If You Could See Me Now (25 page)

“Kept you a table.”

“Thanks.”

Smiles.

“Can I take a breakfast order?” Joe asked her, pen and pad in hand.

Elizabeth usually didn’t eat breakfast, but by the way Ivan was looking through the menu she thought she could just be a few minutes late to the office for a change.

“Can I’ve a second menu please, Joe?”

Joe glared at her. “Why do you want a second menu?”

“So I can read it,” she stated.

“What’s wrong with the one on the table?” he said moodily.

“OK, OK.” She backed off, leaning closer to Ivan to share the menu.

Joe eyed her suspiciously.

“I think I’ll have the Irish breakfast,” Ivan said, licking his lips.

“I’ll have the same,” Elizabeth said to Joe.

“The same as what?”

“The Irish breakfast.”

“OK, so one Irish breakfast and a coffee.”

“No.” Elizabeth’s forehead wrinkled. “
Two
Irish breakfasts and
two
coffees.”

“Eatin’ for two, are ye?” Joe asked, looking her up and down.

“No!” Elizabeth exclaimed and turned around to Ivan with an apologetic look on her face when Joe had walked away. “Sorry about him, he acts oddly sometimes.”

Joe placed the two coffees on the table, eyed her suspiciously, and hurried off to serve another table.

“Busy in here today.” Elizabeth barely even looked away from him.

“Is it?” he asked, not moving his eyes from hers.

A tingle ran through Elizabeth’s body. “I like it when the town’s like this. It brings it to life. I don’t know what Ekam Eveileb is like but here, you get sick of seeing the same people all the time; tourists change the scenery, give you something to hide behind.”

“Why would you want to hide?”

“Ivan, the whole town knows about me. They practically know more about my family history than I do. During the summer, this town is like a big powerful tree, strong and visually beautiful.” She tried to explain. “But in winter, it’s robbed of its leaves, standing bare, with nothing to cover you or give you privacy. I always feel like I’m on display.”

“You don’t like living here?”

“It’s not that. It’s just, it needs some livening up sometimes, a real kick in the behind. I sit in here every morning and dream of pouring my coffee all over the streets, to give it the buzz it needs to waken the place up.”

“Well then, why don’t you?”

Elizabeth frowned. “What do you mean?”

Ivan stood up. “Elizabeth Egan, come with me and bring your coffee cup.”

“Bu—”

“No buts, just come.” With that, he walked out of the café.

She followed him in confusion, carrying her cup outside the door of the café.

“Well?” she asked, taking a sip.

“Well, I think it’s high time you gave this town a caffeine high,” Ivan announced, looking up and down the empty street.

Elizabeth stared at him blankly.

“Go on.” He tapped her cup slightly and milky coffee sploshed over the side and onto the pavement. “Oops,” he said drily.

Elizabeth laughed at him. “You’re so silly, Ivan.”

“Why am I silly? You’re the one that suggested it.” He hit her cup again, harder this time, sending more coffee dripping to the ground. Elizabeth let out a shout and jumped back to avoid it staining her shoes.

She attracted a few stares from inside the café.

“Go on, Elizabeth!”

It was ludicrous, preposterous, ridiculous, and completely juvenile. It didn’t make sense, but remembering the fun in the
field yesterday, how she laughed and how she
floated for the remainder of the day, she craved more of that feeling. She toppled the cup to the side, allowing the coffee to fall to the ground. It
first
formed a pool, then she watched as it
flowed down the cracks in the slabs of stones and ran slowly down the street.

“Come on, that won’t even wake the insects,” Ivan teased.

“Well then, stand back.” She raised an eyebrow. Ivan stepped away as Elizabeth held out her arm and spun around on the spot. The coffee shot out as though in a fountain.

Joe stuck his head out the door. “What are you upta, Elizabeth? Did I make a bad cuppa?” He looked worried. “You’re not making me look good in front of these folk.” He nodded his head to the tourists gathered at the window, watching her.

Ivan laughed. “I think this calls for another cup of coffee,” he announced.

“Another cup?” Elizabeth asked, startled.

“OK, so,” Joe said, slowly backing up.

“Excuse me, what is she doing?” a tourist asked Joe as he headed back inside.

“Ah, ’tis a, eh . . .” Joe
floundered. “ ’Tis a custom we have here in Baile na gCroíthe. Every Monday morning we just, eh . . .” He looked back at Elizabeth, standing alone laughing and twirling as she splattered coffee on the pavement. “We like to splatter the coffee around, you see. It’s good for the, eh . . .” He watched as it splashed over his window boxes. “Flowers.” He gulped.

The man’s eyebrows rose with interest and he smiled in amusement. “In that case,
five
more cups of coffee for us.”

Joe looked uncertain, then his face broke into a great big smile as the money was thrust toward him. “Five cups on the way.”

Moments later, Elizabeth was joined by
five
strangers who danced around beside her, whooping and hollering as they spilled coffee down the pavement. This made her and Ivan laugh even more until eventually they escaped the crowd of tourists, who were giving each other secret looks of confusion over the silly Irish custom of spilling coffee on the ground, but who were
finding amusement in it all the same. Elizabeth looked around the village in astonishment.

Shopkeepers stood in their front doors, watching the commotion outside Joe’s. Windows opened and heads peeked out. Cars slowed down to have a look, causing the traffic
from behind to beep in frustration. In a matter of moments, a sleepy village had woken.

