The Last Bride in Ballymuir Read online

  “Tomorrow?”

  He nodded. “And when I’m through talking, I’ll leave it to you to decide if you want to see me again.”

  A moment passed before Kylie found what was implicit in his words. “So you want to see me?”

  He seemed to speak almost unwillingly. “I’ve tried not to, but I can’t seem to turn away. It’s wrong of me, though.”

  “And why is it wrong?”

  “You deserve better.”

  “Really? How would you know what I deserve?”

  “It’s not so much knowing that, as it’s knowing myself. And you should be more careful in your choices. I’m not the sort to take home to Mam and Da.”

  She’d been through too much in her years to tolerate being spoken to like a child. “Since my father’s hardly available for visits, and my mother died some years ago, I’ll not be worrying about that. And I’m growing very weary of being preached to. I know my own mind, and I know what I want.”

  In the face of her anger, his mouth curved into a full, honest smile. “And what is it you’re wanting right now?”

  “To take you by that ragged shirt of yours and shake you,” she answered, actually enjoying this opportunity to let her emotions run free. “Though it would do me no good at all, with the size of you.”

  He looked her up and down, sending another type of primal tingle through her. Taking one hand, he uncurled her fingers and measured them against his own much larger hand. “I might have the edge on size, but you seem to have me beat in determination. I’d not bet against you in a fight.”

  Slowly, lazily, he rubbed his thumb in the middle of her open palm. As he lingered, she could feel her eyes grow wider, rounder, and the breath leave her body. “In fact, I’m sure I’d soon be begging for your mercy.”

  She came closer, her free hand drifting of its own volition to touch his dark, thick hair.

  “I’ll tell you what I want,” he said, his voice low and raspy. “I want to kiss you again.”

  His lips brushed her palm. “And I don’t mean one of those, but a real kiss.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “I’m out of my bloody mind with wanting, but that kiss—the real kiss—won’t happen until we’ve had our talk. And then if you still want me...”

  “I— I—” was all she could seem to manage to get out.

  “Hello, Kylie. I see you found some company while you were waiting.” At Vi Kilbride’s voice sounding from the doorway, Kylie hastily pulled her hand away from Michael’s. She scooted over on the couch, the wool of her skirt tugging beneath her.

  Michael, on the other hand, sat where he was. “You’ve been busy today, haven’t you, little sister?”

  Vi settled herself in a wing chair at an angle to the couch. “I’m a bit late, if that’s what you’re meaning.”

  He smiled at his sister, and Kylie marveled at how much younger and more carefree he looked in that instant. “You know well enough what I’m meaning.” He stood and nodded at the two of them. “I’ll leave you to your tea.” To Kylie he added, “Tomorrow, and I’ll bring dinner if I might.”

  Thinking she’d not have been more amazed if he’d offered to take a hand to her mending pile, Kylie murmured her thanks and a good-bye.

  After he’d left the room, Vi spoke. “And that’s why I asked you here.”

  Still struggling to gracefully reseat herself, and to get through the delicious haze that spending time with Michael brought, Kylie said, “I’m not following you.”

  “One smile.” Vi put a sugary raisin scone on a plate, then poured herself some tea. “He hasn’t smiled in weeks. Oh, he puts on a good show, coming out here and working, then walking his miles. But not one smile until today. You’re good for him, Kylie. I should be feeling some guilt for dragging you back into his troubles, but I don’t. He’s family, and I’ll do what I must to see him happy.” She paused and took a sip of her tea. “And I think you know that sooner or later you’d have ended up seeing him again.”

  Kylie didn’t argue the point.

  “The two of you have far to go, but if you decide to do this, to stand by him, be sure that you stand strong. We both know I saw what happened at the pub that night. To turn your back on him again, it would be beyond cruel.”

  “I know, and I’ll never betray him again.”

  A shadow, a whisper of some ineffable sadness, passed across Vi’s face. “That’s a fine promise, and one far more easily made than kept. But I’ll be holding you to it.”

