by Holley Trent
Her friend responded, “Me, too. I love the way he chews on it when he’s thinking really hard.” She giggled. “I saw him with his girlfriend at the student store. She’s not even all that cute. I think she’s Dr. Carter’s T.A.”
“Ugh, that dinosaur. I wish he had retired before this semester. He makes folklore so booooring. What’s his girlfriend look like?”
“Olive Oyl.”
Carla seemed to remember seeing him with a tall, thin woman on campus one day, but in her haze hadn’t cared enough to connect the dots that she was his girlfriend. She wasn’t unattractive and she did seem smitten by him. Who wouldn’t be? For the rest of the term, those two girls made a point of crowding around him after nearly every class to ask questions that had already been answered in lecture.
The entire semester she was in his course, she’d never raised her hand to contribute a single time, and he’d never shone a spotlight on her by calling her out when she didn’t want to be, although he regularly did that to other students when he thought they weren’t paying attention. She had thought it unusual then.
She approached quietly and knelt at his bedside and placed a hand on his back. When he didn’t respond to the pressure, she slid her hand up to his shoulder and squeezed. He lifted his head slightly, blew his hair out of his face and appeared to concentrate hard for a moment. “What time is it?” he asked as he closed his eyes tight and turned over onto his back.
“Quarter after ten.” She strode over to the curtains to open them a few inches to let in some light.
“Mmm.” His eyelids drooped once more. “Feels like a quarter after hell.”
“If you want to sleep some more, it’s okay. I can just poke around the hotel or maybe go explore Dublin a bit.”
His bloodshot eyes flew open wider and he forced himself into an upright position. “I’m up. I’m going to take a shower and we can go. I just need some sun to reset my body clock.”
“Uh…” She gestured to the large picture window and the gray sky beyond it. “Not much sun to be had.”
He blew out a breath and rubbed his eyes. “That’s Ireland for you. Next thing you know it’ll be raining. And we’re without an umbrella.”
Chapter 10
As the fates would have it, the hotel gift shop had one large umbrella left. Grant and Carla crowded under, prepared to make a mad dash toward the airport terminals. Then he came to his senses.
“You know what?” he said. “Just wait here under the awning and I’ll run after the car and bring it around. It’s raining so fuckin’ hard I’m gonna get soaked even with the umbrella, and, well…”
She raised one eyebrow. “Well what?”
“I won’t scandalize anyone if my shirt gets wet. I’ve got to teach you how to dress for Ireland, woman.” He leaned back a bit, squinting at her. “Carla, are you not wearing a bra, love?”
She looked down at the white blouse she’d chosen after bathing and gave him a scathing look. “No. I don’t always anymore, especially not when I’m wearing a cami. I don’t really need one, and no one has complained…besides you.”
He returned her expression. “Oh, you need one, love, especially since you seem to be cold all the time.” He was unaffected by her continued glower. “I’m not especially conservative, love, but I have buttons.”
“I’m not a child.” She jutted out her chin. “And you don’t own me.”
As some pedestrians neared them and prepared to run out into the rain, he leaned in close and whispered with his lips nearly grazing her ear, “Let’s make one thing perfectly clear. When it comes to you I have absolutely no qualms about coming across as a possessive jackass. We can argue about it, but it’s not going to get you anywhere. Cope.” He ran off to fetch the car. The woman was going to drive him insane before he had a chance to rein her in. He’d seen the way the men in the lobby had ogled her naked legs and the way her dress clung to her hips as they passed through. Of course she was oblivious.
They stopped for a heavy lunch in Cabra, about half an hour from the airport, which was about how long it took for his teeth to stop chattering from the cold rain. It had soaked through his pants down into socks. Although it was nearly June, they’d had to turn the heat to full blast. “I’ve grown used to oppressive heat and humidity,” he said before shoveling his spoon into his thick stew. “Don’t know what I was thinking moving back here.”
“I’m sure you’ll adjust,” she sniped. She sucked her teeth and stared out the window.
He raised a brow at her attitude. “That’s what my friends told me about America when I first left here. Now I wonder why I ever feared going. Are you annoyed at me, love?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“Why?” He thought he knew why. He just wanted her to verbalize it.
She turned slowly away from the window and glared at him. “You’ll get further with me if you ask me things rather than tell me. I get enough of that shit from my brothers.”
“Oh, I see, but…” He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t you dare compare me to your brothers. They think they’re protecting you from the world, not that I can blame them. Me? I want you in the world, but on my terms.”
“And what are those terms, Grant?”
He huffed and shook his head. Where did my timid wallflower go?
She narrowed her eyes at him.
Maybe I pegged her wrong. Quiet doesn’t mean easy. How rough is she going to make it for me? He rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward over his stew. “I don’t think you like me enough for me to tell you.”
“I like you just fine,” she said huskily, lifting her foot and wedging it under the table between his thighs. She stopped just short of his jewels and picked up her fork with air of nonchalance. “Just don’t treat me like your child.”
