“And, in case you’re wondering, I guess I’ll be sleeping on the settee there tonight – unless you have any other ideas?”
“Well, actually, I have,” Cíara said, putting her arms around his neck and bringing his mouth down to hers. As his arms tightened around her, she pulled her mouth away, and suggested he could sleep in the garden shed outside.
Winters spluttered with laughter. “I should have known there’d be no mercy from you, my darling. Shall we head on in?”
“I think I’ll just walk a bit more. I’m stiff from the drive, and I’ve something I need to think about. I’ll be in soon.”
“Well, in that case, I think I’ll spend a few minutes on the computer, check my email and go over my last few pages,” Jon told her. He was stretching the truth a little – he’d been finding it hard to write before he made that trip to Dublin, and it had been impossible since he’d met her. Lord, he could barely string a sentence together without thinking of her, she flooded his mind. Wanting her was making him plain crazy.
Cíara was almost back at the cottage when she heard a familiar ring. Her cellphone was still in the dashboard of the MG, and she reached in to rescue it, pressing the OK button to answer the call.
“Cíara – it’s Frank O’Keefe – listen, this is urgent. My secretary said you were in the office with Winters – are you still with him?”
“Yes, er, no – he’s in the cottage, I’m….”
“Never mind where you are…what’s he doing?”
“Oh, look, Frank, You’ve got to get over this – Peggy and Jonathon aren’t…”
“Dammit, Cíara!” The voice exploded in her ear, “This is important! Don’t let him turn his computer on!”
“Surely his writing’s not that bad?” she quipped, trying to calm the usually sedate man who seemed to have turned into a raving lunatic.
“I don’t know why I did it, it was one of those revenge things – just don’t let him turn on his computer…”
“Revenge things?” Suddenly everything clicked into place. The repairs to the electrical outlets. Frank’s anger at Winters. She hurled herself towards the cottage, screaming at the top of her lungs – but she was too late. A blue flash enveloped the cottage, and a strange, distant-sounding boom echoed in her ears. She screeched to a halt in the hallway, looking into the living room where Jonathon kept his computer. There, with a shocked expression on his face, eyebrows singed, the writer stood gazing down at a twisted plastic object that had once been a laptop computer.
“Ohmigod,” she whispered. The cottage was in near darkness, the only light from the flames of the peat fire.
“I’m going to kill that electrician,” Winters muttered, along with some very interesting expletives as he reached for the small fire extinguisher that was clamped to the wall by the fireplace. Outside there was a screech of brakes as a car swerved to a stop, and a few seconds later Frank O’Keefe ran white faced into the room.
“Jeez, Winters, I’m so sorry…. I didn’t mean to….”
The writer turned a smoke-stained, murderous glance on him.
“You! You did this!” he growled, “You could have killed me, man.”
“I didn't mean any real harm – it's just that, well, I thought….you and Peggy…”
“You thought I was fooling around with your wife and you wanted a little revenge,” Winters finished for him, his face furious. Cíara cringed, thinking Winters was going to wallop the other man – if he didn't throttle the older man first. Feverishly she ran through the first-aid class she took on helping cardiac arrest victims, but little seemed to have lodged in her memory.
“You thought what?” The whispered phrase came from Peggy O'Keefe, standing surveying the scene from the doorway. “What did you think Frank?”
Cíara took one look at Frank's wife, and wished the ground would open up and swallow her. She saw Frank gulp, and his face turn from white to puce. Winters, at least, had the good grace to look ashamed of his outburst, but she really didn't think the older couple stood any chance with a marriage guidance counselor after all this.
“I thought…I – Peggy, this is Cíara Somers. She's the private detective I hired because I thought you were having an affair with Winters here.” Frank was a plain-spoken man, and he couldn’t break the habit of a lifetime. The room fell into total silence, aside from the occasional hiss from the turf fire and a steady dripping of fire suppressant foam over the remains of the laptop.
