The Wright Brother (31 page)

Nodding, she waved goodbye and stood there watching him go silently. He never turned back to stare at her, but she sensed that if she so much as cleared her throat he’d be back up the stairs in a heartbeat.

“Oh my God,” she whispered when she knew he was well out of earshot, “what the hell is happening to me?”

~*~

“Okay, okay.” Meredith held up her shot glass. Her lavender hair was now longer, hanging in a shaggy bob around her long jawline. “My turn.” She glanced over at Elisa and winked, her brightly painted lips turned up into a half smile. “Either you A, tell us how you’d rather die, or B, you take the shot.”

“Die? How morbid are you?” Angelica sniffed and rubbed at her nose, fluttering a hand over her slicked bun.

Meredith stuck out her tongue and downed her shot of whiskey aggressively before pouring out another one. “Then take the shot, ‘Gelica.”

Tobias chuckled, shoving his glasses back up his nose. Normally he wore contacts, because he always said that if he didn’t he looked a lot like a nerdy hobbit, but Elisa found him more charming with his tweed jacket and thick framed glasses on than off. He looked just like how a proper Keeper should.

Elisa grinned. The gang had been at Turk’s only an hour, but already most of them were drunk off their asses. At one point Meredith had even tried to crawl up on the bar to dance.

It’d taken both Elisa and Callum to drag her down from there.

A foot kicked at Elisa’s underneath the table. She glanced up to see Callum’s glimmering brown eyes smiling down at her. “So what say you, Elisa, how would you rather die, inquiring minds wish to know.” His shot glass played along his full bottom lip.

Stomach fizzing with a case of nerves at his sudden playfulness, and the fact that she hadn’t had a thing to eat today—other than half of Meredith’s chicken sandwich at lunch—she shook her head, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear.

“Jaysus,” Mere snorted. “It’s not that hard, duckling, here let me show you. If I had my way I’d rather die in the arms of my lover as we drank from a bottle of poison. Together. Forever…” She clutched at her chest.

“Good God,” Tobias groaned. “Why am I not surprised you’d prefer a Shakespearean end?”

Rolling her eyes, she gave him a pointed look. “Well then, if my death is not sufficient for you, how would you go?”

“I’ll likely meet my end in the loo, after a violent and very painful bout of—”

“Do you mind?” Angelica turned in her seat to glare at him, and then eyed her amber-colored whiskey with a wrinkled nose.

Tobias chuckled heartily, and, with a shrug, downed his shot anyway.

It’d taken Elisa months to figure out the slang in Ireland. WC, she’d learned, was short for “water closet,” also known as the loo, also known as a bathroom. At least to Americans anyway, they’d teased her mercilessly that a bathroom should have a bath in it and that they never could understand Yanks and their backward ways.

Her lips twitched as she pictured a pantless Tobias sprawled out on a toilet, with his mouth gaping open, dead from a heart attack.

“My imagination is so vivid that I’m having a very hard time not picturing this,” Elisa said with a chuckle.

He winked; his normally pinkened cheeks were now an even deeper shade of red. He and Meredith had been hitting it hard. It’d surprised Elisa how unpretentious academia actually could be.

She’d expected before arriving that everyone would be buttoned-up snobs, only interested in expounding the virtues of whatever priceless rare collections they’d been recently working on. And they were, to an extent.

Tobias seemed to take almost orgasmic delight when reading through the
Book of Kells
, as one of the U.K.’s premiere authorities on it, he was the man to ask if you had any questions on the matter. But he also enjoyed a ribald joke or two, he loved his beer, and the weekly get-togethers had been his brainchild. A place, he’d said, where they could go to relax and not talk about work for just a few hours. Elisa had come to look forward to their Saturday nights.

Callum smiled at her again, and she glanced away.

“Well, I know how I’d like to die,” his deep throated voice interrupted Mere and Tobias’s squabbling.

“How?” Angelica asked with a raised brow.

Elisa was convinced that Angelica only came to these get-togethers because of Callum and her hope of someday making him husband number three, but that was just a guess.

“Alone on a secluded island, with a good woman beside me.” He grinned at Elisa as he said it. “And a stack of books that reaches toward the heavens.”

“How utterly Hemmingway of you.” Meredith chuckled.

