The Last Bride in Ballymuir Read online

  This was Michael, the man for whom she yearned, the man who needed her as much as she needed him. Tightening her fingers she urged his mouth upward to hers. Their eyes met. The fierceness in his green eyes frightened her for an instant, then elated her. His need was tempered with such restraint.

  Because she was safe with him, she was free to kiss him the way she wanted to—passionately—as an aggressor.

  Not a victim. Never again. She learned the smooth feel of teeth and firm cushion of lips, the rough stubble of beard and the strength of him. Lord, the strength. Half passion, half something darker, she shivered yet tried to get closer.

  “Your sweater... off,” she managed to work free from a mind whirling with touch and texture and scent He didn’t hesitate, and she could feel his arousal pressing into her as he levered his weight up to rid himself of the sweater.

  This is Michael, and no other man, she reminded herself as the vestiges of old terror again gathered strength. She closed her eyes and focused on the desire Michael had built in her. When she looked up at him again, he was tugging off his shirt, too. Her breath hitched harder at the sight of his broad, muscled chest, at arms strong enough to force her to his will.

  “Kylie, do you want me to stop? All you need do is say it.”

  With her fingers she tested the strength of those arms, then trailed over his chest and followed a narrow line of hair downward. His muscles tensed beneath her touch. She rested her hand over his heart. It beat a mad rhythm, but in his eyes she saw patience and kindness. She could do this. And she would.

  “No, don’t stop,” she whispered, then gave herself over to the moment.

  Michael took his time, treasuring the trust that rested in his arms. He reveled in the soft fullness of her breasts pressing against him. Skin to skin, it was glorious, sacred. Like nothing he’d ever felt.

  Moving so they both were on their sides on that narrow little couch, left with scarcely enough room to breathe before he’d roll off the edge, he let his hand skim over the dip of her waist and around to the small of her back. Sliding lower, he closed his hand over her bottom and pulled her even closer. She started at the intimate contact, and truth be told, so did he.

  While he had a very clear image of what he wanted to happen this night, he was somewhat vague on how to accomplish it. Tenderness and caring were foreign to him. He knew two things. He wanted Kylie, and he wanted their coming together to bear no resemblance to times with Dervla. So he lingered over the details and allowed some of the strangeness to drift away with the minutes that they held each other.

  When she had again softened in his arms and begun to kiss, touch, and explore on her own, he gave in to temptation. Hands splayed, he learned the sleek feel of her ribs, the narrowness of her hips, and finally the slight curve of her belly. Sliding his hand downward over her rumpled nightgown, he rested his fingers against the mound at the vee of her thighs. And with that touch everything changed.

  Kylie sat upright so quickly that Michael tumbled to the floor. “Stop. I’m telling you to stop now.” She scarcely sounded like herself, her voice high, thin, and quavery. Bracing himself on his palms, he watched speechless as she buttoned her nightgown, then tried to fight her hair into a hasty braid.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with the flash of something not very much like a smile. “It’s all been too much for me, I suppose. The talk, you walking out...” She trailed off, then dragged in a ragged breath. “I’m just feeling overwhelmed.”

  God help him, she was going to cry. He swallowed hard and thought fast for words to stem her tears. “I was clumsy with you, but you see, it’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman.” Like never.

  The words didn’t help. Tears spilled over her lashes. She brushed at them with one shaking hand. With the other, she gathered up the blanket that had been shoved to the end of the couch and clutched it like a shield.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t touch you again. Not unless you ask.”

  She sat, knees pressed to chest, rocking like a child trying to comfort herself when no one else would. Or could. “I’m just tired, so tired.” Her face strained and pale, she said in a low voice, “Morning will be here soon. Stay with me, for what’s left of the night. I’ve been alone too much, and you, too. Let’s not be alone anymore.”

  Confused, still hurting with unappeased need, Michael scrubbed a hand over his face. He understood what she asked now, for a platonic companion to chase away the dark hours. What he didn’t understand was how they had ended up here. Or how to extricate himself from what his body clearly felt was an unreasonable demand.