Ah. He wrapped his fingers around her foot and gave it a gentle shove off his bench. “Love, I think you’re sensitive about a rather insignificant age difference…or more that I at one time had a teeny bit of authority over you. I may treat you like a trophy I’ll carefully guard, yes. Child? Never.”
The tension building up in the hinges of her lower jaw ebbed and she unclenched her fingers from the death grip she’d had on her fork. She laid it down and began to fiddle with the corner of her napkin. “Grant?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You can ask me whatever you want, love. You may or may not like the answer,” he said with a chuckle. He went back to breaking up large, tender chunks of beef with his spoon.
“The year I was in your class, you had a girlfriend.”
He ceased his attack on his stew and looked up at her.
Her expression was wary, but since she’d already stepped in it, so to speak, she spit it out. “I remember seeing you with her once or twice in passing on campus.”
“Yeah?”
“And…why did you break up? I know it’s none of my business, but–”
“But you want to know if she dumped me for being a possessive git?”
She nodded.
“No, quite the opposite. Honestly, I thought you were going to be the twelfth or so person to tell me who else she was shagging on campus.”
Carla cocked her head to the side and squinted. “What?”
“She dumped me. She said I’d grown distracted, and that it was all my fault.”
“She blamed you for her cheating?”
“Well, in a way I guess I’m to blame for her feeling scorned since I was less than attentive toward the end, even when she was right in front of me. I should have ended it, but I’d grown too comfortable. She helped me a lot in adjusting to being in the US. Seemed cruel to just dump her just because I was infatuated with someone else. I thought it would go away, but it didn’t.” He tented his fingers together and stared at her over them.
“Do you mean me?”
He nodded. “I told you that before in my living room. I wasn’t joking.”
Her face became a blank.
“That scare you?”
She picked up her glass of water and stared down into ice for a while as if expecting it to magically transform into something much stronger. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”
“I’m serious, Carla. I–” He flicked his hair back from his eyes then cracked his knuckles. “Never mind.” He slipped out of the bench and stood next to her side with his hand extended. “Come on. We’re expected. Don’t want to be late, and I have things to show you before you get to sleep tonight.”
She stared at his face for a few seconds and slowly slipped her hand into his.
He paid for their meals at the bar on the way out. When they were just outside the tavern doors, he said, “I can’t help how I feel. I don’t expect you to feel the same. I’ve been in love with you from afar for the better part of a decade, and that was before we were properly introduced.”
As he pulled the passenger door of the rental car open, she let his hand drop. “And what about now? You still think I’m so damned interesting?”
He glided the pad of one thumb along the edge of her jaw and looked down at her with hunger in his gaze. “And now…now I think I was justified.”
He gave her a gentle nudge into her seat, waited for her to pull her legs in, and shut the door. He walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk, using the open door as a shield while he caught his breath and smoothed the terrified expression off his face. Any man would be terrified in his shoes. His plan was to shock her, maybe scare her a little–to see if she could handle the kind of man he was at his worst.
He had her on the fast track to his happily ever after, but his idea of perfection may be a far cry from hers. So he’d push, lay it all on the line and hope she didn’t board a plane heading west with plans to never return.
* * * *
He loved her. Grant Fennell was in love with her–Carla Gill, the neurotic, irascible wallflower who’d nearly gone to jail because some woman wouldn’t shut up about the way her butt looked. On one hand, she was flattered. He was goddamned gorgeous, sexy as all get out and so smart. On the other hand, his intensity was concerning. While he’d been mostly laidback in the States, once they arrived in Ireland he seemed to have thrown some switch. Maybe it was nerves–she couldn’t say. Still, she thought he’d either make a god-awful boyfriend and the Atlantic between them would be a benefit, or he’d be amazing and no body of water could keep them apart. She’d reserve judgment.
“Are you happy you took the job offer?” she asked, hoping to mitigate the pall of tension in the car.
He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I’m feeling pretty neutral about it, truth be told.”
“Isn’t it what you want to be doing?”
“More or less. I just thought I’d be doing it in the US, so you can see why my homecoming would feel a tad bittersweet.”
She thought he was crazy. Ireland was beautiful. What did he think he was missing out on in the States? The uncontrolled urban sprawl? The piss-poor public transportation? For that matter, as she looked out her window she wondered how her ancestor had managed to give up his green home in exchange for an unknown continent.
The rain had finally let up by the time they arrived in Maynooth to stroll the campus where Grant would soon be employed.
“Well, this is it, love,” he said, weaving a possessive arm around her back as a cluster of young men walked past. They barely acknowledged her. “Not our alma mater, but it has a certain charm.”
“It is charming,” she said, ducking out from under his arm and giving him her best impersonation of her mom’s patented don’t-make-me-warn-you-again face. He had the nerve to wink at her.
When a couple of old bitties wearing rain caps and slickers puttered toward them, she grabbed an indiscreet handful of his rear. The old ladies tsk’d and averted their eyes as they passed.
