The Selkie Spell (Seal Island Trilogy)

by Sophie Moss

  “Bit of a drastic change, isn’t it?”

  “We all need to get away now and then.”

  “Do we?” Caitlin angled her head. “Never felt much of a need to leave the island myself.” Caitlin’s gaze lifted, her eyes meeting Dominic’s across the room. He shook his head, just the smallest movement from side to side. “I wish we could help you.” Caitlin shrugged. “But I don’t think we’re hiring anymore.”

  Tara bit back her frustration as the front door swung open and three children burst into the room.

  “Dad!” Breathless, Kelsey O’Sullivan rushed to the bartender’s side. “Ronan kicked the ball over the edge again!”

  “It wasn’t me!”

  “It was, too!”

  Dominic arched an eyebrow. “Ronan?”

  “Okay,” Ronan muttered, “It was me.”

  “How far did it go?”

  “I heard a splash,” Ashling piped in.

  Dominic crossed his arms over his chest.

  Kelsey tugged at her father’s sleeve. “Ashling and I were winning.”

  The slightest smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

  “Dad, this is serious. Ronan threw the game on purpose.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I think you should help us find the ball.”

  “You want me to scale the cliff wall?”

  “I bet you could if you wanted to,” Ronan muttered.

  Dominic smiled and mussed his daughter’s hair. “I’m sure there’s another upstairs.”

  “That was the last one.”

  “What about the one I gave you for Christmas?”

  “We lost it.”

  “What about the one your grandmother gave you?”

  “We lost it.”

  “What about the one Ronan’s mom gave you a week ago?”

  His daughter’s eyes lit up.

  “It’s on top of the fridge.”

  Her face fell.

  “You found it?”

  “That’s the one we just lost.”

  Dominic hooked his arm around her daughter’s waist and swung her upside down so her blond curls just brushed the floor.

  “Dad!” she protested, giggling and trying to wiggle free.

  “You know what you are?” he asked, still holding her upside down.

  “What?”

  “Trouble.” He flipped her right-side up and set her back on her feet. “Now go upstairs—all three of you—and wash up. I’ll ask Caitlin to fix you something to eat.”

  When Ronan stuck out his tongue, Tara couldn’t help but laugh. Dominic’s eyes snapped to the sound, his smile fading as he caught the wistful expression on the newcomer’s face.

  “They’re adorable,” she said, her gaze lingering on the stairs after the children clamored up them. “Are they all yours?”

  “No.” Dominic stepped back behind the bar. “Just Kelsey.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She turns eight next month.”

  Caitlin poked her head through the window connecting the kitchen to the bar. “Did I just see Ronan O’Kelly stick out his tongue at my cooking?”

  Dominic tossed an empty bottle of whiskey into the trash and glanced at Caitlin. “I don’t know, but I think you could take him.” He ducked as a dish rag flew past his head. Smiling, he twisted the cap off a bottle of stout, slid it down the bar and turned, pulling another bottle off the highest shelf.

  Tara picked up the plates Caitlin slid through the window. “Where do these go?”

  Dominic took the plates from her hands, set them back on the counter. “Like I said, the position’s been filled.”

  “Why don’t we treat it as a test run?” Tara offered. “If I do okay tonight, you’ll hire me. If not, I’ll leave first thing tomorrow.”

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “It’s one night,” Tara protested.

  “Then why not enjoy it? I’ll bring you a pint. You can sit here and listen to the music that’ll start up soon enough. Then you can be off in the morning and find work somewhere else. There’s other islands to choose from. Coastal villages on the mainland if all you’re looking for is a quiet place.”

  “I want to work here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because… it feels right.”

  “Right?” Dominic started another pint of Guinness, then leaned back from the taps. “Is that how you live your life, then? Doing what feels right?”

  “Yes,” Tara replied, slowly. “Recently that is exactly how I’ve been living my life.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you.” He finished the pint and set it on the bar. “But the only thing I’ve to offer at the moment is a bar stool and a pint. You’ll have to look for work somewhere else.”