  It was his own bloody, boorish fault, though, scaring her as he had. And if comfort was what Kylie wanted, comfort she would have. Even if it killed him. Which, judging by the hard knot in his blood supply, it just might.

  He moved back onto the couch and drew her closer, taking care not to bring her into contact with such obvious evidence of his untrustworthiness. “I’ll stay with you.”

  “So much... too much,” she murmured, then turned her face into his shoulder. Trusting. So damned trusting. And he was to be her hero?

  Giving his discarded shirt and sweater no more than a passing glance, he stood and scooped her into his arms. Carrying her to the bedroom, he swung Kylie down to her feet beside her fantasy of a bed, then tugged away the blanket she still clutched in stiff fingers and tossed it to the bottom of the bed. He pulled back the covers on her side. Her expression questioning, she slipped into bed, and he tucked her in.

  “I’ll be sleeping on top of the covers,” he said as he walked around the foot of the bed. Sitting, he reached across her to switch off the light. Trying his hardest not to react to the way she had practically cringed as he leaned over her, Michael stretched out and covered himself with the spare blanket.

  Kylie stirred. In the starlight passing through the thin curtains he could see her turn to look at him. She still didn’t speak. It was as if she waited for him to ease them past this discomfort, and he could think of no worse person for the job.

  At a loss, he reached out and fingered the billowy material pulled back from the bed’s canopy. “Tell me about this bed of yours.”

  Settling in with a sigh, she answered, “My father always said it once belonged to a beautiful Princess of Tara. When I was a child, I’d imagine a daughter of Brian Boru asleep in here, dreaming of the future.” She paused, and he could feel her gaze rest on him. “When I was older, I learned that it had been my mother’s bed when she was young. And my mother, she was always Da’s beautiful princess. After she died, things started falling apart. Knowing the mouths in town, you’ve probably heard the story by now,” Kylie added in a tentative voice.

  “Pieces,” he answered.

  “Well, for tonight, I think pieces are just enough.” She yawned and curled up. After a long silence she whispered, “Thank you, Michael, for understanding.”

  He nodded into the darkness, and lay there listening as Kylie’s breathing slipped into the regular pattern of sleep. His last thought before he, too, slept was that he understood nothing at all.

  It was before sun-up when Michael realized that even when asleep, the two of them had turned to each other. Still beneath her covers, Kylie had moved to fit herself to his longer frame. And his arm was wrapped over her as though he intended to never let her go. He satisfied himself with holding her that way, with the hope that once he’d learned to lose the roughness, she would come to him willingly.

  Watery morning light was just beginning to push its way in when she stirred. “Where is she now, that Dervla woman?” she asked as though half the night—his running and her pushing him away—had never happened.

  “She died that night,” he said, offering nothing more.

  Kylie raised herself up on one elbow to look down at him. “And the brother?”

  It took a moment to understand that she meant Brian Rourke.

  “I don’t know where he is. He escaped before trial, and as my nan
used to say, ‘Another stone on his cairn.’“

  Her eyes widened a fraction. “You wish him dead?”

  Michael couldn’t stem the bitterness. “Given the chance, I’d see him dead.”

  Together, silent, they waited for the sun to rise.

  Chapter Eleven

  There is no strength like unity.

  —Irish Proverb

  Kylie crumpled her father’s letter and threw it in the general vicinity of the hearth. Then, not quite done inflicting torture on herself, she retrieved the paper and let the last few daggers find their mark. “‘Looking forward to a fresh start in Ballymuir,’” she angrily quoted. “‘Peace and solitude with my daughter.’ That’s grand, Johnny, expecting peace in the middle of the people you did your level best to ruin.”

  It was too much, the way the past was creeping forward to poison her present. Too much the way one awful event over six years gone had come back last night to claim her. Months spent with priests and counselors seeking healing, seeking closure, and for what? To see it all slip away the first time she moved toward intimacy with a man.