“Now, now, love, let’s save it for the bedroom.” His voice was dry as he wrenched her fingers free of his pants.
“I think turnabout is fair play,” she mumbled.
“That’s not turnabout. That’s bloody evil and you know it. How deep does that capricious streak go, huh?”
“Deep enough.” They stopped to assess a statue. “Why, you scared?”
His incendiary leer made her want to be quite indecorous indeed, old bitties be damned.
When Grant got the keys to his new office from administration, they spent a few minutes looking out the window at his slightly obstructed view of campus. He shut the door and pressed her against it, lifting her shirts up to her armpits and mounding her breasts against his palms as he ravaged her mouth. He was leaning her back onto his naked desktop when someone knocked on the door. They quickly righted themselves as much as they could.
“This is becoming a theme,” he mumbled, opening the door.
“Shirley told me you were here visiting. Pleasure meeting you in person finally, Dr. Fennell,” the bespectacled man said as he extended his hand.
Grant gave it a hearty shake. The newcomer was quite squirrelly, constantly wringing his hands or adjusting his glasses whenever he wasn’t otherwise occupied.
“Yes, same here, Dr. Douglas. I appreciate your patience while I considered the job offer. It was a very generous package. I apologize for taking so long.”
Dr. Douglas put up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “No, no. I understand completely how it is. Potential tenure-track in only a year. That’s a big commitment! Say, who’s this?” He looked past Grant to Carla, who perched on the edge of the desk.
Grant blanched. “Carla, this is Dr. Douglas. He’s the dean of the history department.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” she said with her sweetest Southern-girl smile.
“Dr. Douglas, this is, uh, my fiancée, Carla Gill.”
She opened her mouth to object, but before she could voice it Grant hustled the smaller man out of the office. “Um, Dr. Douglas, I’d love for you to show me where the mailboxes are and we can firm up my start date. Uh, I’ll be right back, love.” He quickly closed the door.
She sat there on the desk for a few minutes fuming. Fiancée? Maybe he really was insane. So pretty, yet so very crazy. After thumping the heels of her boat shoes against the front of the desk for a while and not feeling any better for it, she jumped down and left.
Damn him.
Finding Grant would have been a simple matter of locating the department office, but she didn’t want to find him and instead stomped out the way they’d come in. When she found the rental car locked, she swore loudly. “I should have listened to Meg!” Kicking one of the formidable tires didn’t make her feel any better.
“Carla! Don’t run off like that!” Her fiancé jogged toward her with a graceful ease, holding the key fob extended. He pushed the button and unlocked the doors.
She poured herself into the seat, slammed the door, and sat there with arms crossed.
Grant entered on his own side. “Hey, love, I’d arranged for us to tour Maynooth Castle while we were here. They’re doing me a bit of favor.”
“Take me to my hotel.”
“I…well, certainly, I can, but will you let me explain?”
“Explain what?” She turned sideways to give him a good, hard stare, not that she could hold it for very long. He was chewing that delicious bottom lip and she started licking hers.
Focus, Carla.
“That we’re obviously operating on two different sets of assumptions?”
“Look, I had to tell a lot of little fibs to delay making a decision about this job. One of them was that I was in a relationship and wasn’t sure if my fiancée was willing to move. Of course, at the time I wasn’t actually seeing anyone. I figured when I got here I’d just tell them we couldn’t work it out. Anyhow, I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to spook ya.”
With those downcast eyes, he really did seem contrite. She sighed. “Any other stories I need to know before I step into something even more awkwar
d?”
“Well, no. Except that if you do decide to move, the university will pay for it. That was part of the package.”
“Me specifically?”
“My partner. You hopefully. Time sensitive, of course.”
Of course. He’s been my boyfriend for four days and already I’m being urged to make major life decisions. “Any other special perks?”
“A few that aren’t relevant at the moment.”
She’d have to take his word for it.
Chapter 11
The parish of Gallow was about a twenty-minute drive from Maynooth, and the two rode in a comfortable silence. Carla stared out the window at the passing greenery and Grant toyed with the fingers of her right hand with his left hand as he drove.
“It’s really pretty here,” she said finally as he steered onto R148. After her minor tantrum at the university, he had worried he was digging himself a hole he’d never be able to climb out of, and he wasn’t done digging yet. He’d need to tell her soon.
He stole a glance away from the road to examine her pleasant expression. “I suppose it is. I’m a native, so I guess I became immune to it.”
“Why did you stay away so long?”
He shrugged and turned off as if he were going toward the Kilcock golf course. “I guess I wanted to be someplace bigger. You know how if you’re lying in a small bed, if you spread out both arms, they’ll hang over the edges? That’s how I feel about Ireland.”
“I think there’s a certain allure to small, especially a place that has so much history. The US is so young in comparison–not counting the natives who were there first, of course.”
He glanced at her and marveled at the expression of wonder on her face. “Hey, Carla?”