by Clare Austin
Muireann shook her head slowly from side to side as though sifting her thoughts, culling out what she could reveal and what needed to remain her domain. “He seemed desperate.”
And getting more so, Tynan thought. The unsubtle suggestions about Muireann’s motivations, the scene with Walshe, and Dervla’s implication that Ian was spying on them last night all added up to something. But what? Then he showed up here, at Muireann’s house. Tynan didn’t like any of it.
“He could be dangerous.” Ty rose and began to pace the length of the little shed.
“Sit down, Tynan. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
“I’m staying here with you.”
“I have work to do. You distract me. Go back to Mary’s and I’ll catch up with you later.”
“No. You’re not understanding me. I’m staying.”
Her head shot up and her eyes nailed him with incredulity. “Here? No way. Not now. Maybe never. “
“You need protection.”
“And that’s your job?”
“If not, then who? A deaf hound and Simon?”
Muireann stood. “I’m not afraid of Ian. Please don’t worry about me.”
Ty put his hands on her hip bones and held her gaze. “I told you I love you. It is my job to worry.”
“I thought you were done with protecting the women in your life,” she said with a sly grin.
“That only applies to my sisters. They have husbands for that now.” At least she was showing some humor in the situation. But he was pretty sure she wouldn’t back down from her independent stance.
Muireann gently removed his hands from where they rested on her hips. “I have to take care of myself. I want you to go now and let me get my work done.” She gave him a very brief, but not at all sisterly, kiss and turned her back to him.
Chapter Eighteen
The raven sat silently on her window pane, watching her. She tried to awaken but her head was weighty and her eyelids uncooperative. He beckoned her but her limbs refused to obey the demands of her unconscious mind. “I can’t let you in.” She tried to make her mouth shape the words, but no sound would form.
Tynan leaned close and touched her lips. Muireann felt his kiss but the paralysis of sleep prevented her from responding. Her entire body quivered with the memory of the passion they had shared. “You will always be for me,” he whispered. Muireann fought for the surface of consciousness. The raven was impatient and would not wait. The air stirred with the beating of his wings and he was gone. She tried to call out, tell him to come back, tell him she was wrong.
The vibration of harp strings carried on the air. It came from inside her and filled the void the raven had left. The tune had a voice and though the words were muffled, Muireann knew what they meant. The strings were too tight. They begged for release.
She forced herself to wake, tried to wiggle her toes and stretch her fingers. They worked. So this was not still a dream. Deep despair hovered over her as she lay in her bed. A chill shivered up her spine, and she wished Tynan were there to warm her. She couldn’t remember why he wasn’t there until her mind cleared and she remembered she’d sent him away.
Muireann had no doubts about the part of the dream with the raven. Tynan had haunted her imaginings and sparked her fantasies since she was a mere girl. Now he was real to her. Never had she felt so safe in a man’s arms. He was balm to her chaotic soul. He was a tranquil harbor to her storm tossed life.
And then she had treated him with such a lack of sensitivity she was ashamed. From the first evening they spent together, she should have known he was exactly the man he appeared to be. He was so easy to talk to. She hadn’t meant to deceive him.
As she dragged herself listlessly into the sitting room, Muireann made a decision. She would need to see that he opened his eyes to the reality that she was not what he thought. In a way, she surprised even herself. In the past, she had been a complete loser magnet. Nice men, like Tynan, were repelled from her sphere and dirt bags stuck like rusty nails not to be shaken loose.
The last bit of the dream was clear in meaning as well as the first part. No amount of denial would change what she had to do. She must let Ronan go. The harp, his harp, was imbued with music from her brother’s hands with the first cuts he made into the wood. She could no longer trap the music in her heart and refuse to share it.
She pulled a chair over to the harp and sat. It was impossible not to see her brother, his long-fingered hands laid quietly on these strings.
Ronan would always speak to her in her dreams and in her soul. The harp strings held him to this earthly plane. Muireann could set him free.
