by Lia Lee
The wink he gave her was wickedness personified, and she blushed before she regained herself.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, trying to recover some dignity.
“Oh? Are you sure? If you ask nicely, I am certain that I can offer you a lesson or two, pet.” She reminded herself that she really didn’t know anything about Donovan. He was handsome, he was charming, and at the very least, he certainly knew where to get good food, but at the end of it, he was a stranger, and she was in a foreign country.
Carly kept her comments quick and slightly curt as he drove her back to her car. It felt just a little like closing the barn door after the horse was already out, but the slight distance between them helped calm her. It reminded her that she was still in control of the situation. Some strange part of her cried out at any kind of separation from Donovan, but she didn’t understand it. He had done something kind for her, but it was nothing more than that.
He got her back to her car, and to her surprise, the sun was already beginning to set.
He glanced at the sky, starting to show streaks of orange and lavender, and seemed to read her mind.
“Where are you staying?” he asked. “If you’re new in town, perhaps you ought to come stay with me.”
“Oh, well, do you own the hotel too?” It came out lighter than she had thought it would, easy and teasing, and he grinned.
“No, not yet,” he said, and Carly wondered if there was any truth behind that statement. “But I am renting a house. It’s not far.”
“I don’t think that I would be interesting enough to keep your attention all night,” she said without thinking about, and suddenly he was closer than he had been before, so close his chest was nearly touching hers.
She stared, frozen, as his hand raised up to touch her chin ever so lightly. Even that gentle touch made her shiver, and gasping a little, she looked up into his eyes.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen eyes like yours before,” he murmured. “And if you need to ask what I might do to keep myself entertained.” Instead of telling her his answer, Donovan tipped her head back for a kiss instead.
The first brush of his lips over hers, sent a shock wave of pleasure through her, and startled, she grasped him by the arms, hanging on for dear life. It encouraged him wrap his arms around her, holding her still as his kiss went deeper.
Donovan kissed her as if he had all the time in the world, as if the earth itself would stop spinning for his pleasure alone. She shook when his tongue parted her lips, sliding into her mouth as if it belonged there.
I never knew that it could be like this, she thought hazily. She had been kissed before, certainly, but those kisses had never shaken her to her very core, making her yearn for something she couldn’t name.She was aware of the car door behind her, the sweet weight of his body pressing her against it. His hand came up to brush sweetly against her cheek as he kissed her, and she leaned into it. Carly was certain she had never felt the way she did now.
Alive, I feel alive, she thought, and the thought itself was so surprising to her, so shocking, that she reached up, pressed her hands against his shoulders and pushed.
To Donovan’s credit, he responded immediately, and the expression his face almost made her stutter. There was something so hungry there that she wanted nothing more than to throw herself back into his arms. Then he composed himself again, shaking his head slightly.
“I’ll ask again. Will you come home with me?”
“I... No. I can’t.”
He was a stranger. She had just met him, even if he had possibly saved her life. Those were all good reasons to stay away, but a part of her sighed after him.
“All right then, pet. I wish you well.”
This time, the kiss was a gentle peck to her cheek, but her skin still tingled where he touched. Carly got in her car and watched as Donovan got back into his Mercedes. She watched him drive away, and she didn’t come back to herself until he was gone.
If this was what her first day in Loch Naine was like, how in the world would the rest of her visit go?
Chapter Three
It only took another twenty minutes to find her grandmother’s cottage, and when she pulled up the wooded lane, Carly could barely believe her eyes.
When Mr. MacGowan spoke about cottages, she supposed she had taken her idea of what the cottage was from old fairy tales or historical movies. She pictured something that was a room or two, perhaps even with a thatched roof; though when she thought of it, that did sound a little ridiculous.
Instead, her grandmother’s house was large, the stone that made up the exterior walls craggy, gray and dignified. There was an overgrown rose garden crawling around the edges of the house, and on a post in the front, a carefully-lettered sign that read “Martin.”
“Welcome home, I suppose,” Carly murmured, getting out of the car. The house was silent as she entered. Carly had to be honest, the whole time she was driving up, she wondered if she would simply find the property too spooky to deal with. She was brave, but she shivered at the idea of staying in a property only recently vacated by a dead woman; some place far away from the roads and lights of the cities she knew so well.
Instead, from the moment she ventured into the cottage, Carly felt at home. It was like walking right into the embrace of someone she loved. From the warm wooden walls to the carefully maintained furniture, she felt as if the entire place was put together with love and care.
It was a cozy place, and Mr. MacGowan had made sure that the electricity was left on for her as well as the water and the heat. There was the faint must of a property that had stood empty for some time, but it was far from terrible.
As the light outside waned, Carly explored the house. There was a single bedroom off of the main living room and a tiny room that served as what seemed to be a lovely old-fashioned study, complete with secretary desk and bookshelves. There was a kitchen with cast iron pots and pans carefully stacked away for the next user, and a bathroom that was plain but had a single window paned with wavy green glass to shed a soft light into it.
“This is nice,” Carly said out loud.
