This Irish House (22 page)

Digging in her purse, she found her keys, locked the door of her room and ran down the stairs to her car. Neil lived near the City Centre. She was familiar with the streets around the government buildings. Ten minutes later she stood in front of his door and rang the bell.

He was dressed casually, khaki slacks and a plaid shirt open at the throat. It suited him. He seemed warmer, more approachable. Kate smiled.

“Please, come in,” he said, ushering her into a large room with glossy wooden floors.

Kate looked around admiringly. “This is lovely.”

“It's stark,” Neil admitted. “I've kept it that way because I've never really considered it home.”

“Where is home?”

“Nowhere, really. Things have been temporary for quite some time now.”

Kate pointed to a photo in a silver frame. “Is this your daughter?”

“Yes. That's Erin. It was taken last year.”

The child was lovely, blond and blue-eyed, without the usual adolescent gawkiness that characterized most teenagers.

“Would you care for a drink?”

Kate nodded. “White wine would be very nice, if you have it.”

He disappeared into the kitchen.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

He returned with two goblets filled with a delicate golden liquid.

Kate sipped hers tentatively. “Delicious,” she pronounced.

His glance was probing, serious. “We didn't part on the best of terms the last time we met. I want to apologize for that. The circumstances were awkward.”

Kate nodded. She sat down on the couch. “That's why I'm here, to apologize for accusing you of ulterior motives regarding Patrick's investigation.”

He looked surprised. “No offense taken, Kate. Your reaction was perfectly normal.” His smile lit up his face. “But I'm grateful if that's what brought you here.”

She felt the heat flood her face. “I have another reason as well.”

He grinned and sat down across from her. “I'm still grateful.”

Kate twisted the wineglass in her hands. Her feelings were mixed. She felt comfortable here, secure and protected. What she had to say would destroy the mood. But it must be said. Finally she looked up. His eyes, gray and honest and very direct, were on her face. “I need your help.”

“You shall have it,” he said.

Kate bit her lip. “Just like that. No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

“Why?” His answer would lead them into dangerous areas. But Kate no longer cared.

“Because I've never met anyone like you.”

She stared at him, shocked. “You're not serious?”

“Never more.”

“Will you explain that?”

“Not now.”

“When?”

“After you tell me why you're here.”

She drew a deep breath. “I want you to tell me everything you know about Patrick.”

“My report is very complete.” He hesitated, looked at her face and changed his mind. “Is there something in particular you want clarified?”

Six years had passed. Six years and the searing pain still had the power to cripple her. Damn Patrick. They'd had a life, children, careers. Why had he thrown it all away? “When did it all begin?”

“What are you referring to?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh, Neil.” Kate didn't know whether to laugh or cry. “You're so very kind to me. I want to know when Patrick's involvement became more than defending his clients. After that we can talk about the woman or women, whichever it might be.”

Neil looked embarrassed. “I would have spared you this.”

She believed him. “I know but it's too late now. If you want to help me, tell me what you know.”

A minute ticked by while he studied her face, gauging her capacity to endure. Finally he spoke. “Patrick joined the Provos before he left secondary school.”

The gasp nearly strangled her but she refused to allow it to leave her throat, understanding, somehow, that if she did he would stop talking.

“He was a brilliant student, as you know,” he continued. “They handpicked him, nurtured him, perhaps even guided him into and through his professional life. When he married you, his reputation was well established. Given his record, his talent was obvious. That's when he came under the scrutiny of Special Forces.” His voice was toneless, articulate and completely without emotion. “After the Enniskillen bombing and the falter of the initial Peace Accord, operations were escalated. That's when the Belfast Brigade became exceptionally organized. Numbers were scaled down. Informants were ineffective. No one cracked under interrogation. Special Forces couldn't infiltrate. Patrick had risen to an executive level. All targets, all operations were overseen by him. He was an exceptional man. Unfortunately his talents were channeled in the wrong direction. For the last five years before his murder, he was responsible for all of the assassinations by the Belfast Brigade of the Irish Republican Army.”

Kate listened in disbelief. This was Patrick he was describing, her Patrick. How could it possibly be? How could she not have known the man she'd married? “I can't believe it,” she whispered. “I would have known. Surely I would have known.” She appealed to him, the question begging for an answer. “How could I not have known?”

“He didn't want you to know,” Neil replied. “Patrick was clever.”