Then Peggy began to laugh. In seconds she was laughing so hard she was doubled up, holding on to the doorframe for dear life. Knuckling tears away from her eyes, she gasped: “You thought…you thought…a young man like that would be attracted to an old married woman like me?”
“You are a beautiful woman, Peggy O'Keefe, and why wouldn't he be?”
Cíara glanced sharply at Frank. Either he was a honey-tongued beast or he truly loved his wife. And she was willing to bet on the latter. So was Peggy. The older woman held out one arm, the other still supporting her against the doorframe, and said between spurts of laughter: “Come here to me, Frank, darling.”
And he went, with all the quick familiarity of a man who knows he's found a good thing, and never intends to let it go. Within seconds the two were twined in a steamy embrace that left the younger couple in the room eyeing each other with a mixture of envy and embarrassment.
“Well, well – I’ve lived in New York all my life and never seen even a mugging. I come to a distant part of rural Ireland and witness a near murder in the very cottage I’m staying in.” Alison Wilson’s voice was droll as she surveyed the mess. “Jonathon, you told me the craic was good – but nothing in my wildest dreams prepared me for this!”
Frank came up for air and gave a throat-clearing cough. “Er, Peggy and I have some things to discuss, we'll be leaving now,” he said. “Maybe we can discuss, er, the damage, tomorrow?”
“You could stay over, Frank – you guys don’t look as if you'll make it home,” Winters said without malice.
“No, no, we'll be just fine. And there's a motel on the way if we need it,” Frank said, his eyes glittering a promise that made his wife grin like a teenager.
“Well, if the fun is over, I'm off to bed. Guess there's no chance of a cup of tea? Power's off, eh?” Alison asked. Frank flicked her a guilty look he and Peggy made good their escape.
Leaving Cíara and Winters to clean up the mess.
“I'll be sure to give it a decent burial – it was a good friend,” Winters said mournfully as they dropped the fried laptop into a garbage bag.
“Did you lose much of your work?” she asked, eyeing the ruined mess of the desktop.
He shook his head. “Fortunately, I always tidy and file research papers before I go away, so the desktop was clear. And I back up everything to an external drive or a cloud drive. I was just going to check email, so none of the disks was loaded when I powered the machine up.”
“That's good, then.”
She flopped onto the settee, and he joined her after opening the window. “Actually, we can't make tea but I do have something better, courtesy of duty-free,” he declared, reaching down into the cupboard beside the settee and pulling out a bottle of amber liquid. Cíara grinned. She held the two glasses while he poured, and then they toasted the 'Winters & Somers Agency'.
A short while later they fell asleep, nestled in each other's body warmth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
She woke up and stretched, instinctively snuggling into the comforting warmth alongside her. Slowly she became aware of the heavy weight across her chest, and the moist warmth on her neck.
“My God!” She sat up sharply, fully awake and aware, “I'm sleeping with a man!”
It had been a while, but she still remembered the feeling.
“Sad to say, sleeping's all you did,” came a grumble from the area of her left breast as Winters struggled to surface. It wasn't easy for him as Cíara had her elbow in his throat. She peered down into his face.
<
br /> “Are you sure about that?” she demanded, eyes slit with suspicion, remembering the smooth way the duty-free brandy had slipped down her throat the night before.
“Honey, if you'd done anything more than sleep with me, you'd remember.”
“Never could stand a braggart.” She levered herself out of the sofa, using the elbow in his throat to propel herself upwards and enjoyed the satisfying gurgle that the action triggered in him.
“Not bragging – just honest.” He pushed himself into a sitting position, flexing his shoulders. “Not that you're ever likely to find out.”
“What, forgotten about our little bet, then?” The words were out before she could stop them – if he had forgotten that he'd bet he could get her into bed, then it was best left alone and unreminded. Dumb!
“I think I've won – you did sleep with me!” He felt malicious this morning.
“That's not the spirit of the bet…”
“Don't worry, Cíara, I'll get around to making good on it. You'll just have to be patient.”
“That's not what I meant, and you know it!”
