“You’ve been hard on me tonight, Alice. Was that your intention?”
She flushed. “Of course not.”
“You’ve been hard on Emma as well. I’d no idea you disliked her so.”
Alice stirred the last mouthful of stew in her bowl. “I don’t dislike Emma. We just never got on. You were my friend, Patrick. I couldn’t be very fond of her after the way she left you.”
She felt him look at her, his glance moving over her face, curious, probing. Lifting her chin she met his stare. “If you’ve a question, ask it.”
He smiled. “I wonder why your friendship escaped me, Alice.”
“It did no such thing. It was always there.”
“Thank you for that.”
Embarrassed, she stood and carried her bowl to the sink, where she washed and dried it thoroughly. When her emotions were under control again she turned, leaned back against the counter, crossed her arms, and dared the question that had bothered her since Emma had returned to the island. “Has she changed much?”
“Who?”
“Emma.”
Patrick thought a minute. “I really don’t know,” he said at last. “We haven’t seen much of each other. She’s older, of course, but still lovely.”
Alice blanched. Emma was lovely, but she was fifty-six. Age had leveled out some of the differences between them. But perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps a man always saw a woman the way he remembered her.
“I don’t believe I ever really knew Emma,” he continued slowly, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “I created a woman in my mind who was nothing like the one I married.” He shrugged. “When you ask me if she’s changed, I have no answer.”
Alice’s face softened. “I’m sorry, Patrick. You should tell me to mind my own business.”
He shook his head. “You knew her nearly as well as I did. Does she seem changed?”
Alice stared past him, reliving old memories. “I don’t think anyone on this island really knew her. I do remember that in the beginning she laughed a great deal and that all eyes were drawn to her. It was as if she colored the room with light. We were caught up in her pleasure, in her beauty and spirit.” She left out the rest of it, the jealousy that turned into heartache, the slow realization that Patrick was pulling away, falling in love with a woman she could never compete with.
He nodded. “It was her spirit that attracted me. I’d never met a woman so filled with life and hope and smiles, so unconcerned with practical matters.” He stared, unseeing, at his plate. “We had a few good months. What puzzles me is why she stayed at all. I was hardly a catch, an uneducated Irishman with little to offer a woman like her.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Patrick. Any other woman would have been happy to have you.”
“Not Emma.”
“No,” agreed Alice, “not Emma. But why should that surprise you? Not many of our own stay on Inishmore. To imagine a woman like her, accustomed to sunshine twenty-nine days out of thirty, adjusting to a place like this, was too much to expect. There wasn’t a prayer of the marriage working, Patrick. We all knew it was merely a matter of time. To my way of thinking she lasted longer than most would have.”
He smiled ruefully. “Where were you when I needed it explained to me?”
“You were besotted. You wouldn’t have listened.”
“I suppose not.”
“What happens now?”
He looked surprised. “Now?”
“Her family is here now. Perhaps she could be persuaded to stay.”
His mouth dropped. “Tell me you’re joking, Alice.”
“It isn’t a joking matter.”
He understood her unasked question. “There is nothing left between Emma and me. She’s another man’s wife and has been for nearly thirty years. What’s come over you?”
The words were like cooling ointment on a painful burn. She could rest on those words and save the hard questions, the ones like How do you feel when you see her? or Could you ever love again? She wet her lips. “Emma always did bring out the worst in me. I’m sorry, Patrick.”
Across the room she could see his eyes warm and blue. “You’re a good lass, Alice, to be concerned about me. Don’t worry so.”
Were all men so obtuse, or was it this particular one? “Perhaps I will take a drop of the spirits after all, Patrick, to keep the chill away.”
When they were settled in the living room with a pillow behind her back and a blanket tucked around her legs, after she’d taken her first sip of the warm amber liquid, she remembered what she’d been meaning to tell him all along. “There’s talk of evacuation in the village.”
“There’s been talk of it before.”
“The water is polluted for hundreds of kilometers. It may take years to recover.”
“There are other ways to make a living.”
Lord, he was stubborn. She opened her mouth to tell him just how stubborn when something in his eyes made her stop short. He’d been remarkably agreeable all evening long. She wouldn’t risk their tenuous new start by opening up a tender subject. Meanwhile there was tonight, a rare and lovely thought. She would savor it.
CHAPTER 17
Sean dipped the washcloth into the bathwater and squeezed it over the baby’s shoulders. Luke splashed happily and laughed at him. He managed to return his smile, grateful that at least Luke hadn’t succumbed to the aggravating childhood illness that had turned his normally cheerful, uncomplaining nieces into temperamental fishwives.
After rinsing the last bit of shampoo out of his nephew’s hair, Sean lifted the baby out of the tub, wrapped him in a towel, and carried him down the chilly hallway into the main room to dress him near the fire.
The girls had finally dropped off to sleep, their faces sore and raw against the pristine white of their pillows. He had barely secured Luke’s diaper when the doorbell rang. Leaping over an ottoman and a small table, praying that the girls wouldn’t wake, he answered the door before the caller rang a second time.
