Beyond the Sea, page 8
part #9 of Shelter Bay Series
He waited her out.
Mary was many things. She was gorgeous, intelligent, creative, and one of the most caring individuals he’d ever known. But when she got an idea in her head, the female hung on with all the stubbornness of an Irish terrier.
“There was a storm,” she said finally, surrendering to the silence humming between them. Then proceeded, with many frustrating asides that had him wanting to shout at her just to get on with it, to tell him the tale with the skill of the born storyteller she was.
“So,” she finally finished up, “Sedona was understandably a bit stressed, so some of us convinced her to get away for a short rest.”
The irony was that Conn had intended to go to Shelter Bay after the tour wrapped up. He’d been thinking about Sedona Sullivan a lot. Wondering if that connection between them had just been an overload of romanticism from drinking the wedding Kool-Aid at the reception or if it might actually be something more serious.
Thanks to unforeseen circumstances, he still hadn’t managed to get away, but now Sedona was coming to him. And while the timing couldn’t have been worse, Conn was Irish enough to believe in fate. Which was why he was going to grab this unexpected opportunity to explore the chemistry that had tormented his sleep and had him waking up each morning as horny as one of his brother Declan’s billy goats.
* * *
The flight Mary had booked allowed a long enough layover in New York for Sedona to take a cab into Manhattan to meet her parents for dinner and a quick tour of the theater where Freebird’s play would be performed before she continued on to Ireland.
Even booking at the last minute, Mary had somehow managed to score a seat in business class, which should have been a treat. Unfortunately, due to all the stress she’d been living with, nerves about seeing Conn Brennan again, topped off by a flirtatious Irishman seated behind her chatting up his seatmate all night long, Sedona arrived at Shannon Airport feeling like a zombie.
Fortunately, she wasn’t going to have to drive to Castlelough. Since she’d have use of the car kept garaged at the cottage during her stay, Mary had insisted on sending a car and driver to take her to Castlelough.
After making her way through customs, she went to baggage claim to retrieve her luggage and meet her driver.
Sedona saw Conn the minute she entered the area. It would’ve been impossible to miss him. Wearing a white T-shirt that showed off the ripped torso she’d come to know well, worn jeans, and leather work boots, he looked hot, dark, and dangerous.
“You’re my driver?” Terrific. And wasn’t that a great start to encouraging him to open up to her?
“I am.” Apparently unwounded by her sharp, negative tone, he held out a cardboard cup. “Knowing you’d be bringing luggage, I brought my own vehicle from Dublin rather than the Ferrari. Which, by the way, was a rental. Thinking you might have a jet lag on, I picked you up some coffee.”
As seemingly every cell phone camera in the place began snapping away at them, Sedona accepted the coffee with a murmured, “Thank you.” Inhaling deeply, she breathed in the fragrant steam. “I apologize for being rude.” She glanced over at the young Irishman who was still talking as he and the young woman passed. “It was a long night.”
“After some longer days, I hear.”
“They’ve been trying. But not nearly as difficult as yours must have been.” She took a sip and sighed. “This is exactly what I needed.” What she didn’t need, nor had she expected, was to immediately land in Conn’s rock star spotlight.
“I also brought you sugar.” He held up a bag.
Noticing he hadn’t addressed the issue of his father, she looked inside the bag. “A scone.”
Due to tangled nerves twisting her stomach in knots, she’d turned down the lovely airline breakfast served on Wedgewood china with fresh-squeezed orange juice in a Waterford crystal tumbler. But this was not a run-of-the-mill, everyday scone. Nearly as large as her hand, it was stuffed with blueberries and raspberries and sprinkled with powdered sugar.
“It is, indeed. Since the baker who was making sweets for Monohan’s Mercantile, as well as Patrick’s pub, ran off to Dublin and married her computer programmer sweetheart last month, Castlelough has been suffering a dreadful dearth of bakery goods. But when Nora Gallagher heard you were coming, she whipped these up. There are more at the cottage.”
“That’s incredibly nice of her.” Nora, Sedona remembered from having met her at the wedding, was Mary’s older sister, married to a best-selling American novelist.
“She was pleased to be able to welcome you back. If you’d prefer, you could save the scone for later, and we’ll stop and get you a proper full Irish breakfast on the way to Castlelough.”
“No.” She shook her head and pressed her hand against her stomach, which had growled in response to the aroma of baked dough wafting from the bag. “This is perfect. Plus, I can eat it in the car so we don’t have to waste time.”
“Ah, but you know what we Irish say about time,” he said with a glint of familiar humor in his neon blue eyes.
Even as some distant voice in her brain warned her against looking in that misty rearview mirror, Sedona’s mind drifted back to how, when she’d been getting dressed to leave the inn for the airport, he’d talked her back to bed for just one more round. “When God made time, he made plenty of it,” she repeated what he’d told her at the time.
“Aye. ’Tis true enough.” His brogue thickened, the same way it had when they’d been making love. No , the rational, good angel told the frisky one sitting on her other shoulder. Don’t even go there.