She took a seat on the couch, smiling a little at the elderly CRT television her grandmother had kept. It made her wonder what sort of woman her grandmother had been and what she might have watched. If she would have liked her wayward granddaughter.
Carly noticed that there was an old-fashioned VCR under the television, and there was a tape in it. Curiously, she flipped on the TV and played the tape. After a moment, she started to giggle. Apparently, her grandmother had had a love for love stories—the schmaltzier the better.
“I wonder what your life was like here, with mom so far away and your husband dead when you were just forty,” she mused.
There was a kind of contentment in the air, however, and Carly knew that she had never felt so welcomed anywhere else before.
She wondered if it should have felt strange, pulling sheets from the small linen closet in the hall and making up the double bed in the dim bedroom. Instead, it felt just right, and as she fell asleep, her drowsy thoughts were of home and a pair of bright gray eyes.
***
Carly woke up the next morning with an appetite, and she realized with a flinch that she had made no preparations for breakfast. There was nothing in the house, of course, and as she brushed her teeth and put on a light spring-green dress, she wondered what she was going to do.
Well, town isn’t that far away, and I know I passed a little grocery store on the way up to the cottage…
There were a few string bags hanging off of a hook in the kitchen, and she took those down with her.
The day was bright but not as hot as it would get, and Carly found the walk wonderfully refreshing after all the time she spent in the plane and the car over the last few days. The last of her jet lag was beginning to fall away, and she knew that the daylight was helping. She was no stranger to walking to get her groceries after livin
g in the heart of several cities, but she had to admit that walking down the sheltered path from the cottage was far nicer than making her way along cracked sidewalks.
Don’t get pulled in by nice walks and rose gardens, she cautioned herself. You don’t want to get blinded by a nice day, and then find yourself stuck in the woods for years…
That was certainly a sensible position to take, but then she made it to the grocery store. It had less of a selection than she was used to from shopping at American supermarkets, but all of the food present looked delicious. It was hard to stop herself from buying more food than she needed just to try it out, but finally, she had bread, sausage, cheese, some cereal, and, on a whim, a jar of rose hip jelly. She had no idea what it tasted like, but the romance of the name made her smile.
“Hm, I think I recognize those bags,” said the man at the cash register. He was a large solid man with a fringe of black hair around an otherwise bald head, and his smile made her smile in return. “You’re up at the old Martin place now?”
She smiled a little, and inwardly, she shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound, she supposed.
“I am, but I am not sure how long I will be staying. I’m Mrs. Martin’s granddaughter Carly.” The grocer turned out to be a man named MacKenzie, and he welcomed her to the town with a brisk handshake.
“Mrs. Martin was well-liked, and we were all sorry to see her pass,” he said. “I hope we’ll be seeing you down here often, Carly.”
She thanked the man and left, feeling a little odd about the whole thing. In Boston, she never passed more than two or three words with the person ringing up her groceries, but here, things seemed to run on a different time. She wasn’t in a hurry, and neither was he. If someone had told her about it before it happened, she might have thought that it would be irritating, but now, it felt quite different.
It feels as if I might belong here, she thought, and Carly shivered at the idea. She never really believed that anyone belonged anywhere. The idea that she might was a strangely breathtaking concept, one that she felt ill-equipped to deal with for the moment.
It was too nice a day to spend it inside, she decided. Almost at random, Carly found a path that led up into the trees, and after a moment of searching, she found a small sign that declared it a trail-head to Annwyn’s Tears. The name sounded amusingly romantic, but if there was a trail to it, it couldn’t be too hazardous.
It wasn’t dangerous, but it was steep. By the time she approached the summit, Carly’s legs were shaking, there was a fine sheen of sweat on her brow, and she would do anything for a cool drink. At some point, she wondered if she should give up, but there was a native stubbornness that kept her going until she had made it to the top.
When Carly finally lifted her foot and got onto level ground, she whimpered with relief. There was likely a view just a short distance away, but all she wanted in the world was simply to dump her groceries on the soft green grass and simply lie on the ground for a few minutes.
She had almost gotten her breath back, and then a dark shadow fell over her. She was aware of someone standing over her, blocking out the sun, and a bit of the panic from the day before crossed her mind.
“Well I didn’t expect to see you here.”
The words were cut off when Carly flailed, rolling clumsy to her knees and then up to her feet. Her hands were scrambling for her purse, where she kept her mace, and then she realized that she recognized the person who had come to stand over her.
Donovan watched her curiously, hands in his pockets. Instead of the suit, today he was wearing jeans and blue button down shirt rolled up at the sleeves. She couldn’t help but notice that the blue of the shirt made his gray eyes seem even brighter.
“What the hell?” she gasped, and Donovan held up his hands to show her that he meant no harm.
“I was just surprised to see anyone up here right now,” he said. “It’s a little steep for the casual hiker, and Loch Naine really doesn’t get tourists until later in the season.”
“Then what are you doing up here?” Carly asked. The words came out more challenging than she intended them to, but he smiled at her.
