The Last Bride in Ballymuir Page 4

  As though he’d be able to look away from such shimmering beauty.

  She held her hands out to her sides. “I might seem a child to some, but I’m twenty-four years old and capable of knowing when I want to be kissed. And equally capable of telling a man to stop. Not that I stopped you last night. And not that I’ll need to worry about stopping you, with you all but offering to send an engraved announcement before you try again.”

  She moved close enough that if he took his hands from his pockets he could haul her up against him. Tempting, so tempting.

  “What amazes me, Michael Kilbride, and makes me doubt for my sanity, is that I’m beginning to think you’ve had less experience with the opposite sex than I have. Though looking at you, I can’t imagine how that could be true.”

  He didn’t think she’d like the answer, so he gave her none.

  “Now, will I be getting that apology for the way you acted this morning?” The rueful shake of her head was something he was sure she’d practiced on her students time and again. “Not so much as a neighborly nod or hello.”

  Michael had promised himself that he’d give her the truth. Slipping his hands from his pockets, he stepped closer yet. He cupped her hand—so small—in his palm.

  “For this morning, I’m truly sorry,” he said, savoring the feel of her cool skin. The fact that it was a bit work-roughened somehow made her seem all the more appealing. “I’m not much good at social matters.”

  He turned her hand so that, palm upward, it still rested within his. She didn’t fight him, just gazed at him through cautious eyes. It astounded him—humbled him—that she would welcome his touch. With his free hand he pushed back the heavy wool of her sweater until the inside of her wrist was exposed.

  “Don’t think that I ignored you, Kylie O’Shea, because you filled my morning, and not whatever words Father Cready was offering up.”

  With one fingertip he traced the slender blue veins beneath her translucent white skin. The intimacy of it made him swallow hard and hesitate before speaking again. But it didn’t make him stop touching her. Never that.

  “So think I’m a boorish sod, but never think I didn’t notice you.”

  Kylie couldn’t look away from the long finger so intimately stroking her skin. This was no kiss, she thought. But it might as well have been, for the quicksilver thrill his touch sent chasing through her. She imagined that caress traveling further, up to the sensitive skin at the inside of her elbow and to the upper curves of her breasts where no man—

  She shivered, and as she did, an ugly memory gave voice deep inside. Ah, but one man has, it whispered. One man.

  Kylie tugged her hand from Michael’s, and the uninvited thought faded. She drew in a ragged breath and met his eyes. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d shaken her. She didn’t want him to know exactly how much.

  “You are a man to seize the moment, aren’t you?”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “Are you looking for another apology?”

  Not for his touch, she wasn’t. Just for the ghost he’d—actually, she’d—unwittingly conjured. And that wasn’t his apology to make. Fussing with the lopsided hem of her sweater she answered, “No more than I was last night.”

  His smile was wry and teasing all at once. “Good, because the well was running dry. I’ve given you more apologies this morning than I’ve managed to force out in my entire life.”

  Still breathless, she stepped away and set back to work.

  “So how long are you in Ballymuir?” she asked, though not certain she really wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure. I’m thinking of settling here,” he said, sounding almost startled at his own words.

  Kylie’s first thought was that she couldn’t have wished on a star and done better.

  “Truly?” she stammered. She scrambled for some inane question to mask the confusing sense of elation and something much darker that whispered across her skin, leaving the downy hairs at the back of her neck dancing in its wake. “And you’re moving from where?”

  Michael paused. “I’ve got family in Kilkenny.”

  “Ah. Well, if you need help finding a place or settling in, just let me know.” The words slipped out, and how Kylie wanted to swallow them back. Glancing at Michael, she wondered whether it was her imagination or if he truly was inching closer to his car. She felt half-ready to run, herself.

  “I expect I’ll be staying with Vi,” he said. “At least ‘til I’m more sure about things.”

  “I see.” Kylie gathered up a few more rocks and tossed them onto the pile. She’d do well to stop the personal questions now…before she found her thoughts too far down a path she knew she shouldn’t take.