The irony of all this made her decision easier. She needed to expedite the sale of Bertie’s place and get Tynan on his way back to Boston.
An offer had been made on the harp, but it had been too soon after Ronan’s death. It felt as though all that remained of her brother was up for sale and she had turned it down. Muireann recalled not being particularly tactful about the way she refused the bid. It had been a rude equivalent of cold day in hell.
In harsh reality, the harp was the only thing she had of value. She could sell hundreds of pots and never approach what the harp would bring.
Once Tynan had his money, he could be on his way, headed back home to Boston. She would never survive in a city and he would hate living in Balli C for more than a fortnight.
She couldn’t take advantage of his thinking he’d fallen for her. That would be craven. Muireann didn’t want to put rules and limits on the way she came up with the money to follow through on her dreams. She had to admit she liked Ty, but clearly, she couldn’t have the land she believed was her entitlement and the man who now held ownership.
Tynan would have his money, he would have his public house in Boston, he would go find himself a nice American woman to share his life. The end.
The visual of him bouncing wee Irish-American babes on his knee stung, but a woman needed to be practical after all.
For once in her life, Muireann was determined to follow through with a plan. Plans and projects always started with enthusiasm until the disorder in her life overtook the momentum and ground her to a piteous halt.
This time she had a chance to make a difference. It would be a shame to blow it over a man with whom she saw no future .
She would have to work out some fine points, go behind Feeney’s back. It would be difficult. He had everyone in his financial pocket.
The whole scenario nagged at the back of Muireann’s mind. Why was Feeney interested in Bertie’s old place? Was it just to spite her? She doubted Ian would spend an extra euro just to give her a moment’s heartbreak.
Muireann ran the fingers of her left hand from bass to treble, feeling the vibrations of the harp as though they held Ronan’s own breath.
“Talk to me, Ronan. Tell me what to do,” she begged as her hands left the strings and stroked the silky tonewood.
What had the Raven said? “You will always be for me.” The words stung. Yes, she had held on to them for a very long time when she was young. Now she was grown up and fanciful dreams of romance had to be put aside.
Ty’s protective impulses toward her complicated matters even further. She couldn’t let a man, any man, act as her protector. It simply rung like a harsh bell in her view of herself as an independent woman.
Besides, she would die in a place like Boston. She would long for the air, the sky, and the sound of the sea on cliffs, Tynan would tire of her, and they would end up despising one another.
Besides, Muireann scolded herself, Tynan had only said he thought he loved her. He’d said the words he’d whispered in her ear when they were teens—but that was a dream, it was the Raven, not the man.
Ronan would have had a solution to her dilemma, and it would have been elegantly simple. Ronan was never troubled by indecisiveness.
Chaos belonged to Muireann. She often felt that she spent her time in the fruitless attempt to weave together the loo
se ends of her life. As soon as she would secure one renegade course of strands into a snare with the strength to hold her day together, another would break out, and the beginnings of a plan would spill out the bottom.
She wasn’t entirely sure she bought into the idea of karma, even less the burden of sin, but she didn’t want to risk inviting ill will on herself, or go to hell on a technicality. Muireann instinctively knew hurting a good man like Tynan would not bode well for her in this life or the possible next.
She laid her cheek into the cool oak where the harp’s pillar leaned against her shoulder. Tears burned in silver streaks down her face and a familiar hollowness returned to her chest. It had secretly receded over the past two days. The tight band of constriction she had carried around her heart since losing her brother had somehow been supplanted by unrecognizable feelings: pleasant, not painful, but new and a little intimidating.
She looked over at Cú. He was chewing on a shoe. Tynan’s shoe.
As rapidly as the tears and pain bloomed, the sight of her hound filled the dark and lonely space in her and triggered a warmth that deserved a smile.
Tynan.
Muireann moved from the harp and stretched out on the carpet. She stared up at the ceiling in a futile attempt at inspiration.
What was she going to do about Tynan?
