Reluctantly Charmed (35 page)

As he walked to the bar, he looked tense across the shoulders.
He must be worried about work
, I thought.

I looked around. The Olde Punchbowl was small and dark, walking a fine line between cozy and dingy. Candles flickered, and tuneless eighties pop music played in the background. There were maybe four other people in the bar—a couple and two old men—all drinking with an air of serious intent.

“I brought the menu.” Hugh thrust a plastic card in front of me. “I’ve never been here before. I thought we could go to that bistro in Knocknamee, but that’s cool that you wanted to go somewhere else. It’s just, I don’t know if this place is any good.” He was talking at a mile a minute, and tiny beads of perspiration freckled his forehead. That’s when I noticed that he was clean—well, at least not scruffy. His dirty blond hair was coiffed into something resembling a style, he’d shaved and his skin looked clear and tanned. His dark green shirt was ironed, his light blue jeans were spotless, and he was wearing a pair of shoes that weren’t covered in mud. I must have looked a bit shocked, because he asked if I was okay.

“Yeah. You’re, em . . .” I nodded my head up and down at him. “All scrubbed up.”

His whole face turned a shade of purple I hadn’t known existed, and he self-consciously rubbed his hands on the front of his shirt. “Ah, you know, got to make an effort now and again.”

I laughed, thinking that the glamorous blonde was obviously doing a number on him.

I don’t know if it was the heat of the fire, the fact that this was a nondate and therefore there was no pressure, or that the drinks were sliding down easily, but I began to relax. We fell into an easy conversation that was only interrupted when he raced to the bar to refill our glasses. We chatted about everything. I learned that he’d been born and still lived in Lisnawee, a small town about five miles from Knocknamee. He and his brother had lost their parents in a car crash about ten years earlier, and now it was just the two of them, plus Aisling and his mischievous nephews. He was thirty. He’d had Setanta for six years, but he also had forty other animals on the farm, including geese, sheep, and a few cows, one of which he was particularly fond of and which he described as “an auld pet.” He employed a few people on the place to keep it ticking over—he was hoping to free himself up a bit more the following year to travel and see the world. He said he hadn’t been anywhere and felt it was time he did, which was why he was looking to properly brand his business in the hope of investment or maybe even a takeover in the future.

When he started talking about his business, I remembered why we were there. We’d been chatting for well over two hours by that stage.

“Work!” I sat up out of my chair. “Don’t you want to talk to me about work?”

He waved his hands in the air, shaking his head. “Don’t you worry about that. We haven’t even eaten. What am I like? Jesus. What’ll it be, m’lady?”

“What about some good old-fashioned fish and chips?”

He grinned at me. “I couldn’t think of anything more perfect.”

A while later, when our plates had been licked clean, I decided
to broach a delicate issue. “So . . .” I leaned forward, my hands practically touching his knees. He leaned toward me. “Your business? How did you actually get into such an industry?”

He rested back into his chair and spoke calmly, more serious. “Saw a space in the market, needed to make money, and wanted to be able to work from the farm. I started it about five years ago, and we’re doing well. Really well, Kate.”

I shook my head, still feeling a little unsure how comfortable I would ever be with the porn issue. “But it’s porn!” I blurted out. “It’s gross.”

He threw his head back, looking shocked. “It’s not porn! Did you think I worked in
porn
?”

I nodded. “You do, don’t you?”

“What? Oh my God, what you must think of me!” His brow furrowed into a worried V. He looked at me, confused. “No. Of course I don’t work in porn.”

“Your website? It’s a porn site, isn’t it?” I leaned forward anxiously.

“No. Are you mental?” He shook his head in disbelief.

“But I—”

“I had no idea. Porn, of all things. No wonder you couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me.”

“What?”

“That day in the agency. You couldn’t run away from me quick enough.”

I didn’t know if it was the heat of the fire or me, but I could feel my temperature rising, remembering that meeting in the kitchen.

“I don’t understand. At work that’s what you’re known as. ‘The porn guy.’”

“‘The porn guy.’ Brilliant, that is brilliant.” He was laughing
hard now. “So they think I’m some kind of pimp. I should get one of those MTV cribs, a fur coat. I’d look massive in a fur coat.”

