Going to the Chapel

by Adriana Locke

  “Bam Bam, darlin’,” she’d answered, “I know you don’t want to hear it, but…we’re over.” Then she’d slipped on her flip flops, jumped out of the truck bed and walked home.

  Over the course of the past decade—since Duck, Tugboat and Bam Bam had rolled the dice and lost—there were countless others who had taken it upon themselves to vomit their affections all over Tate’s unwilling heart: one-night-stands who wanted more or seemingly-solid friendships that crumbled when the guy fell for her. She didn’t understand why these men couldn’t be content with what she could offer: the “Three Bs,” banging, banter, and bye. But something about her—something that she desperately wished she could identify—made them pursue “more” with her, and it had made her cagey over the years. It had made her angry. It had made her wary. It had made her so damn tired.

  But, dang it, it hadn’t diminished her need for male attention. Her appetite for physical intimacy was as sharp as ever, and woefully unmet.

  As a charter boat captain in the Florida Keys, Tate had ample opportunity to meet men because she essentially lived in a man’s world. In addition to the boatswain, deck hands, mechanics and steward on her own boat, the other charters in the area were mostly skippered and manned by, well, men. And, by and large, her clientele was male—mostly rich men, looking for a little bit of adventure surrounded by luxury. Tate was well-known for sniffing out the best spots for big-game fishing, and a charter with her wasn’t complete until her guests had hauled a Kingfish, Swordfish or Sailfish onto the marlin deck of her seventy-five-foot Mikelson yacht and yelled “Wahoo!”

  But crapping where she ate wasn’t really Tate’s style, which meant that her guests and co-workers were off-limits. Not to mention, Uncle Zeb, her guardian and de facto parent since the death of her mom and dad when she was eight, would skin her alive if she played the whore in their own backyard.

  So when she was invited to attend the wedding of her old camp friend, Brittany Manion, in New Hampshire, Tate greeted the invitation with anticipation. Not only would she get to revisit the summer camp of her youth where Britt was getting married, but it was the perfect set-up for a much-needed fling…if only Tate could find a willing partner.

  “Y’all be good up there, now,” said Uncle Zeb, giving her a hug good-bye after parking curbside at the Marathon Airport.

  Tate squeezed her uncle tight, closing her eyes and inhaling the comforting mix of eau d’Zeb: bait, fish and saltwater, rounded out with a hint of mint-flavored chew.

  “And you take your meds.”

  “Humph,” he muttered close to her ear.

  She leaned back, fixing him with a no-nonsense glare. “Uncle Zeb, I swear by all that's holy, you’re gonna put me in an early grave. You gotta take your meds.”

  His weathered face, complete with a white, salty-dog beard, crinkled into a smile. “Why you so mean to me, Tate Maureen?”

  Maureen had been her mother’s first name, and Tate was pretty sure her uncle used it just to remind himself of the little sister he’d lost almost twenty years ago.

  “I ain’t mean to you, y’old coot. I care about you.”

  “Aw, you love every hair on my head. Admit it.”

  Tate chuckled, because this man—this grizzly, unlikely character who’d never wanted kids—had taken her in as a broken eight-year-old and done his best to be her father, her mother, her uncle and her friend. And he’d mostly succeeded, as much as a 40-year-old bachelor could’ve been expected to. In fact, Zeb’s voice was the only one on earth that could utter the word “love” without sending an unpleasant shiver down Tate’s spine…

  “Lord knows I do,” she whispered.

  …even though she’d never actually responded in kind.

  Four-letter curse words? The kind that offended the ladies at church who sang in the choir? Tate had no trouble hearing or saying those. But the other one? The “L” word? No. It simply wasn’t in her vocabulary, and something instinctual—something innate and involuntary and deeply-rooted in her soul—knew that life was much safer if it stayed that way. It was a simple equation: if you didn’t offer or accept love, then it couldn’t be taken away.

  “Promise you’ll take the meds, Uncle Zeb?” she asked, yanking up the pull-handle on her rolling suitcase.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “You being sassy with me, sir?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Alright, then," she said with a curt nod. "And don’t forget to pick me up on Sunday at eight-fifteen? I'll be waiting right here.”

