for the last couple of hours. As she headed down the path, Brianna called out after her, “Oh, I nearly forgot to ask. Did Nick get hold of you? And are we on for Saturday night?”

  Jess stopped; she’d forgotten all about Saturday night. Crapity, crap, crap, it was all getting too much. Brianna and her campaign, Nick and his development, Owen bloody Aherne and poor wee Wilbur, Nora on the rampage—when did her life get so complicated? She knew she should go back inside and fill Brianna in properly on what development it was that Nick was working on but she simply couldn’t face any more drama in her day. “Yes, Nick’s free. We’ll be there. You go back inside; you’re letting all the heat out,” she called back, hoping against hope that the topic of Bray Community Centre wouldn’t rear its head on Saturday night.

  “Great. Is sevenish alright?”

  “Sevenish is fine.”

  Brianna disappeared back inside and shut the door.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, JESS fulfilled her fantasy by curling up on the couch in her cosy flannelette pyjamas, a glass of red in her hand as she tried to lose herself in the god-awful reality TV show she’d tuned in to. It was no good, though; it couldn’t hold her attention. She didn’t feel like doing a Bridget Jones and wallowing in the mess she was making of things, either. No, she frowned, she was more in an angry woman Melissa Etheridge sort of a mood. Sod Owen and his mixed bloody messages. She got up and began rifling through her CDs, looking forward to joining Melissa in belting out “Like the Way I Do.”

  The phone rang just as she pulled it out of the rack and Jess sighed, looking at it with dread as she debated whether or not to answer it. It was probably Nora and, deciding she might as well get the lecture over and done with, she reached over and picked it up.

  “Jessica, darling, it’s Mum phoning to see how your dinner date went.”

  God! The perfect end to the perfect day. Jess wrinkled her nose before having a big slug on her wine. “Hi, Mum. It was fine, thanks.” As the wine slid down her throat, she knew that fine just wouldn’t cut the mustard, not with her mother.

  “Fine? What does that mean? And are you drinking?”

  Jess took a deep breath and her voice came out in one big long sigh. “A glass of wine, yes. It doesn’t make me an alcoholic, Mum, and what I meant was that I had a nice time. Nick cooked a lovely meal and he was a real gentleman. We will be seeing each other again on Saturday because Brianna’s invited us over for dinner.”

  “She’s drinking alone, Frank, and give me patience—it’s like getting blood out of a stone trying to hold a conversation with your daughter. Listen to me, my girl, I didn’t put us on a family and friends calling plan to have you fob me off. I want the details. What did he cook you? What wine did he serve? Did you have, ahem...”—her mother tittered girlishly—“dessert?”

  Jess cringed at the pathetic double entendre. “Mum! That is none of your business.” Besides which, she wasn’t really sure her mother would understand if she said sort of.

  “Alright, alright—no need to be coy. At least tell me what you ate.”

  “He cooked roast lamb and it was delicious, dessert was crème brulee, and he served a red with the lamb and a white that offset the sweetness of the brulee. He knows all about wine and stuff,” she added dully.

  “Well, for someone who has been wined and dined and treated like a lady, you don’t sound very enthusiastic. What’s the matter?”

  Before she could stop herself, it was out of her mouth. “I’ve just had a big day, that’s all. I drove up to Ballymcguinness again because Wilbur the little runt I befriended got sick.” As
soon as she’d finished her sentence, she knew she’d made a big mistake in confiding what she’d been up to. There was a deathly silence down the other end of the line and then an ear-splitting shriek sounded. Jess held the phone away from her ear, completely unprepared for what she heard next.

  “You’re doing it again, Jessica Jane Baré. You’re damn well doing it again. Frank, I told you this would happen!”

  “Calm down, Mum! I have no idea what you are on about.”

  “You’re falling for the pig farmer with the past instead of the property developer who could offer you a future—that, my girl, is what I am on about.”

  “No, I’m not.” Jess flushed. “Wilbur was sick so I went to see him, that’s all, and the article I wrote about Owen’s sister Amy being killed in a bombing during the Troubles is running this weekend. I was glad of the chance to tell him in person because the story coincides with it being the thirtieth anniversary since it happened. It’s called being sensitive to your source, Mother, and that’s it—end of story. There is no reason for me to see him ever again and anyway, I just told you I am seeing Nick on Saturday for dinner.”

  “That as may be but I know how you work, Jessica. Your heart’s not in it anymore. I can hear it in your voice. This pig farmer fella tells you his sob story and you melt. If Nick were to announce he was going in for a double leg amputation on Monday or, or oh I don’t know, that his cat was terminally ill, then you’d be all over him but unfortunately he has no problems, no issues to work through. He is normal. N-O-R-M-A-L, Jessica.” Marian spelt it out and then carried on, “Well, I am not having it! This time, I am not going to stand by and let you sabotage things for yourself. You are too long in the tooth to mess about like this.”