  When clouds blew in to cover the sun and a chill rain began to spit from the sky, she gave up on field clearing for the day. She turned to Michael. “Would you like to come inside for a while? I started some bread just before you—the bread!”

  Forgetting manners, Michael, everything but her two precious loaves of bread no doubt blackened to cinders, she flew to her house. When she reached the oven door, she already knew it was too late. Grabbing a pot holder she pulled out the loaves and dropped the pans on the stove top where they landed with a metallic clank. Though she wasn’t one for swearing, she tried on one of her father’s favorites for size.

  Low laughter rolled from the doorway. She turned to see Michael framed in the entry, and experienced a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure.

  “I’ve never heard anything more halfhearted in my life. If you’re going to use talk like that, you’ve got to give the words power. Like this—” Loud enough to ring in the rafters, he launched the same profane phrase she had. “Now you try it.”

  A hot crimson blush climbed her face. “I couldn’t. I’ve scarcely thought words like that, let alone used them.”

  He laughed. “I’d noticed. But this would be our secret. Here in the privacy of your home, no one need know what you’re saying. Though I don’t suppose you should get so accustomed to those words that they slip out while you’re teaching the young ones.”

  “You can’t imagine what I’ve heard from a few of those eleven-year-old boys when they think no adult’s listening.”

  Moving out of the doorway and closing the door behind him, he grinned. “Oh, I can imagine, all right. I was about that age when I had a bar of soap for supper one night after Vi told Mam what she’d heard me saying. I belched bubbles for a fortnight.”

  “You did not,” Kylie replied, laughing in spite of herself.

  “A day, then. But my first point’s the same. Relax in your own home, Kylie. It’s one of the few places on earth you’re free to be as you really are.”

  Kylie looked down at the burnt loaves. Michael had homed in on her personal sorrow: not allowing herself even that bit of freedom. She couldn’t afford it, any more than she could more flour for bread. And for the lack of both, she wanted to hate her father, but knew she was more to blame.

  It had been her choice to accept the job at Gaelscoil Pearse. “The next worst thing to being a nun” the other teaching students had sniped when she’d told them where she was going. True, the school held a very conservative philosophy and expected its teachers to be above reproach.

  To Kylie, it had seemed a perfect fit, especially since the school paid better than any other in the area. She didn’t mind wearing her skirts below her knees and was certain she wouldn’t enjoy the local nightclub, anyway. As she’d focused on the struggle to repay her father’s endless debts, she’d scarcely thought about what she might be missing. And being able to stay close to Breege was worth almost any sacrifice. But lately ...

  She cut off that thought, too.

  Looking back at Michael, she saw a passing expression on his face that seemed to echo her emptiness. Burdened with her own regret, she had no time to wonder why he should look that way. It was enough to find the composure to gloss over the moment. She stepped away from the stove and toward the hearth where two bricks of peat still
glowed, their scent competing with that of the well-cooked bread.

  “I can hardly offer you the bread.” She paused to tug her damp woolen sweater over her head and smooth down the worn cotton shirt she wore beneath. “Are you wanting some tea, though? Wouldn’t take more than a minute to get the kettle going.”

  At his answering silence, she turned to face him. Just looking at him, feeling the odd, intense current that seemed to envelop them both, sent a shiver through her. Gooseflesh raised on her arms and she rubbed at it.

  “What I’m wanting has nothing to do with food,” he said in a voice so quiet and low that she had to strain to hear it over the pounding of her heart. “What I’m wanting is to come to you and undo each of the buttons on your shirt ‘til I find what waits for me beneath. Then I’m wanting to put my mouth against your skin and learn the feel of you ‘til I know you so well that you’re part of me.”

  More words than she’d yet had from him. Small wonder he saved them up, what he could do with them. She didn’t look away from his green eyes. Mesmerized, she didn’t blink, couldn’t have if she wanted to.