  “No stronger than I’ll hold myself,” Kylie answered, suddenly feeling cold. So very cold.

  Chapter Nine

  Two-thirds of foolishness is youth.

  —Irish Proverb

  Michael bolted upright in bed. Clammy with sweat and shaking, he tried to sort dreams from reality. The luminescent hands of the old windup alarm clock next to his bed told him that it wasn’t much past two in the morning. His lurching stomach carried the news that he’d been dreaming of her again. Dervla.

  Switching on the light, he rose from bed and walked to the bathroom sink, where he filled and then quickly drank a glass of cloudy tap water. He’d had these dreams before. Too often, in fact. In prison he’d awaken, hard with wanting, hating her and hating himself even more for being aroused by the image of the woman who’d destroyed him.

  He supposed it was progress of sorts that his dreams were no longer of the touch of her hands against his skin. But having her there at all—still inside his head—God in heaven, how he resented it. She was a ghost now, dead these fourteen years. Couldn’t she leave him alone?

  After setting the glass back on the shelf above the sink, he turned and made his way back to bed. There, dreams became reality. Instead of finding sleep, Michael found himself eighteen again, sweaty and panting in Dervla McLohne’s rumpled bed, trying his best to get the one thing he desired above all else.

  “Please, Dervla. Just this once,” he moaned, insinuating his fingers under her skirt.

  She squirmed away. “It would be a sin, you know that.”

  A sin he was almost certain she’d committed at least once in her twenty-five years. “I’m sure they’d forgive you in confession.”

  She kissed him long and hard, and no one was a more skilled or exciting kisser than Dervla. He toyed with the buttons of her blouse, overjoyed when she let him free them. She reached back and unhooked her brassiere. He pushed the red fabric out of the way and cupped her full breasts in his trembling hands.

  It still amazed him that a woman so much older and more sophisticated than he was would be interested in him. He was beginning to think he might love her.

  “Oh, Mickey,” she gasped as he ran his thumbs over her rosy nipples.

  “Michael,” he corrected.

  “You know I want to let you, but it just wouldn’t be right.”

  He kissed her, then pushed her dark, curly hair away from her forehead. As he caressed his way down to her breasts, he said, “Ah, but I’m not quite through persuading.”

  She arched and gasped as he closed his mouth over one nipple. “And you are quite the persuader.”

  Later, when the need was pounding through him so hard he could hear little else, she rolled him onto his back and worked down the fly of his jeans.

  “Can we compromise?” she offered, running her fingertips over his erection.

  Mouth too dry to speak, he nodded, then closed his eyes as she peeled his clothes away.

  Afterward, when he’d calmed, and she lay against him, one leg draped across his thighs, she said, “Remember my brother Brian from Derry? You met him here once.” Fingers drifted downward and softly sifted through the hair at his groin. He couldn’t help the moan that escaped. “I’m going this weekend to celebrate his birthday. Drive up there and be with me, Mickey. We’ll have a room of our own, and I promise this time…”

  Michael wrenched himself from a bed miles and years removed from Dundalk, Dervla McLohne, and her compatriots. Not quite far enough, apparently. T
wo showers later he felt almost clean.

  At four in the morning, having read the last of the books in his room and discarded the possibility of sleep without Dervla there to haunt him, Michael crept downstairs. He’d just made the landing when he was greeted by the click-clack of Roger’s toenails across the tile floor. The dog trotted over to the hook where his leash hung and waited expectantly beneath it.

  “There’ll be no peace if I don’t take you out, will there?” he muttered to the dog.

  As they walked the still-dark streets of town, Michael thought of the evening to come. He had to believe that telling Kylie the truth of his past was the surest way to send her running. Still, he hoped—no, prayed, in his fashion—that he was wrong, for Kylie O’Shea was beginning to mean more to him than he dared admit.

  “God help me,” Michael said, the words echoing down the narrow, empty street.

  Roger, who had been trotting happily alongside him, halted dead in his tracks and lifted his leg.