  “Sunday evening, Tate Maureen,” he said, with a smile that crinkled his blue eyes. “I’ll see you here.”

  He trudged around the truck to the driver's side and she watched him drive away until the taillights on his aqua-blue Ford pick-up faded from sight.

  Finian Kelley was missing home.

  When he’d left Dublin six weeks ago to work off-season at the Summerhaven Event and Conference Center in the states, he’d thought it would be good experience that he could parlay into hospitality work when he got home. And it probably would be, but being away from Ireland for so long was definitely making him homesick.

  Unlike his American-born cousins, Rory, Ian and Tierney, who’d grown up visiting Ireland every other summer, Fin had never traveled beyond the borders of his small, emerald island before now. And while he appreciated the easy camaraderie he found with his cousins, he missed his mam, dad, two sisters and brother. He missed pints pulled from a century-old Guinness tap and the hundred different kinds of rain. He missed a Sunday dinner at mam’s and laughing at the muckshites on You’re a Star. He missed the sad, lovely music coming from the door of every pub on a weekend afternoon, and even the sharp-tongued mollys who wouldn’t give a proper Guillermo the time of day.

  Speaking of women, his last girlfriend, Cynthia, had turned out a bleeding weapon with her high ideas about love and forever. Fin had liked her well enough to start—she was small boned with big tits, which was his personal preference—but after a month or two together, she wanted to know where he was all the time: Who’re ya’ seein’ tonight, now? Ya’ knock the hole off some loosebit later, and I’ll hear about it, Fin. And since one of the lads he went ‘round with was her cousin, she had his balls in a fucking vise. And what man—in his mid-twenties—wanted that?

  Coming to America, to work with his cousins on a six-month visa, seemed a godsend. He had a good reason to dump clingy Cynthia, and from everything he’d ever heard, American girls were spare arse everywhere. And maybe they were…but not in small New Hampshire towns in November. He’d barely seen a single girl his age since arriving, let alone touched one.

  Add to this, he’d recently checked out Cynthia’s Facebook page and learned that she was already seeing someone new: Jamie fecking Gallagher, who had a face like a painter’s radio and worked at his mam’s grocer in a pressed white shirt like every day was Sunday.

  Jaysus, he’d thought, staring at the screen in disbelief, I’ve been replaced by a bloody knobjockey-looking neddy.

  Seeing Cynthia and Jamie’s faces side by side, mugging for the camera, had only made Finian, who hadn’t gotten his oats off in weeks, that much more homesick. Which was crazy, because he didn’t love her. He’d dumped her. He didn’t want to be tied down, right?

  Except being “tied down,” in every possible sense of the expression, suddenly sounded fecking cla. Because that’s what sexual frustration will do, Finian was learning: make a man consider every possible option…just for the chance to throw it in.

  And so there was Fin, considering every fecking option, and damned grateful that his cousin, Rory, getting married meant that weddings guests would be coming to stay at Summerhaven for a few days. And maybe—please God, maybe—among those guests there’d be a free and single lass who was horned up by the romance of the weekend…and would let him scratch her itch while he scratched hers.

  Please.

  “Fin,” said Rory, leaning over his beautiful bride-to-be, Brittany. “Think
you could play something?”

  So far the rehearsal dinner had been a snooze.

  Fin was flanked by his cousin’s hot, but very taken, fiancé, on one side, and his stern Aunt Colleen on the other. His eyes had scanned the room for a girl who’d be game for a fling, but so far, he’d come up empty, more’s the pity.

  At least playing a song or two would liven the place up a bit.

  “Ah, sure,” said Fin, gesturing to the barn entrance with a flick of his chin. “M’guitar’s over there.”

  “Get it,” said Rory. “I’ll make an announcement.”

  Standing up from his seat, Fin cringed, then froze, as his empty chair crashed to the floor. Beside him, his aunt gasped, her flinty green eyes darting up to capture his.

  “Bad luck,” she whispered, making the sign of the cross over her chest.