Easy for you to say , the reckless angel, the one Sedona had listened to that rainy spring night, shot back. All you ever do is work and make those stupid spreadsheets . You never want to have any fun .
I came here for peace and quiet, countered the stern voice of self-discipline . And to help Mary out by seeing if you can make this time easier for her friend. Which doesn’t mean picking up where we left off.
Unfortunately, even as she fought to give herself very good advice, blood began to simmer in Sedona’s veins.
“Besides, any time spent with you is no hardship, Sedona Sullivan.” As she looked up into Conn’s electric-blue eyes a long, humming moment, Sedona knew that keeping any emotional distance from this man was going to be easier said than done.
As they left the terminal, Sedona felt as if they were leading a parade and considered that he should have arranged for a contingent of ground troops to clear the way through the mob of fans. Unlike so many celebrities she’d seen behaving badly on Internet video clips or ET , Conn hadn’t arrived with huge bodyguards to keep people away. Instead, every few feet, he’d stop, chat, sign autographs, and pose for selfies.
“Are you always so accessible to your fans?” she asked after he’d finally explained to the mob that his friend had just gotten off a long flight from the States and would appreciate some quiet to help overcome jetlag.
Amazingly, they obeyed, fading away, leaving the pair to walk to the car park alone.
He shrugged. “I’m only returning their loyalty, which has paid my rent and fed me well. I wouldn’t want you to think I was boasting, but some actually travel across continents to attend a show. There’s this one lad, from Germany, who’s shown up in every single city over this past tour. He writes a blog titled ‘On the road with Conn and Celtic Storm’ chronicling his adventures with videos taken on his phone. Not only is it vastly entertaining, it’s gained him thousands of followers of his own.”
“All that traveling must cost a fortune.”
“He gets paid for his YouTube hits, which pays for his expenses with some left over. It’s a bit like making an indie documentary while bypassing film studios who’d want a significant cut of the profits.”
“The times, they are a-changing,” she quoted Dylan.
“And wouldn’t that be the truth,” he agreed.
“Mary told me about your father,” she said as they reached his vehicle. That he could consider the big metallic black Porsche Cayenne SUV frugal only emphasized the vast difference in their lifestyles. And why, in this land of gray skies, did he need the dark tinted windows more suited to a rapper or a Secret Service agent? “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s kind of you,” he said as he put her carry-on and larger suitcase into the back of the vehicle. “But no sympathy is necessary.” He held the passenger door open as she climbed up in the seat. “If I were to be honest, I’d have to say that I finally have something to be grateful to the man for.”
“Oh?”
“Had Joseph Brennan not decided to return home to Ireland for his damnable dying, Mary would’ve had no reason to send you here to get me out of my music writing funk.”
“That’s not the reason I’m here.” Sedona also found it a bit odd that he spoke of his father by his full name. Then again, everything in her life the past weeks had been out of sync, as if ever since meeting Conn here in Castlelough, the entire world had tilted on its axis.
“Isn’t it, now?” He shook his head in obvious disbelief, walked around the front of the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and headed out of the airport into the morning commute traffic.
Sedona decided this was no time to argue the point because while she knew every inch of that lean, mean body, she knew very little about the man himself. No way was she prepared to stumble around in such a conversational minefield while she was so jet-lagged.
13
N either spoke as they drove north along the River Shannon estuary, through rolling pasturelands that had once been inhabited by cattle barons and, in times long past, ancient Celtic kings. Once off the highway, the narrow road twisted through a maze of hedgerow-separated fields, past whitewashed cottages, many of which, even in this twenty-first century, possessed thatched roofs.
After crossing a small stone bridge, they came to a sign welcoming them to Castlelough—home to the legendary Lady of the Lake. A second sign proclaimed the village to be the sister city of Shelter Bay, Oregon, America. When Sedona had first visited the tidy, medieval town and taken in the colorfully painted shops that brightened the soft days with hanging baskets of cascading flowers lining the cobblestone sidewalks, she’d been charmed. This time, she felt a vague inner click that she knew her mother would take as some sign from the universe, but since Sedona and the universe had not exactly been on talking terms before, she decided it was only a caffeine/sugar rush from the coffee and scone she’d polished off.
He slowed while driving past the gleaming white St. Bernadette Hospital, with its tall Palladian windows. Was he wondering how his father was doing inside? Did he feel guilty about driving her to the cottage instead of sitting vigil with his family?
“That’s fortunate that the town has its own hospital,” she said.
“It began as a workhouse, running from the 1800s until the second decade of the last century,” he told her. “We have Quinn Gallagher to thank for its conversion. Before Nora’s husband paid to have the building transformed, people were forced to travel to Ennistymon or Ennis for medical treatment.”
“Which would have been more difficult for your mother in this situation.”
“It would. Yet Joseph didn’t go to hospital. He’d been staying at the house since arriving back in the country.”
“Oh. Well.” Mary had neglected to mention that part. “I imagine that can get a bit awkward.”
“It was, indeed,” he agreed. “But things will undoubtedly get back to normal soon enough now that he’s finally gone.”
