“Do ya like it, then?”
“Are you kidding,” I say, holding it up to my chest and smiling. “I love it! Where did you find it?”
“One of my mates owns a T-shirt company based out of Galway. I asked him to make it custom.”
“Thank you.” I give him a quick hug and step back before it can get weird. “That’s me. Bravely rescuing the able bodied since 2017!”
He laughs.
I put the T-shirt in my suitcase, grab a pair of cashmere gloves, and follow Colin out the door. When I imagined what kind of vehicle Colin would drive, I imagined a rugged SUV with black tinted windows or a mud-splattered Jeep, not a sleek, matte, gray BMW motorcycle that looks straight out of a Bond movie.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he says, handing me a matte gray helmet that matches the bike. “My hire car had a flat, so I borrowed one of the bikes from the set.”
“What?” I practically squeal. “This motorcycle is going to be in a Colin Monaghan movie? Are you serious?”
He frowns. “Yes, why?”
Why? Because I am a crazed fan who traveled all the way across the Atlantic hoping to see Colin Monaghan and now you tell me I am going to take a ride on the back of the motorcycle from his next film?
“No reason,” I say, casually drawing an arc in the gravel with the toe of my boot. “I didn’t expect you to pick me up on a motorcycle. I’ve never been on one before.”
“You’re serious?”
I nod my head.
“This will be your first time, then?” I look up into his brown eyes, see the teasing light glimmering in them, and my heart does a strange loop-de-loop in my chest. “Do ya trust me?”
Do I trust him? The only thing I know about Colin Banks is that he willingly jumps out of helicopters into a freezing ocean. Can I trust a devastatingly hot adrenaline junkie who smells like sex in leather? My mouth goes dry. My mind goes blank. I can’t think of a witty response, so I pull the helmet on my head and fumble with the straps.
“Let me help,” he says, his long fingers brushing my cheeks. He pulls the strap and adjusts the buckle under my chin. “Is that too tight?”
“No.”
“Grand,” he says, smiling. “I have been riding since before I was legally allowed to operate a motorcycle, so just try to relax. There are a few things ya need to know, though. I will get on first and then help ya on. Put your feet here”—he flips down the footrests located on either side of the bike—“but keep them away from this long tube. It’s the exhaust and it gets very hot.”
He swings one of his long legs over the bike, puts his helmet on his head, and gestures for me to hop on. I climb on and sit up straight.
He looks over his shoulder.
“Put your arms around my waist, your chest against my back, and look over my inside shoulder. When we come to a curve or turn, just relax against me and let me do the leaning, okay?”
I do as he says, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my chest against his back. The engine roars to life and we take off down the gravel drive and onto Oysterbed Road.
I wasn’t entirely honest when I told Colin I had never been on the back of a motorcycle before. Sean of the Donald Duck orgasm rode a motorcycle. He picked me up for lunch one day wearing a Cage Warriors Fighting Championship wife beater and enough Drakkar Noir to knock out an elephant. He jammed the brakes several times, which I later learned is a cheap move pulled by d-bags trying to cop a feel because it slams the passenger’s breasts against the driver. It’s called the “boob jam.” We rode to a nearby park and made out beside a row of Dumpsters. It was a very brief ride and a very unsatisfying make-out session. Therefore, it doesn’t really count.
This ride is totally different—and not just because Colin has mad riding skills, taking the curves with the precision of a Grand Prix racer—but because I feel different with him. He treats me with more respect than Sean ever did. He seems genuinely concerned about me. Each time he stops, he puts his hand on my knee and asks if I am okay. He has the body of a cad and the manners of a dad . . . and I kinda like it.
He takes the N71 toward Killarney, a ribbon of a road that unfurls over rolling hills and through pine-scented forests.
I’m not gonna lie: the vibration of the engine under our seat, the feel of my arms and legs wrapped around Colin’s solid body, the thrill of being on the back of a powerful motorcycle with a stranger in a strange country, is doing something to me. With each mile that passes I am becoming more and more attracted to the Other Colin. I rest my head against his shoulder, inhale the scent of his leather jacket comingled with his cologne, and wonder what it would be like to slip my hands under his coat, run my fingers over the ridges of his abs.
