Shine (28 page)

More people passed, and Zachary’s eyes turned vulnerable. He pressed back against the column as if to keep himself from leaping forward to find me.

I couldn’t wait another second. I pushed against the stream of disembarking passengers, tripping over feet and suitcases and umbrellas to get to Zachary’s side.

My hand brushed his soft leather sleeve. Zachary jerked his arm away instinctively. Then he saw me.

“Au—” was all he got out before our mouths met. I clung to him with everything I had, letting the hunger and joy in his lips consume six months of fear in a single moment. My knees buckled, but he lifted me up and pulled me against him. He was as strong and solid as the Zachary I’d always known.

I felt the floor beneath my feet again, but he didn’t let go. “You’re here,” he whispered, then kissed me. “You’re really.” Another kiss. “Truly.” Another kiss. “Here.”

I couldn’t speak, so I wrapped my arms around his back and pressed my face to his chest. Through his earth-red rugby shirt, he smelled just as I’d remembered.

“Aura, I thought this day would never … ach, I’ll just shut up.”

We held each other, still as a mountain in a hurricane, while people rushed by, laughing and chatting.

I finally opened my eyes and saw the roses that had tumbled to the floor. “You dropped something.”

“Oh!” Without letting go of me, Zachary reached down and snatched the flowers. “You take these, I’ll take your bags. I’ve got the rental car all sorted, we just have to fetch it from the car park.” He took the handle of my suitcase, then stopped. “You’re really here.”

Though our hands were full, we kissed again, testing this new, miraculous reality.

Finally Zachary pulled away a few inches. “The sooner we start walking—”

“Yeah,” I said with the little breath he’d left me.

As we made our way down yet another endless corridor toward the car park, he kept looking at me, as if to confirm I was still there.

I buried my nose in one of the red roses. “These are just like the ones you brought me last year in the hospital.” The morning after we’d first kissed, to be exact.

“These are a wee bit different.”

I examined them. They looked the same—half red, half yellow. Yellow for friendship and red for much more.

Ah, no. Now there were seven red roses and only five yellow. He’d tipped the balance.

In the parking garage, Zachary opened the trunk and placed my bags next to his. He shut the lid slowly, letting his hands rest on it. “Did you want to visit Dublin now?”

“As opposed to …”

“Going straight to the bed and breakfast. Checking in. To our room.” He adjusted the car’s rear wiper blade, though it wasn’t crooked. “You must be tired.”

I wasn’t, not with him so close after so long. “I would like to see Dublin.” Or rather, I felt like I
should
like to see Dublin. “Is it on the way?”

“No, Dublin is south. County Meath is north. A half-hour drive, if we don’t get lost.”

“Oh.” I examined the oil-stained concrete at my feet. In less than an hour we could be alone in a room together for the first time in six months.

When I looked up again, our eyes met.

“North,” we said.

On the way out of the parking garage—I mean, “car park”—Zachary handed me the road map. “You’ll have to navigate. I marked the spot, so just tell me when to get off the M1 and everything after that.”

I blinked the blurriness out of my contacts, wishing I’d worn my glasses on the overnight flight. There was a star and a question mark near the village of Slane. “You don’t know where it is?”

“Not precisely, but I’m sure there’ll be a sign. If not, we’ll ring them.”

I looked up from the map as we entered the motorway, which
had two lanes in our direction and two in the other—but on our right instead of the left.

“Everything’s backward.” Sitting in the left seat, I put my hands into thin air where the steering wheel should have been.

“Confession: This is only my second day driving on the left side of the road. The first was when I somehow acquired a driving license back home.” He tapped the brakes too hard, jolting us. “The examiner was very forgiving.”

“You don’t drive in Scotland?”

“I’ve no need for a car in the city. I walk or take the bus or subway.” He carefully shifted gears. “I’m a wee bit out of practice.” His arms tensed as we entered heavier traffic. “I have to stop talking now or we’ll die.”

We didn’t die, but we did want to kill whoever built the back roads and made the signs and maps that supposedly went with them.

“It’s like they know,” Zachary muttered, after we made the third wrong turn down a mismarked country road.

“Like who knows what?”

“The Irish, that our marriage is a sham.” The car lurched as he shifted down into second gear instead of up into fourth. “This is their way of keeping us frustrated and pure.”

I focused on the map with renewed determination. The hedgerows blocked the sight of landmarks and gave the road a claustrophobic feel.

Suddenly a gap appeared, with a small brown sign. “Slow down,” I said. “Stop!”

Zachary jammed the brakes. We skidded across the damp road.
The car fishtailed, but stopped at the edge of a ditch on the opposite shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said. The engine coughed and stalled.

I pointed out the windshield at the break in the hedgerow. “I think that’s it.”

Zachary started the car, then eased us out of the path of potential oncoming traffic. The tiny brown sign came into view.

BALLYROCK CASTLE B & B
.

T
he brass key trembled in Zachary’s hand as he inserted it into our door. My heart felt jammed between my tonsils, I was so nervous myself.

Before turning the knob, he lifted a finger to his lips as a silent warning to
Shhh
.

The moment we were inside with the door shut, Zachary whipped out his phone. Tapping the screen, he activated an innocent-looking icon marked “Files.” The words “Sweep activating” appeared.

He was looking for bugs. I wasn’t sure if this made me more or less jumpy.

The suite’s walls were gray castle-stone, and the floors a warm, dark wood covered in thick earth-toned rugs. Near the door where I stood, a love seat and coffee table sat facing a fireplace, flanked by armchairs. Straight ahead, double doors opened onto the balcony,
where I could see the dim afternoon light through translucent white curtains.