  “Ah, come on,” he said, ignoring the shiver down his spine as he leaned over to right the chair. “That’s just superstition, Aunt Colleen.”

  “Mí áde,” she repeated, this time in Irish.

  “Éirigh as.” Stop it.

  He gave his aunt an annoyed look as he pushed in the chair, but in his heart, Fin knew the truth. Bad luck was coming, whether he liked it or not.

  He crossed the room—a barn decorated with white flowers and twinkle lights—to where he’d left his guitar case at the entrance.

  “Friends,” said Rory, after clanking on his wine glass with a spoon, “you all know that we Havens take our Irish ancestry pretty seriously. As luck would have it, my cousin, Finian, who’s visiting from Ireland, is staying with us, and he’s brought his guitar…”

  As Rory droned on about Ireland and Irish music, Fin unbuckled his guitar case and took out his Irish bouzouki.

  Imported to Ireland in the 1950s from Greece, the bouzouki had become a staple of Irish pub music over the past sixty-something years, and Fin was more than proficient, able to play almost any traditional Irish song on his own or pick up a new song after listening for a few minutes.

  And as good luck would have it, his guitar bore a shamrock on the back, engraved and stained into the wood. He flipped the instrument over, rubbing the green clover with his fingers. Not quite as good as a rabbit’s foot or saint’s medal, the shamrock should still do the trick.

  There, he thought. Bad luck reversed.

  He stood up, looking out over the candlelit room, holding the neck of the guitar and easing the strap over his head…

  And that’s when he saw her.

  Her platinum blonde head gleamed in the soft, warm light, catching his eyes and holding them as he tightened his grip on the guitar, physically unable to look away. With his feet planted firmly on the ground, he slid his gaze— slowly, so slowly—from the crown of her head to her eyes.

  His knees buckled, but he somehow straightened them just before he fell. He felt the jolt in the base of his spine, in the hinge of his jaw, in the tips of his toes. He’d never seen her before, and yet, it was like he knew her. Cobalt like the August sky, her eyes sparkled as she stared back him, so brilliant blue in the candlelight, he was hypnotized.

  Time stopped, and sound boiled down to a low buzzing in his ears as he stared at her.

  Her face was mostly expressionless, her wide blue eyes unblinking as she held his, her shoulders frozen rigid. He knew that Rory was still speaking. He could feel the strings of the bouzouki digging into the pads of his fingertips. But he couldn’t move. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to move again.

  And then she smiled.

  And suddenly his ears tuned into real life again and his fingers eased off the neck of his guitar. He blinked, taking a deep breath to fill his empty lungs and wondering what had just happened. It was almost as though a spell had been cast, and her smile had released him from—or into—enchantment.

  Cailleach phiseogach.

  She’s a witch. A sorceress.

  “Fin? Finian?” He blinked again, looking right, then left, then focusing on Rory, who was staring back at him expectantly. “Cuz? You, uh, you ready to play?”

  “Yeah! Yeah, of course. Coming,” he said, weaving his way through tables, careful not to look back over at the cailleach, lest she steal his breath—and his senses—again.

  3

  Tate hadn’t noticed him before he’d stood at the barn entrance staring at her. But now that he was standing beside Rory, playing his guitar and singing some soft Irish lullaby? She couldn’t look away; though his eyes, downcast in concentration, didn’t glance up even once during his singing, which was too bad, since the look he’d given her from the doorway was enough to make Tate twitch between her legs.

  She watched his mouth as he sang, imagining it pressed against hers in some dark and anonymous place where they couldn’t look into each other’s eyes. He sang confidently, occasionally licking his lips in a way that was appealing, if wholly distracting, and she found herself, almost unconsciously, following the words of the chorus he was singing.

  “I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,

  I wish I had my heart again.

  And vainly think I’d not complain.”

  Tears brightened Tate’s eyes and made the room swim as she repeated the words in her head, a glimpse of her parent’s faces flashing through her mind. Sepia and warm in her memories, they smiled at her with the kind of undying love she hadn’t allowed herself to even dream about since she’d lost them. Like a quick jab to her heart, she felt it—the sharp sting of their loss, all over again—and it made her gasp softly.