  “Don’t you think it’s time you let it go?” she had asked Michael. A fine piece of advice coming from her. She absentmindedly tucked her father’s letter in the small box filled with others containing his schemes and excuses. Nothing was ever Johnny O’Shea’s fault. And sometimes it felt like everything was his daughter’s.

  “Live what you preach,” Kylie told herself with a disgusted shake of her head. “Let it go.”

  But what had happened six years before wouldn’t be shaken free quite so easily. One night when a simple “yes” might have purchased her father’s freedom. One night when a hard-fought “no” had instead made her unable to accept a man’s touch. Even a man she cared for very deeply.

  She had let Michael believe that her emotional collapse last night had been his fault. Another wrong, another measure of guilt to be borne, for truly, he’d been gentle and patient. His tense body and ragged breathing had told her what it cost him, too. In repayment for that kindness she had turned from him again.

  Twice now, she thought. Once in the pub when she might have salvaged his reputation, and again last night when she might have saved ... them. Well, it wouldn’t happen again.

  She wouldn’t wait for his call, either. She’d wasted too much time letting others determine her fate. With trembling fingers, Kylie paged through the phone directory until she came to the number she sought.

  Vi stood with her hand cupped over the phone’s mouthpiece and a peculiar look of glee on her face. “Michael, it’s Kylie O’Shea, and she’s sounding for all the world like she’s never rung up a boy before.”

  Michael’s mouth quirked at the idea of being a boy. Putting aside the materials list he’d been jotting down, he rose and took the phone from Vi.

  “Do you have somewhere you could go?” he asked, hand safely over the mouthpiece as he gestured at their close quarters.

  “Why, right here in front of my own fireplace, as I do every evening.” At his growl she added, “Unless you’re suggesting I move the fire.”

  Stretching the phone’s cord around the corner as far as it would go, Michael reflected on the particular pains of being kept on a short leash.

  “It must be true love,” Vi called from her perch. More like unrequited lust from his side of the affair, Michael thought.

  Keeping his voice low enough, he hoped, to escape his sister’s acute hearing, he said hello and asked Kylie how she was feeling.

  “Fine. Well, actually tired, quite tired, now that you ask,” she said, piling one word on top of the next. “It was a long day at work. A cold’s going ‘round the classroom and it was a chorus of sniffles.” Michael smiled as she drew in a breath. Vi would have little to overhear if Kylie kept chattering like a magpie too long deprived of its company.

  “Anyway, I was glad to be home and have a quiet dinner, but now I’m feeling sort of... well, lonely, and I was wondering if you’d meet me at O’Connor’s Pub this evening?” she finished in a great rush.

  His hand tightened involuntarily on the phone. A vision of Evie Nolan, sharp, nasty-tongued, and vindictive, loomed in front of him. He’d promised to treasure Kylie, to keep her safe. As far as he was concerned that included protecting her from gossip.

  “Michael, are you still there?”

  He cleared his throat. “I am. I was just thinking that a night of noise and too much smoke doesn’t sound quite the cure for loneliness. And besides, O’Connor’s not very fond of me.” If not the pub, then where? A visit to her house? He wouldn’t survive the night without touching her, and that was another promise he’d made—not to, till she asked. “Why don’t you come here, to Vi’s house? We can, uh, play cards... or something.”

  His offer was met by a howl of laughter from in front of the hearth and a momentary silence on the phone.

  “Cards?” Kylie eventually echoed.

  He leaned his forehead into the door frame with a solid thunk. “Or something. I’ll come around and get you if you like.”

  “No... no, I can drive myself.”

  He imagined her little car with its distinctive rust patterns—junkyard camouflage—sitting square in front of Vi’s house. So much for cutting off the talk. Michael considered telling her to park down the road a way but he knew that she’d take it as a slight. He’d hope for a dark night and quiet streets.

  “Fine then,” he said, “I’ll see you in half an hour?”

  “Shall I bring anything?”