“Not clever enough to prevent his own murder.”

“An inevitability for a man in his position.”

“What do you mean?”

“The IRA isn't the only paramilitary group with clever leadership, Kate. For every man like Patrick, there will be one like him on the other side.”

“What about the woman?” she asked.

“We don't know who she is. We don't believe she was ever involved in any IRA targets, therefore she wasn't important to us.”

“In other words, she was Patrick's mistress.”

Once again, he hesitated.

“Tell me, Neil.”

“I believe so.”

“Why?”

“On more than one occasion, they shared a room.”

Kate's hands shook. She lifted the glass and wet her lips. Her stomach refused more. Her scope of vision narrowed. The room was going black and she couldn't find her breath.

Neil's hands were hard on her shoulders. His mouth was near her ear. “Kate. Are you all right?” Gently he eased her down until she lay flat on the couch. “Close your eyes,” he said.

She heard him rummaging in her purse, felt him press the inhaler vial into the palm of her hand. “Breathe,” he ordered.

She shook her head.

“For God's sake, Kate. Don't do this.”

His voice was very far away. She didn't want to breathe. The sharpness would come back and with it the pain. She wanted it all to go away.
She
wanted to go away.

“Kevin needs you, Kate. Deirdre needs you. Stop this. Patrick was a man, a clever manipulative man. You made a mistake. You have two children. You're alive and he's dead. You have the best of the bargain.”

His words pierced through her fog. Kevin and Deirdre. Kevin and Deirdre. Slowly she lifted the vial to her mouth, closed her lips around the head and squeezed.

L
ater, much later, when the world had evened out again, when Kate could bear to open her eyes and sit and breathe and speak and think, when the searing hurt had settled into a dull ache, when once again Neil sat across from her, relief evident on his face, she came back to the question he had never answered. “How am I unlike anyone you've ever met before?”

He knew it wasn't the right time. He wanted no part of correcting Patrick Nolan's mistakes, but he also knew that she desperately needed reassurance. The only way to give it to her was to tell the truth.

“This is dangerous, Kate,” he warned her. “But if you really want to know, I'll tell you.”

She looked up at him through thickly feathered eyelashes. “Do you know that in the Irish language, the word
no
doesn't exist?”

His face changed, hardened. His eyes burned with an intensity she hadn't seen in a long time. Could it possibly mean what she thought? Please, she prayed silently, let it be so.

He crossed the distance between them to sit down beside her. Without warning or permission, he took her face between his hands and lowered his lips to hers.

His mouth was gentle, undemanding. Kate closed her eyes and gave herself up to the sweetness of it.

Too soon, he pulled away. “I think I've been in love with you since the first moment I saw you.”

“Love?” She looked incredulous. “You love me?”

“What else would you call it?”

She pressed her hand so that it was flat against his chest. “I don't think I love you,” she said, forcing the honesty from her lips. “I'm attracted to you. I like you, but love—” She shook her head. “I've never even considered the possibility.”

“I know.”

“You don't really know me.”

“I know you, Kate. Not completely, but I know all that is necessary to have fallen in love with you. Any man in his right mind would love you. You're loyal and intelligent, generous and uncomplaining, a loving mother, a faithful wife.” He sat back, not touching her.

She hadn't intended to push him away. The feel of a man's lips, his hands, after so many barren years was heaven.

She inched toward him. “Is this the way you normally make decisions, so quickly?”

He looked at her steadily. “I haven't made a decision, Kate. I'm simply telling you how I feel.”

“I see.” She felt deflated, presumptuous, embarrassed.

“There is your position to consider, and mine,” he muttered under his breath.

“Of course.”

He couldn't read her. Her eyes were veiled against him. Damn it, what was going on in her head? He'd just told her he loved her. “Kate—” he began, “I don't normally do things this way. I don't know how it's done.”

She looked up quickly, a flash of blue, very bright, too bright, in the pale oval of her face.

Was it possible that he'd hurt her? He risked the question. “What are you thinking?”

She shook her head.

He decided against caution. She would be the one to reject him. Gently he lifted her hand, worked open her clenched fingers and pressed her palm against his mouth. She shuddered. Emboldened, he ran his tongue from her palm to the inside of her wrist. She touched his cheek. Desire coursed through him. Threading his fingers through her hair, he pulled her head back and set his mouth on hers.

