Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (33 page)

“Aye well she puts the hair up the back of my neck, I’ll admit. I’m not comfortable, I suppose, with that sort of attention.”

“That,” she said, getting up to scrape at the remnants of petrified biscuit in the pan, “is not what Pat told me.”

“No?” Casey gave her a look of complete innocence. “What did my brother tell ye?”

“That the two of you, yourself and Robin, that is, left a swathe of broken hearts in Belfast a mile wide during the years you ran together.”

“Ach, ye know Pat exaggerates somethin’ terrible, ‘twas maybe half a mile wide, the streets in Belfast bein’ a bit on the narrow side,” he grinned, winking at her before returning his attention to his food. She turned back to wipe at the floury counter, nervously aware of the brown manila envelope sitting next to his wrist.

Behind her Casey made a noise that fell somewhere between horror and amusement. She looked out of the corner of her eye, knowing he’d found the pictures.

In his hand he held a photo she’d taken of him one morning shortly before they’d left Boston. In it he was only half-awake, darkly stubbled, hair mussed, his attire the sheet which covered very little, in his hand a cup of morning tea. It was the most erotic photo she’d ever taken and she was very proud and not a little nervous about him seeing it for the first time.

“Jaysus woman,” he said in tones of shock, “is it not a little indecent to be takin’ pictures of yer husband in the altogether?”

“I see you in the altogether all the time,” she said equably.

“Aye, but generally speakin’ yer not tryin’ to catch it on film. How’d ye take such a thing without me knowin’?”

“Hid in the linen closet,” she said, “there was enough light that I didn’t need the flash and there was a garbage truck below that hid the sound of the shutter whirring.”

“Sneaky wee devil,” he said half-admiringly. He looked at the photo again, a reluctant smile beginning to play about his lips.

“Christ, do I really look like that?” He seemed uncomfortably pleased.

“Yes, you do.” She came around the back of his chair and looked past his shoulder to the photo that he held with ginger fingers. “Do you like it?”

“Yes an’ no,” he said. “I mean I feel as if ye’ve caught my soul somehow here on paper Jewel, an’ it’s a bit eerie lookin’ at myself the way ye must see me in order to take such a picture. It’s like seein’ through yer eyes instead of my own.”

“I don’t see you through my eyes, Casey.” She slipped her arms around him from behind, feeling the comforting expanse of his back against her. “I see you through my heart. I have for a very long time.”

“Aye well, yer heart must wear rose-colored glasses.”

“You’re a handsome man, don’t you realize that?” She rubbed her cheek against the fine cotton of his shirt.

“Ye tell me often enough, but I think it’s love that makes ye see me in that light,” he said gruffly.

“Maybe now,” she acquiesced, “but at first it was something else.”

“Aye, like what?”

“It was a purely physical reaction to the way you looked, to your presence. If I remember correctly I felt rather feverish and dizzy.”

“Feverish an’ dizzy, eh?” He sounded rather pleased.

“Mmhm,” she breathed his scent in contentedly, “pure unadulterated lust. Right from the very first moment.”

“An’ now?”

“And now it’s the same, only it’s sweeter and deeper because I love you. It’s more than wanting. It’s—” she hesitated looking for a word that would match what she felt.

“Everything,” Casey supplied quietly.

“Everything,” she agreed. “I can’t believe that you didn’t see your appeal to the opposite sex though,” she put her face to the side of his neck, savoring the warmth and his scent.

“I think it was because I had no mother about. I think a young man or woman sees themselves as beautiful through their parent’s eyes first an’ if ye see that approval there ye thrive an’ if ye don’t then ye can never quite believe what stranger’s eyes will tell ye.”

“Pat told me the girls were mad for you when you were in your teens, said there was always some silly female trying to get your attention.”

“Aye,” he admitted reluctantly, “it’s true. Daddy used to say I was like a sugar bowl to a bunch of hormone addled flies.”

“Didn’t that make you realize you were attractive to the opposite sex?”

“Not altogether, I mean I was a big boy but I spent a lot of awkward years gettin’ there an’ I was under the impression that it was my size they were particularly attracted to. The girls seemed to think that if I was big in stature—” he turned faintly pink on the back of his neck.

“That you’d be correspondingly large elsewhere,” she finished dryly.

“Aye.”

“And did you oblige their curiosity?” she asked.

