by Dorien Kelly
He was pleased that Kylie had Breege for an adopted grandmum, of sorts. She needed family in a way that he didn’t. Still, he could see where the present circumstances were going to prove... uncomfortable.
Michael gave a wry shake of the head at the total inadequacy of the word he’d settled on. Uncomfortable, hell. It was going to be bleedin’ torture. And after seeing Breege settled in like Ireland’s answer to the Queen, he’d never look at Kylie’s bed in quite the same lust-ridden light again.
All in all, though, he had to admit that life was better than what he’d been expecting. His continuing spite campaign of posting handyman bills around town was beginning to produce an odd job or two. A small blessing—infinitesimal, actually, since Jenna Fahey had told him that just now, she couldn’t afford to finish what she’d started. As he jimmied loose a muddy rock, he considered his options. Work, real work—that’s what he needed if he meant to care for Kylie after they married.
Michael lifted the heavy stone, then came close to dropping it square on his toes as he realized what he’d been thinking. Telling himself he was next in line for the village eejit, and that he might as well just bash in his thick skull with that rock, he brushed his hands off on the worn denim of his jeans.
He was more likely to be made Prime Minister than he was to bury his past and marry Kylie O’Shea. He should take the sunny day, the soft breeze, and the taste of Kylie’s kisses and be content.
Somehow it was no longer enough.
Chapter Seventeen
What is in the marrow is hard to take out of the bone.
—Irish Proverb
Kylie pushed aside the piece of old lace that served as a drape over the kitchen window. Looking out the ancient glass, she felt a sudden and surprising burn of tears. Michael stood in the field, staring at the house as though he didn’t recognize it. She didn’t understand half of what went on in his head, and wished that he’d open to her enough so at least she could give a fair guess. Not very likely, she admitted to herself. He gave up nothing—not even guilt—without a battle.
He was so stark and male and beautiful that she hungered for him. Physically, to be sure. But also from someplace even more intimate, someplace where heart and soul melded into a yearning so strong that she wanted to weep from it.
That was the trouble with having wishes come true. Once fate had granted her one favor, she had begun to build her expectations. Having Michael as even a secret part of her life was more than she’d ever dreamt possible. To be asking more, for all of him and to be able to give all of herself in return, was nothing more than greed. And nothing less than impossible.
Kylie let the curtain drop, then put together the tea tray to bring to Breege. Once her friend was settled, and Kylie was certain that she could handle the tea without scalding herself, Kylie found her coat, slipped out of her shoes and into her wellies. If she couldn’t have Michael forever, she’d steal what moments she could.
He was attacking the field with a ferocity that would have been amusing if she had any idea what motivated it. She waited until she had pulled abreast of him before speaking.
“Breege’s glasses were on her nightstand.”
“I saw them.”
She thought she heard a bit of humor in his voice. That gave some comfort since he still threw rocks with an effort just skirting violence.
“It’s grand of you to finish clearing the field for me, but it really doesn’t have to be done by sunset.”
He stopped to slant a sidelong look her way. “Just working off steam. Sorting through some matters.”
“Such as?”
“What to do with that fool peacock of Breege’s, for one.”
She pushed back her hair where it flew wild in the breeze. “Breege says he’ll forage well enough, or adopt himself into another family, as he did with her.” Now wasn’t the time to tell him she already considered Martin part of her new clan. “And the other matters?”
He hurled a rock to the far corner of the fence line. “Nothing that talking about will make come any clearer.”
She laughed, then stood on tiptoe to brush a kiss against his cheek with its dark stubble of beard just beginning to show. She smiled as it tickled her, loving his feel, his scent. Loving him. “Well, I’d be a fool to suggest otherwise when I’m getting my field cleared in the bargain. But if you ever want to tell me what’s truly bothering you, I’ll be waiting to hear.”
He nodded in response, as if he deserved no less. Annoyance nipped at Kylie. Like the high king, himself, she thought. “It helps to be good at waiting where you’re concerned, doesn’t it?”
His eyes narrowed as though he’d just spotted trouble. He didn’t know the half of it.
“Trouble is,” she continued, “I’ve spent my whole life waiting for one thing or another... for Da, for happiness, for forgiveness. I’ve decided that I’m through with it. So you can stand here and hurl rocks, or you can tell me what’s bothering you and get on with the day.”
His squint hardened to a scowl.
Kylie waited, this time liking it, this time relishing the coming clash of wills. That in itself amazed her. Before Michael, she’d have fled from the first sign of discord as fast as her feet could carry her. Before Michael, she’d been so frightened of stepping even the smallest bit out of line.
“You’re becoming just a bit of a harridan, aren’t you? I can see you sixty years from now smacking your poor husband with a cane—” His brows lowered and his jaw clamped shut on whatever else he’d been intending to say.
“Quiet so soon?” she challenged. No walking away now, neither emotionally nor by foot. “All those stormy looks and nothing else to say? I don’t believe it for a minute.”
“Believe it.” He kicked a rock and sent it skittering. “Shouldn’t you check on Breege? She might be needing something.”
