Hot Whispers of an Irishman (26 page)

It was Beth again, the third time she’d called today, still in a state of high alarm. He had done his best to reassure her that all was under control—no mean feat, considering he’d also had to tell her of Meggie’s expulsion. Even his promise to call their daughter’s school in Atlanta first thing Monday and arrange for books and lesson plans to be sent by express courier hadn’t calmed her.

“One last question,” Beth said this time. “That woman who’s staying in your carriage house…she’s not going to Ballymuir, is she?”

“Vi’s already there,” Liam replied, wishing he were.

“I knew she was involved!”

His ex-wife didn’t sound at all herself. Their divorce had been emotionally difficult, but even in those moments of stress, she’d not been vindictive. Liam attempted to calm matters.

“Beth, Meggie and I are staying in a hotel of sorts, not with Vi. She doesn’t even know we’re coming.” Though she damn well should expect it, he could have added.

“I don’t like this,” Beth said. “I’m going to call my parents. Maybe they can—”

“Don’t,” he said with more force than he’d intended, but his pulse had jumped at her words—ones that sounded a threat to him, when a few weeks ago they would have sounded like nirvana. “Meggie’s fine with me, and here she’ll stay. I haven’t had nearly enough time with her.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a few of his followers making a break from the pack. “Hang on a sec,” he said to Beth. “Cullen, get them away from the house, and then while you’re at it, off the property.”

“But my car park fees!”

Liam tallied the vehicles while he listened to his ex-wife threaten to hang up on him since she wasn’t worth his full attention.

“I owe you twenty-one euros, then,” he said to his brother.

It seemed bribe enough, for Cullen was on the move.

“Beth, about Meggie,” Liam said into his cell phone, but it was too late, for Beth had been as good as her word. He redialed, got her voice mail, and left an apology even though he knew it would do little good. He’d spent his apology quota on Beth years before.

Cullen had the property cleared and a hand extended for cash with such efficiency that Liam was forced to feel some respect for the sluggard, if not the need to be around him very much longer.

And so Liam began a task surprisingly solitary in nature considering the number of onlookers lining the low stone wall that marked the border of Nan’s property. An empty task it was, too. The sun had started to slip low in the western sky when Liam was forced to admit that Rafferty’s gold wouldn’t be saving his arse today. Or likely any other.

“I’ll be heading home,” he called to the remaining intrepid observers who were sharing both joking comments and what appeared to be a flask of whiskey. “And don’t be expecting an invitation to supper.”

Liam returned to town, noting that most of his entourage had stopped near the family pub. Now, at least, he grasped why his da had been so open with the reporter. Like Cullen, his father had been thinking with his wallet.

Glad to be rid of his tail, Liam moved on to his mam’s house. When he entered, the first thing that struck him was the quiet. Usually she had the television going whether in front of it or not. He stuck his head in the small television room, but it was empty, as was her fussy front room.

“Mam?” he called.

Just then, Meghan came skidding into the hallway from the dining room. “You’re back early, Dad.”

Liam took in the over-brightness of her tone and the way her brown eyes shone with a contrived innocence. He might be a novice at parenting but he was no fool.

“I’m exactly on time. Where’s your grandmother?” he asked as he strolled into the dining room. Meggie’s blue daypack lay on the table with a scattering of CDs around it, and an open bottle of Club Orange sat on the polished mahogany without a coaster beneath it. Clearly, Mam wasn’t in residence, for she’d be having a seizure at the sight.

Meghan positioned herself between him and the door to the kitchen, which was ajar. “Aunt Catherine’s barfing, so Grandma went to watch everyone. I’m staying here since I’d rather die than puke. I mean, what if Aunt Catherine has the flu or something? The last time I had it, I even barfed the water Mom tried to give me. It was totally gross.”

Liam had begun to see a pattern in his daughter’s habits. Sharing of random personal details meant she was hiding something else. He looked at her more closely. Her white long-sleeved shirt was splotched a brownish color here and there, and its cuffs looked to be both wet and stained with the same color.

