“I don’t know, Sin.” I stare at the fireplace as if the answer to our very real problem is hidden in the flames. “What do you think Aunt Patricia would say if she knew you were thinking about turning Tásúildun into a hotel? Do you think she would be happy knowing that her home, her passion, was going to be transformed into a crass commercial venture? It makes me sad, down-to-my-soul sad, to even think about doing anything that would strip Tásúildun of her magic, her grandeur.” I sigh.
The waiter returns with the charge slip and Sin’s credit card. Sin signs the bill, slips his credit card into his wallet, and lifts his jacket off the back of his chair.
“Don’t make your mind up just yet,” he says, walking around the table to pull my chair out. “There’s something I would like to show you first.”
Sin takes my arm and leads me out of the hotel. We follow a snaking gravel path around the main lodge and the hotel’s newer, modern wing, and continue following it through the gardens, until we arrive at a pier extending out over Lough Eske. A helicopter is waiting on a helipad built at the end of the pier.
“Have you ever seen Tásúildun from the air?”
I shake my head.
“Then you are in for a marvelous treat.”
We board the helicopter. The passenger compartment is more luxurious than business class on most airlines, with wide, leather upholstered seats and plush, wall-to-wall carpet. Sin helps me adjust my lap belt before taking a seat in the chair across the aisle.
“This helicopter has advanced acoustics and vibration suppressors, which means the cabin will be much quieter than most helicopter cabins.” Sin slides his seatbelt buckle in until it clicks. “That means we will be able to talk without having to wear headsets.”
“Is this the way you always travel?”
He chuckles.
“Not always. My company has a contract with an executive aeronautical service, though this is definitely one of the nicer helicopters in the fleet.”
The helicopter vibrates. I hear a muffled thwack-thwack-thwack. I look out the window and realize with a start that we are already lifting off. The lake is churning, capped with white peaks as the helicopter’s blades spin around and around, pushing air down.
We climb straight up, up, up and then we are moving forward, speeding over the tops of trees, rolling hills, villages filled with crayon-box colorful cottages. We turn north and follow the coast.
“This is amazing.” I can’t look away. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.”
Less than fifteen minutes later, two television monitors swing down from the ceiling and the pilot’s voice fills the compartment.
“Mister Burroughes, Miss Maxwell,” he says. “I have turned on the nose camera. Please direct your attention to the monitors as we are approaching Tásúildun.”
I can barely contain my squeal of excitement as I watch the dark gray speck in the middle of the screen grow larger and take the shape of Tásúildun. The camera zooms in close enough for me to count each of the tall, octagonal chimneys.
“Look,” I say, pointing. “Did you know there were cupid faces carved into the stone pediments over each of the windows?”
Sin squints at the screen.
“No.” He smiles at me. “Perhaps we could have an artist do a rendering and use it as a logo for branding.”
Logo? Branding? Who cares about logos and branding when you’re flying in a helicopter over a glorious Irish castle?
The helicopter circles around and around, affording us the opportunity to see the castle from all sides. The oldest section with towers looming over the sea, towers too dangerous to inhabit but intact enough to spark the imagination of days of knights and female pirates. The front hall, the newest section, with the façade of a grand country manor home. The sides, where the old and new were cobbled together.
We are circling back around to the front when I spy Mrs. McGregor standing in the kitchen garden, her hand pressed to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun. She waves at us.
“Look, Sin! It’s Mrs. McGregor!”
I hold my iPhone against the window and start filming a video. A split second later, Mrs. McGregor comes into view. From up here, she looks like a dollhouse doll, with her teensy-tiny shawl wrapped around her shoulders.
I know she can’t see me but I wave back anyway. The helicopter follows Tásúildun’s drive, whizzes over the standing stone, and then we are flying over furze-covered hills.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” Sin says, leaning closer. “The estate extends over one hundred acres, far beyond these hills. Nearly one hundred untouched acres of that could be developed into luxury cottages, a five-star restaurant, a wellness center and spa, hiking trails. The possibilities are endless.” He reaches across the aisle and grabs my hand, squeezing it. “Think about it, Tara. With the right financial backing, we could turn Tásúildun into a premier vacation destination and raise enough money to keep the castle in lead eavestroughs for the rest of our lives.”
