Running Back

by Allison Parr

  Instead of answering, I watched water trickle down his neck, tracing down his bare, tan chest, and slipping over his well-defined abdomen.

  “Like what you see?”

  I dragged my gaze up to his grinning face. “Shouldn’t you not open your door half naked?”

  His grin widened and he shrugged nonchalantly.

  My gaze slipped down again, and I yanked them up as my cheeks burned. “Uh. Sorry. I can come back some other time.”

  His eyes danced. “Just give me five.”

  I nodded as I backed away, but once I’d closed my door I leaned against it and let out a moan.

  Apparently not quietly enough, because I heard a low chuckle through my door. I tossed the candy on the dresser and then flung myself onto my bed, this time using my pillow to muffle my embarrassment.

  For five impossibly long minutes, I tried to make myself breathe deeply and think of something calming and non-sexual. Unfortunately, I was having a hard time coming up with non-sexual objects. Or not just straight up picturing Mike’s body.

  I had the worst timing in the history of the world.

  Then again, he could have thrown a shirt on. Who answered the door practically naked? I could have been room service. He could have scarred someone.

  Then again, he hadn’t seemed surprised to see me, and my door had a peek-hole. So maybe he’d chosen not to put a shirt on.

  Okay. I had to stop overthinking everything.

  Over five minutes had passed, so I picked up the goods and went back to his door. This time, Mike wore jeans and a Leopard’s T-shirt when he opened the door.

  “Sorry,” I said automatically. “About—earlier.”

  “No worries. What’s up?”

  I lifted the Reeses. “I brought peace offerings.”

  He stepped back and I moved inside his room. It had the same set up as mine, but there were already marks of his presence, sneakers and shirts tossed carelessly about. A set of weights lay in one corner, a football beside them. I wondered if he had anyone to practice with here.

  The door clicked shut behind me and I turned back to Mike. He cocked his head at the half-eaten bag of candy. “That’s a pretty paltry olive branch.”

  “I know. I was munchy earlier.” When he sat on his bed, I took it as my cue to curl up in an overstuffed mint-green armchair several feet away. He didn’t look away from me as he leaned against the headboard, his long legs sprawled out before him.

  I took a deep breath. “Look, I know it’s a little awkward, me being here. Especially when I’m sort of a work problem and this is your personal life, and your family’s here... If it bothers you, I can get a room in Cork.” The bus ride would take an hour to get to the village, but that would be preferable to dealing with Mike if he didn’t want me here. “So, I don’t know, I just of thought if you had any issues you wanted aired, we could air them. Now. Until we’re cool.”

  He stared at me.

  I sank my head into my hands. “I’m sorry. I’m not a very eloquent speaker. Which sort of sucks, because I have a speech to give in September and I’m already freaking out about it.” I sighed and looked up. “How are you so together?”

  He popped a Reeses in his mouth. “I’m not together.”

  I scoffed.

  “Didn’t you see my family down there?”

  His warm, entertaining family that was so comfortable with one another that they could pick and snap at each other without fear of damaging their relationships? “Yeah. They’re wonderful.”

  “Wonderful in moderation.”

  “I mean it. They’re great.”

  He cocked his head at my tone. “What’s that mean?”

  All right, maybe I’d been a little too emphatic. I lifted my shoulders in slight embarrassment. “They were great.”

  His eyes widened. “Are you kidding? Didn’t you notice my little sister storming out?”

  I dismissed that with a wave of my hand. “She’s seventeen.”

  “Yeah, old enough to know better. Were you like that at seventeen?”

  I’d been president of National Honors Society, president of the French club, vice-president of the Sobriety Council, junior member of the Rotary Club and a choir member. For my seventeenth birthday party, my parents’ friends’ children and several members of my class had come over for a catered dinner by a local celebrity chef.

  That year, like the sixteen before it, I had spent almost every day wanting to gouge my eyes out in the few moments I didn’t feel numb.

  “At least she has a personality,” I said firmly.

  “What, and you didn’t?”

  I shrugged. “I had personas.” The perfect daughter, the perfect student. “Pretty boring. I’d take cursing goth kids any day.”

  He groaned. “She’s dating some baby biker dude. Instead of going to college she wants to work in his sister’s tattoo parlor.”

  “Well. I guess she won’t have to worry about student loans?”

  “She won’t have loans. I’m paying.”

  “Maybe she wants to be fiscally responsible.”

  He shot me a look. “Yeah, that sounds like Anna.”

  “It’s not exactly easy, having perfect older brothers.”

  He raised a brow. “Which you know about?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe not perfect. But I always felt second-best.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh.” Now I felt silly, because I hadn’t meant the conversation to come around to me, and I actively avoided talking about my family to anyone besides Cam. “My brothers are from my dad’s first marriage, and I think he kind of preferred them. Not a big deal or anything, he just didn’t know how to relate to me.”

  He tilted his head. His hair, still straightened from his shower, was beginning to dry and curl. “Sounds like a big deal.”