  Chapter 2

  A sensible person would take the hint. A sensible person would bow out gracefully, track down a room for the night, and take the bartender up on his offer of a stool and a pint. But Tara was sick of deferring, of following orders, of letting people push her around.

  Squaring her shoulders, she stepped back up to the bar, pausing when a crash of pots and pans and a thin female scream burst from the kitchen.

  Dominic cursed, snapped the taps back into place, and shoved the door open.

  Tara flinched when she spotted the red-head on the floor, holding her hand awkwardly in her lap. When Dominic groaned, dropping to his knees, Tara craned her neck around the doorway to see.

  “What have you hurt this time?” Dominic asked.

  “My hand,” Caitlin bit out. “And I wouldn’t have to go climbing all over your furniture if you’d put things in a place where I could reach them!”

  “Let me see.”

  She held it up, and Tara winced at the crooked way the middle finger bent.

  “Come on.” Dominic pulled Caitlin to her feet. “We’ve got to get you to the mainland.”

  The mainland? Tara watched the islanders surround the pair as Dominic helped Caitlin out of the kitchen.

  “Are you sure it’s broken?” Sarah Dooley asked, concern knitting her wrinkled face.

  “I’m sure,” Dominic answered, pushing past her toward the door.

  “Do you want Jack to take a look at it first?” Sarah trailed after them. “Remember he fixed that calf’s leg last year.”

  “That calf walked with a limp for the rest of its life!” Caitlin objected.

  “The rest of its very short life,” Dominic added.

  Jack Dooley wove through the crowd, handing Caitlin an ice pack. “I wasn’t the cause of that calf’s death.”

  “That’s still up for debate,” Dominic murmured, opening the door to the pub just as the ferry captain walked inside, shaking the rain off his jacket. “Finn, we need a ride to the mainland.”

  The captain peeled off his dripping layers, hanging them on the rack. “There’s a storm coming.”

  “Caitlin needs a doctor.”

  The captain looked down at Caitlin’s hand. “Sorry, love.” He shook his head. “It’ll have to wait until morning.”

  “Morning?” Caitlin squeaked.

  “You’re not waiting until morning,” Dominic assured her, stepping around the captain. “We’ll take my boat.”

  “Your motor’s broken,” Finn reminded him.

  Dominic dragged a hand through his hair. “I’d forgotten that.” He glanced back at the faces of his neighbors huddled around them. “Donal?”

  “You heard Finn,” Donal argued, siding with the captain. “There’s a storm coming in and I don’t want my boat getting lost in it any more than he does.”

  At the first clap of thunder, Tara pushed away from the bar and walked over to where Caitlin was standing. “You don’t have a doctor on the island?”

  Caitlin shook her head.

  “Would you mind if I took a look at it?”

  Caitlin regarded her, warily. “Why?”

  “I’d like to see if I can help.”

  “Are you a doct
or?”

  “No,” Tara lied. “But I might be able to help you.”

  Caitlin lifted her throbbing hand cautiously, set it in Tara’s outstretched one. The strangest sensation, like a stream of warmth raced up her arm, dulling the pain. Caitlin jerked her hand away. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” Tara murmured, taking the woman’s hand in hers again and ignoring her surprised intake of breath as that warmth shot into her arm again. Tara turned the hand over in hers, studying it. “How’s your tolerance for pain?”

  “How’s my tolerance for pain?” Caitlin started to ease her hand free. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Your finger needs to be reset, but it’s going to hurt.”

  “You said you weren’t a doctor,” Caitlin protested.

  “I’m not. My father was. He taught me how.”

  Dominic stepped in between the two women. “She needs to see a doctor.”

  “I can save her a trip to the hospital.”

  Dominic shook his head, pulling Caitlin back toward the door. “It’s out of the question.”