I look at Sin, see the sincere enthusiasm shining in his eyes, and the apprehension squeezing my heart like a vise-grip relaxes.
“It might work.”
Sin is out of his seat, unfastening my seatbelt, and pulling me into his arms before I’ve even finished talking. He kisses me full on the lips, hard and quick. So quick, there’s no time for me to close my eyes or pop my leg, no time for my butterfly nerves to fully develop and start fluttering about inside my belly.
I sit back down and stare out the window, but the landscape is a blur. I pinch my leg good and hard just to make sure I am actually awake, that I am not dreaming this afternoon with Sin. I pinch harder.
Ouch. Yep, I am definitely awake.
Of course you are awake, you fool. Do you really think you would dream about a man as gorgeous as Sin Burroughes kissing you like . . . like a man who hates kissing?
Sweet Jesus! There’s a terrible, awful, rotten, no-good, miserable thought: a sexy-as-sin man born without a libido. What would be the point?
No, God doesn’t make those sorts of mistakes.
What about the pipefish? The starfish? They’re fish, but they can’t swim. What about the ostrich and the penguin? Are you telling me God meant to create flightless birds?
Since I refuse to believe a being powerful enough to create the sun, the moon, the earth, and each of the stars twinkling in the sky, could make a mistake, I have to assume Sin has the ability to muster passion—just not with me.
Sin isn’t attracted to me.
I would have expected such a realization to feel like a shotgun blast to my ego, but the truth is my initial attraction to Sin has faded faster than a ten-dollar spray tan.
Chapter Twenty-six
By the time Sin maneuvers his sleek car off the main road and onto the drive leading to Tásúildun the sky resembles a deep purple curtain with just a ribbon of weak golden light peeking out at the bottom. Aidan is backing into a parking space as we pull up to the castle.
“Right,” Sin mutters. “Perhaps it would be best if we didn’t mention our plan to Aidan.”
I look at him, but I must not do a good job of hiding my emotions because he starts talking faster than a Baptist preacher at a tent revival.
“Just until I have had time to fly to London to see if I can secure the financial backing necessary for such an ambitious endeavor.” He smiles one of his smooth smiles. “Just give me two weeks.”
“I don’t know if I am comfortable keeping such a big secret from Aidan. It feels dishonest.”
His smile fades. “Don’t you trust me?”
I remember Manderley’s text. An expensive suit and a bouquet of flowers can hide a multitude of sins.
“It’s not a matter of trust, Sin.”
“What is it then?” He looks out the window at Aidan’s car and back at me. “Oh, I see.”
“What? What do you see?”
“You’re in love with Gallagher.”
“What?” I snort. “In love
?”
“Stupid me.” He smiles again, only this time it’s a sad smile. “I came here hoping I stood a chance, slender as it might be, to win your friendship and impress you with my business acumen.”
“You have my friendship, Sin. As to your business acumen, I am extremely impressed.”
“Really? Enough to choose me over Gallagher?” He shakes his head. “It’s just like when we were kids. You will always choose running wild with Aidan over playing chess with me.”
“That’s not true!” My words sound forced, false, even to my ears. “I remember playing chess with you in the library several times. I always lost.”
“I just want a fair crack at it, Tara. That’s all.”
Is he talking about winning my friendship or our aunt’s castle, I wonder. Either way, it makes me sad to think of little knock-kneed Rhys, all alone, staring out the library window as I ran off with Aidan.
“Fine,” I say. “I won’t tell Aidan about your hotel scheme until you’ve had some time to see if it is financially viable. You have two weeks. No longer. Aidan deserves a fair crack, too.”
“Brilliant!”