Chapter Nineteen
Muireann smoothed her hands over the pockets of her jeans and opened the top button on her silk shirt. She glossed her lips and brushed blush on her cheekbones. She needed to look the part of a serious customer with just enough feminine appeal to keep Ian off balance. She could play nice, even with Ian Feeney, if necessity demanded.
Threatening him with her dog had only made relations worse, but she hoped he was over the humiliation or had begun to see humor in it. She doubted either scenario, but choices were spare today.
The hard part was keeping thoughts organized, but she set her jaw and her resolve as she pulled open the glass door to the Fisherman’s Bank.
Nora Walshe looked over her bifocals with raised brows. She gave a wry grin.
Muireann had never seen Walshe looking so unkempt. Her eyes were red rimmed, her hair flattened to one side of her head, and her makeup looked as though it had been applied by a toddler with finger-paints.
In the years that Walshe had been operating the front desk of the bank, Muireann had only spoken to her a half dozen times. Not that Muireann had tried to avoid her or be openly unfriendly, but Nora kept to herself and seemed to work hard at remaining aloof.
This morning it looked as though Walshe needed a friend, and soon.
“If you’re looking for the bank manager, he’s not in,” she said with a gravelly voice and continued to type at her computer.
Muireann glanced past Nora’s desk and into the glass-encased back office. It was empty. Feeney was not there. Her pulse slowed a notch. “When do you expect him?”
“He’s a snake. You never know when he might come slithering in.” Her tone was pure vitriol. Muireann’s curiosity accelerated into the danger zone. Could she coax Walshe to her side of things?
Muireann let herself breathe normally. “I need your help.”
“Feeney finds out I’ve assisted you in any way, he’ll have a stroke,” Walshe said as she put a file away in her desk drawer. “What can I do for you?”
“I want to buy the Ó Mháille place.” Muireann held out the clipping from the newspaper, said a silent prayer, and continued. “It says here ‘all serious offers will be considered.’ Well, this is mine.”
Nora rolled her eyes and looked as though the effort caused her head to spin. “Feeney won’t let you.” She searched in her purse for something. “Dammit, I was sure I had some headache pills in here,” she said. “I can’t believe I drank that much last night. I vaguely remember Ian giving me a lift home, threatening me if I talked to you. He has no right.”.
“He doesn’t need to know I’m the one behind the offer. With your help, I can do it under another name.”
Walshe clenched her teeth and shook her head. “Look, I’d like nothing more than to screw Feeney over this, but I’m not sure how we’d pull it off. It would mean my job.”
Muireann sat down next to Walshe’s desk. “I don’t want to ask you to do this if you really think he’ll fire you.” Nevertheless, she was determined to ask anyway.
Walshe picked up a pen and wrote an amount on a sticky note pad. She ripped it off and handed it to Muireann. “Don’t let Feeney know you got this from me, or I’ll be back in Belfast selling sausages out of my father’s butcher shop.”
“Thanks…I owe you.” She got up to leave.
“Oh, and Muireann, one more thing. That fellow, Sloane, he seems to need to sell this place. I got curious and found out some facts. He’s in the process of buying a business in Boston, but he’s under pressure to come up with the money soon. It looks like he’s out of cash and really needs to unload Bertie’s land to break even. Feeney will best your offer by a mile.”
A pain shot through Muireann. She didn’t like to be reminded of how she was going to banjax Tynan’s plans. “Yeah, I guess he isn’t inclined to donate it to my cause.” She didn’t want to hurt Tynan, but this cause was bigger than any one individual. Surely he’d find a way to pay for his project. After all, he hadn’t planned on making a windfall here until Bertie died.
She took another look at the amount Walshe had jotted on the note. “I can handle this. You might say I’ve got an angel helping me.”
Nora bit her lower lip as though trying to stop her mouth from working. “This is a huge breach of confidentiality, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Feeney is determined to have that two hectares. I thought at first he wanted to pave over that plot and make a point about it not being anything special. You know, his people weren’t exactly friendly toward the Irish back in the day. And then there’s the legends—selkies, fairies, pagans—all that. But that’s not the real motivation.”