“What happened to your shirt?” he asked.

“I don’t see anything,” she replied without even looking. Liam tried to glance around her, toward the kitchen, but she repositioned herself in his way.

“Odd. You see nothing at all, eh?” He took her by the elbow. “Let’s go in the kitchen and—”

Meghan dug in her heels. “Wait! Grandma has this awesome soap bar by the washing machine. I’ll get it. You wait here.”

“So what is it you’re not wanting me to see?” Liam asked as he released her, then managed to skirt past her and into the room she guarded.

The astringent scent of brewed tea filled the kitchen. Wet sheets of paper, all tinged an ugly light brownish color, lay across dishes lining the counter-tops. More were clipped to hangers suspended from every available cupboard knob or hook. And Jamie sat at the kitchen table, a mug of what else but tea in his hands.

“Jamie,” Liam said, giving his brother an appraising nod.

“Liam.”

“Do I want to ask what you’re about?”

“Just having a cuppa,” his brother replied with great calm.

“Right.” Like Meghan, Jamie was more the Club Orange sort. “And the paper?”

“We’re aging it,” Meghan said as she came to stand behind her uncle.

“You’re what?”

“Aging it. Uncle Jamie showed me how.”

“I’m trying very hard not to sound an idiot, here, but why might you need paper soaked in tea?” Liam asked Jamie.

“He’s going to make treasure maps for the people coming to town,” Meghan said before Jamie could answer. “You know, like in the movies.”

And there was the final hand in the middle of the back pushing Liam to the town limits. “Jesus, Jamie—”

“Mind your words,” his brother said in a fine imitation of a parish nun. “There’s a child present.”

“One you’re involving in a fraud scheme.”

“Ah, come now, Liam. You’ve got to learn to go where the wind takes you. How do you think our ancestors managed to survive?”

“Through thievery and corruption, according to you,” Liam replied. He flicked at an almost dry piece of paper on the kitchen table. “And this, I’d say, falls into the corruption end of the enterprise.”

“Thievery, too, I suppose, as it’s Mam’s tea we’re using,” Jamie cheerfully pointed out.

“Grand,” Liam replied while Meggie giggled.

“Just meeting a need,” Jamie said. “I knew as soon as that reporter lady came to visit Da that there’d be treasure seekers arriving. And as long as they’re seeking, why shouldn’t we recoup some of the Rafferty gold with a map or two?”

“It looks more like a few dozen to me,” Liam said. “And you don’t sense a moral issue afoot in all of this?”

“I’m having some fun, is all,” Jamie replied.

“Jeez, Dad, don’t act like this is some big deal.”

Liam didn’t much like his daughter’s comment, for this was a “big deal,” indeed. If Beth got wind of Meghan’s involvement in even this small scam, it would be yet one more reason to pull her from him.

“Meghan, why don’t you go pack up your things?” he asked. “I believe I saw your bag in the dining room.”

“But—”

“Now. And close the door, too.”

Meghan did as told, but none too willingly.

“I’ll give you a questionable sort of credit for initiative,” he said in a low voice to his brother, as he knew his daughter would have an ear to the door. “But involving Meggie? I’d be better off letting Da open the tattoo parlor for her, as he’s promised. At least that would be legal.”

“Tattoo parlor? Hadn’t thought of that one,” Jamie said. “Do you suppose it could turn a profit in a town this size?”

“Forget the parlor,” Liam said, regretting he’d even raised the topic. “Meggie and I are here until tomorrow morning. If you could keep your damn maps to yourself until then, I stand a far better chance of convincing her you meant these as over-priced souvenirs and not wholesale fraud.” He glanced about the kitchen. “Oh, and good bloody luck in getting this room clean and all the stains out of Mam’s rug by the sink. If you don’t, she’ll be chewing your arse till Easter.”