  Suddenly edgy, I jumped up and walked to the window. He had a view out the back of the inn, toward several cottages and the endless rolling hills and hedgerows. Lavender clouds rolled across the deepening blue night. “It really wasn’t. What about you? Where’s your dad?” A second after the words left my mouth, I remembered that his dad had to be gone for him to inherit Kilkarten. I turned to see him, my eyes widening. “I’m so sorry—”

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

  We were both silent, but neither of us looked away. I could feel the space of the room constraining, or his presence growing, until it was as though I could only see him. My head felt light. I broke contact first and headed back to the armchair, busying myself with settling back in. “Anna must have been little.”

  “Seven.”

  Wow.

  “What’s that look for?”

  I raised my eyes, startled at the question. “I wasn’t giving you a look.”

  His smile contained a hint of skepticism. “Yeah, you were.”

  Fine. “Sounds like you’ve been father-figuring your youngest sister and supporting your whole family for a long time.”

  He let out a wry breath. “Lauren said about the same. She wants to ‘fix’ things while we’re here.”

  “‘Things’?”

  “Us. Our family.”

  “How?”

  He met my eyes again, with that same powerful intensity, and gave me a crooked smile different from the regular one he used to charm people. “I wish I knew the answer.”

  I acknowledged the difficulty of that with my own wry smile. “How do you usually deal with problems?”

  He watched me with a very odd, very aware expression. “Usually I smile a lot and people end up agreeing with me. Or liking me, so they alter things to go my way.”

  I blinked but couldn’t look away. He looked back, his gaze bright and focused, like he saw something unusual and worth studyi
ng. I swallowed. “And of course, you’ve already figured out that I do the same thing.”

  “You were shocked when I said no to the dig. I bet people don’t say no to you very often.”

  “I don’t put myself in positions where people can say no to me that often.”

  He tilted his head. “What does that mean?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d meant, myself, so it was difficult to parse into words. Maybe I just didn’t ask or go after things when there was a chance I’d be turned down. I shrugged helplessly.

  “What are you going to do while you’re here? I mean—you don’t know anyone here, do you?”

  I shrugged. “My advisor’s in Dublin, but he’ll probably come down in two or three weeks. He was planning to, originally... And tomorrow I’m going to talk to your aunt, actually, and she might introduce me to some people who know about the land.”

  He straightened. “You are?”

  I nodded “I’d been corresponding with her husband for months. It seemed appropriate.” I paused. “What’s she like?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “I haven’t actually met her. We’re having lunch day after tomorrow.” His eyes lit up. “I’ll go with you tomorrow.”

  “Really? Are you sure?”

  He raised his brows. “I’ve been with my family a solid week. I think I deserve the company of someone I’m not related to.”

  I raised mine right back at him. “So you deserve my company?”

  His voice was little more than a murmur. “Don’t I?”

  I sucked in a quick breath. I was suddenly aware of how late it was, how much I’d enjoyed talking to him this evening, how whenever I was in his presence I was always so, so aware of him... And that he had unflinchingly refused to let me excavate Kilkarten, and just several hours ago I’d had the thought of enlisting his sisters for a coup d’etat. “I should go.”

  He shook his head. “Must be our catchphrase.”

  I paused halfway to the door. “What?”

  “You said something like that when we first met. Then I tried to leave Ryan’s fast. But we never seem to get very far from each other, do we?”

  I pulled the door open. “I am going.”

  He nodded. “See you in the morning.”

  I could feel the intensity of his gaze long after I’d tucked myself into bed and turned off all the lights.

  * * *

  I woke to birdsong. The sun had already risen, and morning light filtered through my window, lying in panels across my bed and the floor. I stretched and twisted and considered my jogging gear, but the time difference had thrown me off and I didn’t have time for a run if I wanted to meet with Maggie O’Connor in two hours. Still, I headed outside so I could get some fresh air and give my appetite time to wake up before breakfast.

  I settled on a white stone bench under a cypress tree with my volume of Yeats, which to be honest I never would have read if I hadn’t been in Ireland. My last poetry had been along the lines of Dr. Seuss, who I held in great esteem, but other than him my attention usually drifted off during the first stanza of a poem.

  I’d only been there fifteen minutes when Anna walked toward me, clearly coming in for breakfast from the cottage where she was staying. We both hesitated when we caught sight of each other, and then she angled her path to my bench.

  I nodded at her. “Morning.”

  She nodded back, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her faux leather jacket. The pockets didn’t look like they were actually built to support hands. “Sorry if I was kinda bitchy yesterday.”

  I smiled. “We can blame it on jetlag.”

  She grunted. “So. Are you a model or something?”

  People had asked me that before—mostly because I’d inherited my mother’s height, cheekbones, and famous gray eyes—but I always hated the question. “Definitely not. I’m an archaeologist.”

  “Seriously?”

  I closed my book and slid over on the bench. “I study Irish history, from about two thousand years ago. I’m interested in the contact between Ireland and Rome, and your family’s farmland might cover an archaeological site that would give more information on that.”

