by Cathy Kelly
‘I have missed this country,’ Conal said loudly. ‘The banter, the fun—’
‘The hand-to-hand combat,’ Cari said.
Somehow they got through dinner, Cari increasingly jolted by this good-looking, charming, witty man who turned out to be a doctor with a marvellous career in immunology, was just as clever as Jeff, had joined a cancer research lab in Dublin after what appeared to have been a stellar career in France and did not have baby sick on any part of him. It was clear that he loved the baby and when Anna brought the little mite back down after a tiny snooze – a gurgling and adorable creature called Jasmine – even Cari allowed herself to melt enough to hold the baby in her arms and croon little murmuring noises into that little squashed-up face.
‘I didn’t think you’d be good with children,’ whispered Conal. ‘I thought you’d be more of the put-them-in-a-pot-and-boil-them-and-eat-them type.’
‘I only do that on Tuesdays,’ said Cari sweetly. ‘The weekends I save for putting people on the rack, general torture, inquisition sort of stuff. Have you seen my shoes, for example? I trample on people with them.’
She lifted out a foot shod in her favourite new shoes, leather weapons of purple and black with a spike heel so nut-crackingly sharp that it would frighten any other man. Conal’s dark eyebrows raised. His eyes were a steely grey, she realised. Not unfathomable at all, indecently glittering at her, implying all the wicked things he’d like to do to her. Cari swallowed. She must stop this. It was the mummy porn – she should have given all of those ones to Declan. There had to be some benefits to being the senior editor.
She nuzzled baby Jasmine, adoring the scent of baby and telling herself that this life wasn’t for her but oh, there was something about Jasmine’s soft cheeks and the way her tiny pink, almost translucent, fingers clung to Cari’s index finger that made her want to well up inside.
She could live without a man – had done. But this? She spent so little time with small children because none of her friends had babies – or was it that she didn’t spend time with friends who had babies on purpose? Briefly she allowed herself to understand the savage hunger in Jojo for her own child. Then she put that to the back of her mind. Nearly a quarter of people lived alone – she could handle that. She liked cats. She would get one or two. Rescue cats. Rescued from life, like her.
She looked up to find Conal watching her, eyes hooded, assessing and sexy. The lizard part of Cari’s brain leapt from baby to baby-maker in a second.
Why this, why now?
‘You like the shoes, then?’ she said to cover up her confusion, still holding Jasmine tightly but angling her foot so the pointy end of the spike looked at its most lethal. Shoes, she often felt, were women’s way of projecting their power. A weapon by any other name, they said: ‘I can be as tall as you with these on and if you annoy me, I will step all over your carcass in these shoes.’
‘I like them very much,’ said Conal. ‘But it would be rude for me to rip them off and caress your ankles flirtatiously at my brother and sister-in-law’s table.’
‘You call this flirting?’ Cari asked in fake surprise, handing Jasmine over to him in a sneaky move.
Babies always separated the men from the boys, she found. So many pretend-macho men fell apart when faced with a small child because they were scared the baby would be sick on them or require a nappy change, all anathema to men who did Iron Men competitions, swam fast miles in dirty water and cycled hundreds of kilometres in their own sweat every weekend.
To her amazement, Conal took the baby expertly, cuddling her against his shoulder, holding her precious little head perfectly so it wouldn’t fall back.
‘You look good like that,’ she said, suddenly not joking at all. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and a human desire to populate the earth hit her over the head like a caveman wielding a club.
‘I like children and I love this little darling,’ he said and he wasn’t joking either.
And it was that moment, which wasn’t laden with teasing or joking or flirting, that made Cari Brannigan think she might be falling in serious lust with Jeff’s brother. How exactly had that happened? She had sealed her heart over in case any man might slip through when Barney dumped her. Now this guy seemed to be worming his way in in spite of her best efforts to repel him. Worse, he was holding a baby and the combination of man and baby was making her breathe faster.
‘Wine.’ She held out her glass and startled Jeff.
‘Thought you’d driven and weren’t drinking.’
