Saint and Scholar (16 page)

“I like you just fine,” she said huskily, lifting her foot and wedging it under the table between his thighs. She stopped just short of his jewels and picked up her fork with air of nonchalance. “Just don’t treat me like your child.”

Ah. He wrapped his fingers around her foot and gave it a gentle shove off his bench. “Love, I think you’re sensitive about a rather insignificant age difference…or more that I at one time had a teeny bit of authority over you. I may treat you like a trophy I’ll carefully guard,
yes
. Child? Never.”

The tension building up in the hinges of her lower jaw ebbed and she unclenched her fingers from the death grip she’d had on her fork. She laid it down and began to fiddle with the corner of her napkin. “Grant?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“You can ask me whatever you want, love. You may or may not like the answer,” he said with a chuckle. He went back to breaking up large, tender chunks of beef with his spoon.

“The year I was in your class, you had a girlfriend.”

He ceased his attack on his stew and looked up at her.

Her expression was wary, but since she’d already stepped in it, so to speak, she spit it out. “I remember seeing you with her once or twice in passing on campus.”

“Yeah?”

“And…why did you break up? I know it’s none of my business, but–”

“But you want to know if she dumped me for being a possessive git?”

She nodded.

“No, quite the opposite. Honestly, I thought you were going to be the twelfth or so person to tell me who else she was shagging on campus.”

Carla cocked her head to the side and squinted. “What?”

“She dumped
me
. She said I’d grown distracted, and that it was all my fault.”

“She blamed
you
for her cheating?”

“Well, in a way I guess I’m to blame for her feeling scorned since I was less than attentive toward the end, even when she was right in front of me. I should have ended it, but I’d grown too comfortable. She helped me a lot in adjusting to being in the US. Seemed cruel to just dump her just because I was infatuated with someone else. I thought it would go away, but it didn’t.” He tented his fingers together and stared at her over them.

“Do you mean
me
?”

He nodded. “I told you that before in my living room. I wasn’t joking.”

Her face became a blank.

“That scare you?”

She picked up her glass of water and stared down into ice for a while as if expecting it to magically transform into something much stronger. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

“I’m serious, Carla. I–” He flicked his hair back from his eyes then cracked his knuckles. “Never mind.” He slipped out of the bench and stood next to her side with his hand extended. “Come on. We’re expected. Don’t want to be late, and I have things to show you before you get to sleep tonight.”

She stared at his face for a few seconds and slowly slipped her hand into his.

He paid for their meals at the bar on the way out. When they were just outside the tavern doors, he said, “I can’t help how I feel. I don’t expect you to feel the same. I’ve been in love with you from afar for the better part of a decade, and that was before we were properly introduced.”

As he pulled the passenger door of the rental car open, she let his hand drop. “And what about now? You still think I’m so damned interesting?”

He glided the pad of one thumb along the edge of her jaw and looked down at her with hunger in his gaze. “And now…
now
I think I was justified.”

He gave her a gentle nudge into her seat, waited for her to pull her legs in, and shut the door. He walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk, using the open door as a shield while he caught his breath and smoothed the terrified expression off his face. Any man would be terrified in his shoes. His
plan
was to shock her, maybe scare her a little–to see if she could handle the kind of man he was at his worst.

He had her on the fast track to his happily ever after, but his idea of perfection may be a far cry from hers. So he’d push, lay it all on the line and hope she didn’t board a plane heading west with plans to never return.

* * * *

He
loved
her. Grant Fennell was in love with her–Carla Gill, the neurotic, irascible wallflower who’d nearly gone to jail because some woman wouldn’t shut up about the way her butt looked. On one hand, she was flattered. He was goddamned gorgeous, sexy as all get out and so smart. On the other hand, his intensity was concerning. While he’d been mostly laidback in the States, once they arrived in Ireland he seemed to have thrown some switch. Maybe it was nerves–she couldn’t say. Still, she thought he’d either make a god-awful boyfriend and the Atlantic between them would be a benefit, or he’d be amazing and no body of water could keep them apart. She’d reserve judgment.

“Are you happy you took the job offer?” she asked, hoping to mitigate the pall of tension in the car.

He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I’m feeling pretty neutral about it, truth be told.”

“Isn’t it what you want to be doing?”

“More or less. I just thought I’d be doing it in the US, so you can see why my homecoming would feel a tad bittersweet.”

She thought he was crazy. Ireland was
beautiful
. What did he think he was missing out on in the States? The uncontrolled urban sprawl? The piss-poor public transportation? For that matter, as she looked out her window she wondered how her ancestor had managed to give up his green home in exchange for an unknown continent.

The rain had finally let up by the time they arrived in Maynooth to stroll the campus where Grant would soon be employed.

“Well, this is it, love,” he said, weaving a possessive arm around her back as a cluster of young men walked past. They barely acknowledged her. “Not our alma mater, but it has a certain charm.”

“It
is
charming,” she said, ducking out from under his arm and giving him her best impersonation of her mom’s patented
don’t-make-me-warn-you-again
face. He had the nerve to wink at her.