When he finally pulls into the restaurant parking lot and kills the engine, he has revved me up way more than the motorcycle. He removes his helmet, climbs off the bike, and holds out his hand to help me off.
I put my gloved hand in his and climb off the bike.
“You’re trembling,” he says, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. “Was it too cold?”
Cold? Is he kidding? It was bone-marrow-melting hot.
I take my helmet off and hand it to him, grinning.
“Are you kidding me? I don’t want to sound like a stereotypical American, but that was awesome.”
He laughs and stops rubbing my arms.
“I am glad ya liked it.”
While Colin attaches our helmets to the bike, I look around. It’s the gloaming, that magical time just before dark when the world looks as if it has been suspended in amber. The cozy stone restaurant is situated in the Killarney National Forest, on the banks of Looscaunagh Lough, a mirror-smooth lake aglow with a translucent orangey-yellow light. A wreath is hanging on the restaurant’s red-painted door and tall red candles burn in each window. A painted wooden sign hangs from an iron lamppost that reads: Seanmháthair Lodge, established in 1860. It looks like a Thomas Kincade painting.
“What does sean-ma-there mean?”
“Seanmháthair means ‘old mother,’” Colin says, taking my hand and leading me toward the front door. “It’s pronounced ‘shan-a-WAW-her.’”
Colin opens the door and we step inside. The rustic restaurant has stone walls, rough timber beams spanning the ceiling, and logs crackling and hissing inside a massive fireplace. The air smells of roasting meat and cinnamon.
An older woman wearing a crisp white apron greets us and shows us to a table beside the fire. She hands us each a menu, hand printed on heavy cream card stock.
“The special tonight is Seanmháthair Yule Pork,” she says, crossing her hands and resting them on her waist. “Pork fillet wrapped in crispy belly, stuffed with apple and black pudding, and served with spiced apple and rosemary-flavored roasting juices. We serve it with a potato and cauliflower puree and garden peas.”
“Mmm, that sounds delicious,” I say, handing my menu back. “I will have that.”
Colin orders beef fillet served in a whiskey peppercorn sauce and champ, creamy mashed potatoes with scallions and loads of butter. Meat and potatoes sound so much classier in Ireland.
“Can I bring yous something to drink?”
If I spend the rest of my life living in a cozy cottage in County Kerry, I won’t ever become used to hearing the word you pluralized.
“I would love a Bulmers,” I say. “Unless you can recommend a local cider.”
“Ah, sure,” she says, grinning. “Moll McCarthy’s is made not too far from here in Moll’s Gap. Mind how much ya drink, though, or ya will be two sheets to the wind before ya know it.”
“I’ll take one, thank you.”
Colin orders a Guinness.
Our server returns with our drinks and a basket of warm soda bread with a crock of whipped butter.
“So, Grace Murphy,” Colin says, resting his elbows on his chair and lacing his fingers. “Tell me something about yourself. Something grand.”
I take a long sip of my cider and try to think of s
omething grand. Something grand. Something grand. An image of my cramped apartment with the leaky kitchen faucet and sad, needle-shedding Charlie Brown Christmas tree pops into my mind. There isn’t a lot of grand in my life.
“I am spending Christmas in Ireland. That’s pretty grand.”
“Ah, sure. But what about your family?”
“What about them?”
I take another sip of the crisp, pale golden cider, savoring the smooth taste that makes the cider I drink back home taste like cheap apple-flavored Kool-Aid by comparison.
“Aren’t they going to miss ya?”
“I don’t have a family.”
His brows knit together, his lips turn down at the corners. “Everyone has a family, Grace.”
I don’t want to tell this tall, dark, gorgeous Irishman my sad, sordid, soap-opera-worthy story because I don’t want him to pity me—pity is the worst, like razor blades on the heart—but he is staring at me with his soul-piercing eyes, beneath those thick, expressive Colin Monaghan-ish eyebrows.