He stood and turned in her arms, dark eyes creased with amusement. “Aye, I did, an’ before ye wrinkle yer nose up in disapproval, it’s not a period of my life I’m proud of. An’ ye can believe my Da’ saw to it that I paid for my sins. An’ besides, I never loved a one of them,” he drew her closer and kissed her softly, “until you.”

“Mmphm,” she attempted a disapproving noise that ended up in a sigh as his hands stroked her back and he kissed her again.

“You and your Irish tongue,” she said rather breathlessly a few minutes later.

“As far as I’m aware,” he murmured in her ear, “all my bits are Irish.”

“Stop,” she batted his hands away from her shirt buttons, “trying to distract me. Now tell me about these women.”

He crooked an eyebrow at her. “Ye really want to know this?”

“I do.”

He sighed, an extravagant and thoroughly Irish sigh. “I don’t ask ye to dredge up the lurid details of yer own past, now do I?”

“Because I don’t have one as you and I both know.”

“Aye well then, if ye insist, but come here to me an’ get comfortable first.” He led her to the big, battered chair he favored and sat, pulling her into his lap, tucking her neatly against his chest. She settled against him with a contented breath, enjoying the heat of his body against her side, the comfort and security of his arms about her.

“Ye know that swath Pat was tellin’ ye about, well ‘twas such an incident that got us banished from Belfast one summer. Robin had gotten a girl in trouble an’ her daddy was lookin’ for him an’ it wasn’t to congratulate him, if ye take my meanin’. I was consortin’ with a rough crowd from the Unity Flats area an’ Daddy thought it wouldn’t be a bad notion to get the both of us out of town for a bit.

“He sent us up to stay with Desmond an’ Siobhan, knowin’ they’d keep a tight eye on the two of us an’ work us hard enough to make us grateful to get to bed early at night. It worked well enough to start but then Siobhan’s sister died in New York an’ they had to go over. Desmond checked with my Da’ to see if he wanted us scuttled back to Belfast, but Daddy said no, that the two of us could earn our keep better up there by takin’ care of the bed an’ breakfast for the two of them.

“I think they were a little leery of leavin’ the safekeeping of their livelihood in our hands but they were in a rush an’ we assured them we’d take the responsibility seriously. Added to the fact that Desmond had described at least a dozen inventive an’ lengthy ways he’d kill us if we screwed up.

“’Twas hard work an’ at first we enjoyed it, but after two weeks of gettin' up at the crack of dawn an’ cookin’ sausage for guests who complained that the food was scorched an’ the tea too strong an’ the sheets wrinkled an’ so forth, the charm was pretty much gone. Robin had been walkin’ out with a local girl an’ she was real soft on him, so we hired her an’ her sister to take over for us an’ swore them to secrecy.”

“She must have been soft-headed,” Pamela said, “to work like a dog so the two of you could run about the country philandering.”

“Well she thought we were on,” Casey cleared his throat, a chagrined smile playing across his lips, “a mission.”

“A mission? The two of you? Granted I don’t know Robin well but I don’t think any woman would ever mistake you for a man with Godly intentions.”

Casey managed to look as though his honor had been seriously impugned. “Now here I am barin’ my soul to ye woman an’ ye insult me, an’ as for the Godly bit they do say as we’re made in His image.”

“Some,” Pamela retorted smartly, “more than others.”

“Well the lass could be forgiven for it wasn’t that sort of mission we were meant to be on. ‘Twas a covert operation, with code words an’ all. I tell ye we’d a fine evenin’ of it, makin’ up the story.”

She snorted. “Covert operation. She
was
soft-headed if she fell for that.”

“Don’t be so hard on the girl, Robin was handy with makin’ the lassies believe the grass was blue an’ the moon made of cheese if he so wished.”

“I’m starting to see why the two of you got on so well.”

Casey wisely chose to ignore this remark and continued on with his story. “We decided we’d have a bit of a lark down the countryside—we’d time, we figured—Dez an’ Siobhan were likely to be some weeks longer as there were problems with the will, an’ fightin’ relations Stateside. Then Dez figured as long as he was over there he might as well have a gander about the country. Once we’d decided to go it was only a matter of figurin’ out how to keep food in our bellies an’ the occasional roof over our heads on rainy nights.”

“And that was?” She asked, giving him an accusing look.