  But Caitlin pulled back, gazing into the other woman’s eyes. She didn’t know this woman. Or what she was doing to her arm. But the sensation now spreading through her whole body was so much better than what she’d been feeling a moment ago, she didn’t want it to end. “Have you ever done this before?” she asked cautiously.

  Tara nodded.

  “How many times?”

  “Enough to know what I’m doing.”

  Caitlin looked over at the captain. “You’re sure the seas are too rough to make the crossing?”

  Finn nodded. “You wait for morning, or she does it now.”

  Caitlin took a deep breath. “Alright,” she said, looking back at Tara. “Let’s get it over with.”

  “Now wait just a damn minute.” Dominic took Caitlin by the elbow, steering her away from the crowd of islanders. “You don’t even know this woman.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “We could wait a few hours,” he suggested. “Ride out the storm.”

  “You know I hate making the crossing at night.”

  “But you could,” he insisted. “If you had to.”

  “I could,” Caitlin said, stretching out the word. “Or I could just let this woman who says she knows what she’s doing treat me right now.”

  Dominic’s gaze dropped to Caitlin’s hand. “She could make it worse.”

  “Or she could make it better.”

  He glanced across the room at where Sarah Dooley was helping Tara pull tape and gauze from a first-aid kit, laying the supplies out on a table they’d pushed up next to the armchair beside the fire. Donal was shaping a make-shift splint out of a piece of driftwood, holding it up for Tara’s inspection.

  ‘I’m just looking for a quiet place to spend the summer. That’s all.’

  Bullshit, Dominic thought. She was hiding something. And the last thing he needed was another woman with a shady past pushing her way into his life. “I don’t like this.”

  “I know,” Caitlin sighed. “Neither do I.” She took a deep breath. “Now fetch me that bottle of Jameson’s before I change my mind.”

  ***

  Securing the final piece of tape around the splint, Tara set the newly wrapped hand back in Caitlin’s lap. “Feel better?”

  Caitlin nodded. “How long will I have to keep it like this?”

  “A few weeks, at least.”

  Caitlin glanced over at Dominic. “I can’t cook like this.”

  “You can’t,” Tara agreed. “You don’t want to risk hurting it again during the healing process.”

  Caitlin frowned at Dominic. “What are you going to do about a cook until Fiona gets back?”

  “Who’s Fiona?” Tara asked.

  “Dom’s grandmother,” Caitlin explained. “I’m just filling in while she’s gone.”

  Tara folded the leftover gauze into a neat little square. “I can cook.”

  Dominic shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “Come on, Dom,” Caitlin said. “She just saved us a trip to the hospital.”

  Tara re-packed the leftover gauze into the first-aid kit and handed it back to Dominic. “If you don’t want me to cook, I can wash dishes, or clean. Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it.”

  “Why are so desperate for a job in my pub?”

  “I told you,” Tara said, impatiently. “I’m just looking for a quiet place to spend the summer.”

  When Dominic said nothing, Caitlin interjected. “It’s not like you have a lot of other options.”

  Dominic shrugged. “I’ll call Liam.”

  “Oh, right,” Caitlin scoffed. “Liam’s a worse cook than I am. Last time he tried to cook he almost burned the pub down.”

  “People change.”

  “Not Liam,” Caitlin countered. “Besides, he’s giving mid-terms next week, so that’s not an option.”

  Dominic lifted a brow. “Are you keeping tabs on my little brother now?”

  Caitlin looked down at her hand, red creeping into her ears. “I just heard him talking about it last time he was here.”

  He’d deal with that later, Dominic thought, shifting his gaze back to Tara. “How are you in the kitchen?”

  “I don’t have a lot of experience,” Tara admitted. “But I’m a fast learner.”

  “I’ll help her get started,” Caitlin offered.

  “Since when are you so generous with your time in the kitchen?”

  “Since the person I’m offering to help just treated a broken bone in my hand!” Caitlin waved her bandaged fingers in his face, frustrated. “Besides,” she added, when she caught the expression in his eyes. “It’s just until Fiona gets back.”

