The Last Bride in Ballymuir (3 page)

When he pointed out his sister’s house,
urgency joined the tension. Kylie struggled for a half-veiled hint
that she’d like to see him again. Unable to come up with one, she
pulled to the side of the road. She reached out her hand to shake
his. “It’s been a pleasure, Michael Kilbride.”

He grasped her hand, but instead of shaking
it, pulled her forward. Kylie could feel her eyes widen as he
neared. Before she could even form the thought to object, his mouth
settled hot and hungry over hers. She was a woman who’d been kissed
neither well nor often, yet she could recognize passion beginning
to dance beneath her skin. Kylie shivered. Wanting to know more,
but half-fearing the power of what she might learn, she settled her
hand on his shoulder, her fingers gripping the coarse fabric of his
jacket.

He drew her closer, and she felt her mouth
open to him. The sweep of his tongue was an intimacy so different
from those long-ago clumsy, teenage kisses that were all she had to
compare to this moment. As she learned the taste of him, the beat
of his heart, she began to lose her sense of self, something she
generally clung to as tightly as her dignity. The realization
shocked her.

At her indrawn breath, Michael let her go.
Kylie fell back against her seat. When she looked at him, she would
have been hard-pressed to say who was more startled by the
kiss—Michael or herself.

Kylie scrambled for words, but Michael
Kilbride left the car without saying anything at all. After he was
gone, a breathy “wow” was all she could manage.

She was in well over her head. What better
time to learn to swim?

Chapter Two

If you hit my dog, you hit myself.

—
Irish Proverb

Michael had no sooner shut
the door than Vi
closed in on him. “It’s
past six. Where have you been?”

Feeling as churlish as a teenager late home
with Mam hovering over him, he snarled, “Out.”

“
You leave walking and come
back in a woman’s car. Interesting, that.”

“
I don’t believe it. You
were watching me out the window!” He advanced on his meddling
sister, but stumbled on a fat little dog that seemed to have
materialized from nowhere. Glaring down at the homely thing, which
was more or less a stumpy second cousin to a Jack Russell terrier,
he added, “And what the hell is this?”

“
This
is Roger, the only male I’ve yet to meet with sense enough to
take care of himself.” Vi reached down and scratched the dog behind
the ears. The animal heaved a blissful sigh and sidled closer to
his owner. “He stayed with friends while I was gathering you home.
He’s a fair dog, Rog is. Stay out of his chair by the fire and
you’ll get along well enough.”

“
More than I can say for us.
I won’t be spied on!”

She stood toe to toe with him. “You think
that I was spying on you?” One finger jabbing toward the front of
the room, she said, “I just happened to glance out that window when
I heard the car. Can you blame me for looking twice with the show
you were putting on? Make friends fast, do you?”

“
She’s not a friend.” At
Vi’s astonished laugh he added, “Exactly.”

“
And I’d say she wasn’t
behaving like an enemy—
exactly. Who was the
little thing? I was thanking God
I didn’t
see auburn hair or I’d think that bit of trash Evie Nolan had
latched onto you.”

He put aside the interesting concept of being
“latched onto” for later consideration. “Her name’s Kylie O’Shea.
Do you know of her?”

Vi smiled. “Around here, you know a little of
everyone. Whether what you know has anything to do with the truth,
that’s another matter.” Pulling a stool away from the counter that
divided kitchen from living room, she sat. “But Kylie O’Shea? She’s
Black Johnny O’Shea’s only child, that I know for sure.”

“
Black Johnny O’Shea.”
Michael grinned at the antiquated image the name conjured. “And
what does he do, rob Bus Eireann every time it rolls through
town?”

Instead of laughing, Vi took
the question seriously.
“Well, I wasn’t
here when Black Johnny was about, but I’ve heard he was a grand
schemer, and a thief, too. He’s in prison now—a safe place for him,
considering what his name means around here.”

She’d intended no jab with
those words. But as a man whose name held meaning itself, Michael
felt
the blow. All the more reason to avoid
Kylie O’Shea.
He doubted that she held a
soft spot in her heart for ex-convicts, any more than his own
family did. He mumbled some indecipherable response.

Vi tapped a long finger to her lower lip as
if contemplating a matter of great import. “That Kylie, I’ve heard
she’s as proper as a nun. And if there’s a committee to be formed
or a charity in need of a hand, she’s in the thick of it. Imagine,
there she was kissing you for God and all the world to see when
she’s not known you for more than a few hours. I don’t like this,
Michael, not at all.”

Prepared to launch into an abject apology for
soiling the reputation of Kylie O’Shea, Michael stammered to a stop
when Vi went on. “There’s something afoot with that girl,” she said
with a stern frown. “You’d best be staying away from her.”

She’d knocked him wordless
with that. He neither wanted nor deserved his sister’s protection.
And
while Vi had never been the delicate
flower for
which she was named, he didn’t
recall her being this
intractable, either.
Michael wasn’t certain what to say.

Vi stood and walked to the peg rack by the
front door. She pulled down a ridiculous looking orange-and-green
braided leash and snapped it to Roger’s collar.

“
Be a love, and take Rog for
a walk. He needs his fresh air. I’ll have soup on the table by the
time you get back.”

Soup.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what was it with women and their
soup? He’d sell the family relics— if they had any other than
Mam—for even a tough cut of mutton.

Vi
shoved the loop end of the leash into his hand. “Off with
you.” She shooed them out the door and shut it smartly behind
them.

Michael scowled down at the little creature
on the other end of the tether. It regarded him with a Zen like
calm. “Come on, then,” he muttered. “This must be my day for making
a bloody fool of myself.”

Roger looked especially pleased at that
thought. After sniffing the air, the dog trotted down the sidewalk
and veered toward town center.

