by Laura Burton
She looked at him now as he stood up from down the table where he’d been quietly listening.
“I don’t mind camping out with you, Jenna.” He smiled hopefully at her. “It’s for a good cause, after all.”
“Oh – ah – “ Jenna felt more than a little uncomfortable at the idea of a sleepover for two.
She looked pleadingly at Kate, who shook her head.
“I don’t camp out,” Kate said. “Ever.”
“Right. That’s two of you, so. Better than none.”
Jenna glared at Gran, who was already standing and collecting cups and mugs.
And just like that, the meeting was over.
And now, Jenna had to prepare for a protest. A protest with Martin, a tent, and not much else.
“Jenna.”
She looked up to see Martin beaming down at her.
“Should I start getting supplies together?”
Jenna pushed her chair back and stood.
“Thank you for your kind offer. But I don’t want to trouble you. I’m sure you’re needed back at the university and – “
“I cleared my schedule for a couple of weeks,” he interrupted her proudly. “Wouldn’t want to leave a damsel in distress, would I?”
She smiled weakly and shook her head.
“I’ll go and get packed up,” he said excitedly. “And as luck would have it, I have my travel Scrabble in the car.”
He turned and bounded off, and Jenna closed her eyes and groaned.
If she didn’t love that bloody castle so much, she’d just give up altogether.
But even as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t true.
She’d rather stick needles in her eyes than let Conor King have his way.
Saying a quick goodbye to Gran and batting away apologies and excuses, she made her way back home.
It was Saturday, which meant that the office was closed, so she ducked in to leave a note for Mrs. Glynn that she’d have to hold the fort for a while.
There wouldn’t be any legal emergencies for her impromptu sit-in, and she’d have her phone in case of emergency anyway.
Dragging herself upstairs, she pulled out her camping equipment, feeling harder done by than ever before in her life.
Martin Forster was a very nice man, but he wasn’t someone she would have chosen to stage a protest with.
The builders weren’t due to break ground on the castle until Monday, but she was starting her protest today.
Better to make a big impact when the place was crawling with members of the public. She might get it into a couple of newspapers or maybe the radio.
If she was noticed by enough people and gained some traction, it could shame Conor King into backing down.
After all, who’d want to stay in a hotel with such bad publicity?
It wasn’t much. But it was all she had.
Three hours later, Jenna was set up and ready to protest.
It was an unusually fine day with actual warm sunshine, and the castle was abuzz.
All around her, families wandered the ruins as familiar to them as the castle must have been to the people who lived here so long ago.
She smiled as children squawked and ran and asked their parents hundreds of questions about the ruins and the people who’d once lived there. About the way of life back then.
She laughed as the questions got harder and harder to answer. Like how long it would take to walk to their homes from the ruins, if they’d lived back then. And how they’d find their way without Google maps.
This place was such a part of the tapestry of the area and the people in it. It was woven into their hearts and their blood.
How could she just sit back and let Conor King take it all away from them? Erase its magic with his golf courses and luxury spas?
He had no idea about the magic here. And worse, he had no interest in it.
Which was exactly why she had to save it from his clutches.
The afternoon stretched on, and the crowds dispersed.
Gran had come by with lunch and supplies for the night.
Kate had come by with a bottle of wine and a warning that she had more than a few screws loose in her head.
And Martin had come by to tell her that he hadn’t been able to get his hands on a tent and was heading into the big town to buy one.
Her protestations had fallen on deaf ears, and he assured her that he’d be back tomorrow, come hell or high water, to fight the good fight with her.
She’d much rather he didn’t but had a feeling that nothing short of death would stop him.
As evening fell and the crowds faded to nothing, Jenna decided to take a wander around her beloved ruins.
She’d often come up here at this time. When the sun began to set, and the world got quiet.
Sometimes, when she’d still been working in a big law office in Dublin, she’d come down here at the weekends to think about her multitude of cases.
Sometimes, she’d think about the boy she liked, or the band she loved.
Sometimes, she didn’t think at all. She’d just walk and listen to the sounds of nothing.
Now, her mind raced with worry about what this place would be this time next year.
Stopping at the cliff’s edge, Jenna looked out at the still, blue ocean and cried.
Just a bit.
Just enough to get it out of her system.
And when she was done, she wiped her eyes, squared her shoulders, and headed back to her tent.
As she came over the hill, her stomach dropped when she noticed a posh looking black tent set up beside her own modest red one.
Martin must have gotten back from town earlier than he’d expected.
It was tempting to just run to her car and drive home, but that would be cruel.
She wasn’t being very nice about Martin, she knew. He was only trying to help.
She was worried that he had an ulterior motive, but he wasn’t the type to come on too strong, she was sure.
A quick, likely awkward conversation should put any confusion to rest.