“Music of course,” he replied, returning her look with a black one of his own. “We’d pretty voices the two of us, Robin with the face to match, an’ no one can play the fiddle like Bobbie when the mood is on him.”

“Bobbie?” she enquired lightly, smoothing back the hair around his ear.

“Aye,” he smiled, slightly nostalgic, “I suppose even after all this time the name comes natural to me. I was the only one who ever called him that, everyone else called him Robin.”

“He was your best friend, wasn’t he?”

Casey nodded. “Aye, he was. We went through all those things together that bond ye—the girls, the fightin’, the troubles at home, the awkwardness of bein’ adolescent. We told each other everything, our hopes an’ fears an’ dreams. An’ we watched one another’s backs. There was no one I was closer to other than Pat an’ Daddy. Bobbie though, he only had me. An’ there’s somethin’ that’s open in those years, inside, that closes up later, so the friends ye make then are different, ye never make ties like that again. Did ye have friends like that, Jewel?”

“No,” she said, “I didn’t, I’m afraid I wasn’t very approachable. And my father died when other girls were buying their first pair of high heels and going out on dates.”

“Ye must have been terrible lonely,” he said softly, hand cupping her face.

“I suppose I was. I just didn’t realize it until I met you,” she said, “but you were telling me about Robin.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Someday woman yer goin’ to tell me about those years whether ye like it or no. Understand?”

“Understood,” she agreed, “now go on, tell me about the singing and seducing you two ran about doing.”

“Singin’ an’ seducin’, is it?” He gave a wry smile, “I suppose that does sum it up rather well, though it seems a little prettier in memory than that. Well we liked a bit of a fight now an’ then, ye see. An’ if there was no one willin’ to fight, we’d stage one between the two of us.”

“What on earth for?”

“Well ye see, women bein’ of a rather sympathetic nature, we’d found—”

“That bumps and bruises got you sympathy,” she finished for him.

“We were adolescent, an’ were runnin’ more on hormones than brain power, admittedly. Though it did come as a shock to find out just how aroused women were by blood an’ sweat. Yer odd creatures at times.”

“I suppose it’s bred in the bone, after all you men have been fighting for thousands of years and expecting a certain welcome when you arrived home from battle, stinking and blood-soaked. I imagine we got used to it, and learned to like it.”

“Ye like it when I come home all sweaty?” He eyed her dubiously, as if this were a perversion that had never occurred to him.

She flushed slightly. “Well not always, but sometimes—well like last week when you were working on the cupboards downstairs and you were up the ladder and—and—well you know what happened.”

“Aye,” he smiled broadly, “I did wonder what had gotten into ye.”

“It was the whole working man thing, the hammer, the t-shirt, the way you smelled of wood shavings, it was very—will you stop looking at me that way—it was very erotic.”

“Was it then?” He gave her a knowing look that deepened her blush considerably. “I love that ye know, ye can behave like a complete wanton, rollin’ me around on the floor of the kitchen an’ yet ye blush like a virgin schoolgirl to talk about it. Now
that’s
erotic.”

“Can we please,” she said, furious at the heat in her face, “get back to the subject at hand?”

“Well,” he said, “we spent most of the summer havin’ great craic altogether, singin’ in every little out of the way pub all down the west coast an’ along the southern shore.”

“How’d you find gigs all the time?”

“Well we worked cheap, sang for our supper mostly, a meal an’ a couple of pints to keep the pipes workin’ was all we asked. An’ we loved singin’, we’d keep the place goin’ all night, sang ourselves hoarse on a few occasions. Sometimes we’d even bring the dawn in, the landlord would lock the door at closin’ an’ keep the drink flowin’, lots of times they’d put us up on their own couches.”

“And the other nights?”

“Well there was always a patch of grass an’ the stars overhead.”

“And,” she prodded.

“An’ there were the women.”

“And women,” she said tartly, “are notoriously weak-willed when it comes to musicians.”

“Aye, we’d noticed the phenomenon ourselves, an’ certainly saw no need to question the reasons behind it too deeply. I could see the attraction to Robin, a fiddle wasn’t without its appeal after all, but the squeezebox was altogether different.”

“The squeezebox?”

“Aye, an accordion, that’s what I played believe it or not, that an’ the bodhran some nights. We took turns singin’, though some nights we’d sing together, two-part harmonies an’ the like.”