Hot Whispers of an Irishman (24 page)

Love couldn’t flourish in resentment. Vi feared having anger mar her words when she told him what had happened to her all those years ago. He deserved better from her, and she could not yet find the resources in herself to give it.

Vi walked past the front of Liam’s house, where lights still shone. Utterly unprepared to say goodbye, she hurried into the carriage house. There, Rog was content to lounge on the sofa, an affair squat to the ground, much as he. Vi briefly smiled at his paws-aloft sleep position and gave thought to the escape of doing the same, herself. It was early yet—not even ten—but she’d fit two days worth of activities into one, and she planned to leave at first light.

“Coward,” she muttered to herself. Tonight Nan would be seasoning her carrageen soup with a bit of thyme, to build some spine back into Vi. Even if she yet found her anger unconquerable and her personal peace a distant goal, she owed Liam a decent parting this time.

Fifteen years ago it had been disastrous. On a sweet summer night with the moon high in the sky, she had thought he was going to ask her to spend the rest of her life with him. Instead, he’d told her that in a week, he’d be off to America to attend a small college that had offered him a full scholarship. He promised he’d be back for her in four years and asked if she’d wait for him. Stricken and betrayed to the bone, she had stormed off, proving his claim: that he’d kept silent all summer because he’d known she’d take the news like a child instead of a woman.

Late that night, she’d seen him move into the shadows of a party being held at the riverside with an American tourist girl. Despite her grandmother’s advice that she see with her heart, a far more perfect organ than her eyes, Vi had pushed Liam from her life. Her last words to him: that she would hate him forever.

How wrong she had been.

Before her courage could again flee, Vi crossed the courtyard. The moon had risen enough that it no longer seemed ominous to her. Indeed, it was more the guardian of contemplation that Nan had always called it.

Lights were still on within the house. She rapped at the back door. When no one arrived, she took the liberty of entering.

“Liam?” she called softly, then closed the door behind her.

She could hear the sounds of the television in the front room and walked toward it, hoping to find him alone there.

What she found made her already bruised heart ache even more. Liam and Meghan were both asleep on the sofa, with Liam sitting upright and his daughter curled up next to him. The low table in front of them bore evidence of a night’s indulgence. Savaged bags of potato crisps competed for space with shredded packets of biscuits. Half empty bottles of Club Orange soda crowned the feast’s remnants.

God in heaven, how she wanted this. She wanted her own child, not just Roger, love him though she did. To yearn this much and know what could have been was a pain she wished on no one. She could wake Liam, she knew, but she could taste that wholly unacceptable yet wholly human bitterness on her tongue. Vi would keep her words tonight, and share them only with the moon.

What the eye doesn’t see will cause no sorrow to the heart.

—I
RISH
P
ROVERB

L
iam woke slowly, with his joints locked and muscles knotted. The cause soon became apparent, for he was in no bed, but still in front of the television. The morning light glowing through the slats of the window blinds sent a jolt through him.

“Meggie, wake up,” he said, reaching out and shaking his daughter’s shoulder. “It’s time for school.”

He’d no sooner sounded the alarm than he recalled that there would be no school for her today or any day soon.

Meghan sat up and ran a hand through her hair, which was flattened to the side of her face that also bore the imprint of the sofa’s unforgiving fabric. She looked even more muddled than he. “Gimme a second.”

Liam stayed her when she was ready to rise. “Sorry, love. I should have let you sleep. You’ve no school, remember?”

“Holiday?” she asked blankly.

He watched as actual recollection returned.

“Oh, yeah. Expelled,” she said, then scrubbed at her face with her hand. “Can I go upstairs and go back to sleep?”

He knew he’d be setting a poor precedent, but if she felt anywhere near as unrested as he, the day would be a wreck in any case.

“Go on,” he said. “But I’ll be waking you in a few hours.”

“Okay.” She stood, then took a nearly eaten bag of potato crisps from the table. Liam winced as she dug in a hand and began to munch while heading toward the stairs. A fine breakfast, there.

After Meghan was gone, Liam stretched his aching bones, stood, and cleared the table. He dumped the night’s remains in the kitchen bin and then looked out the back window. Vi’s car was already gone. She was off to her nan’s, no doubt, and had likely been in a rush to be there before he could annoy her with direct conversation.

Hungry, he dug about in the fridge until he came up with a couple of eggs and a package of rashers. After he had some food in his stomach, he’d head to Nan’s himself, and not just to corner the local ill-tempered redhead.

Vi had been right. He could at least finish confirming where the gold was not. And if that meant digging additional holes in likely spots, it was a more productive activity than contemplating his business and personal woes. Aye, he thought while pulling a frying pan and getting the rashers set, a move in any direction was more positive than standing still.