She might have considered dinner with him yesterday, but her meeting with Conor King had put an end to her even considering that.
Because the truth was that even when she’d been standing there arguing and wanting to slap his smug face, there’d been a moment where she’d felt something between the two of them.
A spark.
One she’d never really felt before.
One that had scared her and confused her.
She was attracted to him; she’d realised in horror. Despite herself and despite how awful he was, she’d been so close to kissing him that she’d had to run out of there.
And though she had absolutely no intention of ever putting her lips anywhere near Conor King, that attraction had highlighted how very uninterested she was in poor Martin.
Knowing that she couldn’t stand there forever, Jenna walked toward the tents, mentally preparing herself for a night of travel Scrabble.
Thank the lord that she had a friend like Kate who had brought wine.
Upon reaching the castle, she looked over to make sure her car was still there then frowned in confusion.
There was a car parked beside her own, but it wasn’t Martin’s Prius. It was a shiny black Mercedes and nothing that anyone around here drove.
But she hadn’t seen any stray tourists, and nobody would park this far away from the beach.
As she stared at the car, a horrible realisation started to dawn on her.
And she looked back at the big black tent in time to see its occupant come out of the entrance.
“You have got to be joking,” she whispered as she glared across the ruins into the face of a smug looking Conor King.
Chapter 9
If Conor’s ego was ever in danger of getting out of control, being around Jenna McCarthy was a sure-fire way to take him down a peg or two.
He watched her face fall as she spotted him leaving his tent and couldn’t hold b
ack a grin at her obvious disappointment.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded as she stomped over to him.
Once again she was in jeans, as he was. This time however, she wore sturdy hiking boots, and the rest of her was covered in a shapeless, navy-blue jacket.
She still looked good, though.
Better than good.
“Hello? I asked why you’re here,” she spat.
“Nice to see you, too,” he drawled, earning a scowl. “To answer your very polite question, I’m here to camp.”
“Really? Wow, I never would have guessed,” she said, oozing sarcasm. “Why are you camping?” she asked when he didn’t answer. “Why aren’t you on your way back to New York?
“Because it’s my land, Jenna. My property. And you are trespassing. Not me.”
If looks could kill, Conor knew he’d be a pile of ash on the floor.
He wondered, not for the first time, why he was even doing this.
He was supposed to be on a plane to New York.
He had meetings in his calendar that had been there for months. And he never cancelled meetings. Especially not to camp out at a ruined castle in the middle of the Irish countryside.
The proof of that had come in the form of more than one frantic phone call from his family.
All he’d done was email his PA to say he wouldn’t be back for a week and to clear his diary.
Apparently, that was enough to cause mass panic, and his brothers and sister had called one after the other to ask what was going on.
Their questions ranged from asking if he was having some sort of episode to asking him to speak in code if he’d been abducted and needed help.
Standing here now, he had to wonder if he did actually need help.
He certainly couldn’t be in his right mind.
For the entirety of his adult life, he’d slept on thousands of dollars’ worth of bed sheets in a bed that cost more than some people’s apartments.
And yet, here he was.
He never took time off. Never.
Yet, here he was.
And on a Saturday night.
This was all her fault.
He’d just known that she meant what she said about a live-in protest. Just as he’d known that she wouldn’t wait until Monday to do it.
So, he’d gone and bought camping equipment, all the while questioning his own sanity.
“Not much of a turn out for your big protest, is there?” he asked.
She ignored him.
“You know, I could just call the police and have you removed,” he tried again.
This time she snorted.
“Good luck to you,” she answered derisively. “Everyone knows Tommy Glynn won’t come out on a Saturday till after the nine o’clock news.”
He stared at her waiting for her to laugh, but she was dead serious.
“Hold on. You’re telling me that I can’t get police assistance until after the news?”
“Not from Garda Glynn, you won’t.” She smirked. “Everyone knows not to bother him before ten.”
Unbelievable.
“I’ll call him after ten then,” he said, but she didn’t seem concerned in the slightest.
And then something dawned on him.
“Glynn?” he asked. “Any relation to your friendly receptionist?”
Jenna’s smile was the epitome of triumphant.
“Her husband,” she answered. “And a very dear friend.”
Jenna could barely keep a straight face as she watched the disbelief then grudging acceptance on Conor King’s face.
The truth of it was that if he called Tommy Glynn, the man would most certainly come out here to remove her.
But Conor didn’t know that. Nor did he need to.
The temperature was dropping quickly with the breeze off the sea turning to an icy wind, and she set about lighting the fire she’d built earlier.
Turning her head, she saw Conor watching her with his eyes narrowed as if she were conducting some sort of life-altering experiment.
“It’s a fire,” she scoffed.
“I know it’s a fire,” he answered petulantly. “I just didn’t think you’d know how to light one.”