  “But since all that would surely call for an apology, I’ll be leaving now.” As he walked out the door, he called over his shoulder, “Though if you like, you can consider it your engraved announcement for our next time together.”

  Their next time. Kylie flopped into the worn armchair she’d been so fiercely gripping. Their next time. Her heart had scarcely survived this one.

  Chapter Four

  It is better to exist unknown to the law.

  — Irish Proverb

  Michael came downstairs at six-thirty on Monday morning. Already dressed, Vi sat at the kitchen table gingerly sipping a steaming mug of tea.

  Setting aside the mug she said, “My studio’s not far from the bank. You can come with me now or join me later—after the bank’s open.”

  “You’re going to work this early?”

  “I’ve someone coming over from the States next week to look at my work. Some nonsense about doing fabric design for them.”

  “Nonsense?” he repeated in a teasing voice, amazed that she seemed so uncomfortable with her own prosperity. “People don’t generally cross the ocean on a whim.”

  He could have sworn his bold sister was sporting a blush.

  “Don’t go making more of this than what’s there,” she said. “I’ve things I need to see done, that’s all.” She stood and settled her hardly touched mug with the others nesting in the kitchen sink. “Now are you coming with me?”

  He opened the cupboard and found it as bare as a pauper’s. “I might as well.” One last hopeful peek in the refrigerator yielded nothing. Shrugging on his jacket he asked, “What exactly do you eat, sister, fairy dust and summer dreams?”

  “More like yogurt and the occasional bit of granola.” Pausing from her efforts to secure Roger to his leash when he appeared more in mind of a game of tug-of-war, Vi grinned up at Michael. “Mr. Spillane down at the market is usually filling the shelves about now, and he’s not against letting a customer in a bit early.”

  He followed on his sister’s heels. “So I’m to go to market for you?”

  “If you plan to do any eating, you are.”

  Vi dropped him off at Spillane’s without so much as an introduction. Peering in the front window of the market, Michael saw a burly, silver-haired man busy stacking boxes of soap. He rapped on the glass, and the man looked sharply his way. Michael worked up a casual smile and wave, hoping that would get him through the gates to this paradise.

  The man opened the door just enough to stick out his head. “We open at eight, as the sign on the door would have told you—had you come when there was light enough to read it.”

  Michael gazed at the neat rows and narrow aisles just beyond the door. “Vi—my sister—said you’ve let her in early now and again.”

  “Vi? Then you’re Vi Kilbride’s brother Michael come to visit? I’d heard you were in town.” The door opened wider and one enormous hand ushered him in. “I always let Vi shop when the whim takes her. If I didn’t, she’d forget to eat altogether.”

  Michael stepped into the store. Almost reeling with pleasure, he inhaled the combined scents of fruit, flowers, and food. Paradise it was.

  “I’m Seamus Spillane,” the storekeeper said, extending his hand. “Welcome.”

  Michael shook the man’s hand. “Vi mentioned that she had an account here.”

  “She does, and because I’d hate to see the girl starve to death, I also have my son run the groceries to her house when she thinks to buy any.”

  “Your son hasn’t been up her way in some time,” Michael commented, then reached out to heft an orange in one hand. The color was incredible, almost tempting enough to have him biting into the bitter skin.

  The grocer held out a basket. “Fill this, and when you’re done, take another. You have the look of a man who likes his food.”

  Smiling, Michael took the basket and dropped the orange into it. “More than you know,” he said.

  It wasn’t gluttony overtaking him. It was the sweep of hue, scent, and texture that he’d been deprived of for so long. Though he meant to have an eye to price, he had soon loaded the basket with a rainbow of produce: blood oranges from Spain, tomatoes from Holland, grapes so perfect they hardly seemed real.

  In the next basket went goods from around the world: pasta of every conceivable shape, cereals screaming with sugar, and tins of soup that he was sure would be the difference between starvation and not. Looking at the wealth of food in front of him, it hit Michael how prosperity had come to the Republic. He’d missed so much in his time gone. So much to make up for. So much to learn.