“Tsk, tsk…do you guys think you could hold off the lovers' quarrel long enough to drive me to the airport? Some of us have to work, you know.” Alison Walker stood in the doorway, coolly surveying them. She looked drop dead gorgeous, beautifully groomed, self-possessed and wide-awake. Cíara, bed-headed and grumpy, wanted to slap her.
“I'm going for a shower. Have a good trip,” she muttered ungraciously as she slipped past the other woman, gritting her teeth as she heard Alison comment: “My, you didn't work your bedtime magic with that one, now, did you?”
She didn't wait to hear Winters' reply. She didn't want to hear about his bedtime magic. She was confused, mad and wanted to go home. And that's just what she would do, the minute she'd showered and the two of them were gone.
But the shower wouldn't co-operate – she remembered Winters' comments about begging in the right way, but somehow she didn't seem able to coax it into action. Then she remembered that the power was off thanks to Frank’s meddling with the wires and last night’s explosion. She seemed to be batting 1000 on failure to coax things into action, she thought grumpily to herself – then remembered the moonlight kisses she'd shared with Winters, the close embrace that had shown just how ready for action he was. She cursed her foolish hormones, slammed shut the shower door so that it rattled satisfyingly, and pulled on some jeans and a warm sweater.
She sat on the bed until she heard the bang of the front door and the roar of Winters' big four-wheel drive sports vehicle. Safe at last, she told herself wryly as she gathered up her overnight case and went out to her car.
But in her heart she wasn't sure she was ever going to be safe from Jonathon Winters.
* * *
“If you ask me, darlin', I'd say you're looking a bit peaky.” Grace Muldoon slapped a large plate of fried bacon and eggs, mushrooms with toast on the side in front of Cíara. The bed-and-breakfast landlady was resplendent in a peacock blue jogging suit with neon pink runners and a blue and yellow scarf tied around her head. She patted the scarf, when she saw Cíara's entranced glance. “Haven’t got me curlers out yet.”
Grace had been delighted to see her. She was full of questions about the exciting cases she imagined the young private detective was working on, especially the outcome of the case Grace proudly asserted that she'd helped with.
“Well, I sent in my report but I'm not sure what kind of decision the lady in question has made,” she told the landlady fatalistically, gulping strong tea to wash the bacon down.
“Well, maybe she'll decide that she loves him enough to put up with his straying the odd time,” Grace said, sitting down opposite with a panel of her quilting and talking around the cigarette in her mouth. “Some women do, you know.”
Cíara, who had developed a very dim view of male/female relationships, just grunted.
“'Course, I wouldn't have put up with anything like that. Mr. Muldoon, bless his soul, was as faithful as the day is long. He knew what would have happened otherwise!” Grace laughed, but then seeing Cíara 's sober expression, added: “So, what is it, luv? You look like a woman with man trouble.”
She didn't intend to tell another living soul. But this was Grace Muldoon, and all of a sudden the words came tumbling out of her, all about the high-handed behavior of one Jonathon Winters, about the way he was taking over her life…and, unexpectedly, about the bet they had.
“Sounds like a right one to me, dear,” Grace said, when she'd finished the bout of laughter that had brought tears streaming down her cheeks. “I like a man with a sense of humor, I do. What did you say he did for a living?”
So she told her that, too – leaving out the policeman part but reluctantly adding the romance writer. The other woman's eyes went round and wide and the cigarette end glowed red as she sucked especially hard. Then she whipped the white tube from her mouth, stubbed it out vigorously in the small black ashtray at her elbow, and yelled: “J.V. Winters? J.V. Winters wants you to go to bed with him and here you are sitting in old Grace Muldoon's kitchen? What's wrong with you, girl? Are yah anemic or something?”
Cíara sniffed. “I hardly thought you'd approve of a man wanting casual sex,” she said huffily.
Grace took in a deep breath. “Love, some things are a sin, and some are experience. Have you read the man's books? Now there's a man who knows how to please a woman. And how'd you know it's just casual, anyway?”