I was confused. “Hang on a minute. Are you saying you
don’t
work in porn?”

“No. I mean, I guess I could see how it could be lost in translation, but, no, I run a discreet site.” He wiggled his index fingers in the air as quotation marks around “discreet.”

“Discreet? Isn’t that porn?”

“Nah. We sell products that people are too embarrassed to buy in the shops, like men’s hair dye, foot fungus cream, or denture paste. One of our bestsellers last year was a tonic for women with thinning hair, and, now that I think of it, condoms. We always sell a lot of condoms. I guess that might be the porn thing.”

I was so confused. I’d had visions of him peddling smut. I’d gotten him wrong.

“Now that you say it, though, we could always throw in a few blue movies. There’s definitely a market for it.” He smiled at me.

I must have looked really shocked and confused.

“I’m joking. You wouldn’t want to get mixed up in that kind of stuff. Especially in business. It could lead down lots of dark alleys.”

“Wow. I should probably apologize. I think I had you pegged all wrong. I’d heard differently. In the office, I . . .”
Marjorie
, I thought. Now it all made sense. Marjorie had deliberately misled me. She was unbelievable. So manipulative. She wanted to run the account without any interference, and she probably had her eye on Hugh, too. What had she called him? Repulsive. When he clearly was anything but. Porn was the perfect cover. It would deter input from anyone else in the company. Quite smart, really.

“Sorry I’m not more of a shady character. I’d probably be a lot more interesting.”

“Don’t worry. My life is a little
too
interesting, at the moment.”

He looked at me quizzically, but I waved it away, really not wanting to get into my current magical mystical situation.

So Hugh wasn’t the confident porn guy I assumed he was. Unfortunately for my crush, though, he was just lovely, easy company, full of smiles, and so attractive.

I snapped back into reality. “So now that I know what your industry is, do you want to show me the work you’re struggling with?”

He produced pages of ad treatments. Some worked; some didn’t. We sat and reviewed and debated the pieces. Well, I debated the pieces—Hugh just agreed with everything I said, occasionally chipping in with “I thought that was a load of bollocks” about various executions. In the end we agreed on a style and format.

“This is your winner. It’s really strong. It’ll work across all mediums. This one I’m excited about. This will take you places.”

He just stared at me, his stormy gray eyes holding fast on mine. My heart was pounding. “You really know your stuff.”

“It’s not rocket science, you know.” I eyed him teasingly. “Or like working in the UN.”

He put his hands to his face. “Oh God, I’m bloody useless.” He hung his head. “I just panic, you know, and I say the wrong things.”

“I should have known you weren’t a porn guy. You would have been a lot smoother.”

His cheeks were flushed and he looked embarrassed. “Oh, look, I’m sorry, em . . .” He looked toward the door, as if he wanted to bolt. “I’ve no filter. It just comes flying out. I suppose I didn’t understand the work that you do, how hard it is. I haven’t been able to make head nor tail of it. I don’t want to make a
mistake—it’s important to the business—but it’s all gibberish to me half the time.”

He looked flustered, and hearing him backtrack was kind of amusing.

“But, in my defense, you don’t talk like the other people in your work do. What you say makes sense. It’s clearer. I don’t know what they’re saying half the time. It’s bollocks. They just talk for the sake of talking. I’d prefer it if they just told it like it is, you know. Don’t try and romance me. The way you talk, Kate, that’s what I like.”

“Shoot from the hip.”

“That’s what I do, too. I shoot from the hip.”

“It’s funny, I never used to. I guess I’m more confident now. I dunno. I’ve started to trust my instincts more.”

“You should. You should trust your instincts.”

And then we looked at each other, and suddenly we both seemed embarrassed and started to shift awkwardly and look around the pub, at the door, the fire, the empty glasses in front of us. It was as if we’d had a confessional moment, a heartbeat of intimacy, and now we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.

The bell rang for last orders, relieving the tension.

“Would you like another one for the road, or do you just want to leave?”

“Another one would be great.”