Liam was sure that Jamie’s response of “feckhead” was meant with the utmost of respect and affection.

“Come, Meggie,” he said, pushing open the dining room door slowly enough that his eavesdropping daughter might dodge it. “Uncle Jamie says goodbye.”

Desire makes hunting.

—I
RISH
P
ROVERB

“R
ubbish and more rubbish,” Vi decreed.

Of course she had no one with whom to share the critique of the two canvases she’d created, as Pat and Danny had rescued Roger from the studio the day before. At least she thought it had been the day before, but she wouldn’t wager much on it. Time had a way of fleeing while she worked.

Vi tried to tame her hair into a knot, then sniffed the air suspiciously. Something smelled a bit ripe. It might have been herself or it might have been an item among the food moldering away atop her glass display case by the cash register. She’d meant to tuck the offerings her brothers had delivered into the small fridge hidden in the back room, but had gotten sidetracked. She’d also stopped answering the phone and had in fact unplugged it, as she could bear no interruptions when consumed by an idea.

Unfortunately, it seemed that in this instance she had done the idea-consuming, then spat it out as two rather frantic and disjointed paintings. Hands on hips, she glared at her works. She planned to create four seasonal pieces—souls celebrating round bonfires burning on the riverbank near Castle Duneen. These first two, with Beltaine’s watery springtime lushness and Samhain’s crisp autumn shades, should have been the easiest to capture. It seemed, though, that putting the idea on canvas was the first step toward disappointment. Milky Imbolc and wild Lughnasa bonfires were still forming—or was it festering?—in her imagination.

She remained enamored of the concept, if not the execution. What better than community blazes of rebirth for a castle once burned? But her theme hadn’t carried through clearly, for matters of personal passion wouldn’t let her be. She was haunted by a man very much alive.

Physically, she might have left Liam in County Kilkenny, but someone had forgotten to inform her subconscious. The seductive heat of his kisses, the deep sound of his laughter when she would toss a comment his way, and the way he had of making her feel alive to her core…all had followed her to Ballymuir. And now she wanted him to be here, too.

If she closed her eyes, she could envision Liam down to his cuticles. And she could paint him to perfection, too—just nothing bloody else, it seemed.

“You’re mad,” she said to herself. “Not that it’s any great news.”

Deciding that a quick wash-up might change her outlook, Vi went to the small bathroom located in the back corner of the studio. She did the best she could with a toothbrush, a bar of lavender-and-thyme soap, and a sink too small to be of practical use. At least she could now bear her own scent. She left the shirt and brassiere she’d been wearing on the studio floor and pulled a well-spotted painting shirt over bare skin.

Buttoning as she walked, Vi passed a half-dozen other efforts on silk and canvas that in the past weeks she’d abandoned like changeling infants in the forest of her cluttered studio. She would not look at them, would not acknowledge the power they held over her with their failed faces.

She switched on the radio and listened for a bit of chat that might give her the day. Then, she returned to her Samhain canvas, which was still not quite spoiled, and looked again.

“All over too orange,” she said. “Yet fixable.”

Vi had just gone to her palette when a jingle of the bells tied to her front door signaled an intruder.

“Did I not tell you to let me be?” she called over her shoulder to whichever of her brothers had developed the desire to be flayed alive. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to be brought home.”

They knew her well, her brothers. Along with Roger’s company, they had also deprived her of her car. Experience had taught them that she’d be a hazard on the roads when she was finally exhausted enough to stop work.

“I was under the impression that you’d not be calling me at all,” Liam Rafferty said.

In that moment, words failed Vi even more dismally than her art. She spun to face him.

Ah, but the sight of him made her knees grow soft and her heart softer. If she were the least arrogant about her envisioning abilities, she might believe that she’d wished him here. She wasn’t, though. He was here of his own accord and appeared none too pleased to have it so.

“You didn’t read the sign on the door?” she finally managed to work from muddled mind to mouth.