Kylie crossed her arms and stood her ground. “She’s in finer shape than you are. And she’s far clearer in what she’s wanting and not wanting. What you need is someone to take you by the shoulders and shake you until that tongue of yours loosens.”
His mouth opened, then closed. He made a huffing sound that was so out of character she struggled not to laugh. A small snicker escaped.
“Are you laughing at me?”
Though she knew she was already caught, she put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile.
“I asked if you were laughing at me.”
When she was sure she’d regained her composure, she let her hand drop. “Not at you, exactly... more with you.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“But you should be. And you should be talking, too.”
He moved closer, so close that her heart jumped.
“Or you’ll take me by the shoulders?”
Kylie danced back a step, then circled, sizing him up. Michael was a big man, and she’d noticed time and again that he was all the more careful for it. Now he loomed over her, using physicality when he couldn’t chase her off with silence. She rolled her eyes. Dangerous indeed.
“A little thing like you, I wish you luck in trying,” he scoffed.
All bluster, she thought, smiling again.
He didn’t slow. “I’ll see a field full of flowers in this rock heap before I see you taking hold and shaking me. And—”
She darted in and settled her mouth over his. A low sound of surprise echoed from deep in his throat, and his hands clamped onto her shoulders like he was readying to push her away. Twining her arms around his neck, she held on for all she was worth. No running, she willed him. Just wanting.
She knew the moment when he accepted her and understood she wouldn’t be bullied or placated. She didn’t let go. His hands, cool and gritty from the work he’d been doing, cupped either side of her face and held her. She could feel the streaks of mud now painted on her skin, and didn’t mind in the least.
Kylie welcomed him, his tongue even hotter in contrast to the cold hands cupping her face. His taste was indisputably Mic
hael, singular and elemental, and she wanted more. Her tongue stroked his, ventured to taste more, and still it wasn’t enough. On the kiss spun until she finally realized she’d forgotten to breathe altogether.
Kylie ended the moment and drew in a ragged breath. She didn’t let go of him for fear of sinking to the wet earth. He curved his hands on the backs of her thighs, just beneath her bottom, and tugged her closer.
“You loosened my tongue, all right. Straight into your mouth,” he murmured into her ear. “A damn lot more fun than being shaken, too.”
She froze at this—the first blatant sexual banter she’d ever shared.
“Good, now,” she said, not quite brave enough to meet his eyes, “since that tongue of yours is nice and loose, perhaps you’re ready to tell me what’s got you flinging rocks and scowling at nothing in particular.”
“I can think of other things I’d like to be doing with my tongue.” He bent closer and whispered words so intimate and delicious that a resounding yes! echoed though her imagination even as she pushed away.
“Just a thought,” he said in an offhand way that didn’t at all match the hot sexual intent of his expression.
Kylie turned from him and rubbed the slight grit that had transferred from her face to her fingertips. She’d underestimated him, and it had nothing to do with his size. One whispered picture and all thought of getting to the bottom of his unhappiness flew. Sharp man, Michael, she thought, then turned back to face him.
“A thought you’d best be saving for later. Now talk.”
He wore the look of a hunted man. “You won’t be letting this go, will you?”
She shook her head.
“Right, then . . .” Instead of continuing he gazed off into the countryside, miles and miles unbroken by town or tree. He cleared his throat, glanced at her, then looked back to the horizon. “The summer I was fourteen, I asked my mam if I could be apprenticed to a furniture maker in Kilkenny. I was sick to death of the boarding school she’d pitched me into, and they were damned sick of me, too. And the furniture maker, I’d gravitated to his shop from the time I was old enough to slip away from home. He made a fine living of it, and you see his pieces in glossy magazines these days. But you’d have thought I’d asked to work in the sewers the way she acted. Why couldn’t I plan to go into business with my father, she wanted to know.”
He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets even though the day was warm. “Insurance.” He spat the word like an oath. “Can you imagine me in a suit and tie, cell phone attached to my ear, spouting actuarial tables?”
She couldn’t. He belonged to a solid, simpler time, one that had ended long ago.
“Anyway, Mam refused to do it, and my da—as usual—wouldn’t cross her. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. There was no great calling for woodworkers in prison.” His smile angled sharp with irony. “For some reason they found it inadvisable to equip terrorists with awls and screwdrivers and the like.”
“So I’d guess.” She marveled that he could find any humor—even the painful sort—in his past. Unfortunately she also saw where this was leading, and her heart ached for him.
“I got myself fourteen years of book education, the best Her Majesty offers her prisoners. I can tell you about Homer and Plato and formulae and business plans, not that anyone would hire me. Fourteen damn years and the only useful thing I walked out with was a one-hundred-pound clothing allowance. I’ve got no skills, Kylie, nothing to offer.”
‘That’s not true. I know the work you’re doing now isn’t as grand as you’d wish, but it’s a place to start.”
“A place to start,” he echoed bitterly. “I’m thirty-two years old. Actually, thirty-goddamn-three soon enough.” He paced away in long, angry strides, then swung back to her. “A place to start! I’ve got no place to go! I could start here, then throw every rock in Kerry. I might as well die doing it because that’s all I’m good for.”