  Dominic looked back and forth between the two women. “Okay,” he agreed, finally, his gaze settling on Tara. “But only for the one week.”

  And as soon as he found out what she was doing here, on this island, she’d be packing her bag and leaving on the next ferry.

  ***

  When the last of the regulars drifted home for the evening, Caitlin slipped out of the kitchen and shut the door quietly behind her.

  “How’s she doing?” Dominic asked, drying pint glasses and re-racking them for the night.

  “She hasn’t burned the place down yet.”

  “But?”

  Caitlin sighed, leaning her back against the door. “She’s burned just about everything else that’s come within an inch of her pan.”

  “It’s not worth it. I can ask Mary or Sarah. They’ll give me a night or two if I offer to fix the fences the last storm tore down. We don’t need her.”

  “No,” Caitlin agreed, slowly. “But I think she might need us.”

  Dominic’s hand stilled on the taps. “That’s the worst thing you could have said.”

  Caitlin pulled out a stool and sank into it, sighing. “I told you I’d work with her. She said she wasn’t very good in the kitchen. It’s her first night. Give her a chance.”

  “I don’t trust her.”

  “She’s not Rachel.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Rachel was after something. You could see that in her face from the day she walked in that door.”

  “How do you know Tara’s not after the same thing?”

  “She just seems…different to me. That’s all.”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. I’ll have a talk with her tonight if it’ll make you feel better. Let me get her settled into the cottage and I’ll find out where she’s from.”

  “What cottage.”

  Caitlin lifted a brow. “What cottage do you think?”

  “No.” Dominic shook her head. “No way.”

  “She needs a place to stay for the night.”

  “She can stay at the B&B.”

  “The plumbing’s out.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since this afternoon. Didn’t y
ou hear the O’Neil’s talking about it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s one week,” Caitlin protested.

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “She fixed my hand. It hardly hurts anymore.”

  “It will when the whiskey wears off.”

  “Do I seem drunk to you?”

  “You’ve a way of hiding it.”

  Caitlin’s lips twitched. “Come on, Dom. There’s nowhere else for her to stay, unless you want one of us to take her in.”

  “No.”

  “I figured that.”

  “I don’t like this,” Dominic said, but he pulled out a set of keys from under the bar.

  Caitlin took the keys, slipped them in her pocket. “You were a runaway once too, you know. You shouldn’t forget that.”

  “That was different. My grandparents lived here. I had a purpose in coming here.”

  Caitlin held his eyes across the bar. “Maybe she does, too.”

  ***

  Caitlin pushed open the door to the kitchen and took in the stacks of dirty dishes, the candied carrots stuck to the stove, the grease stains spackling the walls. When Tara reached for another dirty pot and dunked it in the soapy water, Caitlin shook her head. “At this rate we’ll be here until dawn. Come on, let’s close up and deal with the mess tomorrow.”

  “I can’t leave a mess on my first night,” Tara protested. “What kind of impression would that leave?”

  “A sane one. Come on. We’ll deal with it tomorrow. Besides,” Caitlin added. “My hand’s starting to hurt again.”

  “Here.” Tara dried her hands and rushed to the freezer. Grabbing a handful of ice, she wrapped it in a towel and handed it to Caitlin. “Put this on it.”

  Caitlin took the ice, and as their fingers brushed a strange tingling sensation flowed up her arm. Caitlin looked at Tara. “That’s odd. It feels better already.”

  “Good,” Tara offered a small smile and moved back to the sink.

  Caitlin stared after her, marveling at the sudden lack of pain, but then shook her head. She was probably still in shock from the fall, probably just imagining things. She walked over to the sink and pried the pot from Tara’s soapy fingers. “Leave the mess, Tara.”

  “No,” Tara objected. “You go ahead. When I make a mess, I clean it up.” She reached for another pan. “Besides, it’ll give me some time to think over what I learned tonight.”