“I’ll show you, if you want to see?” Hunger forgotten with her scare for the moment, Carly nodded cautiously. When he held out his hand, she took it. She was surprised by how natural it felt, her hand in hi as he tugged her along the path.
Just forty yards away, they came to an overlook. When Carly looked over the side, she gasped. It was steep, and it looked out over the whole town—from the edge that skirted the freeway all the way to the lake itself. It was a stunningly beautiful view, and something in her felt at peace just looking down at her grandmother’s home town.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” she murmured, and Donovan grinned at her.
“It is, and for some reason, it’s still Ireland’s best kept secret.”
She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
He cocked his head at her, his grin charming. “I’ll tell you if you share.” For a moment, she had no idea what he was talking about, but then she saw him glance at her string bag.
“You’re hungry?”
“I am. I came up early, and I didn’t think I’d be up long. I sort of got carried away, and the result is that breakfast was almost four hours ago.”
“Oof, well, my planning wasn’t much better, so sure. Come on, let’s have some lunch.”
The meal wasn’t as well-prepared as the mutton stew he bought for her the night before, but she couldn’t deny that there was a certain charm to it. She had a pocket knife they used to cut the sausage and the cheese, and as for the bread, they simply tore out chunks of it. It was freshly baked, dense and white, and there was a simple savor to the meal that she wasn’t sure she had ever enjoyed before.
She and Donovan were pulled into the peace of it all, passing the sausage back and forth and offering each other slivers of cheese to eat on top of the bread. Carly found herself watching Donovan’s hands, large but well shaped with long fingers that were grace incarnate as he sliced her another bit of sausage.
“Rose hip jelly?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, and Carly shrugged.
“I’ve never tried it before. I was curious.”
“Curiosity is a great good thing,” he said. “Mind if I open it?” When she shook her head no, he opened the jar and spooned some of the dark pink jelly onto a bit of bread. He offered it to her, and curiously, she popped the morsel into her mouth. There was a pleasant fruitiness to it, she realized, followed by a darker, almost herbal taste. Not quite bitter, it smoothed out at the end. Carly wondered if she liked it, and when she found herself wanting to try it again, she decided that she did.
“I’ve never had that before,” she said, “but it’s good.”
“This is quite good, but I know a couple in town who do their own canning, and they make up batches every year. Perhaps I can get you one.”
“You do seem to know everyone,” she said, “but you’ve not told me yet what you are doing up here.”
“I did promise you that, didn’t I? Well, come up, and we’ll walk over to Anwynn’s Tears.” She took his hand to lever herself up without thinking about it. It gave her the same tingle from before, but she ignored it in favor of walking by his side.
They walked a short way until they were facing north. From their vantage point, they could see forested land a short distance from town. Carly was startled to see what she thought must be the roof of her grandmother’s cottage from their vantage point. There were a few other cottages as well, but they looked far more run down.
“I told you before that Loch Naine was Ireland’s best kept secret,” he said. “People don’t know that there’s a town here, and when they look at the lake on a map, they see one of so many others that it surely cannot be very special. At least, that’s what most people see. I look out here, and I see opportunity. There’s more to this town than a few hunters that come up here once in a blue moon, or the odd fisherman who wants to try his hand.
”
“Really? And what do you see?” Carly asked. She wasn’t sure if she liked the enthusiasm in his voice. He said that there were no men like him, but she wasn’t so sure. The topic might have been different, but the eager tone that talked about money and investments was certainly ringing a bell in her head.
“A resort,” he said with a wide and toothy grin. “Perhaps a convention center where international businesses can come and host large seminars, perhaps an exclusive site where the rich and the powerful come to get away from it all. The beauty of Loch Naine is the beauty of the Ireland that lives in everyone’s mind, poetic and almost unreal.”
“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” she said. It was true. She could already feel herself falling in love with the town and her grandmother’s cottage, even if she was trying to resist it. There was a kind of beauty and peace here that she had never found anywhere else, and it made sense that Donovan wanted to bring it to the world.
But did the world deserve it? She wondered what would happen to the little grocery store once the conglomerates got in, or the Goat and Compass when finer restaurants started to crowd the streets. She had seen it happen before in neighborhoods she had lived in.
“I cut my teeth on deals like this,” Donovan said with a grin. “I made my fortune on them. However this will be the biggest yet, and the best. I can bring a life to this place that it has never seen, and I can make sure that people know how beautiful my country can be.”
That sounded more laudable at least, and Carly opened her mouth to say so, but then he spoke again.
“Now if only I can get the old Martin woman’s estate settled.” She blinked. For a moment, she almost asked him how he knew her last name, as she obviously hadn’t told it to him, but she bit it back.
“The old Martin woman?” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.
“Yes. She owns or should I say, owned, a parcel of land right smack in the center of where it should all go, and she refused to sell. I came up here a year ago, before she died, and I gave her a more than generous offer for her land, seeing how well-centered it was. I can tell you for sure that none of her neighbors got anything like that, and she still turned me down.”