  “And that’s pretty much what God’s been telling me, too.” With that, they turned back toward Vi’s house, where a certain beast could be shut into his owner’s bedroom.

  By the time Vi wandered out of bed and into the kitchen, Michael had read through, then hidden back in his car, the raft of cookbooks Jenna Fahey had loaned him. It was sheer self-defense, his sudden interest in the culinary arts. He couldn’t face another of Vi’s dead-by-neglect meals, or one of Kylie’s, either.

  “You’ll be coming with me this morning, won’t you?” his sister more demanded than asked. “Father Cready’s been asking after you.”

  “Tell him my soul’s too black for cleansing.”

  Vi gave a disgusted growl and turned her back on him. Muttering about clot-headed men, she pulled open the refrigerator and gasped. “What in heaven’s name is all of this?”

  “It’s called food,” he helpfully supplied. “Yesterday after I left Muir House, I drove to that bloody huge supermarket in Tralee.”

  “And did you leave any food in the market?”

  “Enough to tide them over.”

  Vi didn’t comment. She was, Michael saw, too busy stuffing her gob with strawberries he had plans for. He wrenched the container from her hands, tucked it back in the refrigerator, and closed the door.

  “So you’re planning a regular feast for that O’Shea girl?”

  He arched his brow. “Feeling deprived, are you?”

  Vi shoved her hair out of her eyes and squinted threateningly, not that he was the least impressed by her show.

  “Just hungry,” she clipped.

  “In that case when you come back from church, I’ll have a full breakfast waiting for you. Eggs, toast, and maybe I’ll even pop over to a neighbor’s to see if I can chase up some rashers and a nice blood pudding.” The last was a brilliant touch, perfect to keep his strictly vegetarian sister away from the kitchen. He hid a smile at her answering shudder.

  “I’ll be going straight to the studio. And you can keep an eye on Roger for me,” she added over her shoulder as she hurried from the room.

  Michael felt a wet nose nudge his ankle. He looked down and could have sworn the little dog was smirking at him.

  Several hours and many failed recipes later, Roger wasn’t smirking anymore. In fact, he lay under the kitchen table, belly distended and a replete expression on his furry face.

  “Lucky for you I got it right this time, or you’d be exploding, you little glutton.” Hating to see anything go to waste, no matter how misshapen or gelatinous, Michael had offered his disasters to the dog. Whatever internal mechanism a canine should have to tell him when he’s eaten his fill was sadly lacking in old Roger. Confirming that, the dog let loose a resounding belch.

  In a case of survival of the simplest, the meal for Kylie had come down to roast chicken, salad, and a platter of fresh fruit for dessert. Rather sparse for what Michael was personally tagging as their Last Supper. He hoped that she would accept his offering in the spirit it was given. One of desperation.

  “Drink, then talk,” his nan had always said. But Kylie had taken no more than a sip of her drink that rotten night at the pub. And though he hadn’t much experience to base it on, Michael didn’t think he was a drinker himself. Tonight was to be “Eat, then talk.” If the food was good enough, maybe she’d later overlook one or two of his sins.

  As Kylie watched Michael’s car pull up, she thought she must have been crazed, agreeing to see him alone, out here in the middle of nothing much. If she believed even a fraction of what they said in town, she should be seeking armed guards. The best she had was Breege down the road, God bless her soul.

  But justified or not, Kylie had faith in Michael. Whatever sins he might have committed, she believed he’d never harm her. Her common sense, the only thing she’d ever possessed in overabundance, seemed to have taken flight.

  Kylie drew in a sharp breath. So impossibly tall, square-shouldered, and handsome, Michael walked toward the house. When she was little—before she knew better—she would often dream of bold and daring heroes, a sugar dusting of fantasy sifted over the old legends learned from her mother. And now, looking at Michael, his serious eyes stormy green and his jaw set firm, Kylie wondered, had she somehow foreseen this man? For when she dreamt, her heroes had all looked like him.