She fought the tears that sprang to her eyes. “Because when he's finished messing around in my life and my agency, when the Great Writer gets bored, he'll be taking himself off without even a backward glance, to Hollywood to write a script or to New York, or to…to…”
“I know what they do in New York, dear. I watch TV, too.” Grace said, patting her on the shoulder comfortingly. “Do you really think he'll leave?”
Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she sniffed. “Yeah, I do. And I hate him because I've only known him a few days, and I miss him already. What will it be like at the end of his year in Ireland? I'll be insane!”
Grace nodded sympathetically and went to pour more tea. For once, she had nothing to say.
* * *
The phone was already ringing when Cíara arrived, but she decided to let the answering machine take it. Sinking down wearily into Winters' new office chair, which was after all, where her office chair had once stood, she rested her head in her hands. Then his voice came over the machine, and she wanted to wail and pull her hair out.
It was bad enough that she'd driven alone through the unfamiliar country roads, battled the traffic into Dublin and then had to park miles from the office because of a parade through the city center to commemorate something or another – but that the first voice she should hear on arriving back was his was too much. Could she never escape the man?
“Going home and sulking isn't going to solve anything, Cíara,” his disembodied voice floated into the office. “I have work to do here, but I'll be back in town Monday night at our apartment. We still have a lot of things to discuss – about the business.”
“Damn him!” she snarled, throwing a pencil across the room. One of Winters' pencils, from Winters' desk – in what to all intents and purposes was Winters' office. And her apartment was now our apartment? How had all this happened? She'd always been fully in control of things, with her work and love life well under control.
Although it’s been a while since you had a love life, a nasty little voice in her heart muttered.
“Shut up!” she shouted, hearing her voice echo satisfactorily around the small space. So she shouted again, only louder, for good measure.
* * *
“Hey, Cíara, darlin! C'mon, babe, open the door!”
Cíara was almost snarling as she wrapped a towel round her head, pulled on a robe and yanked open the door of her flat. “What the feck do you want, Smokey? It's late, and I was in the shower.”
“Sure, girl
, and you should be glad and grateful to the Lord Above that you have a shower. Some of us poor folks, we don't got none.” The lanky, longhaired hippie type standing on the doorstep delivered the lines with perfect pathos gently simmered in North Dublin street slanguage.
“Got thrown out again, did you?” Cíara asked, amusement and impatience flitting across her face. The tall drink of water before her nodded mutely. “You been smoking that weed again? Didn't the landlord threaten you and threaten you?”
“Er, it was a bit more than that. You see, we….well, the lads and me, we'd been out at that concert, you know, and we'd stopped in to lift a few jars on the way home, and Musty, he'd thrown up..”
“Oh, God, Smokey, spare me the details,” she sighed, bracing herself for the inevitable. But then a door on the landing above opened, and a red full moon face peered over the banister rail.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Cíara Somers, have you gone into volunteer work? What in the name lf God are you doing bringing home beggars off O'Connell Street at this time of the night? Now, you just cut out this racket, or I'll be on to Mr. Travers in the morning and you'll be kipping under O'Connell Bridge with yer friends!” The face disappeared and the door slammed shut.
“You'd better come in,” she said, grabbing Smokey with one hand and yanking him inside while directing an internationally recognized hand signal in the direction of her grumpy neighbor.
“Er, it’s not just me,” Smokey said, digging his feet into the hall rug and keeping Cíara from slamming the door shut.
“Not just you?” She knew it was trouble every time Smokey crossed her path. “Come on, spill the beans.”
“There's Short Eddie, too,” Smokey shuffled his feet. Cíara sighed.
“Okay, okay – Come on in and join the party, Short Eddie,” she called down the hallway. She should have chosen her words better and could have bitten her tongue when all three hundred pounds and six-foot four of Short Eddie hurtled across the landing. The word 'party' was like a red rag to a bull, and she almost made the sign of the cross as the two men collapsed on her living room furniture and the room began to fill with the sweet smell of marijuana that followed them everywhere.
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