He climbs out of the car and hurries around to open my door. I get out and immediately look over at Aidan leaning against his Range Rover. My skin flushes with guilty heat.
Aidan takes one look at my body-con dress and nose-bleed high heels, Sin’s guiding hand on the small of my back, and his face hardens.
“How are you, Aidan?” Sin says. “Sorry we didn’t invite you along, but . . .”
Aidan skewers him with a stare so sharp, so pointedly hostile, I check to make sure he hasn’t drawn blood.
“Right then,” Sin says. “I’ll just pop into the kitchen and start the kettle to boil.”
Sin retreats into the castle faster than green grass through a goose. Coward.
“So, ya went out with Oxford?”
“He took me to lunch.”
“After we spent the night together?”
“What does that mean?” Guilt sharpens my tone. “You walked me home from school so I am not allowed to sit beside anyone else in the cafeteria?”
“I did a whole lot more than walk you home from school, banphrionsa, but thanks for letting me know how little it meant to ya. Thanks a million.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did ya mean, then?”
“Our night on the lake was”—my face flushes with heat because, well, it ain’t fittin’ to talk about what happens between a man and a woman when they’re alone together, naked as the day the Lord made them, it just ain’t fittin’—“special. Mighty special. But that doesn’t mean you own me. You don’t own me, Aidan Gallagher. If I want to spend the day with Rhys bleedin’ Burroughes, I will!”
“I never said I wanted to own ya, Tara,” he says, quietly. “Is that the sort of man ya think I am? The sort that would try to control ya?”
He’s not yelling or pitching a big fit, though I almost wish he would because the calm, controlled Aidan feels far more threatening than the fists-flying, legs-sweeping brute I saw in the cage that day at Bánánach Brew Farms.
“That’s not what I meant. Let me explain.”
“Don’t bother,” he says. “I waited ten years to catch you between ponces. I won’t be waiting another ten years.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair? What are ya on about?” He looks incredulous. “I’ll tell ya what’s not fair. It only takes a bouquet of flowers to make you forget all about me. Am I really that unimportant to you, Tara?”
I want to cry out, you’re the one who said you couldn’t be my Prince Charming, but it sounds petulant and juvenile in my head.
“You are important to me, Aidan.” I grab his sleeve, but he pulls it away. Gently. “I just didn’t think I was that important to you.”
“Are ya fecking kidding me? Why would ya think that? Because I don’t leave ya alone at a dance to run off with me mates? Or tell ya to lose weight? Or is it because I don’t play the fiddle and try to take advantage of you when you’ve had one too many pints of Guinness?”
“Well, you don’t play the fiddle anyway . . .”
I regret the words as soon as I say them. Words are like bullets though, once they’re out of the gun there’s no sucking ’em back in.
“Is that what ya think, then? That I took advantage of ya? That I don’t care about you?”
“I don’t know how you feel about me because you haven’t told me.”
“Maybe ya don’t know how to listen.”
He shakes his head, the same way my daddy shook his head when I told him I was going to college in Texas, and it tears through my heart like a hot knife through butter. I hear my daddy’s voice in my head, Tara, dahlin’, you’re just too darned headstrong for your own good.
Aidan climbs into his Range Rover, starts the engine, and drives away. No big dramatic scene. No spinning tires and spitting gravel. Just red taillights fading into darkness.
* * *
I see those taillights later, as I am lying in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, listening for the sound of Aidan’s footsteps in the hallway. I see the disappointed look on his face, the broad expanse of his back as he is walking away, and the bright red taillights of his SUV driving off into the night, like a video clip stuck on a perpetual loop. Playing over and over and over.
Aidan was right. I don’t listen. I hear, but I don’t listen. I didn’t listen to my daddy when he told me he loved me as much as my sisters. I didn’t listen to him when he told me he thought I was making a mistake studying radio, television, and film. I got all defensive and defiant because I mistook his concern for my happiness as doubt over my abilities. I thought he was telling me I wouldn’t be successful in radio, television, and film because I wasn’t as clever as Manderley or as personable as Emma Lee.