  “Cards” he answered, and smiled at the laughter in Kylie’s voice as she said good-bye.

  After he’d hung up, Vi came to give him a loving smack on the head. “You’re set on running me out of my own home, aren’t you? No great matter, though. I’ll just pop over to O’Connor’s for a pint and some company.”

  Michael reached out his hand and stopped her from moving off. “No. Stay, please.”

  Vi grinned. “Are you afraid of that bit of a girl?”

  “I’m trying to maintain proprieties.”

  “And proprieties are worrying you after spending last night at her house?”

  “Since her nearest neighbor is almost a mile off, and your neighbors snoop through the curtains morning and night, yes, I’m worrying.”

  Vi paused, her brow arched at an inquisitive angle, and a smile playing about her mouth. “I don’t think it’s just proprieties we’re talking about. I think you’re feeling nervous. Nature hasn’t precisely taken its course between you two, has it?”

  “Whatever course it’s taken is none of your damned business. I’m asking you, as my sister, to stay here tonight and be nice to Kylie. No prying questions, and get that smug look off your face!” he finished, pounding his last order with heavy emphasis.

  She reached up and patted him on the cheek. “If you’re going to be so skittish about a matter as natural as sex, you’d be just as well off entering the priesthood.”

  She’d tease him until he was as maddened as a bull, if he let her. But he wouldn’t. “Only if I get to hear your confession, sweet Violet,” he said with an answering tweak of her nose. “I’m willing to bet it would be a ripe one.”

  “That you’ll never know. I’ll play chaperone to you and your young miss for as long as you wish. You already have enough to unload on Father Cready the next time you see him.”

  “I’ll save it for my meeting with the Almighty, Himself, if you don’t mind.”

  “Actually, I do. But I’ll hold that harping for another time, when you’re not so besotted. Now I’ll put on some tea for our guest, and you go see if you can make yourself look civilized. You’ve enough sawdust clinging to you to be declared a fire hazard.”

  Michael brushed his hand through his hair and winced at the shower of wood shavings that came free. “Nothing wrong with a little mess after hard work.”

  “And there’s nothing wrong with presenting yourself like a proper suitor. Upstairs with you, Romeo.”


  And upstairs he went before Vi could land another dart. Being called “boy” and “Romeo” had been quite enough for one evening.

  “Primping in front of the mirror, who’d have ever thought it?” Michael muttered a few minutes later, showing a self-disgust he more thought he should feel than actually did. In truth, caring about his appearance and whether his manners were intact made him feel a step closer to being alive.

  A promise shimmered out there, one that was fragile and giving. He felt slow and clumsy as he reached out to grasp it. This waking up was a difficult business, but one he meant to accomplish with as much speed and grace as a man his sort could.

  “Showered, teeth brushed, shaved,” he ticked off the items on his hygiene list. The doorbell chimed. “And nowhere damn near ready,” he admitted, then made his way down the stairs to see if he could survive an evening without further mucking up things with Kylie O’Shea.

  An irresistible attraction. Even under Vi Kilbride’s amused eyes, Kylie found herself moving nearer to Michael, closing the gap of electric-blue sofa between them. And Michael, he was an immovable object. Though he sat close enough that she could reach out and trace the slight bump on the bridge of his nose, or that curve to his mouth that set her heart dancing, he was as distant as the stars.

  She could hardly blame him after last night. This was no time to explain that it had been an aberration, some mysterious, cosmic folding-over of time she was quite certain would never happen again. At least, not while she had a breath left in her body to fight it. No, now was decidedly not the time, though Vi looked to be an avid audience.

  Instead, talk lazily meandered its way through Vi and Kylie’s progress on the Gaelscoil arts project and the children’s recent renderings of the mythic hero Fionn MacCumhaill and his bold hounds, Bran and Sceolang, then on to the coming promise of spring. From there, the ritual was completed with chat about common friends.

  After a moment’s companionable quiet, Vi popped in with, “And your father, Kylie, is he well?”