  His gaze settling on a tub brimming with bunches of fresh cut flowers—God knew where they had been jetted in from—he pulled two bouquets and added them to his pile. This he’d pay for out of his small stash of pocket money. It wouldn’t do to have Vi buy her own flowers, or Kylie’s, either.

  Grabbing the flowers, a bunch of grapes, and a sweet pastry sealed in crinkly plastic, he left the remainder of the purchases to be carted to Vi’s by Seamus Spillane’s son. After thanking the grocer, Michael strolled down the steep hill toward the harbor. While popping grapes into his mouth with all the relish of a Roman at a banquet of old, he nodded greetings to the few people out and about.

  In spite of the wind’s sharp teeth, Michael slowed and gazed in shop windows. Pubs with bicycle rental counters, bookstores, and bakeries tucked in the same small space, this town was a tribute to creativity and survival. And freedom.

  Freedom, it was a heady thing. He could scarcely understand—or believe—that it wouldn’t be pulled from him. But he had to believe, for as Vi had said, it would surely kill him to go back there again. These money problems, needing work and a home, all were small compared to what he’d been through.

  As he walked by the solemn stone front of the bank, he recalled yesterday’s promise to Vi. He would open the account and buy the car, all the easier to explore this wonderful new world. But he would also keep a record of his expenses and pay her back as soon as he found a job. Stubborn Kilbride that she was, if she wouldn’t take the money, he’d save it for the children she was sure to have one day.

  He rounded the corner to the arts village and quickly spotted Vi’s studio. As he stepped through the door, the breath was hammered from him. If the market had been a riot of textures, this was a damned war. Vivid flowing colors battled for his attention. Fluttering banners, fabric sculptures that breathed with life, abstract paintings so hungry and demanding. He dropped the flowers and pastry on the nearest surface that didn’t seem to be alive and bolted from the room.

  “Enough,” he said after dragging in a breath of cold air. Leaning against the rough, whitewashed outer wall of the studio, Michael rubbed a hand over his eyes as if trying to wipe away the overload of images.

  “Are you all right?” he heard his sister say.

  Hitching a thumb over his s
houlder, he asked, “How do you sleep at night, with all that in your head?”

  “Sometimes I don’t. It’s too much, and all of it fights to get out at once.” She reached over and smoothed a hand through his hair, a sign of affection he remembered from Nan a lifetime before. “Perhaps I should have fed my art to you in small doses.”

  He shook his head. “It’s more a cumulative reaction. These past few days, all the people, the places. And then your art—”

  Vi grinned. “Enough to send a customer screaming into the street, you think?”

  “Not this lifetime.” Michael pulled away from the wall and stood straight again. “Your art’s as you are—uncompromising. And if people lack the eye to see your talent, the hell with them. Now let’s go inside, I have a gift for you.” He gave a rueful shake of his head. “A pale one, I’m thinking now.”

  Back in the studio he handed her a bunch of flowers. While she arranged them in a vase, Vi made all the proper noises about the sweetness of his gesture and the beauty of the blossoms, but she kept eyeing the remaining bouquet on her display counter. Having learned that volunteering information was a sure path to trouble, Michael remained silent.

  Finally, Vi swooped up the other flowers and settled them into a white enameled pitcher. “I don’t need to be asking whom these are for, do I?”

  Michael took the indirect route. “Gaelscoil Pearse— do you know where it is?”

  “I do,” she said sounding both resigned and unwilling. She returned to her workbench and began toying with a large, exotic seashell, something that would never find its way to Kerry’s rocky strand. “Have you thought, Michael, that this attraction you have for her shouldn’t be trusted. You’ve been out scarcely a week, and it’s been so long since you’ve—”

  Michael’s hand sliced through the air between them. “There are some parts of my life I deserve to keep private. If you’re wondering whether I plan to drop onto one knee and propose marriage to a woman I met two days ago, I’ll tell you the answer’s no. Anything else I intend to do—with Kylie or any other woman—is my business, and mine alone.”