Muireann held her tongue to keep from saying something in defense of pagans and selkies.
Walshe looked over her shoulder with a nervous glance before she continued. “He has a deal to resell as soon as Sloane signs on the dotted line. And Ian Feeney, the gobshite, stands to make a very substantial profit.”
A cold grip of suspicion coiled in Muireann’s gut. She hated to ask but needed to know what Feeney was planning. “Who is he reselling to?”
“Consolidated Fisheries Consortium,” Walshe whispered. “Industrial fishers. Japanese. They need access to the coast and O’Malley’s land is the last bit standing in the way.”
“No,” Muireann choked. “He can’t. They can’t.”
“Oh, yes, they can. As soon as they have clear title to the place, the road crew will show up and—”
“That’s not possible.” Muireann stopped her. “All the land around it belongs to other people, farmers, fishermen, neighbors I’ve known all my life. They wouldn’t sell out.” Tears threatened and Muireann had to stop herself from screaming.
“All I know,” Walshe said, “is that this Japanese company has more money than anyone’s seen around here in a very long time. People are struggling and who knows what you’d do when pressured like that.”
“If the land is all that valuable, why doesn’t Tynan hold out for more money?”
“Feeney hasn’t told him any of this and he thinks I’m sworn to secrecy. I might have been until last night.”
“I’m countering Feeney’s offer. Don’t let Tynan Sloane come in here and sign papers until you hear from me. Please Nora,” Muireann begged and headed out the door.
****
Ty barely had the patience to wait until noon to call Boston. He felt foolish with a giddy sense of promise. His mind spun and wove threads together in patterns he thought might color the rest of his life.
Muireann.
He loved her. He would have her. He’d decided. He would find other chances to own a pub, but there would not be another Muireann, anothe
r woman who could capture his heart and his imagination in her decisive way.
Ty glanced at his phone. The time read seven a.m. Boston time. Flann and Cade were late sleepers and likely wouldn’t answer, but he had made a decision and needed to follow through before he lost his nerve.
He punched in the numbers for his little sister’s mobile. You’ve reached Flann’s mobile. She’s probably left me in her fiddle case, but if you leave a message, she’ll at least feel guilty about not answering. Flannery’s voice always brought a smile to his heart. “Flann, pick up, its meself.”
The phone clicked and he heard a scuffle in the background. “Wait, don’t hang up. I’m here,” she shouted breathless into his ear. He waited. “Ty—Oh, damn—Sorry. Feck the stupid thing. Hey, stranger…” Ty was just glad she had a mobile at all. He never expected her to actually answer it.
“Still there? Can ya hear me?”
“Flann, I can hear you just fine. Thanks for picking up,” Ty said through a stifled laugh. “Where are you?”
“Ty, it’s the middle of the night. Where do you think I’d be?”
“It’s past seven, Flann. The sun must be up…even in Boston.”
“Oh, right. It is. Anyway, we’re home. In bed. Cade, wake up. It’s Ty callin’ from Ireland.”
“Put him on, would you?” Ty asked.
“Ha, that’s short shrift. Don’t you want to know what’s been going on here?”
Of course he did. And he’d best listen to her. He wanted her in a good mood when he explained his plans. “How’s my niece-nephew?”
“You won’t believe where we went last night. So I’ll tell you. We were at childbirth class.”
Ty tried to picture this. “I’m impressed. How’s Cade handling it?”
“It was his idea. He’s totally into the whole crazy business.” She laughed and it warmed Tynan’s heart to hear her so ebullient. “I sort of had the idea I’d be in a drug-induced coma for the whole episode.”
He heard a man’s voice in the background. “This is great, Ty. You should try it.”
“We miss you. When ya comin’ home?” Flann asked. “Did you have the fires on St. John’s eve? Did you enjoy the solstice?”