The Last Bride in Ballymuir (5 page)

Even after the years apart, she knew him
well. But then again, taking the money and spending it were two
distinct matters. He could promise one without doing the other.

“
You have my word,” he
replied, using just the right measure of defeated frustration. Vi
tossed him the keys. Michael caught them with a victorious
laugh.

“
It was a pleasure meeting
you,” he said to Jenna Fahey as he backed away, “And I’ll take you
up on that dinner soon—before sweet Violet, there, starves me to
death.”

Her appreciative laughter rang over his
sister’s less hospitable response. Michael chuckled to himself as
he jogged to Vi’s car. He’d have hell to pay when he returned to
her house tonight. Fitting, though, since he had a wee bit of hell
to pay this afternoon, as well.

The miles to Kylie O’Shea’s couldn’t have
seemed longer. Michael immediately learned that it was one thing to
commandeer Vi’s car, but another to drive it. He was thankful that
this time of year he stood little chance of running into a poor sod
of a tourist who’d strayed to the wrong side of the road. It was
struggle enough to keep true to the curves and hills without
hopelessly grinding the car’s gears.

Rounding the last torturous
bend before the little track to Kylie’s home, for the first time he
asked himself what exactly he was doing. He owed her an
apology, perhaps two. That much was certain. Yet
he
wasn’t truly sorry for the kiss—shocked
that he’d done it, and a bit mystified, too. But sorry? No, he was
too selfish to feel regret. All he could bear to give was an
excuse. The honest truth was that the sight of her took away his
good sense and what few words he’d ever been able to string
together. And he expected this meeting to be no
different.

As she had been the day before, Kylie was at
work in her field. Knowing no one else would come their way,
Michael parked the car in the middle of the track and climbed out.
Since his Sunday best and his everyday were one and the same, he
didn’t hesitate before joining her.

She had changed from the simple blue dress
she’d worn to church. The oversized sweater he’d seen yesterday
hung to her fingertips. Her long, slender legs were now covered by
khaki-colored trousers tucked into muddied black wellies. Her hair,
though, was the same as it had been in the too close confines of
St. Brendan’s. She wore it pulled back from her face in a neatly
woven style he vaguely recalled the girls all those years ago
saying was a French braid.

Whatever the name, he’d sat through Mass with
his fingers burning to loosen the strands of the plait, to feel its
silken length. Because he knew he wasn’t beyond temptation—he’d
proven that well enough the night before—he’d pretended that Kylie
O’Shea wasn’t there at all. And hurt her by it, he knew.

“
Hello,” he said.

She murmured a greeting in reply but never
stopped working. He had wondered whether she would make this easy
on him. Now he had his answer.

“
Fine day to finish clearing
the field,” he offered as he fell in step next to her.

She spared him a chilly
glance from under her
lashes. Filling her
arms with jagged rocks, she stalked
off to
the fence and began setting in her load. Torn between frustration
and the sure knowledge he was
getting a
warmer reception than he deserved, Michael
stood and watched her for a moment. Then with a shake of his
head, he bent down and jimmied a large rock free of the earth.
Using hands and the occasional foot, he rolled it in a zigzagging
path to the fence. And all the while he considered his next move.
Honesty seemed the only way out.

She still stood at the low line of fence,
scowling at it as if by sheer force of will she could make it grow.
Michael moved behind her, wanting to rest his hands on her slender
shoulders but not daring to touch her. Not deserving to.

“
I’m sorry,” he
said.

She swung round to face him.
A hot flame danced
in those cool blue eyes,
making him realize that his sister wasn’t alone in the ranks of
warrior.

“
Sorry for what?”

Jamming his hands deep into his pockets he
muttered, “For kissing you. It was wrong of me... stupid. I should
have warned you... or something.”

“
Kissing me? You’re sorry
for that? There’s nothing else you’ve done that you think might be
worth an apology?”

A recitation of that list would stretch long
past sunset, not that the woman in front of him looked inclined to
let him slip in a word.

“
Well,
I’ll
admit the kiss was unexpected,”
she said. “And not invited, either. But I want you to take a look
at me.”

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 whis
pered.
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.”