“My grandparents died before I was born. My father left when I was a little girl. I don’t have any siblings, aunts, or uncles.”
“What about your mam?”
I shrug. “She told me once she never wanted a kid. She thought a baby would be the superglue to hold my father, but he found a solvent—another woman. He got my mother pregnant and left her. Apparently, I have several half siblings scattered from Bakersfield to Boston.”
“Jaysus!” He runs his hand through his hair. “I am sorry, Grace. I don’t know what I would do without me mam and me gran.”
“Ain’t nothing but a thang,” I say, smiling even though my heart is aching.
“What?”
“Sorry, it’s something my friend Vivia says when she’s brushing something off. It’s American slang for ‘no big deal.’”
“It is a big deal and I am sorry”—he reaches across the table and puts his hand over mine—“truly.”
“Thank you, but you know what they say—what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I swallow back the lump forming in my throat. “I’ve learned to be independent. I graduated from high school valedictorian, won a swimming scholarship to UC Davis, put myself through college and grad school, and landed a killer job.”
Colin stares at me, a sympathetic smile on his lips and a knowing glint in his eye. He sees right through my bravado.
“You have had to be strong and independent.” He squeezes my hand, before pulling his hand away. “You’ve had nobody else to rely on. Go raibh do theach i gcónaí ró-bheag a shealbhú go léir do chairde.”
Either Irish cider is a lot more potent than the cider we have in the States or Colin is having a stroke.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s an Irish Gaelic blessing.” He says, cutting himself a piece of soda bread and slathering it with butter. “I said, ‘May your home always be too small to hold all your friends.’ Until you have a family of your own, I pray God gives you many friends.”
Tears fill my eyes at his unexpected kindness.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice cracking.
“Tá fáilte romhat.” He finishes buttering the bread, puts it on my bread plate, and cuts himself a slice. “That means ‘you’re welcome.’”
“What about you?” I change the subject before I crawl into his lap and start blubbering like a toddler lost in the mall. “Do you have a big family?”
“Sure,” he smiles. “Five brothers, eight aunts, seven uncles, thirty-one cousins. Holidays are barely managed chaos, they are. We gather at my gran’s house, not too far from where ya are staying in Sneem. Where are you from, Grace?”
Every time he pronounces my name, with a slight tip of the r and the Irish lilt, my heart skips a beat. I could listen to him say Grace Murphy again and again. Would it be weird if I asked him to say it into my iPhone recorder? How cool would it be to have that as my text tone?
“I was born in California, but I live in Philadelphia.”
“What do ya do in Philadelphia?”
“I am in advertising. In fact, I work for the largest advertising firm in North America.”
“Like Mad Men?”
I smile. I actually get that a lot.
“Sorta like Mad Men, only without all of the cocktails and sordid office sex.”
He looks up from buttering his soda bread, one black eyebrow arched. “What’s the point, then? Really, without the cocktails and sex, it’s just an unrelenting grind toward heart attacks and lung cancer.”
I laugh.
“Tell me a campaign you have worked on. Have I seen any of your ads?”
“For the last year, I have been working on the Désir campaign.”
“The Belgium chocolates?”
“Yes.”
He sits back, crosses his arms, and whistles. “I am impressed, Peggy.”
“Peggy?”
“You’re a Peggy Olson. Striking out alone to make a name for yourself in the cutthroat world of advertising.”
“Something like that,” I say, laughing again.
I don’t tell him that, like Peggy, I focus on my career too much and pick deadbeat losers as boyfriends.
“Still, I am impressed. Lifeguard and advertising executive. Very impressive.”
“What about you, do you like being a stunt double?”
“I get paid to do things I would do for fun.”
“Like fall out of a helicopter?”
He shrugs. “Fall out of a helicopter. Dangle from a cliff. Drive a motorcycle off a bridge.”
“You drive motorcycles off bridges just for fun? Please tell me you don’t have any fun planned on our ride home.”