Jenna rolled her eyes at him.
“Everyone around here knows how to light a fire,” she said. “But we don’t all have expensive manicures to worry about.”
She saw from the corner of her eye that he opened his mouth, probably to argue. But then he frowned down at his hands, shoved them in his pockets and stayed quiet.
Proving her point.
Jenna busied herself quietly with the fire for a few minutes, pouring some fuel on it and lighting a match out of his line of sight.
If he wanted to believe she could light fires quicker than a boy scout, let him.
“You hungry?”
She stood and turned at his question to see him holding up a picnic basket.
“What is that?”
“That is dinner,” he answered. “I figured all this protesting might be hungry work. And I brought enough to feed your army of supporters. When do they arrive?”
She wanted to strangle him. She really, truly did.
“I brought my own food,” she bit out, ignoring his jibe about her supporters.
He was supposed to be in New York.
He wasn’t supposed to be here to see her one-woman fight for the land. Well, one-woman plus Martin when he’d bought his equipment.
“But I’ll bet mine’s nicer,” he answered childishly.
So, she ignored him just as childishly.
Stomping over to the camp chair that she’d placed at the opening of her tent, Jenna sat and picked up her e-reader, determined to ignore him.
She had a thing for romance novels, but romance was the last thing she wanted to think about around Conor King, so she opened a murder mystery instead. A violent one. Nice and gory.
Out of the corner of her eye she watched as he unfolded a whole picnic table, complete with benches attached to either side then emptied the contents of the basket onto it.
He unpacked container after container of delicious food. Hot food. Steak, chicken, sweet potato fries, more sides than even an army of villagers could have eaten.
Jenna felt her mouth water as she thought miserably about her granola bars and rice cakes.
Another rummage in the basket produced china plates, knives, forks, spoons, and linen napkins!
Who camped with linen napkins? Well, billionaires, she supposed.
Finally, he was done, and he sat on the bench facing her chair.
She refused to turn her head, staring intently at the brightly illuminated screen in her hands. She hadn’t managed to read a single word yet.
“Are you sure you won’t join me, Jenna? There’s plenty to go around.”
She ignored him. He wasn’t even worth her time.
And who cared if her stomach rumbled? Granola was a fine meal. There were people starving in the world.
She didn’t need his steak, or his sweet potatoes, or – she glanced over. Or his brownies, which looked amazing but would be tainted with his horribleness.
She heard him move but didn’t look up until his shadow loomed over her.
“Look, we’re both here. We both need to eat. Why don’t we just have dinner? You can tell me all the ways you hate me the whole time.”
She had to bite her lip to keep from responding to his smile.
He was insanely good-looking. It was ridiculous.
But she had her pride.
“I’m not hungry,” she bit out, but right then her stomach rumbled loud enough for him to hear.
His grin widened.
“Come on.” He held out a hand. “Truce. Just for tonight.”
She shouldn’t.
She really, really shouldn’t.
But the sun was just setting behind him, and he looked like something from one of her romance novels.
She honestly hadn’t thought they made men
like this in real life.
Besides, he really was the enemy.
Every bite would be a betrayal.
But it did smell good.
So did he, as a matter of fact.
“Come on,” he said, his bright blue eyes piercing her.
Calling herself an idiot, Jenna nevertheless put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet.
Chapter 10
Conor watched as Jenna sat and immediately began to fill her plate.
He was so used to women only eating things like garden salads and gluten-free everything that it was refreshing to see her unashamedly enjoying the food around her.
He hadn’t realised how boring his meals had become until he sat here eating with Jenna McCarthy.
Because he’d declared a truce, it was only awkward for the first couple of minutes.
But it didn’t take long to coax her into conversation.
Conor made sure to steer them away from talk of the castle, or her grandmother’s cottage.
Instead he asked her about her family, and her work in Dublin, and told her about his.
After making quick work of the food, they moved to sit in their camp chairs, Conor pulling his over until it was side by side with hers, looking out over the ocean and endless sky.
She even produced a bottle of wine, which they drank out of plastic mugs. Something he’d never done before in his life.
“So, you gave up on the rat race, huh?”
“Something like that.” She laughed softly. “Though I’m sure it was more of a turtle race compared to life in New York. It’s just – it’s not for me. I’m not cut out for it. I’m happy to live a small-town, quiet life. Once I’m near the water, I’m happy.”
She meant it, too.
He could see it in how content she looked just talking about her life here.
The pang of envy he suddenly felt took him by surprise.
He wasn’t unhappy with his life, was he?
Few could claim to live a more privileged one.
And he had property by the water. Several of them near oceans, lakes, rivers.
So, why would he be sitting here wishing he could trade places with someone who lived in a small apartment above an office in a little pink building, of all places?