  Her jaw dropped open, and she fell onto the bench. “Seriously? Kilkarten? The farm? Are you going to, like, dig it up? That’s awesome.”

  Something twinged in my chest, but I ignored it. “I don’t think so. I’m mostly going to be looking at old local records. Sometimes in these rural villages, papers don’t get digitized, so.”

  Her brow scrunched up. “Well, why don’t you dig it up? Isn’t that easier?”

  “Um.” I glanced back at the inn. So Mike hadn’t talked to his family about the excavation. “It’s complicated.” I shook the thoughts from my head and smiled at Anna. “So, how about you? You’re here to...” Oops. I’d just walked into depressing territory. “Because of your uncle?”

  She shrugged and scowled. “Yeah, I guess. But seriously, who the fuck goes to Ireland because of some dude they never met?” She cut me a measured look, as though waiting for a reprimand, but I didn’t bite. She could curse her tongue off if she wanted.

  “Did you have plans this summer?”

  She snorted. “Obviously. I was going to work in Derek’s sister’s tattoo parlor.” She swung her foot impatiently. “But then they made me come here, so he broke up with me.”

  I looked at her. “Because you weren’t going to work at his sister’s tattoo parlor.”

  She shrugged. Her foot kept swinging. “Well. And I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

  Shocking.

  “I mean, I was going to.” She scowled. “Who wants to be a fucking virgin their senior year of high school?”

  Fucking virgin was my new favorite phrase.

  “Now he’s dating Kaitlyn Taylor.”

  “On the other hand, Kaitlyn Taylor is stuck back home, and you get to explore all of Ireland.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  I leaned my head back, so I could admire the morning sky, and lowered my voice confidentially. “So my best friend and I came up with a plan before I came here. You want in on it?”

  She seemed aware that she was too cool for plans, but still couldn’t resist asking, “What is it?”

  “Operation: Irish Boyfriend.”

  She threw a startled glance at me. “Wait, you want an Irish boyfriend? But what about—” She stopped abruptly.

  My mouth twitched. “There’s nothing going on between me and your brother.”

  “Why not?” She sounded almost defensive.

  I jumped up from the bench. “I’m hungry. Let’s get some breakfast.”

  And I headed back inside before Anna could press the issue.

  The rest of the O’Connors joined us not much later, and when the three women moved to go to Cork for the day, Mike excused himself. “Natalie and I are going to head into the village.”

  Kate agreed with such alacrity I suspected she still hoped Mike would be introducing me as his girlfriend shortly. Anna shot me a pointed look.

  I turned to Mike after they’d left. “I feel like your entire family has some sort of agenda.”

  “They usually do.” He stood and I followed. “Come on, let’s ask Eileen how to get into Dundoran.”

  Chapter Seven

  The coastal path from the inn to Dundoran Village curved along the shoreline. It rose and fell through the hills, but never touched the sand. Instead, we walked on flattened grass, while a haphazard stone wall herded us south. Pale green moss frosted the stones, and purple thistles fringed the bottom. Beyond the wall, wide green swaths rolled up into hills and sky, only interrupted by bushy trees and hedgerows.

  I let out a deep sigh.

  “You okay?”

 
I waved my arm expansively. “I’m just happy. It’s so beautiful. All these greens—all the colors.” The land rose slightly and the path followed it upward, giving us a splendid view of the heather covered green that sloped down to the shore. The water lapped gentle against the pale yellow strip of sand.

  Mike stared at me. “You cannot get this turned on by nature.”

  I tossed a grin back at him. “Why not? What else is this amazing?” I closed my eyes and inhaled a warm, fresh breeze, grass and blooming flowers, all underlain by the sea. “In Ecuador, you can smell the eucalypti. It’s sickly sweet. Heady. The bark peels off like paper, and it’s everywhere—the Spanish introduced the trees as a source of cheap firewood, and then it spread all over. I dreamed of those trees when I left.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  I opened my eyes. “Why? Well, the dig was up.”

  “Hmm.” There was something in that noise, like I’d revealed a facet of myself I hadn’t intended to. “And what are you going to dream of here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the sea. Salt and earth and wind.” I laughed. “Am I getting too fantastical?”

  He studied me. I was learning that when Michael O’Connor fixed his attention on me, I felt like we were the only two people in the world. Out here in this rugged landscape, we could have been. “So you’ve lived in New York and Ecuador and now you’re here. You don’t put down roots, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I put down enough.”

  He lifted a challenging brow. “But you travel more than most people, don’t you?”

  I’d always been proud of my travel spiel before, but now I wondered if he had a point. “I spent a year abroad in London. Did my field school in Greece summer after my sophomore year and then went back there the next season. Worked in the Great Plains for the summer after that. Did some work on Inka fortresses for one of my profs last year. My degree’s archaeology, so not place specific, though I’ll just be focusing on Ireland for my thesis.”

  We kept walking, and he offered me a hand as we jumped over some mud. “Don’t you ever want to stay put?”