  Mindless of the cold that hammered its way in, she opened the door well before he reached the stoop. As yesterday, the need to touch him shimmered over her.

  “May I take that from you?” she asked, hands extended outward to grasp the hamper he carried, hoping for even the brush of his fingers against hers.

  He stepped in, hand still possessively wrapped around the basket’s wooden handle. “I have it.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “I know I haven’t made much of an impression on you with my cooking, but I don’t think I can harm the meal by carrying it.”

  “I’ll be taking the blame for this one,” he said as he set the basket on the counter, then shrugged out of his jacket. Kylie noticed how much smaller her tiny home seemed with a man in it. It pleased and surprised her that she found this intimacy appealing; she’d always been concerned that she was damaged beyond repair.

  She took his jacket and quelled the impulse to hold it to her face and breathe deeply the scent of him. She wanted to fix this moment in her memory, to hold it since she couldn’t hold him. Turning away, she carried the jacket to the rack by the front door and allowed herself one fleeting brush against rough wool that smelled faintly of cigarettes and more of an honest male scent.

  She turned back and watched with interest as Michael slipped a covered container into the oven, then set the temperature. “You look comfortable, there in the kitchen.”

  “I’ve had some practice today,” he said.

  “And before today?”

  “None.” His blunt answer left no room for exploration. As if sensing the sting she felt, he came to her and cupped her face in his hands. “We’ll get there. I promise we will. But I need some time to work into this. It’s not an easy thing for me, talking or thinking about where I’ve been. And what I’ve done. Give me this meal with you, and then I’ll give you my past.”

  It was a small thing to ask. At her nod of assent, he gently followed the line of her jaw with his fingertips, then set back to work in the kitchen.

  Kylie pulled her only linen tablecloth from its place in the sideboard. One of the few links she had to her past, the tablecloth had been her mother’s, and her grandmother’s before that. As she shook out the heavy ivory fabric crisp with starch, she gave them a silent plea to send her the wisdom she’d need this night. She fancied she felt a soft caress against her cheek. Comforted, a warmth burgeoned in her heart.

  The meal itself—simple, delicious, and a touching gesture on the part of this quiet man—passed quickly. While they finished washing up the dishes and then went to settle together on the couch, Kylie was wise enough to give Michael his silence. This was his moment, and should be done i
n his way. Promising herself that she’d listen and accept with an open mind, she pushed away everything but the faith she had in Michael Kilbride.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any sense in delaying the inevitable,” Michael said, though he was thinking that delay did hold a certain amount of appeal. He would sell what was left of his soul for a few more minutes of Kylie looking at him with no accusation in her beautiful blue eyes, no hatred on her face. He wasn’t fool enough to think that even her generous heart could hold him after this night was done.

  “When I was twelve, my parents sent me away to boarding school in Dundalk. It was a third-rate place, filled with pretentious little assholes who weren’t bright or well-connected enough to go to Queenstown, or someplace like that. No matter, though. I’d been sent off more out of expediency than any aspirations my parents had for me. See, I’d become a bit of an ass myself, making trouble in town, judging just how far I could push things at home. Getting thrown out of a school or two before Dundalk.”

  He paused and gave a brief smile in spite of himself. “Judgment... I’ve always seemed to have trouble with that. Anyway, each summer I’d come home and show them all what a sullen little beast I’d learned to be. And everyone believed it. Everyone but Vi, that is. No matter what I’d do, she’d just look at me with those grown-up eyes she had, and say I wasn’t fooling her one bit. That she knew me and loved me for who I was.”

  Kylie’s laughter warmed him. “Then she hasn’t changed at all, has she?”

  “Oh, she’s changed all right. She’s got the years and the size to go with the attitude, now. But even back then, I knew she was the only one in my family who really cared. When I was away at school, I’d write her every chance I got. She was—and is—my only true friend.”

  “I’d like to think that I’m your friend,” Kylie offered in a husky voice. The sound of her pulled him back from those lonely school days.