When a couple of old bitties wearing rain caps and slickers puttered toward them, she grabbed an indiscreet handful of his rear. The old ladies tsk’d and averted their eyes as they passed.

“Now, now, love, let’s save it for the bedroom.” His voice was dry as he wrenched her fingers free of his pants.

“I think turnabout is fair play,” she mumbled.

“That’s not turnabout. That’s bloody evil and you know it. How deep does that capricious streak go, huh?”

“Deep enough.” They stopped to assess a statue. “Why, you scared?”

His incendiary leer made her want to be quite indecorous indeed, old bitties be damned.

When Grant got the keys to his new office from administration, they spent a few minutes looking out the window at his slightly obstructed view of campus. He shut the door and pressed her against it, lifting her shirts up to her armpits and mounding her breasts against his palms as he ravaged her mouth. He was leaning her back onto his naked desktop when someone knocked on the door. They quickly righted themselves as much as they could.

“This is becoming a theme,” he mumbled, opening the door.

“Shirley told me you were here visiting. Pleasure meeting you in person finally, Dr. Fennell,” the bespectacled man said as he extended his hand.

Grant gave it a hearty shake. The newcomer was quite squirrelly, constantly wringing his hands or adjusting his glasses whenever he wasn’t otherwise occupied.

“Yes, same here, Dr. Douglas. I appreciate your patience while I considered the job offer. It was a very generous package. I apologize for taking so long.”

Dr. Douglas put up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “No, no. I understand completely how it is. Potential tenure-track in only a year. That’s a big commitment! Say, who’s this?” He looked past Grant to Carla, who perched on the edge of the desk.

Grant blanched. “Carla, this is Dr. Douglas. He’s the dean of the history department.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” she said with her sweetest Southern-girl smile.

“Dr. Douglas, this is, uh, my
fiancée,
Carla Gill.”

She opened her mouth to object, but before she could voice it Grant hustled the smaller man out of the office. “Um, Dr. Douglas, I’d love for you to show me where the mailboxes are and we can firm up my start date. Uh, I’ll be right back, love.” He quickly closed the door.

She sat there on the desk for a few minutes fuming.
Fiancée
? Maybe he really
was
insane. So pretty, yet so very crazy. After thumping the heels of her boat shoes against the front of the desk for a while and not feeling any better for it, she jumped down and left.

Damn him.

Finding Grant would have been a simple matter of locating the department office, but she didn’t
want
to find him and instead stomped out the way they’d come in. When she found the rental car locked, she swore loudly. “I should have listened to Meg!” Kicking one of the formidable tires didn’t make her feel any better.

“Carla! Don’t run off like that!” Her
fiancé
jogged toward her with a graceful ease, holding the key fob extended. He pushed the button and unlocked the doors.

She poured herself into the seat, slammed the door, and sat there with arms crossed.

Grant entered on his own side. “Hey, love, I’d arranged for us to tour Maynooth Castle while we were here. They’re doing me a bit of favor.”

“Take me to my hotel.”

“I…well, certainly, I can, but will you let me explain?”

“Explain what?” She turned sideways to give him a good, hard stare, not that she could hold it for very long. He was chewing that delicious bottom lip and she started licking
hers
.

Focus, Carla.

“That we’re obviously operating on two different sets of assumptions?”

“Look, I had to tell a lot of little fibs to delay making a decision about this job. One of them was that I was in a relationship and wasn’t sure if my fiancée was willing to move. Of course, at the time I wasn’t actually seeing anyone. I figured when I got here I’d just tell them we couldn’t work it out. Anyhow, I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to spook ya.”

With those downcast eyes, he really did seem contrite. She sighed. “Any other stories I need to know before I step into something even more awkward?”

“Well, no. Except that if you do decide to move, the university will pay for it. That was part of the package.”

“Me
specifically
?”

“My partner. You
hopefully
. Time sensitive, of course.”

Of course. He’s been my boyfriend for four days and already I’m being urged to make major life decisions.
“Any other special perks?”

“A few that aren’t relevant at the moment.”

She’d have to take his word for it.

Chapter 11

The parish of Gallow was about a twenty-minute drive from Maynooth, and the two rode in a comfortable silence. Carla stared out the window at the passing greenery and Grant toyed with the fingers of her right hand with his left hand as he drove.

“It’s really pretty here,” she said finally as he steered onto R148. After her minor tantrum at the university, he had worried he was digging himself a hole he’d never be able to climb out of, and he wasn’t done digging yet. He’d need to tell her soon.

He stole a glance away from the road to examine her pleasant expression. “I suppose it is. I’m a native, so I guess I became immune to it.”

“Why did you stay away so long?”

He shrugged and turned off as if he were going toward the Kilcock golf course. “I guess I wanted to be someplace bigger. You know how if you’re lying in a small bed, if you spread out both arms, they’ll hang over the edges? That’s how I feel about Ireland.”

“I think there’s a certain allure to small, especially a place that has so much history. The US is so young in comparison–not counting the natives who were there first, of course.”

He glanced at her and marveled at the expression of wonder on her face. “Hey, Carla?”