“It was in Irish,” he said, “which was never my language of choice.”

“Still, I’m sure you recall that
dúnta
means closed.”

He strode closer, all clean and fresh and bloody well reeking of confidence.

“You forgot this,” he said, dropping her patchwork bag at her feet. “And you forgot this, too.”

He kissed her, thoroughly, deeply, and with an utter boldness that angered her as surely as it aroused.

“You owed me that for goodbye,” he said when he’d finished.

She needed to regain her balance or her heart would be forever lost.

“I owed you that?” she asked. “And what might you deserve in the way of a welcome? Me on my knees before those fine shoes of yours?”

Liam laughed. “Reading my mind again, are you? Or maybe it’s just an insight regarding men in general. No matter,” he said, then began to stroll a loop around her studio. He touched a soft weaving adorned with seashells that she’d collected and gave a nod of approval.

“How long have you been here?” he asked when he reached her rather pungent food remains.

An easy enough question, most of the time. “What day is it?”

“Monday,” he replied, a measure of surprise registering on his distinctive features.

“Really?” Another day had indeed slipped past her.

“It’s not the sort of thing worth lying about, now is it? So how long?”

“Since Friday afternoon.”

“And you slept here?” he asked, then with the tip of one shoe, nudged the tattered green futon she’d earlier spread on the floor.

Their gazes locked, and if emotion were a visible thing, Vi would find their sexual awareness a brighter crimson than the flames she’d painted.

“I’ve slept now and again,” she replied.

“You must be wanting your bed.”

Before she could frame an answer, he’d gone to stand in front of her two new canvases.

“Don’t look at them,” she said, alarm making her voice ring sharply in her ears.

“Why not?”

“They’re not fit.” And if he looked closely, he’d find himself in both paintings, along with the impossible bit of wishcraft of her at his side. In all, running naked through Ballymuir would create less exposure than what her brushes had produced.

“The paintings look fit enough to me.” In spite of his words, he turned away, leaving Vi to gather her dignity.

“Did you think you could just leave Duncarraig?” he asked an instant later.

The jump in conversation brought her fully alert. Though he’d said Duncarraig, he’d meant himself. The fewer words, the better, in response.

“I couldn’t stay anymore. I’ve a life that needs tending.”

“As do we all. My complaint, Violet, is with the way you left.”

Violet.
He used the word to incite, but she would not be so easily played. “I apologized in my note. Quite nicely, too, I thought.”

“You did,” he said, prowling closer. “In a bland sort of way. Very tellingly unlike you.”

“Tellingly? What do you mean by that?”

“Later,” he said. “First, I want that welcome kiss, and then I want you in your bed…on the floor…against those unfit paintings. It doesn’t matter, so long as I’m inside you.”

She shivered when he touched her face and then the curve of her lower lip.

“Here, then?” he asked, flicking open the buttons of her shirt.

Vi fumbled to cover what he exposed. “I haven’t showered in days.”

“I don’t care.”

She laughed. “But I do. I can scarcely bear myself.”

He kissed her once, then again, quick persuasive nips. “Let me take you home. Now.”

This would solve nothing. She would leave his arms as incapable of addressing their problems as she was at this moment. And yet she gave the answer that her easy heart dictated.

“Yes,” she said.

Liam had been put out with the dog. Of the two of them, Roger seemed far more content with the situation. Liam had angled to be in Vi’s shower, but had been told in blunt terms that as she actually planned to get clean, she would be doing it alone, thank you. He could tend to the royal hound.

While herself’s dog sniffed about the back fence line, Liam turned up his jacket’s collar and did his best to ignore the chill wind sweeping up the hillside from Dingle Bay. Roger, who wore a warmer coat, circled a low shrub once and then again in reverse, as though the act were part of a ritual.