There was no gentleness in the kisses he pressed on her lips, her neck, her brow, the slope of her cheek, just heat and need and passion and a feeling that finally he knew what it was like to belong, to feel a woman beside him, around him, within him, to sense her presence, to care enough to please her, to protect her, to take her burdens for his own. He pressed her down on the couch. She looked up at him, blue eyes huge and trusting, dark hair splayed across the pillows. He saw the rise and fall of her chest and waited no longer.

He was conscious of the thinness of her, the faint blue veins under the pale skin of her breasts and the tight, toned muscles of her runner's body. She was small-boned but not fragile, shy but not self-conscious, inexperienced but willing. The feel of her beneath him, the taste of her skin, the slight weight of her breasts, the smooth silk of her legs undid him and he touched and kissed and stroked and moved with all the wonder and care of a man coming into love later than most and for the first time.

Kate sensed it and opened for him hungrily, completely, understanding that the differences between them might well be too much for this night to be repeated. It wasn't the physical satisfaction she missed. That had been rare, even when Patrick took his time to please her. It was the closeness she craved, the heat and muscle of a hair-rough body pressed against her own, the incredible intimacy of joining, the rising tension, harsh breathing, words, soft and low, muffled against her throat, the dizzy pleasure of lips on her breast and, finally, the moment of release, liquid warmth spreading through her, arms tightening, breath slowing and the even, steady drum of a heart beating in unison with hers. Secure in her expectations, anticipation rising, she closed her eyes.

She couldn't say when she first realized that nothing was the same. All at once they were upon her, sensations she'd never known her body was capable of feeling. Neil Anderson was not Patrick Nolan and lovemaking was as different as one man was from another. She welcomed it, the heat, the desire, the wanton urges of her newly awakened body demanding more and more until she felt it, the shattering moment where she no longer cared that her soul had been sold to a man that Patrick would have called
the
enemy.

Neil watched her breathe. Her sleep was deep, trusting. He was grateful for that. Whatever the future held he would remember this night and know there had been nothing held back between them. His arm ached. He would cut it off before he disturbed her. She would have her sleep. Instinct, and the dark bruises below her eyes, told him there had been little enough of that for her.

He must have slept as well. He woke to find her smiling at him.

“Hello,” he said.

She blushed. “Thank you.”

“The pleasure was mine.” He lowered his head to her lips and lingered there.

“Ours,” she said when she could speak again.

He nodded. “Ours.”

Again she smiled. “Ours.”

He watched her sit up, find her clothes and pull them on, wondering if she had any idea how lovely she was.

“I need to ask you about Kevin.”

Neil's heart sank. He zipped up his trousers and waited.

“He's changed.”

Neil frowned. “How?”

“Until now, he's been grateful for my visits and anxious to come home. When I saw him today, he was angry and sarcastic, just like he was before this whole thing blew up.” She sat very still, her hands in her lap. “Has something happened?”

Neil tugged his shirt over his head. He would tell her. She had a right to know. “Kevin has been in contact with his uncles. I imagine they've convinced him that they have his interests at heart. More than likely his attitude has everything to do with his level of confidence. He feels invincible.”

“Is that true?”

“Absolutely not.”

“How can you be sure?”

“These are terrorists, Kate. They do what they have to do.”

“Are you telling me that Kevin is in danger?”

“There is a risk. You knew that.”

He watched her swallow. She was pale again and obviously terrified. Her hands shook and she concentrated to control her breathing.

“It can't be like that, Neil. What do we have to do to get him out of this?”

We,
she'd
said
we.
“As a matter of fact, I was thinking the very same thing.”

The brightness in her eyes was worth his admission.

Quickly he moved to clarify his thought. “It has to be done carefully, Kate. Kevin has already been seen. I can't just pull him out. It would be too dangerous.” He hesitated. “There's something else.”

“What?”

“He still has the terms of a drug conviction to fulfill. He won't be sent home scot-free.”

The light died in her eyes. “What will he have to do?”

“I don't know. I'm not experienced with this sort of thing. I'm sorry.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“There's an arms shipment he told me about. His time and location are wrong, of course. A lad like Kevin would never be trusted with accurate information. I can make it seem that he's unreliable. He'll be pulled.”

“What has an arms shipment to do with Kevin?”