It was Mollie. He breathed a sigh of relief, invited her inside, and closed the door against the cold. She went straight to the baby, kissed both round red cheeks, and began drying the areas Sean usually forgot, behind the ears and between each miniature toe. “I came by to tell you I’ve thought of something,” she said, gently patting the fold of Luke’s ear. “What if we file a suit for negligence and liability as well as damages?” She peeked behind the baby’s ear, frowned, and looked more closely.
“For what reason?”
“To make Transom Oil responsible not only for cleanup but for the livelihood of the community. We would ask them to pay for interruption of employment.”
“Do you know of a precedent?”
“I’ve asked a friend in America to find out. He said he would call tomorrow if he has anything.”
Resentment colored Sean’s response. “What does your American friend know about Irish lawyers?” As soon as the words were out he was ashamed. “I’m sorry, Mollie.”
She wasn’t paying attention. Instead, she’d taken off the baby’s sleeper and turned him around, peering closely at his back. “Sean, look at this. Is it what I think?”
He picked up his nephew and examined the small back. Tiny red areolas were forming at the top of the spine. He checked in back of Luke’s ears and swore fluently. “How much more do I have to take?”
“The children are the ones who have the chicken pox,” Mollie reminded him, lifting the baby from his lap. “It makes sense that if the girls have it, Luke would catch it, too.”
He stared at her. “Does anything rattle you?”
“Of course.” Avoiding his eyes, she carefully eased the baby’s chubby legs into his knit sleeper and snapped the buttons shut. “There you are, love,” she crooned, “all ready for bed.”
She knew her way around the cottage. Passing through the kitchen, she picked up the bottle, warm and waiting, in its pan on the stove. She smiled at Luke. “You’re not feeling it yet, are you
, little guy?”
He smiled back, his lips widening around the nipple for an instant before beginning his meal. Mollie carried him into his bedroom and sat down in the rocker beside the crib. Within minutes the warm milk and the rocking motion worked their magic. The baby’s eyelids fluttered and closed. His mouth relaxed, and he slept. She lowered him into his crib, tucked the blanket around him, and kissed his cheek before raising the bar.
For several minutes she stood there, watching him. Luke was a beautiful baby. The symptomatic red sores had not yet reached his face. His cheeks were soft and clear, his eyelashes long and dark against cream-colored skin. Whorls of light brown hair were growing in all over his head, and his hands, open and relaxed in sleep, were long and well shaped.
An ache rose in Mollie’s chest. She hurt for Kerry. How tragic that a mother should miss seeing this. Another thought occurred to her, just as sobering. What if she never had children of her own? She was approaching her twenty-ninth birthday. The girls she’d grown up with were married. Most had children. Marriage and children had been her plan, too. Yet she was no closer than she had ever been. She thought of Garrett and dismissed him immediately. Garrett Michaels would never be her husband. She’d told him so, but he stubbornly refused to accept it, insisting that she wait, that too much had happened, that she didn’t know her own mind.
If there was anything Mollie knew, it was her own mind. It frightened her sometimes, the images that flitted across it, impossible desires she had no business imagining. One day, when she had the time, when she wasn’t teaching or worrying about her mother or Patrick or the children or the condition of the island, she would sit down, allow herself free rein, and examine why she spent a good part of everyday thinking and worrying about Sean O’Malley.
She had never met anyone like him. He was complicated, intellectual. His thoughts were quick, his humor sophisticated, his moods unpredictable. He was bound to his sister’s children in ways mere words couldn’t begin to express. She loved that in him. It wasn’t a difficult stretch to realize why that part attracted her so. She was sensible enough to know, by itself, it wasn’t enough. He was also rigid, with the kind of inflexibility that saw no way other than his own. It frightened her.
He was back in the living room. Mollie hadn’t been alone with him since that night in the room beside the kitchen. He’d asked her to Galway but not for a date. For what, then? She took a slow, steady breath, smoothed her hand over Luke’s blanket one last time, and returned to the fire lit room where Sean waited.
He sat on the couch, staring into the blazing turf fire, his profile backlit by the glowing flames. A lump rose in her throat. She swallowed, confused by the roiling emotions peeling back the edges of her control. She wasn’t ready for this. She started to back away. He turned and stood. She stopped. In the dim light she couldn’t tell if he was smiling or frowning.
“Mollie? Is everything all right?”
Her voice was air-filled, tremulous. “Yes.”
“I’ve made tea. Will you stay for a bit?”
Her smile was forced. “Yes.” She approached the couch and sat down on the other end.
He handed her a cup. “Milk and sugar. That’s right, isn’t it?”
She nodded and lifted the cup to her lips. She was being ridiculous. That night in the kitchen was a lapse. He’d forgotten it, and so would she. “Exactly right,” she pronounced in her normal voice. “How is the cleanup coming along?”
He shrugged. “Slowly. There’s a crew from Australia and another from America flying in this week. We can use the help.”
“Where in America?”
“Scripps Institute.”
“San Diego. That’s close to home.”
“Aye.”
The pot of tea would take forever to empty. Silence, awkward and thick, settled over them.
He broke it. “I’m sorry about Galway.”
“Don’t be. I understand.”
“You’ve been a tremendous help with Luke and the girls, Mollie. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Thank you for everything.” There was no doubting the sincerity of his words.