But I barely registered all this, because of the bed. Tucked back into the right side of the room, it dominated the space with its king-size hugeness and what looked like the world’s fluffiest quilt. The carved dark wood frame reached four posts up toward the low ceiling.

I needed air.

I went to the balcony doors, leaving Zachary sweeping the phone in slow arcs at arm’s length, watching the screen carefully. He nodded to me when I put my hand on the latch, so I opened the doors and went outside.

“Whoa.” I stepped out into the mist and rested my elbows on the stone railing. Below, the hills and trees sloped down toward the stately River Boyne, whose northern shore I could just glimpse through the fog. I wondered how many ghosts I would see peppering the distant fields and streets if I hadn’t been so recently—and so thoroughly—kissed.

A few minutes later, the balcony door creaked open behind me. “We’re alone,” Zachary said softly.

“Great.” I cleared my throat and repeated the word, but kept my eyes on the river, wishing I could borrow its silent, silver serenity. “Did MI-X give you the bug sweeper?”

“My dad did, as long as I promised not to tell Mum. She doesn’t want me following in his footsteps.” He gripped the railing. “But I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.”

I began to tremble, from his proximity and the strength in his voice.

Desire and fear were playing tug-of-war with my thoughts.

“I bet when it’s clear,” I said quickly, “you can see the whole valley.”
Am I really talking about the weather to hide how nervous I am about sex? Seriously?

“I hope it’s clear for sunrise tomorrow at Newgrange.”

And now he’s doing it, too.
“It will be, I just know it.”

“Aye, this weather’s no match for that beautiful Yank optimism.”

“No way.” My voice was a bare whisper now.

Our hands lay inches apart on the balcony’s stone railing, but the distance might have been miles. That’s how much courage it would take to join them, because once we touched, here in our room alone …

I spread my fingers, and he did the same, until the tip of my right pinkie and the tip of his left pinkie almost brushed. Almost.

The thick Irish mist seemed to fill my lungs, drowning me in fear and anticipation. I wasn’t sure what would kill me faster—touching Zachary or
not
touching him.

“Are y’hungry?” he finally asked in a low voice.

“No,” I whispered, not looking up.

“Thirsty?”

“Uh, yeah. No. I don’t know.” I risked a glance at him. “What’s there to drink?”

“Water from the tap?” He uttered a short, hoarse laugh. “I dunno why I’m acting like a waiter. I suppose, now that you’re in my part of the world, it feels like you’re my guest, and I want to make you, em …”

“Comfortable?”

“Happy.”

I summoned every scrap of courage and turned to face him straight on. “You do.”

“Aura.” Zachary drew his top lip between his teeth, then spoke to the stone surface just beyond my feet. “I tried tae think of the perfect things to say and do right now.” With each quickening blink, his eyes shifted, never leaving the ground. “But then, I thought maybe this would never happen, that I’d never even see you again. And then every time I turned my mind to this moment, it went blank.” His lashes lifted to let his gaze meet mine. “I couldn’t imagine a future that would be so kind.”

My eyes burned with tears—of anger as much as sorrow or love. Whatever those bastards had done to him, the one thing I’d never forgive was the haunted look they’d put in his eyes.

“So I’m sorry,” he continued, “if I’m no’ quite the most, em, smooth person when it comes to these things. I never did sort out what to say and do, how to get from here”—he pointed to the space between our feet—“to there.” He gestured behind him, toward the door. Toward the bed.

I took a shaky step forward, so that we almost touched. “You’re not the only one who can sort stuff out.” I twined my fingers with his, feeling his hands tremble as hard as mine. “Let’s go inside.”

Sitting on the edge of the love seat, I watched Zachary start the fire. His face set in concentration as he reached up the chimney to open the flue, which settled into position with a heavy iron thunk. “There.” Then he pulled a long match from a green cardboard canister on the hearth. Our hosts had arranged the wood for us ahead of time, with kindling and paper underneath.

“Wait.” I went to kneel beside him. “Let me do it.”

With a faint smile, he handed me the red-tipped match, then held out the rough bottom edge of the canister for me to strike.

I hadn’t realized how dark the room had grown until the flame burst white-yellow from the match head, searing my vision. Zachary pulled back the fireplace’s webbed-steel curtain so I could touch the match to the paper beneath the kindling.

The fire crackled and curled the paper, then snapped at the dry wood. I sat back on my heels, offering the lit end of the match to Zachary. “Make a wish.”

His green eyes, dark with desire, met mine as he blew out the match. Then he leaned forward, and without touching me, brought his lips to mine.

We’d had perfect kisses before. Our first one, a year ago on that ship. Our last one at the airport in June was pretty amazing, too. And then there was the time in the woods, when we finally decided to be together.

But this …

It was as if with one kiss—one long, deep, shivery kiss—he’d turned me naked beneath him, and I was feeling his lips and tongue on every inch of my skin. In that moment, I lost all fear and nerves. I became pure want.

He finally reached for me, but instead of giving me the caresses I craved, he slowly unbuttoned my top, his fingers not even grazing my skin. I moaned, relishing this delicious torture, realizing that he meant to touch me only when he could press hands to flesh.

Zachary peeled back my shirt, one shoulder at a time. Even as my skin met the chilly air, it was warmed by the swelling fire and this never-ending kiss.

He finally broke away, long enough to pull off his own shirt, the collar sweeping his hair forward over his temples, almost to the ridge of his brows. Unable to resist, I brushed the dark waves off his forehead, then traced his hairline down to the curve of his jaw.

Zachary closed his eyes and turned his head to kiss my palm. In its soft, tender center, I felt the touch of his tongue. I gasped as the electric sensation seemed to skip my arm and go straight to my core.