He laughs.
“That depends on what you consider fun.” He winks, his broad toothy grin stretching across his handsome face. “What sort of fun did you have in mind?”
My cheeks flush with heat. I know precisely what the charming Irish rogue is implying. I should pump the brakes on his fast flirting, but a bad boy addict rarely knows her limitations.
“Anything that doesn’t involve pain,” I say, flipping my hair over my shoulder and giving him a little wink. “Surprise me.”
Chapter Seven
CRAZY HEART
Colin Monaghan once said, “My biggest problem is that I don’t know how to abstain from love. I fall in love with nearly every girl I meet.” By the end of dinner, I am feeling Colin’s pain. I am not saying I am in love with Colin Banks, but I am well on my way to having a problem.
Of course, Colin Monaghan also said, “There’s something massively empowering about running naked into a frozen lough with a bunch of lads.”
So maybe I shouldn’t read too much into Colin Monaghan quotes . . . or the way Colin Banks’s leg kept brushing mine under the table, or the way he made me laugh a thousand times before dessert, or the way he fed me a bite of his sticky toffee pudding.
We are just about to put our helmets on and climb back onto the motorcycle when he grabs my hand, puts it to his lips, and kisses the tender spot on my palm.
“Do ya have to get home?”
“No. Why?”
“I know a place. . . .”
Don’t all players know a place? Is Colin making a play? I can’t tell. Sure, his banter has been a wee bit flirty, but other than that he has acted as if he were having a pint with a pal.
“. . . and on a clear night you can see clear across to the Beara Peninsula and Dursey Island.”
“Ah, sure,” I say, mimicking his accent. “It sounds grand, it does. ’Tanks for inviting me. ’Tanks a million!”
He laughs and pushes the helmet over my head. I adjust the straps, wait for Colin to swing his long leg over the motorcycle, and climb on behind him.
We follow the same ribbon road back to Sneem, but this time I hold Colin a little tighter and rest my chin against his left shoulder, watching the countryside zip by as if in a movie. I wish there were a cameraman filming us because I don’t ever want to forget t
he way the hills look bathed in the quicksilver light of a full moon or the way Colin reaches back and squeezes my knee each time we stop at a crossroad.
We drive to the outskirts of Sneem, to a dirt turnoff. Colin parks the bike and we hop off. He takes my hand, leading me down a narrow path, through a thicket of flowering whin bushes, and to a wide swath of sandy beach.
We stand side by side, staring out over the water, glimmering silver in the moonlight, to a distant silhouette rising out of the water.
“That’s the Beara Peninsula.” He points across the water. “It’s where me gran lives.”
We walk along the water. The cold air blowing off the sea whips my hair around. Colin pulls his beanie off his head and puts it on my head, tucking my hair behind my ears. He stares at me so long I am certain he can read every hope written on my soul, hear the thundering beat of my heart.
“Do ya know how fecking beautiful ya are, Grace Murphy?”
No. I don’t know how beautiful I am, Colin Banks, but please, please tell me in excruciating detail with that drop-dead sexy Irish accent.
I am about to make a flippant, self-depreciating comment when he leans down and presses his lips to mine. If Santa Claus filled my stocking with all of the sugarplums in the world, they wouldn’t be half as sweet as Colin’s kiss. He tastes of toffee and Guinness, two flavors I will forever associate with this moment and Colin Banks.
I am about to slip my arms around his waist when he stops kissing me. A cold breeze blows a lock of my hair across my face and it becomes fixed to my damp lips. Colin reaches down, brushes the hair from my face, and then slowly, teasingly, traces the swollen curve of my bottom lip from corner to corner. I can taste the sea salt, feel the rough warmth of his finger.
He grabs my hand and I open my eyes, blinking away the fog of fantasy. He leads me to a seawall and we sit on top of it. Colin wraps his arm around my waist as if it is the most natural thing in the world for us to be together on this dark, deserted beach. The waves lap against the shore, a lone seagull circling overhead cries mournfully.
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