He closed the distance between them and gripped her by the shoulders. “You ask me what’s the matter. I want what I can’t have. I want...”
His fingers tightened convulsively, then he let her go. Still his pain closed around her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t draw a breath.
“... and I’ve got no business to be wanting.”
She reached out her hand, needing to touch, to comfort.
He stepped back. “Don’t. Just... don’t.”
That hurt more than anything else he could have done.
He scrubbed his hand over his face, then stared at the ground. “I’ll be going. I’m sorry.”
Without answering—without knowing how to answer—Kylie turned and walked to her house.
He’d made an absolute mess of that, Michael admitted to himself as he retreated to town. He hadn’t meant to say anything at all, but the woman had a way of working under his defenses. He’d tried to sidetrack her with talk of lovemaking, something neither of them could ever have enough of, but even that hadn’t worked. No, she’d pushed him until what words he’d managed to scrape together were the wrong ones.
Silence. God—if there happened to be one—as his witness, he’d stick to silence from now till the bitter end. And bitter it would be. Bitter to see her marry another, and laugh and love with him. Most bitter of all to see her one day grow round with another man’s children.
Michael clenched the steering wheel tighter, thinking he’d like to rip it from the dash. He wanted to howl at the injustice of life, but knew better than to bother. When it came to Kylie, he was a beaten man, and had been from the start of the race.
He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Gerry Flynn had taken up his appointed position. No point in making the effort to be angry.
Gerry drove slowly by as Michael pulled his car alongside the curb in front of Vi’s house. Michael trudged to the front door, swung it open, then leaped back from the wave of sound blasting at him.
“What the bloody hell—” he began, then Vi reached out and hauled him into the house. That he’d managed to miss the music before he’d reached the door only showed what a damned mess he was. Though he wasn’t quite sure he should close off a means of quick escape, he shut the door behind himself.
“Bruce Springsteen,” she shouted over the driving rhythm, then spun off into a dance that looked nothing short of pagan.
“That much I knew,” he muttered, well aware no one could hear him. Not that anyone other than his sister seemed to be at this party. Roger, too, he amended, watching the homely dog bound after his owner, trying to grab onto the fringe from the purple shawl-thing she waved about like a harem veil.
Vi stopped to gulp from a glass full of some bubbling neon orange stuff. “Dance with me!” she urged after wiping the back of one hand across her mouth.
Michael inspected the contents of that glass instead. He sniffed it once, then again. No scent of liquor. He took a sip, winced at its cloying sweetness, then set the glass back down.
“It’s orange drink, you big ninny. Orange Crush, all the way from America.”
If his sister had to pick a vice, he supposed this one was harmless enough, though not as satisfying as a good, thick pint.
She shimmied in front of him, and he came damned close to being embarrassed. “I’m celebrating. Sold myself today. Lots of lo-o-o-vely Yank dollars will be flying my way,” she announced while Bruce sang about someone named Rosalita jumping a little higher.
It seemed that his sister was quite high enough. He took her by the elbows and tried to still her, not that he had much luck. She danced out of his grip and planted a great, smacking kiss on his cheek.
“I’ll be designing fabrics for them,” she said, leaning close enough to be heard. “We’ve been talking on and off for a year, but I never thought anything would come of it. But they want me, and they’re paying fine for the honor, too!”
“You’re worth it,” he said, then wrapped Vi in a hug she suffered for all of two seconds, then spun away.
Half-breathless from he
r dance, she blurted, “Oh, I forgot you had a call today, too. Said he was an old friend of yours, but wouldn’t leave a name. Not from prison, I hope.”
Michael’s stomach lurched. It sure as hell was none of his fellow “political” parolees, though he was quite certain they’d made a point of keeping track of him. They specialized in embracing their enemies.
Who, then? He’d written the correspondence teacher from his last business courses and told him where to forward his remaining tests and papers, but the man wasn’t the sort to pick up a phone. Which left Michael hearing Gerry Flynn’s insidious words about Brian Rourke, who surely wasn’t fool enough to have returned home.
“You might as well quit scowling,” his sister ordered. “If the man calls back, he calls back. And if he doesn’t, you’ve wasted a perfectly good dance.”
She grabbed his hand and forced him into some semblance of moving with the pounding beat. He started out stubborn and intractable as any mule, but soon enough was pulling off his jacket and setting aside thoughts of matters he couldn’t control. It felt good to let go to the music, though he couldn’t call what he was doing dancing, exactly. And it felt beyond good to share in his sister’s happiness, to push some of his own woes out of the way.
Then trouble came slamming through the front door.
After pounding over the din until her knuckles throbbed, Kylie gave up on good manners and marched into Vi Kilbride’s house. She decided it must be a genetic flaw, this Kilbride madness. She paused for an intriguing instant to watch Vi move about in a way that shocked her, and made her more than a little envious. Vi waggled her fingers and mouthed a silent “hello,” then danced on. Michael had stilled as soon as he saw her. His face lost its rare smile and took on that cornered expression she’d already seen once today.
Well fine, because he was a hunted man. She stalked toward him, and he froze in place.
“You go slinking off in a sulk, then not half an hour later I find you dancing like you’re auditioning for The Full Monty!”