“He died?” The past tense Conn had used belatedly sunk in.
“He was after dying last night. Which, of course, would have been while you were traveling here and out of pocket, so Mary couldn’t reach you.”
Having lived in Ireland, Sedona knew that the after perfect tense of the language signified the recent past. In this case last night. She pressed her fingers against her tired and aching eyes, regretting that she’d forgotten to check her email after the plane had landed. “Now I really am sorry,” she said. “You should be with family rather than taking time away to fetch me from the airport.”
“It was a relief to escape,” he brushed off her apology. “My brothers are all there and probably half the town. Not so much for him as for my mother. And if there’s one thing the Irish love, it’s an excuse to get together and talk. The wake’s tonight, but you needn’t concern yourself about that. When you ring Mary, you can assure her I promise not to get drunk and cause a scene, so there’ll be no need for a chaperone.”
“I’m not here to chaperone anyone.” For a man whose father had just passed on, he didn’t seem terribly depressed. Then again, if what Mary had told her about those scars being a result of having been beaten by the deceased man was true, Sedona could hardly expect him to be crying in his Guinness.
While she was still trying to wrap her mind around what she was supposed to be doing here, if not to try to help lift him out of depression, Conn pulled over and parked in front of a hulking stone building. It was obviously unoccupied. The windows were boarded up with sheets of plywood that a teenage boy was currently tagging with a can of green spray paint.
“I’ll be right back.”
He walked over to the teen, who, instead of running away as Sedona might have expected, merely stood there, chatting away as if getting caught committing vandalism by a rock star was an everyday event. Whatever they were discussing, a peaceful accord appeared to have been made. After doing one of those mysterious male complex fist-bumping handshakes, Conn walked back to the SUV with the paint can while the teen pedaled away on a bike.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a member of the neighborhood watch,” she said after he’d tossed the can into the back of the SUV and returned to the driver’s seat.
“Sean Malone’s a second cousin on my mother’s side.” Conn started the engine and continued rumbling down the cobblestone road through the town. “I merely told him that if he didn’t hand over the paint, I’d be ringing his parents and letting them know what he was up to.”
“Small towns,” she murmured.
“Wouldn’t that be true enough? One summer, I was returning home after taking a local girl to the movies. By the time I got to the house, no less than six people had rung up my mother to tell her I’d been speeding.”
“I’ve no doubt she was shocked by that news alert,” Sedona said dryly.
His answering chuckle confirmed her words. “Sean’s a good enough lad. Certainly better than the hell-raising black sheep I was when I was his age. He’s just mad about his father losing his job when Guinness shut down operations here. Which is how the brewery came to be abandoned.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Since paid work has always been hard to come by out here in the back-of-beyond West, even more so since our booming Celtic Tiger economy crashed and burned, you’ll be getting no argument from me,” he agreed as he turned off the road onto an even narrower country lane. “Which is why I bought it.”
“You bought a brewery?”
“No.” He paused as a thirtysomething woman in jeans and a blue-and-yellow County Clare football jersey shooed a bevy of geese across the road in front of them. “Patrick, whom you’ve already met at the pub, is the brewer in the family and already has a much smaller, more modern operation to make his beers. I merely bought the building.”
“Why?”
“I have plans for it.” He waved to the woman, who smiled and waved back, then continued on.
“You didn’t mention that when I was here for the wedding.”
“We didn’t spend that much time on conversation,” he reminded her. “But it’s a moot point because I hadn’t yet bought it.”
“But you did have plans to do something with it.”
“Not at the time. But I do now.”
She wondered how a man could buy an entire building without having done an extensive study. Then remembered whom she was talking to. The man who’d claimed to go with his gut. Which might be fine for musicians. Such a leap-into-the-mist music writing method had, apparently, served him very well. But something as conventional as investing in real estate? Sedona could more easily imagine sprouting wings and soaring over the Castlelough cliffs than behaving so irresponsibly.
“Are you going to share those plans?” Apparently Conn hadn’t gotten the memo that the Irish were supposed to be talkative. “Or are they top secret?”
He shot her an amused look. “I finally have your attention. I was wondering what it might take.”
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” she hedged. As his gaze dipped down to her lips, she resisted licking off any powdered sugar that might have lingered.
As if she’d been alone in feeling the jolt of chemistry that could have electrified the entire west of Ireland for a month, he returned his eyes to the road. “When you didn’t call or write or text after our night together, I had no choice but to assume that you no longer respected me the next morning.”
“We’d agreed,” she reminded him. “Besides, you could have called me .” Rather than move on without a glance back.
“Agreements can always be altered,” he said conversationally. “I am surprised to discover that you’d be falling back on the old rules of waiting for the man making the first move. I seem to recall you informing me that you’re an independent-minded woman who wasn’t in the market for a lifemate but only up for some hot shagging that would be enjoyable by both parties. No strings or entanglements. No promises.”
Was he actually laughing at her? “You’re right, of course. That was our agreement.”
“Perhaps you’d feel more comfortable if my solicitor wrote up an official contract for our time together during your visit here?”