I didn’t listen to Grayson when he told me I wasn’t the sort of girl he was going to marry. He told me, maybe not in those exact words, but he definitely told me. I thought I could stomp through life in my cowboy boots, dying my hair crazy colors and rebelling against the Old Guard, and Grayson would just chuckle and say, That’s my dahlin’, Tara. Isn’t she just precious? The same way Rhett Butler chuckled over Scarlett O’Hara’s antics.
I didn’t listen to Aidan when he told me he liked me just as I was, pudgy-fudgy middle, frizzy hair, braces, and all. He told me he liked me when we were kids by spending his summers with me instead of his friends. He told me he liked me when he kissed me on the rocks below Tásúildun. He told me he liked me when he quietly listened to my silly childish woes and worries, never once laughing or teasing me. In dozens of quiet, meaningful ways, Aidan told me how much he cared for and respected me. I just didn’t listen.
Worst of all, I haven’t been listening to myself. I knew my daddy loved me—deep down in my bones, I knew. The day before I sent my enrollment deposit to the University of Texas, I was watching Super Soul Sunday on OWN and I had an epiphany. Oprah was interviewing this man who lost three of his limbs in a tragic accident. The man was talking about how nearly dying taught him about living, that he was lying up in his bed feeling sorry for himself when he suddenly had an epiphany that he was using his accident as an excuse not to look at what was really ailing him: lack of faith in himself and gratitude for what remained.
That’s when I had my epiphany. I realized there was only one person to blame for my pitiful low self-esteem: Tara Grace Maxwell. Daddy never told me I wasn’t as clever as Mandy or as sweet as Emma Lee. Daddy never said I wasn’t pleasing enough to be a good Southern girl. I said those things, in quiet, destructive whispers.
You’re too fat to be pretty.
Clever girls don’t read cookbooks.
Proper, pleasing Southern girls don’t wear overalls, catch frogs, go quail hunting, or eat the pecans out of a pecan pie with their fingers.
I knew then, on that Super Soul Sunday, that I was making Daddy my whipping boy, blaming him for the wounds I infli
cted myself. I was running off to Texas half-cocked because I didn’t have the courage to stay and admit I didn’t know who the hell I was or what the hell I wanted to do with my life, really do.
I didn’t listen to myself when I said, Girl, what are you doing with a man like Grayson? He’s never gonna make you happy, with his boring political aspirations and narrow worldview. He’ll put you in a pretty little box on the shelf in his family’s drawing room, another pretty little ornament in Grayson Calhoun’s privileged world. Is that what you want to be? A useless ornament? To be valued for your beauty instead of your substance?
I fall asleep, still listening for the sound of Aidan’s footsteps, and vowing, sincerely vowing, to listen to Tara Grace Maxwell and the people who really, truly love her.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“I have changed my mind.”
Sin is seated at his desk, pouring over spreadsheets. He leans back, pulls his stylish glasses off his handsome face, and frowns. “Sorry?”
“I don’t feel comfortable keeping our plan from Aidan. I think we should tell him about your idea to turn Tásúildun into a hotel.”
“I see.” He smiles with his mouth but not with his eyes and I know he isn’t pleased. “When did you want to tell him?”
“Now.”
“Now?”
“He’s in the kitchen,” I say. “Why don’t I put the kettle on? We can all sit down, have some apple cake, and talk about the situation openly and honestly. What do you say?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, in that case, I think it would be a grave mistake telling Gallagher about the plan before we have performed a thorough due diligence.”
“Why?”
“Gallagher strikes me as the sort of man who makes his mind up about someone—and something—rather quickly. Once formed, I suspect his opinion isn’t easily altered.”
“I disagree.”
“Is that so?” Sin rests his elbows on the arms of the desk chair and forms a steeple with his fingers. “How long do you think it takes for someone to form a first impression? An hour? Five minutes? Thirty seconds?”
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