“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” Callum smiled, tipping his glass toward Elisa.

She swallowed hard, feeling slightly anxious by his obvious attentions tonight. Apparently she wasn’t the only one to notice because a moment after Callum excused himself to the bathroom Meredith shielded the left side of her mouth with her hand so that neither Tobias nor Angelica could see her mouth, “Wow.”

He’d gotten friendlier with her since the day he’d helped her with the boxes. It was nice to have finally broken the ice, but now she was scared that she might have done more than broken the ice with him.

There were moments where her mind would drift, wondering what he was doing, where he was at. It unnerved her that she couldn’t seem to control those thoughts. She still loved Julian, but it was so easy sometimes to imagine what it might be like if she was free and so was he. As much as it pained her to even think it, all signs were pointing toward their relationship heading in that direction.

Shushing her friend, Elisa waved her off. “I think I might go.”

“Oh no,” Meredith cried, “not yet, I haven’t even gotten properly drunk.”

Laughing, she got up, feeling a little lightheaded, but not too bad. She’d only had two beers and a shot. Her tolerance for liquor was growing since meeting the rowdy bunch.

“No really.” She pretended to yawn, accidentally bumping into a bar patron as she did. “I’m tired, I haven’t slept much the past few nights and I’m exhausted.”

“Oh, come on,” Meredith wrapped an arm around her neck. “You can sleep in tomorrow, there’s no rush.”

“No.” She looked up as Callum sat back down, giving her a strange look as she slipped some cash onto the table. “Really. Angelica.” She gave the French beauty a nod of goodbye. “God of Books,” she then said to Tobias, who gave a hearty chuckle at her nickname for him and reached his arms up for a hug.

He was quite touchy when deep in his cups. Elisa would never tell him so, but in the pub he was a happy drunk, unlike the strict taskmaster at work.

Giving him a quick hug, she nodded at Callum. With a quick kiss on Mere’s cheek, she gave a final wave and headed for home.

She’d walk tonight—it was a distance, but she wanted the fresh air.

The city was alive with the sounds of laughter and lights, she loved Dublin, loved everything about it’s Old World charm, so unlike Maine. She felt like a different person, a new woman here.

Though she’d spent the majority of her life on U.S. soil, she found it almost too easy to settle into life in Ireland.

Deep in thought, she didn’t hear the pounding footsteps coming up behind her until they were right on top of her.

“Hey you.” Callum’s deep throaty voice made her whirl on her ballerina flats.

“Whoa.” She expelled a long breath. “Oh my God, you scared me.” She gave a weak chuckle and grabbed her chest.

His hair looked windblown from running, he’d shaved his beard weeks ago, but he now had a fine dusting of dark shadow on his jaw. Her fingers twitched.

“Where are you off to?”

Nibbling on the corner of her lip, she glanced forward and then back. “Did you just chase after me?”

Sticking his hands into his jeans he shrugged and with a coy grin said, “And what if I said I did?”

Pulse thundering so hard through her ears she was afraid he could hear it, she turned on her heel, confused whether to stop and chat or keep walking for home.

“Did I leave something there?” she finally asked in confusion.

“Elisa.” He grabbed for her hand, threading their fingers together just briefly. “You must know by now.”

The touch of his skin on hers sent shockwaves through her arm. Jerking away from him, she shook her head. “You…you…” She cleared her throat. “You shouldn’t touch me that way.”

Grabbing her elbow, he pulled her to a stop.

His deep brown eyes mesmerized her.

“How long are we going to play this game?” he asked and she frowned.

“What game?”

Cocking his head, a thick lock of his wavy hair slipped over one eye, and she had to curl her hand into a fist to keep from brushing it back.

“The game where we pretend that we don’t feel this.”

Clenching her jaw, it was everything she could do to turn away from him. “I have a boyfriend,” she said; bringing Julian up made her feel a little braver.

“You mean the man who rarely comes anymore?”

“Hey,” she snapped and twirled on him, “what we do is none of your business.”

Holding out his hands, he gave her a calm look. “I’m not trying to fight, believe me. I admire you. I have almost from the moment we’ve met. But I would be a fool to not let my feelings be known. To not fight for any sort of a chance.”