Resigned to his fate, Michael followed
behind. He kept his head down and pretended invisibility, no simple
task at his size. But it was far easier to be concerned about
walking this joke of a dog than to be thinking about what had
happened with Kylie O’Shea.

It was just a kiss; he knew that. From what
he’d read in newspapers and witnessed firsthand in the Dublin pubs,
his act was no great sin. And there was no shame in wanting a bit
of fun after too many years filled with loneliness and wanting. But
much as he wanted her to be, Kylie was no bit of fun.

“
A few laughs, that’s all,”
he muttered, then realized that he looked exactly like one of those
crazy bastards three steps short of a jig who spent the day talking
to his dog. At that, Roger stopped and stared up at him.

“
I’m not looking for an
answer from you” Michael
said.

Female laughter echoed from a shop doorway.
“And he’ll not be giving you one.”

She stepped out onto the
walk. There was no mistaking this one for a child. The young woman
was short with lush curves that were enticing enough now, but
sooner or later would thicken to those of a
cantilevered matron. Clearly not Kylie’s fate, Michael
thought, then pushed her from his mind.

“
I’ve seen the dog before,
but you—you’re new.” She eyed him much the same way Michael would a
tenderloin roasted to perfection. “A friend of Vi Kilbride, are
you?”

“
Her brother.”

The woman smiled, and with a
practiced flirtatious
move brushed long
auburn hair over her shoulders.
Trouble and
a blatant promise shone in her dark eyes.
“Better yet.” She stepped closer. “My name’s Evie
Nolan.”

His first impulse was to laugh at the
coincidence of meeting Evie on the heels of Vi’s words. Then he
recalled the dozens of incidents from childhood on when Vi saw or
knew things before their time. A safety net or noose, Vi was,
depending on what one did with her bits of sight.

Looking at the female in
front of him, though,
Michael thought it
would be no hard thing at all to be
“latched onto” by Evie Nolan. Then Vi’s image
super
imposed itself over Evie’s sharp
features. Decidedly no hard thing, Evie Nolan, but no wise thing,
either. He didn’t offer his name, but she didn’t slow a
beat

“
I was just closing up my
da’s shop and about to head down to O’Connor’s Pub. Been there
yet?”

“
No, but I don’t think
they’d be welcoming me with this in tow,” he said gesturing at
Roger.

“
You could tie him to the
lamppost,” she said, dismissing the dog with a bored
glance.

Somehow, Michael knew he’d be safer in tying
Evie to a lamppost than he would Vi’s precious child. “Maybe I’ll
join you another time.”

Evie pared the general down
to the specific with a skill he couldn’t help but admire. “Monday
night, then. Eight o’clock... And if you’re lookin’ to have fun,
leave the dog
and
your sister at home.”

She moved closer and for one wild moment he
imagined her doing to him what he’d done to Kylie. Had he not been
so tall, Evie Nolan just might have been up to the challenge. As it
was, she brushed one dagger-tipped nail against the front of his
jacket. “Will I be having your name before Monday?”

He hesitated, feeling as though he was giving
up something he shouldn’t. “Michael.”

She looked him up and down.
“For the Big Fellow,
Michael Collins, I’d
wager.”

With his size and build, he’d heard the
comment countless times before, and hated it. Collins, patriot and
hero to some, spy and murderer to others. And to him, a burden. “I
was named for my father.”

The words must have sounded
even harsher than he’d intended. A flash of surprise and anger
passed
across the girl’s face. She stepped
away warily. “Well,
Michael named for his
father, Monday night, then.” She brushed past him and made her way
down the narrow walk.

He watched her round bottom sway back and
forth to a hot beat. “We’ll see,” he said more to himself than
her.

Roger gave a low growl and tugged at his
leash. Michael imagined that if he loosed him, the dog would sink
his teeth straight into Evie Nolan’s swinging promise of sex.

“
Latched onto, all right,”
he said with a laugh, then followed Rog round the corner and, after
several blocks’ zigzagging detour, back home again.

“
You’re all walked out,
then,” Vi commented as he swung shut the door and then freed Roger
from his leash.

“
Eighty years on the road
and I’d not be walked out,” he said, hanging his jacket. During his
years caged, more nights than not he’d dreamt of walking in a
straight line bending over the horizon and on to forever. Past this
ruined life altogether, and starting again. Starting clean and
simple.

Vi was silent a while,
seeing to the evening’s meal.
When the
table was set, she said, “I can’t imagine it... knowing I must be
in the same place so long. I think it would kill me—especially when
I’d done nothing to warrant being there.”

To his way of thinking, sheer stupidity
qualified as something, though he loved Vi for her unswerving
loyalty. Michael’s smile was grim. “Well, the anger’s enough to
keep you going a while.”

In all her visits, all her letters, and all
of his to her, they’d skirted the “whys” and “hows” of his
existence. The life and the emotions were ugly, now best swept
under the rug. Not the most courageous of acts, but one that better
suited his skills at self-preservation.

Vi waved him to his place at
the table. The aroma of
the
soup was regrettably reminiscent of his earlier
meal. Michael slowly brought the spoon to his mouth, carefully
tasted, then grabbed for the glass of water in front of him. A
conspiracy, it was!

He glared at his sister. “Did no one teach
you to cook?”

“
Of course they did. I got
distracted, that’s all. I had the grandest idea for a new painting
and had to get it down before it flew off.”

He grinned. “The painting?”

“
No, the idea, you ninny,”
she said, brandishing her soup spoon like a weapon.

“
So I’m suffering for
your
art. And here I
thought that was the artist’s job.”

“
Do you suppose you could be
doing any better?”

“
No.”

“
Then don’t complain.” She
nibbled at the bread before asking
, “So
what’ll it be, Michael? You’ve enough
money
for a new start wherever you want to go.”