‘Changed my mind,’ said Cari, because she could hardly say bringing the car had simply been an excuse to leave early. ‘The car’s just outside. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.’
The night flew. Jeff and Conal had clearly not spent enough time together since he’d come back to Ireland and Jeff was madly keen to talk to his brother, even though Conal wanted to talk to Cari.
‘Jeff, you’re monopolising Conal,’ said Anna in exasperation, when she came back from putting Jasmine up to bed again to find the same discussion going on, and Cari beginning to tidy up.
‘I agree,’ said Conal. ‘Why don’t you two sit and relax while myself and Cari wash up.’
‘Good idea,’ said Cari before realising that it wasn’t – Jeff had a long galley kitchen which would not accommodate herself and this large, disturbing man. She had to save herself from sheer lust.
‘Actually, you sit and talk to Anna and Conal and I’ll tidy,’ she contradicted herself.
‘No, sweetums,’ Conal said quietly, ‘I need you all to myself. The blind dates must talk or else it insults their hosts who set the whole thing up.’
‘I might be a bad washer upper,’ said Cari.
‘I wash, you dry.’
‘No, mister: I wash, you dry. I hate drying.’
‘I hate washing,’ Conal said, ‘unless it’s in the bath—’
‘You have such a one-track mind,’ Cari said. ‘What did you say you were researching a cure to?’ she added sweetly. ‘Sexually transmitted diseases?’
She heard Anna laugh out loud.
‘You did say she was funny,’ Conal said to his sister-in-law. ‘Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise.’ Then, in a quieter voice to Cari, he said: ‘If I did have syphilis or some other STD, and I don’t, thankfully, we would need to be doing more than washing up for you to contract it. But we could manage, if I put you down on this countertop,’ he said thoughtfully, grabbing her waist with both strong arms and gazing at her as if he were thinking of picking her up—
‘Let me go—’ she growled.
‘Only teasing, buttercup,’ he said.
‘Don’t call me buttercup!’
He let her go reluctantly and she began to fill the sink with water. ‘Sorry about the crack about STDs, it was in bad taste.’
‘You washing or drying?’ he said.
Cari sighed. ‘Since you’ll probably have to wash your hands ten times before we can start as if you’re scrubbing in for an appendectomy, you might as well wash.’
‘I don’t do appendectomies,’ he said with a filthy grin, ‘but I know exactly where it is and I could show you later.’
‘Bet you played doctors and nurses will all the little girls,’ Cari grumbled.
‘Only the ones I liked.’
For once, Jasmine slept, and, taking advantage of that fact, Anna and Jeff were asleep on the couch by the time Cari and Conal emerged from the kitchen. Jeff was open-mouthed and snoring.
‘Poor things. I’ll go,’ whispered Cari. ‘I can hail a taxi on the street or use an App.’
‘I’ll drive you,’ said Conal. ‘I brought my car too, so no booze.’
They shut the front door quietly behind them, and Conal locked the second lock from a set of keys on his keyring. Cari wondered how many places he had keys to and then berated herself for such a thought. He was just the sort of man to spend his time in Paris with women superglued to him. He was sexy, funny and clever, despite her taunting. Far t
oo sexy, funny and clever. She needed to get away from him.
Then he led her to a car parked halfway down the street: a low-slung vintage thing in a fiery red with a long, low bonnet and fat wheels.
Cari liked it but didn’t want to admit it. Her seven-year-old white Mistubishi, parked four cars up, looked very tame in comparison.
The steering wheel was on the other side, which must have made it tricky to drive in Ireland, Cari figured.
‘Couldn’t afford a new one?’ she teased, as he unlocked the passenger door, ‘Or are you just in love with old things? Do you bring out the original Twister for dates?’
‘I do like older, classic things,’ he said, grinning, ‘That’s why I like you, otherwise I’d be like most thirty-seven-year-old men and be dating a twenty-five-year-old.’
‘Twenty-five-year-olds don’t like American muscle cars,’ she snapped back.
He slipped into the low-slung seat beside her, his seat shoved back to accommodate his long legs. ‘You do know what it is,’ he said, impressed.