  I wish I had my heart again.

  Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she forced herself to change the picture in her mind and think of Uncle Zeb, his blue eyes bright against the backdrop of a cerulean sea. Her parents were gone. Zeb was alive. Any drop of love left in her dried-up raisin of a heart belonged to him, leaving none for anyone else…including herself.

  Mercifully, the soft, heartbreaking song ended, and Tate opened her eyes again as the bawdy chords of a jig filled the air.

  “Who is that?” Tate asked her old friend, Halcyon Gilbert, who was sitting beside her. The handsome musician’s face was alive with joy as he played and sang, and Tate couldn’t help wondering if he could be the one she’d been hoping to find this weekend.

  “Who? Ian?”

  It figures. Of course Hallie only had eyes for her old crush, Ian Haven.

  “No, Hal. I know who Ian Haven is. He hasn’t changed a bit.” This was a not-so-subtle reminder to her friend that Ian was probably still the heartbreaker he’d been as a teenager. “The brown-haired one with the guitar. Some younger Haven brother we never met?”

  “Nope. That’s their cousin. Finian.”

  “Ohhhh. That’s Finian, huh?”

  Tate cocked her head to the side. Brittany had briefly mentioned Finian, asking, when Tate called to RSVP to the wedding, if she was bringing a “plus one.”

  “No. Why? Do I need one?”

  “Of course not!” Brittany had laughed. “Want me to set you up?”

  “Ha! You haven’t changed, little Miss Cupid!”

  When they were girls at camp together, Brittany was always trying to pair up Tate with one of the boys she knew from Boston.

  “It’s my calling. And Rory has this cousin visiting, Finian, who’s single and I think he would be perf—”

  Because she had zero interest in hooking up with one of Brittany’s soon-to-be relations, Tate had cut off her friend. “No, thanks.”

  “Are you sure? He’s cute.”

  He might be cute, but Tate was careful. She wasn’t going to get entangled with her friend’s husband’s cousin. If things went south, it could make things awkward between Tate and Britt.

  “I’m sure. Tell me more about the wedding….”

  But now, as Finian glanced up at her and grinned? She wasn’t so sure she wasn’t interested. In fact, there were parts of Tate that felt very interested.

  His thick brown hair was cut short and he wore a scruff of beard that define
d his jaw and would scratch the inside of her thighs if he kissed her clit.

  “He’s trouble, huh?”

  Hallie shrugged. “I don’t really know him.”

  Hmm. Tate bit her bottom lip, looking away from Finian for a count of ten before catching his eyes again, not surprised that they were still trained on her, but definitely gratified.

  It’s on.

  She just hoped Britt would forgive her if the whole thing somehow went tits up.

  Tate leaned over and kissed Hallie’s cheek, suddenly feeling giddy with anticipation. “I gotta powder my nose.”

  She stood up from her chair, picking it up quickly when it crashed to the ground. After she righted it, she looked back up at Finian, her gaze direct, her invitation universal and unmistakable as she glanced at the barn doorway leading into the dark night, and then slid her eyes back to his.

  “See you tomorrow, Hal,” she said distractedly as she turned and left the table.

  She was fairly certain that he wouldn’t be playing another song after this one. She’d made it clear what waited for him outside in the darkness. So, it annoyed Tate when, after a rousing applause and short pause, the guitar music started up again. Leaning against a tree, several feet away from the barn entrance in the shadow of the candles and twinkle lights, Tate’s eyes widened as new chords heralded another song, and a chorus of Irish voices chimed in to sing.

  What? He’s playing another song? He’s not coming?

  She blinked in shock at the barn, crossing her arms over her chest and deeply affronted that he’d choose to keep playing when she’d been so clear in her offer.

  “Jerk,” she hissed, trying to decide whether she should return to her cabin or go rejoin the dinner.

  “Are you callin’ me names already?”

  She gasped, whipping around to find Finian standing behind her, a wide grin on his handsome face.

  “But you’re—you’re playing the guitar,” she mumbled, frowning at him because he obviously wasn’t.

  “Nah. Me uncle’s playin’,” he said, chuckling softly at her discomposure.