“What’s wrong?” Ivan asked, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. “Why have you stopped laughing?”

“Are there no such things as dreams to you, Ivan? Can’t some things remain only in your head?” As far as she could see, he could make everything happen. Well, almost everything. She looked up into his blue eyes and her heart beat wildly.

He gazed down at her and took a step closer. He looked so serious and older than he previously had appeared, like he had seen and learned something new in the last few seconds. He placed a soft hand on her cheek and moved his head so slowly toward her face. “No,” he whispered and kissed her so gently on the lips her knees almost buckled beneath her. “
Everything
must come true.”

Joe looked out the window and laughed at the tourists dancing around and splattering coffee outside his shop. Catching a glimpse of Elizabeth across the road, Joe moved closer to the window to get a better look. She held her head high in the air with her eyes closed in perfect bliss. Her hair, which was usually tied back, was down and blowing in the light morning breeze and she looked to be reveling in the sun shining down on her face.

Joe could have sworn he saw her mother in that face.

Chapter Twenty-Three

It took Ivan’s and
Elizabeth’s lips a while to pull away from one another, but when they
finally did, Elizabeth half skipped, half walked with tingling lips along the path to her office. She felt if she lifted her feet any higher from the ground, she would
float away. Humming as she tried to control her non-flight, she bumped straight into Mrs. Bracken, who stood in her doorway, eyeing up the tourists across the road.

“Jesus!” Elizabeth jumped back in fright.

“Is the son of God, who sacrificed his life and died on the cross to spread the Lord’s word and to give you a better life, so don’t take his name in vain,” Mrs. Bracken rattled off. She nodded in the direction of the café. “What are those foreigners up to at all, at all?”

Elizabeth bit her lip and tried not to laugh. “I have no idea. Why don’t you join them?”

“Mr. Bracken wouldn’t be pleased about that carry-on at all.” She must have sensed something in Elizabeth’s voice, because her head shot up, her eyes narrowed, and she studied Elizabeth’s face intently. “You look different. You’ve been spending time up at that tower?” Mrs. Bracken accused her.

“Of course I have, Mrs. Bracken, I’m designing the place, remember?”

Mrs. Bracken’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Your hair’s down.”

“And?” Elizabeth asked, moving into the fabric shop to see if her order had arrived.

“And Mr. Bracken used to say beware of a woman who drastically changes her hair.”

“I would hardly call letting my hair down a drastic change.”

“Elizabeth Egan, for you of all people, I would call letting your hair down a drastic change. By the way,” she moved on quickly, not allowing Elizabeth to get a word in, “there’s a problem with the order that came in today.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s
colorful.
” She said the word as if it were a disease and, widening her eyes, she emphasized the next word even more:
“Red.”

Elizabeth smiled. “It’s raspberry, not red, and what’s wrong with a bit of color?”

“What’s wrong with a bit of color, she says.” Mrs. Bracken raised her voice an octave. “Up until last week, your world was brown. It’s the tower that’s doing it to you. The American fella, isn’t it?”

“Oh, don’t you start with that tower talk as well.” Elizabeth dismissed her. “I’ve been up there all week and it’s just a crumbling wall.”

“A crumbling wall is right,” she said, eyeing her. “And it’s the American fella that’s knocking it.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Good-bye, Mrs. Bracken.” She ran upstairs to her office. On her entry, a pair of legs sticking out from underneath Poppy’s desk greeted her. They were men’s legs, brown cords with brown shoes moving and squiggling around.

“Is that you, Elizabeth?” a voice shouted out.

“Yes, Harry.” Elizabeth smiled. Oddly, she was
finding the two people who usually irritated her on a daily basis strangely lovable. Ivan was certainly passing the silly smile test.

“I’m just tightening up this chair, Poppy told me it was acting up on ya last week.”

“It was, Harry, thanks.”

“No problem.” His legs slithered up under the desk and disappeared as he struggled to his feet. Banging his head against the desk, he
finally appeared, his bald head covered by spaghetti strings of hair brushed over from one side to the other.

“Ah, there you are,” he said, popping his head up, spanner in hand. “It shouldn’t spin on its own anymore. Funny that it did that.” He gave the nut one last turn, then looked at her with the same expression as the one he had when examining the chair. “You look different.”

“No, I’m still the same,” she said, walking through to her office.

“It’s the hair. The hair’s down. I always say it’s better for a woman’s hair to be down and—”

“Thank you, Harry. Will that be all?” Elizabeth said
firmly, ending the conversation.

“Oh, right so.” His cheeks
flushed
as he waved her off and made his way downstairs to no doubt gossip to Mrs. Bracken about Elizabeth’s hair being down.

Elizabeth settled down and tried to concentrate on her work, but found herself gently placing her
fingers on her lips, reliving the kiss with Ivan.

“OK,” Poppy said, entering Elizabeth’s office and placing a piggy bank on her desk. “See this here?”

Elizabeth nodded at the little pig. Becca stood at the door in the background.

“Well, I’ve come up with a plan.” She gritted her teeth. “Every time you start to hum that bloody song of yours, you have to put money in the pig.”

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows in amusement. “Poppy, did you
make
this pig?” She stared at the papier-mâché pig sitting on her desk.