‘Did a book on them once. Seventies Corvette?’
‘Stingray L82,’ he said with a certain reverence.
‘Now I know why you go on blind dates: you’re a car nerd,’ Cari groaned, as he fired up the car and she tried not to be impressed by what sounded like a rocket engine under the bonnet.
‘The V-8 rumble,’ he said proudly.
‘You brought it over from France?’
‘Yeah, the left-hand drive was fine there but I may have to give up on it here.’
He sounded genuinely sad and Cari thought of Jeff telling her that his brother had been a bit of a nerd. She’d been a book nerd and could understand how being obsessed with something, obviously science in his case, could isolate you. Maybe dreaming about cool cars had been his release.
‘How fast does it go?’ she asked. ‘And no lengthy discussions on horse power or cylinders or any of that crap.’
‘Very fast,’ he said, shifting a hand onto the gear stick. ‘Like me.’
‘Fast, are you? Has that line ever worked in the whole history of corny chat-up lines?’
‘Not always. Do you know, the NASA boys drove these cars when they were working on the space programme – imagine, astronauts riding to work in this to go into space.’
‘You are a small boy,’ she said, grinning at him.
For the first time that evening, his face wasn’t amused or smiling. ‘Yeah, small boy, that’s me,’ he said grimly.
Realising she’d touched some nerve, Cari did a conversational swerve.
‘So you are actually curing cancer.’
‘Part of a vast worldwide team who are trying to,’ he said, concentrating on the road. ‘Our lab is doing specific research but the results are important to all research labs.’
‘Wow. I’ve never been with a doctor before,’ said Cari, then quickly amended it to ‘I’ve never been out with a doctor before.’
‘First answer stands,’ he murmured. ‘Being a medic is handy as I can tell you what bit I’m touching as I touch it but I’m in the lab permanently these days, not a clinician.’
‘Most guys have a limited triangular area of expertise: kissing, hands on boobs, then straight to procreation central,’ said Cari idly, ‘so medical science is not required.’
‘Tell me,’ he said, one big hand on the gearstick. ‘Have the guys you’ve gone out with always done the triangular area of expertise? Kissing, breasts and, er, the procreation area?’
Cari knew she shouldn’t have said that. The downside of not having dated in so long – she had no idea how to behave and her filter was permanently switched to off.
‘Well … it’s classic male, isn’t it?’ she stammered.
‘Not this classic male,’ he said, and she could have sworn his voice slipped from baritone into a lower register. ‘People who study anatomy see the body as an exquisite instrument and it needs to be treated as such.’
Cari knew this was all her fault and she had to change the conversation soon.
‘Sorry, let’s change the subject. That previous conversation was just an occupational hazard: myself and Declan, the other editor, are always reviewing mummy porn from the slush pile and you get so bored with it, you forget that everyone doesn’t talk about sex like some people discuss shopping lists. We have to divide it up and send it off if it’s any good – there are different divisions: serious bondage, semi-serious bondage, phone-the-police-because-these-people-are-clearly-nuts, you know …’ She realised she was babbling and this was getting worse.
They had topped at a red light and Conal stared at her. ‘What is this mummy porn?’ he said, fascinated.
‘Oh, come on, seriously,’ said Cari. ‘Everyone knows.’
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I mean, do you know what Pembrolizumab is?’ he asked.
‘A new capital city? One of Saturn’s rings?’
‘It’s an immuotherapy drug, pretty ground-breaking. Developing immunotherapy treatment is what I do. So mummy porn, utterly fascinating as it sounds, is not on my mental radar. Jeff calls me a nerd and he’s right – I am obsessed with what I do. I think all scientists are. You are going to hate me for saying this but I am not a reader unless it’s about science. But, I could change that with the … er … mummy porn stuff …?’
And then, as the lights turned green, he looked at her with a look so hot that Cari giggled. The car made its loud rumbling sound.
‘It’s an entire new genre of hot books where thirty-something billionaires with dark secrets and possible psychological issues that might need medicating tie up virginal twenty-year-olds and hit them with riding crops.’
She watched his face to see his reaction.