The rashers had begun to sizzle and his mouth to water. Their taste and scent were something he’d not been able to replicate in America. He’d tried Canadian bacon, Kentucky salt ham, and Danish bacon, but all to no avail. Irish rashers were just that, and while not reason enough to move back home, they came close.

Liam was getting some much needed coffee going when the phone began to ring. A hunt through the front room found it jammed behind a sofa cushion.

“Hello?” he said, pulling a biscuit packet’s wrappings from the phone’s resting spot.

“So, did you have another row?” his brother Jamie asked.

Since his brother had dispensed with politeness, Liam did the same. “What are you talking about now?” he asked as he returned to the kitchen.

“Vi, of course, you great eejit. She dropped in this morning to say goodbye to her da.”

“Dropped in at your place? You’re making no sense.” Jamie lived in the flat above the pub—an unlikely place for Vi’s da.

“I’m making fine sense. Vi’s da is staying in the spare bedroom just now, and Vi was here along with her dog.”

This was unthinkable…impossible. Except he knew in his gut that it was all too possible.

“And is he there now?” he asked.

“The dog? No, Roger’s gone with Vi.”

Poorly-timed elbows to the ribs had always been Jamie’s forte. He’d apparently branched out to the verbal equivalent.

“Her father, as you damn well know I was meaning,” Liam said with what little patience he could find.

“No humor at all about you, is there? He’s off to Brian’s office for work. So did you have a row? If you did, I’m giving you fair warning, Liam. If you don’t want her, I do.”

“One thought in that direction and you’ll be finding your teeth with your tonsils, understood?”

Jamie laughed. “Threats work only if you’ve ever once carried through.”

“Try me on this one,” Liam said. “And you won’t be doubting me again. Now, stay safe behind your bar, Jamie, and let me deal with Vi.”

He hung up before his brother could prod him again over words that were more easily spoken than lived.

In need of proof that Vi was indeed gone, Liam switched off the stove, crossed the courtyard in long strides, and entered the carriage house. He was up the stairs in two beats of his heart, and then into a bedroom empty of any evidence of Vi Kilbride.

“Damn you,” he said once, then repeated it again, louder, angrier and still not enough to vent his frustration.

He was downstairs again and nearly to the door when on the kitchen counter he spied a folded piece of paper bearing his name. He opened it and read.

Her name was signed with a flourish, the only evidence he could find of the woman he knew and had made love to so thoroughly. Christ, she might as well have written “enclosed please find my apathetic disregard.” He’d jotted warmer missives to total strangers. And as for luck finding the gold, ha! He crumpled the note into a tight ball and jammed it low in his pocket.

Appetite in its grave, Liam returned to the house, shoveled the rashers onto a plate, then stuck it along with the eggs back in the refrigerator. He showered and dressed in record time and then checked on Meghan, who was tunneled under her covers and sound asleep. He left her a note on the kitchen table, telling her he’d be visiting with Brian, then off to the countryside for a bit of digging. He signed his words, “Love, Da,” feeling somehow superior to chilly Vi for having done it.

Was the truth so bloody difficult to put on paper?

Would a simple “call me” have been so painful?

He’d deal with her, all right, but first he’d let his temper cool, for he liked to think he’d learned something in the fifteen years since she’d last rubbed his nose in the dirt. Still, as he gathered the equipment he’d need to work at Nan’s and set it behind his car, Liam couldn’t escape his growing fury.

He knew this for a dire sign. He was gripped by feelings he’d not had in years: never in his failed marriage, and for that matter, with no other woman than Violet Kilbride. He damn well refused to call this “love,” for the fire inside burned too hot for a word diluted by poets and syrupy songwriters. He needed the cant of incendiary rebels…the dead opposite of Miss Violet’s sudden case of politeness.

Muttering a brief and blunt curse, Liam opened his car’s boot, then stilled. What sat in front of him performed alchemy on his anger. Vi might be gone, but her fat patchwork bag rested just where she’d left it yesterday morning.

“‘Fondly,’ was it?” he asked, mocking the words of her note.

He knew better now. It took incalculable emotion for a woman to leave behind her perfumes and potions. Whether it was love or hate gripping Vi, its hold was fierce. And because he was a man who believed in hope, Liam could only believe that her emotions fell closer to love. Filled with a sense of victory, he laughed aloud. Vi Kilbride was running from him, and this time he would not let her go.

“Home again,” Vi said to Rog, who hours before had given up tail-wagging at the car window for a glum slump on the seat, chin resting on paws. Were she not driving, she’d strike much the same pose.