Anyone else and she wouldn’t even have a second’s doubt. But Callum was beautiful. Beyond beautiful, he was the type of unattainable male most women only got to dream about and admire in magazines. He’d modeled for some of the most elite designers in the world and he was telling her he liked her.

Her stomach heaved.

“I love him,” she said and meant it with every fiber of her soul. Regardless of how strained things were now between her and Julian, she’d never be able to just move on to a new man. Even one as beautiful as Callum.

He brushed his knuckles over her cheek and for the first time in years Elisa felt the type of sensations that could only spring from new love.

What she felt for Callum wasn’t anything close to what she had with Julian, but there was definitely attraction, which made this so much harder.

“I’ve lived a lifestyle of ease and women, money, and everything it could buy. But none of it made me happy. I’m the kind of man who when I see something I want, I go for it. And I want you, Elisa, I’m intensely serious about that.”

He stepped into her, crowding her space. And even though she’d been drinking and could blame anything that might happen on that, she knew she wasn’t really that drunk.

Though Callum smelled of books and wine and cigar smoke—smells she loved now—and his looks could make even a saint stop and stare, she turned her face to the side.

“I really don’t think this is appropriate,” she said.

But he was already swooping in, and she turned just in time for his mouth to graze her cheek instead of her lips.

Her entire body lit up in a blaze of heat, her skin tingled where he’d touched her. It was all she could do not to brush her fingers over the spot where he’d kissed her.

Stepping way back and out of his reach, she shook her head. “Don’t do that again.”

“I want to see you tomorrow. Just you and me, wherever you’d like. Tell me you’ll come.”

Each word out of his lips weakened her resolve further. Needing to get away from him, right now, she said, “Callum, I—”

Lost for words, confused, and shamefully excited, she sidestepped him and ran straight to her flat.

The run was exhausting, and by the time she got to her flat she was coated in a layer of sweat, but it’d also helped to clear her jumbled thoughts. She needed to talk to Jules. Running to her laptop, she called him, trying to Skype. But it rang and rang and rang. Either he was asleep or out.

Wanting to leave him a message, she clicked on her Gmail, but stared at the screen as too many words crowded her head.

He’d graduated almost two months ago. They’d just talked last week, but things were so different now. So horribly, terribly different.

Sniffing, she shut her laptop and shuffled into her room, stripping her slacks and shirt off, then stumbling into bed with nothing on but her bra and panties. Yanking Julian’s pillow to her, she lay down and stared at the painting of her and him in the hospital room hanging up on her wall.

Was it really possible that after everything they’d gone through, it could be over just like that?

But as her eyes closed and her mind began to drift, it wasn’t Julian’s sea-green gaze she saw, but a pair of sensual brown ones.

“I want you, Elisa, and I’m intensely serious…”

Elisa smiled as memories of her pseudo-date last night crowded her waking thoughts. She really didn’t even know what to call it. But Callum made her feel things she hadn’t felt in years, alive, excited, happy.

She winced into the rare sunniness of a bright Irish morning and pulled the sheets up over her head one final time. Her head ached from one too many beers and her mouth was dry. The idea of eating anything right now didn’t appeal, but if she didn’t at least have a coffee and some dry toast she’d regret it later.

Thank God it was Sunday and she had the day to recover—Meredith had kept pushing those beers on her last night. Granted, she could have said no, but Callum’s teasing smile had made her feel stupidly brave.

He’d asked to see her again today. Her stomach dove to her knees. They’d been drunk and silly, what if it was nothing more than just words? She’d tried hard not to encourage him too much last night. But that kiss on her cheek right before she’d run away…

She worried her bottom lip thinking about it. Why did everything have to be so complicated?

Rolling over, she buried her nose into Julian’s pillow, breathing him in before she started her day, but then froze as it felt like she’d just been sucker punched.

Elisa sniffed again.

Nothing.

Eyes going wide in an instant, she shook off her sleepiness and sat up, snatching the pillow up as she did so. But no matter how many times she buried her face in it, his smell was gone.

Numb, she stared at the crimson pillow case with tears blurring her eyes as the finality of what that meant began to wiggle itself through her brain. She and Julian hadn’t out and out broken up. But their talks were less, their need to see one another was less, they had their lives, and somehow—without her even being aware of it—they’d begun to move on.