‘Really?’
She was gratified to see that he looked astonished. ‘Why twenty-year-olds? And what’s with the riding crops?’
Cari felt a wild desire to throw herself onto his lap. A normal man who made her feel good for the first time in three years and didn’t want a riding crop. Due to not actually having a relationship with a real man in three years, she’d fallen into the trap of assuming that all men wanted the televisual and mummy porn standard of virginal twenty-somethings and not used up and dried-out women of thirty-four.
‘Twenty-year-olds in books have never had sex – apparently.’
‘I don’t believe that for a moment.’ Conal was scathing.
‘Exactly!’ she said. ‘I’m fed up with reading about all these virgins. The office hasn’t room for all the manuscripts that keep pouring in. Can’t they be older and have hot sex without whips and handcuffs?’
‘Ah, you never mentioned handcuffs,’ Conal teased, almost in a growl. ‘Pink furry ones … I could go for that.’
‘Pervert. Take a left here,’ she directed.
‘Or a blindfold …’
Cari could not say how utterly enticing the notion of playing with a blindfold with Conal was, only he’d be wearing it.
‘We’re here,’ she said as the car turned into her road.
‘I might have to come in and have a cold shower.’
‘Oh please, you really are a pervert,’ she said again, and was about to hop out of the car but one strong arm across her lap stopped her.
‘Can we have a date and continue this fascinating conversation,’ he said, mouth close to hers.
‘Only if we don’t talk about this stuff,’ she said, feeling a flush of embarrassment. What sort of woman would he think she was? The sort who hadn’t had a date in three years and read too much mummy porn, that’s what. And Cari was not that sort of woman. He’d merely got her on a bad day when she was hormonal and deprived and had a man who gave off the sexual heat of two normal men.
‘We could see something in the concert hall, a classical recital,’ she said desperately, determined to regain lost ground and show her cultural interests.
‘Great,’ he beamed. ‘Or opera.’ Now he sounded really excited.
How lovely, a man who liked opera.
‘Not Madame Butterfly,’ she said suddenly. ‘Always makes me want to cry.’
‘But I’d comfort you,’ said Conal gently.
‘Nobody can comfort you after Madame Butterfly,’ Cari said bleakly. ‘It cuts to the bone.’ And she’d clambered out of the car, with the feeling that Conal was dangerous and exciting and bad for her nerves.
Love hurt, she wasn’t risking it again.
No dates for him. She was going in to read a crime novel: nothing like dead bodies, bad guys and a forensic pathologist weighing up dead people’s brains to stifle any sexual urges.
Barney listened to the water cooler chat about the weekend.
Someone from new advertising accounts, one of the newbies, was wittering on about a match they’d been to: in Paris. Stade de France, the buzz, a few drinks beforehand and a glorious celebratory dinner in the Marais near their hotel when Munster won.
‘Ten points,’ the newbie was saying. ‘We hammered them!’
‘You all look like death microwaved up. Did every single one of you get hammered too, with booze this time?’ asked another newbie, this one a woman, the girl with the long black hair who reminded him of Cari every time he saw her. Her name was Saskia and she was tall too, strode along in her advertising copy-writer standard gear of skinny jeans, cool shoes and a fashionable top, lean legs eating up the miles of corridors in Bentleys DB4. She was going places too. Not cut from the same cloth as many of the new hires who’d all got relatives in the business and had got in through the back door.
Saskia was possibly the first in her family to go to college, he remembered, and she made mincemeat of the art college boys with the old school ties, taking no prisoners.
The newbie guy backtracked: Saskia was gorgeous, not Cari gorgeous but still pretty damn good-looking, and Barney was sure there was a secret bet going to see who could get a date with her first. Sexual harassment law had not reached advertising as hard as it had reached other businesses. He had a pal in a bank who’d have been canned if he so much as winked at a female colleague.
Traci phoned him as he walked back to the office he shared with another lawyer. The photo on his phone changed to their wedding photo. Every time Barney changed it to a different picture for when she called, she nabbed his phone and changed it back. As if she never wanted him to forget that day.