“We're after the paramilitaries' weapons arsenal. Drugs are only a front. The same people are involved in both.”

Her hand was at her throat. “My God. You have my son involved with paramilitary weapons? Kevin can't do that, Neil. He's a boy, not even a boy from the streets. He hasn't been raised like that.”

“I realize that now. It was obvious the first time I sent him off by himself.”

He watched her struggle to gather herself, to remain calm. Whatever was between them was forgotten for the moment.

“Won't it be obvious if you pull him out after only one attempt?”

“What else can I do, Kate?” Neil was feeling desperate. “We both want him out.”

She stared at him, her face innocent of makeup, her eyes huge and hurt. “I have to trust you, Neil. There is no one else. I can't take much more. Please understand that if anything happens to my son, it will destroy me.”

“What about us?”

She smiled. “This was lovely. Thank you.”

He forced himself to speak calmly. “That's it?”

“Did you expect—” She stopped and started again. “Did you want something more?”

“You know damn well that I want something more.”

Kate wet her lips. “What about who we are? I believe you called it
our
positions
.”

“We're beyond that and you know it.”

“I'm a Catholic, Neil. This is Northern Ireland. I can't fraternize with a police officer. My credibility would be ruined.”

“You're home is in the Republic. When this is over, that's where you'll be. I'm not Protestant, Kate. Religion hasn't been part of my life for a long time, but if that's important to you, it will be.”

“This won't be over for years and years. We're not making any real progress. The sticking point for us is a new government, a new policing force. You could very well be out of a job if those demands are met.”

“I'll take my chances,” he said dryly. “Quite frankly, if I never see Northern Ireland again, it won't disappoint me.”

“Do you feel that way about all of Ireland?”

“Of course not.”

“Our timing is poor.”

“Better that than not at all.”

Kate stood and stretched. “I have to think about this, Neil. I didn't expect it. There are so many unresolved matters.”

“Such as?”

“Kevin, for one.”

“I'm going to fix that.”

“There's Patrick.”

“He's dead.” His words were honest, brutal, powerful.

“Not for me,” she said. “Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't know the truth.”

“I'll help you.”

She turned to him eagerly. “Will you?”

He nodded. “It may not be what you think, Kate. There is the possibility you may be hurt very badly.”

“Will you help me?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said wearily, wishing he had another choice.

Kate stood in front of the double doors that had served as a small upstairs office and retreat when Patrick was alive. This was the room Kate and the children had known not to disturb without permission. He had ordered sliding doors to separate it from their bedroom and close out the light when he worked late. Kate had never felt quite up to clearing it out, even down to the scattered papers on his desk and the heavy coats and parka in the closet. Someday, she had promised herself, when she could smell remnants of his scent without breaking down, she would organize and give away the last of his belongings. Weeks became months and months, years. She always seemed to find something else to do that could not be postponed. She refused to put it off any longer. Instinct told her the answers to her questions would be found in this room.

She stood in front of the closet, closed her eyes and opened the door. His coats were hung according to season, heavy wools first, tighter wools and windbreakers for spring and summer. So far, so good. She fingered a dark gray tweed, moved it across the rack so that a tighter gray wool was exposed. Suddenly it hit her, the faint, familiar smells of tobacco and aftershave, old leather and wool, Patrick's smells.

Kate picked up a sleeve, buried her face in it and inhaled. It was different, this time. Somehow it felt right to be standing in Patrick's closet with her cheek pressed against the sleeve of his coat. She smiled into the wool, running her hands down the expensive fabric, then inside over the lining. Humming to herself, Kate slipped her fingers inside the pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, a bookmaker's receipt. How odd. Patrick had been one of few Irishmen who had no interest in racing. Pencil marks hid some of the numbers. She flicked on the light, squinting to decipher the faded writing. It looked like a phone number, but there were too many digits.

On a hunch, Kate carried the paper downstairs to her study, opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out her address book. 011 was an international code and 212 was the area code for numbers in the city of New York. She relaxed. Patrick knew people in New York. He hadn't been specific about all aspects of his work but, to be fair, she had never shown much interest. She stared at the receipt and thought of the restaurant in Belfast. On an impulse, she picked up the phone and dialed the number. No answer, nor was there a machine. Slowly Kate replaced the receiver and looked at her watch. It was five hours earlier in New York, four o'clock in the morning. She would try again later.