Thinking he might as well put his time banished to good use, Liam pulled his cell phone from his pocket and readied to put through a call to Muir House, where he and Meggie were staying. The elegant manor house and restaurant, owned by an expatriate American chef named Jenna Gilvane, was hardly what he’d expected to find in this quiet part of County Kerry. It seemed, though, that others had found it, for even now, in the tail end of November, it was booked nearly to capacity.

After some persuasion and name-dropping of the Kilbride variety, he and Meggie had taken up residence in a two-bedroom suite on the top floor. Meggie had immediately embarked on a reconnaissance mission, certain she’d spotted some movie star named Sam walking the grounds.

Liam dialed Muir House and was quickly connected to his rooms. Meggie picked up after two rings.

“Have you called your mother as promised, love?” he asked after greeting her.

“Yeah, but I couldn’t find her, so I left a message. And you’ll never believe it, but I
did
see Sam Olivera, just like I told you. His girlfriend is the owner’s sister, and they’re so nice. He even gave me his autograph when I asked, and then they invited me to go with them for a bike ride to the village in a little while. Can I go? There’s bikes for the guests and I promise I’ll even wear one of those geeky helmets. Say yes, or I swear I’ll die right here.”

It was a near miracle, how she’d managed to fit all those words in one breath. “Mind the traffic, such as it is, and be sure you’re back before dusk. We’ll be eating in the restaurant tonight. The owner’s invited us to a special dinner.”

“So you mean I can go to the village?”

“Yes.”

“You are the coolest dad ever! Hey, I gotta go find my camera.” She hung up before Liam could say anything more, which was fine as his ability to concentrate was fading. He again pocketed his phone and settled one hand on the back door’s knob.

“Ready yet?” he asked Roger, who seemed to be exhibiting a certain amount of canine glee in taking his time. Just as Liam was ready to go chase down the beast, he trotted up the steps.

“Glad to see you could work me into your schedule,” Liam said to the dog, then closed them both inside.

Vi’s modern house was an unremarkable white stucco on the outside. The interior, however, was as exotic as its owner. The walls were rich jewel-toned hues, and some had quotes painted upon them. The words were in Irish, naturally, and Liam’s skills weren’t up to accurate translations. He could catch a few bits, such as
tine,
which, as he recalled, meant fire, and
farraige,
which was the seaside.

The air carried a fragrant scent, too, of cloves, perhaps, and some flower he couldn’t identify, except that it brought to mind wild pleasure on silken sheets. Of course, the scent of Roger’s kibble might well trigger the same thoughts at this moment.

Seeking distraction, Liam returned to the canvases he’d noticed leaning three-deep against the walls of the back hallway, all unframed and clearly unattended. He flipped through the stacks and marveled at Vi’s talent.

Some works were detailed, reminding him of the fire paintings he’d looked at in her studio until she’d chased him off. Others were more abstract, like that of Castle Duneen above Nora’s mantel. But all were stamped with Vi’s perspective and singularity of vision. Liam had no idea why she would be treating art this arresting as though it was queued up to be put out with the rubbish.

He was about to go through the canvases again, but a new, muted sound distracted him—that of Vi singing. Her voice lured him inward. Through the front room he walked, where Roger had settled on a small sofa in front of the fireplace. Liam ventured down a hallway until he came to a closed door, which he knew had to be the bathroom. There was no sound of water running, just that of her bright song.

“Vi?” He rapped on the door, hoping now, at least, for an invitation to enter.

“Don’t even think of coming in,” he received in answer. “My bedroom’s the next room down. Go on in, but do keep Roger out. He’s a bit of a voyeur.”

Liam glanced toward the front room where he’d last seen the dog, but he needn’t have looked so far, as Roger was at his heels.

“Think again, boyo. It’s the sofa for you,” he said when the dog tried to slink in the bedroom door. When working up a profession of love, the last thing a man needed was a wee beast laughing at him. Just then, Vi’s clear tones of amusement came his way. Though of course, he mentally added, a woman’s laughter would be a thousand times worse.