“I love them,” she said simply.
He smiled, and her heart skipped a beat. “I know that. You love easily.”
She set the cup and saucer back on the table and thought a minute. “No,” she said. “I don’t. I can count the number of people I love, really love, on one hand. That’s unusual for someone my age.” She challenged him. “Don’t you agree?”
He found himself counting—Caili, Marni, Luke, and Emma. Four. Who was the last? Maybe Patrick, but he didn’t think so, not yet. She still hadn’t completely forgiven Patrick for his defection.
She was waiting for his answer. He gave her the one that first came to his mind. “I think it would be more unusual for someone like you to count those who love her in such small numbers.”
He knew the exact moment she understood. Her face flamed. She looked away. “Thank you. That’s a lovely compliment.”
“You’re not comfortable with compliments, are you, Mollie Tierney?”
“I don’t remember having any trouble with them,” she said stiffly.
“Perhaps it’s only when they come from me.”
“Why would that be?”
It lay there between them, the unspoken question, out in the open at last. “Because you know the choice is yours.”
She looked at him again, at the vertical creases in his cheeks, the slant of his cheekbones, the arch of his brow, and his mouth, kind, male, smiling. She smiled back. It was such a relief to finally say it. “I choose, yes.”
Yes. A single word, a wealth of meaning. Carefully, slowly, he reached across the space dividing them, lifted her hand, and carried it to his mouth. His lips were warm against her palm.
Her eyes closed, and her head fell back against the couch. For days she’d tortured herself, rehashing and analyzing, over and over, finally concluding that his kiss had meant nothing more than a momentary lapse not to be repeated. The timing was bad, she’d rationalized. Four months wasn’t long enough to know a man’s heart and mind, or was it?
She felt him beside her, his hand on her arm, her throat, her cheek. “Mollie,” he murmured before his mouth closed over hers, “whatever do you see in me?”
Turning to him, she filled her hands with the wool of his sweater, with the thickness of his hair and the taut, bunched muscles of his shoulders. A million thoughts leaped to life in her brain only to disappear in the maelstrom of rising desire. Was this love, to want and need and tremble with passion, yet to be afraid at the same time? What did he feel for her, this man with his lightning moods and his sliding, crooked grin that stole the air from her lungs and squeezed her heart with a yearning she couldn’t explain? It was a question that needed answering, but not now, not when his hands warmed her skin, kneading their way under her sweater, across the bare skin of her back, not when his lips teased her mouth apart and his tongue curled around hers, coaxing her into an intimacy she must have known before but never with him, never like this. Later, much later, she would ask her question, and the others she’d pushed aside.
Sean had known desire, long ago, but he’d forgotten how it could rise up after a long dormancy and catch a man unaware, when it was least expected, when he didn’t want it. What he wanted now, as he’d never wanted anything before, was to feel a woman, this woman, beneath him, taking him inside her, cooling the burn, soothing the pain. He wanted to touch the bones of her face, the nape of her neck, the soft roundness of her breast. His mouth was filled with strands of her hair, whiskey-gold in the firelight. Her face was pressed into the curve of his throat. The strength of his hunger shook him. He didn’t know wanting could feel this way. Why had it never felt this way before?
He didn’t know when it changed, when he knew she would have him without refusal, without the games women played, without the words they needed before giving of themselves. He carried her into the bedroom, grateful that he’d
thought ahead to light the fire. Locking the door against interruptions, he undressed her slowly, baring one small section of skin at a time, touching her, kissing her, suckling her until she was naked and shivering and wanting him as much as he wanted her.
She was neither shy nor bold, her quick fingers aiding him in the separating of buttons from their holes and the sliding of zippers and the loosening of laces and all that kept him from her waiting, eager, flame-gilded body. She touched him all over, tentatively at first and then with growing confidence, molding the lines and shape of him with her hands and arms and lips. Her mouth settled on his, and she kissed him deeply.
He pulled back before entering her, to look at her face. What he saw there tugged at his heart. There would be no stopping, no regrets. She was seeing him, seeing through him. Had he ever really looked at a woman at this, their most intimate moment? The answer shamed him.
Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he slid deeply into her, moving with the rhythms of her body, feeling the warm female flesh close tightly around him. He felt the sound more than he heard it, a small involuntary whimper she couldn’t control. She wanted him. The knowledge was powerful, heady. It inflamed him. His control broke, and he surged inside her.
When it was over she touched him on the blade of his cheek and ran her finger over it. “Sean,” she breathed. “Oh, Sean.” He put his mouth on hers, and she wanted him to leave it there forever, but there were questions to be asked, and if ever they were to do this again, they needed asking.
“How have we come to this place?” he asked in wonder.
“Because of Kerry,” she answered. “Kerry brought us together.” She turned on her side and propped her cheek up on her elbow. “Tell me about Kerry.”
His mouth tightened. He didn’t want to go there, not yet, perhaps not ever again. “My mother would do a better job of it.”
“I’m asking you.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Of course there is. I want to know her. Her letters were lovely, welcoming. The girls are the way they are because of her. Don’t keep her from me. She deserves to be remembered.”
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