It wasn’t the return to Ballymuir affecting her mood. This village was home to her in a way that the place she’d been born had never been. The heathery sweep of rocky mountains to the shore, the sea-scented air, the richness of color even now when autumn had stripped bare the few stands of trees hardy enough to hold fast to the soil…all was usually pleasing to her soul.

Today, though, tension tampered with her nerves. Unfinished business was a poisonous brew, and in leaving matters so thoroughly incomplete with Liam, she knew she’d taken in a vile amount. There was no turning back. The cure would be even more lethal than the illness.

Vi drove past the arts village perched on a steep hillside overlooking the harbor. The small enclave of traditional-looking white cottages had been built years before by the government to lure artists. She had been well snagged, as her studio sat in the cluster. She would not go there today, though. The abandoned projects waiting within suffocated her, and already she could not breathe quite right.

Panic crept upward, closing her throat, and she held tighter to the car’s wheel. This would pass even before the moon had fully waned. She was sure of it.

On the seat beside her, Roger shifted and moaned. She glanced over at him, sorry that she’d let her turmoil unsettle even her dog. They both needed constancy and comfort.

“Shall we visit Michael?” she asked him. His ears swiveled at the familiar name.

“Grand, then,” she said, as Roger sat upright.

Vi drove past her own house on the very edge of the village and then up the winding road that traced the terrain’s change from hill to nearly mountain. The closer she got to her brother’s house, the more quickly she drove. As she neared, the promise of peace teased her.

Michael’s ways were the old ones…not quite as Nan had lived, but still with a distance from the rush and noise that was creeping into even the Kerry countryside. He built furniture and supervised his brothers in general carpentry tasks out of a stone barn behind the farmhouse that he and Kylie had bought from an elderly friend some time before. It was a peaceful place, and one of family. Unless he was with the twins at a job site, Vi stood a grand chance of catching all three brothers at once.

As she turned off the main road onto the smaller track that led to Michael’s home, Roger stood and began snuffling at the air vent in front of him.

“Hold fast,” she said as the car rocked from side to side on the rutted road. A veteran of such travels, he dug his nails tighter. Vi’s tension-knotted muscles began to ease.

Then she caught sight of not only Michael’s car, but also Kylie’s parked in front of the large white farmhouse. At this hour Kylie should still be at Gaelscoil Pearse with her students. Vi pulled in next to Kylie’s car, then let Roger have a go at his business before heading toward the door. She wasn’t yet to the stoop when her brother came outside.

Vi doubted she’d ever take the sight of him for granted, not after the way they’d been separated for the fourteen years he’d spent imprisoned in the north, a victim of his own youthful gullibility. Today, though, more than other times, Michael Kilbride was exactly who she needed.

“Grand of you to drop by,” he said in the calm and steady voice she loved so, “especially without having called me these past ten days.”

“Keeping count, were you?” she asked as she approached.

“No, just listening to Pat and Danny moan about having no one to boss them about. As if I’m not enough,” he added before folding her into a hug that was a balm to her uneasy spirit.

“Where are the boys?” And boys they would always be to her, though they were both now a head taller than she and grown so independent that she knew they’d be gone from her home before she could prepare herself to let them go.

“Danny’s at Muir House, framing the folly Jenna’s having built in her garden. Pat’s working on Lorcan O’Connor’s new wine bar.”

Vi hid her disappointment. “Well, I suppose I’ll see them tonight.”

“You’ve no way of missing them, once I call and tell them the prodigal sister has returned,” Michael said. “For now, though, come inside and watch Kylie with me.”

“Watch her do what?”

“Just come along. You, too, Rog,” he added, then ushered them inside.

“Love,” he called into the kitchen, “can you hold up a few minutes? Vi’s returned.”

“Tell her I’ll be just a sec,” returned a muffled voice.

Michael gave a woeful shake of his head. “Right, you will.”

“What’s going on?” Vi asked.

Her brother tilted his head toward the kitchen. “Go have a look.”

Vi peeked in the doorway, then glared over her shoulder at her brother. “Get in there and help her,” she ordered.

Kylie—who in less than a fortnight had somehow expanded exponentially—was on her hands and knees scrubbing the baseboards. The sight pained Vi for reasons both charitable and not. First, Kylie was usually a slender woman and small of bone. Vi had no idea how, when so large with child, Kylie could get that low to the ground, let alone how she’d regain her feet. And then on the greedy, selfish, and appallingly self-centered front, Vi was jealous to the bone.

Seeing Liam with Meghan last night had made the lie she’d based her life on impossible to sustain. God, how she hungered to be pregnant, and how she would starve. It wasn’t as though she begrudged Kylie, but that failed to ease her pain.