Hugh wanted to cycle with me back to the B and B five miles out of his way, there and back, so really ten miles. I appreciated the gesture but knew he’d get an eyeful of the tents and the commotion at Knocknamee and then the questions would start. I told him that I was fine, and that he was a bit drunk and wobbly to be escorting anyone anywhere. We both were. It was a clear night, chilly, and the moon was out. All was quiet. Hugh had
parked his bike by a bench, and walked toward it, stretching his legs, then turned to me.

“I think I might be a bit saddle-sore in the morning by the time I get home.”

He stood in front of me, his sheer size dwarfing me. A moth flew between us, and its fluttering filled the silence. I studied it with the dedication of an entomologist. It chose to settle on Hugh’s chest, and I found myself staring at it in the moonlight, watching it rise and fall with his breathing. He licked his lips, and finally I met his gray-eyed hopeful gaze. He moved his face closer to mine, and I smiled up at him. He bent his head forward. And he kissed my cheek. “Thanks for all that tonight. It was great.”

“Thanks for dinner.”

He lingered. “Right, I’ll be off on my bike now.”

But he didn’t move, and neither did I. We both stared at each other, acres of silence between us. “Right.” Snapping himself out of the moment, he quickly turned, jumped onto his bike, and pedaled off, shouting: “Good night, Kate McDaid. Sleep tight, Kate McDaid!”

30

T
he disguise was a stupid idea, but I thought it might work. I’d bought from Martin a green anorak that was the color of a damp field, with a maze of buttons and zips, hidden pockets and hoods, and a sturdy pair of hiking boots, something Frankenstein would wear. For the final nail in the coffin, I got Vinny to pick me up a wig in Ennis. It was cheap, scratchy, and dark brown.

So I was one of them now, but at least I’d be able to step outside the door. It was depressing, though: I had to pretend to be a female Frankenstein to leave the house. Would I ever get back to being the old Kate McDaid? I wondered.

I already knew the answer to that. Because there’d been a shift, and the old me was gone. There’d be no
Kate McDaid Part 2: The Revenge,
the “I’ll be back” part. There was a change in me, and I wasn’t quite sure what it was, or how I would deal with it, but I knew my old life was gone.

With the wig on, I looked like Barbie’s sick cousin, the one who got mangled in the plastics machine and never got near a sun bed. My synthetic hair crinkled like a packet of crisps to the touch, and the electric hum it gave out was causing dogs nationwide to cover their ears and whimper.

But the disguise was working. So two days after my dinner
with Hugh, I zipped up my anorak and tightened the bolts on my Frankenstein boots. I was going for a walk to visit a fairy fort—Martin had told me that Billy the pig farmer had one on his land. It was a good distance out of town, and he’d deliberately kept it under the radar of the Anoraks, not wanting to have them traipse all over his potato crops.

Fairy forts are supposed to be an exit and entrance to an intricate system of roads that crisscross under the ground and that fairies travel on. The roads are protected with spells and magic. The forts are like a keyhole into their world. That’s why you’re never supposed to enter one unaccompanied; that is, without a fairy.

I walked for forty-five minutes until I reached Billy the pig farmer’s land. His back field hosted the fairy fort, a perfect circle of high stones, each the size of a small car, with a lot of gnarly gorse bushes that had locked onto the rocks over the years. The actual circle was smaller than I thought it would be, but the rocks were larger—much too large for little people to be heaving around. There was no leprechaun there counting his pot of gold.

So now what happens?
I wondered as I circled the fort like a one-legged swimmer. “Do I think I’m going to see a fairy or something?” I said to no one in particular.

The hills in the distance were trying to blow off some gray clouds that were threatening to rain on them and me. The clouds scooped out some raindrops and heavily plopped them on my head.

I should step inside
, I thought, zipping up my anorak.

Knowing that I wasn’t superstitious but admittedly a little bit more than curious, I stomped right on in there, past the rocks and gorse bushes into the middle of the circle. At that moment the heavens opened and rain spilled down. Standing there in the center of uneven clumps of grass, surrounded by a circle of misshapen
rocks, I didn’t feel like it was magical, like a gateway to an intricate system of fairy roads. It didn’t feel like I was breaking an unwritten law. And yet I was. I was doing the unspeakable, standing in the middle of a fairy fort. But I hadn’t been struck down, a magic wand hadn’t been waved at me, and I still had all my limbs intact.