The Last Bride in Ballymuir (39 page)

“
Well then,” she said as she
pushed away from the
table, “here’s your
chance to meet some new mates. I’m going visiting, and I’ll be
happy to drop you wherever you want in town. That is, if you’re
ready.”

She jingled her car keys and started to the
door.

“
Of course, if you’d like to
sit and reminisce with
Breege, I’m sure the
walk to town would be relaxing.
It’s not
raining that hard, after all.”

Breege didn’t bother hiding her amused
chuckle, nor did her da his displeasure.

“
We’ll be on our way, now,”
Kylie said to Breege.
“I’ll be back to get
supper going.”

“
Don’t be bothering
yourself. Edna’s coming for a
visit and I
expect she can open a tin of soup as well as
any of us.”

“
Right, then. If you need
me, I’ll be at Vi’s,” Kylie said to her friend, then left. She
wasn’t especially worried whether her da followed. He did, of
course, and they were no sooner in the car than he
started.

“
Visiting someone named Vi,
you say? Anyone I’d
be knowing?”

She snorted. “I couldn’t begin to keep up
with your list of acquaintances.”

“
You’re really seeing that
Kilbride man, aren’t you?”

“
If I am, you don’t need to
concern yourself with it.”

Johnny was silent for a few minutes, then
said, “I haven’t been the ideal father, have I?”

That he’d even ask the
question shocked Kylie. She took a moment to gather her thoughts.
“You haven’t been all that horrible. You never raised a
hand to me, and kept a roof over my head. Well,
most
of the time, anyway.”

“
I’ve failed you often
enough,” he muttered.

Flashes of his drunken
sprees hovered at the edges
of her memory.
As did a ghost of a face at the window
on a
night she would never forget. She pushed it back
into the realm of the dead.

“
If you’ve failed me, it’s
in the past.”

“
I’d be failing you now if I
didn’t tell you to stay away from Kilbride,” he said after a few
false starts.

She smiled, though it tasted a bit bitter.
“You’re standing at the end of a long queue with that advice.”

“
He’s—”

Kylie cut him short. “Be
careful what you say. I
love him, Da, just
as Mam loved you. It’s as simple as
that.”
And as horribly complicated, an internal voice
whispered.

Johnny sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ll be
changing your mind?”

“
I don’t suppose I
will.”

When Kylie arrived at Vi’s
house, neither Michael’s
nor Vi’s car was
in sight. She rapped on the door any
way.
After a few moments a redheaded giant in sawdust-covered clothes
answered. Kylie couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

“
Danny Kilbride, your sister
will cook you alive when she sees the mess you’ve tracked through
her house.”

He grinned as he stepped
aside and ushered her in.
“She won’t leave
her studio long enough to cook me, and you’re forgetting she’s a
vegetarian, anyway.”

“
Lucky for you,” Kylie
replied as she glanced around. “Is Michael here?”

Danny scratched his head, releasing a shower
of wood shavings. “You mean he didn’t tell you?”

“
Tell me what?”

“
That he’s off to Galway
City for a day or two. Said he had a business prospect to
visit.”

“
Really?”

He nodded. “You’re not to worry. We promised
Michael we’d finish up the Village Hall for you. You’ll be open for
business come Monday.”

The student art show had
been nowhere in her
thoughts. The idea that
Michael would up and escape
without
offering to take her along was too enormous to leave room for
anything else.

“
I don’t suppose he left a
number where I might ring him?”

“
Uh, yeah, he
did.”

Kylie’s lips curved into a
smile as Danny riffled through a stack of paper by the phone. She’d
more
than call, she’d show up at his door.
It was either that,
or lose what bit of
sanity the citizens of Ballymuir hadn’t already prized away from
her today.

“
Found it!” Danny
crowed.

Kylie copied down the needed information,
flew home, and told Breege of her plans, then drove north to her
future. Dark cloaked the city by the time she arrived at the
hotel.

She stewed up an absurd
broth of marital lies for a
hotel clerk who
had neither asked nor cared, then shut her overnight bag in the
lift door. Now she was confronting an ancient hotel room door that
had no
intention of giving way. Biting back
a frustrated hiss,
she leaned her forehead
against the cool wood of the door and slowly counted to ten. From
the other side, she could hear the sounds of running water and what
must be Michael singing.

Singing? Now, there was a miracle, and she
was ready for one. She’d sooner run naked through Galway’s Spanish
Arch than face that clerk’s superior smirk if she had to tell him
she couldn’t get into the room.

She rattled the key again, then turned the
knob and butted her hip into the door. It flew open. She staggered
into the entry, overnight bag clutched in one hand, key fob left
behind, clanking against that godawful door.

She hadn’t even righted herself when Michael,
towel slung low about his hips, burst from the bathroom.

“
What the—” he snarled with
a fury that made her
drop her bag and take
an alarmed step backward.

Her “I’m sorry—” collided with his oath in
midair.

She’d never had the experience of being
greeted by a mostly naked and thoroughly enraged male. Despite the
jolt of fear that shot through her, she couldn’t seem to tug her
gaze from the dark line of hair arrowing down his abdomen into the
towel.

“
God, Kylie, I’m the one
who’s sorry for scaring you half to death, but what can you expect
breaking into a man’s room?” He paused long enough to draw a
breath. “And what exactly are you doing here, anyway?”

Now that was the wrong question to ask a
woman who’d just driven hours in a dying car.

“
I could be asking you the
same question, disappearing like you did. I stopped over Vi’s for
a visit and Danny told me you’d gone. Silly me, with all your talk
of getting away, I thought you’d like it if I surprised
you—”

“
I do like it. Really, I
do,” he said, re-anchoring his
towel.

Transfixed, Kylie’s eyes
followed his hands. It had been so long, so very long since she’d
had him to her
self.

“
When I heard the noise in
the entry, I thought—”
he was saying.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter what I thought, now does
it?”

He walked around her,
retrieved the room key, and
closed the
door. “Fine greeting I’ve given you. Shall
we try this again with more kisses and less
shouting?”

At his words, Kylie’s gaze
drifted upward to his mouth, and her heart tumbled. His mouth—his
beautiful mouth—was swollen and had a nasty split
at the corner. Her cry of distress sounded sharp
in the
quiet room. “Whatever
happened?”

“
It’s not as bad as it
looks. A little fall, nothing important”

But she was the daughter of Johnny O’Shea and
had patched cuts and bruises from any number of brawls. She took
Michael’s hands in hers, running fingers over his puffy and scraped
knuckles.

“
And I suppose you caught
yourself on these when you fell.”

When he nodded, she was
thankful that at least he couldn’t give voice to such a ridiculous
lie. She
traced her fingertips to either
side of the bridge of his
nose. He
winced.

“
Well, judging by your nose,
you didn’t do a very good job of catching yourself.”

“
Really, love, it’s
nothing.”

Kylie let out her
exasperation in a long breath. She
turned
away and busied herself by settling her overnight bag on a chair in
the corner. “So you’re asking me to believe that you did all of
this by tripping over your own feet.”

He came up behind her and wrapped his arms
around her. “I’m asking you to trust me.” His voice was deep and
low in her ear. The sound washed through her, bringing comfort even
when she knew it shouldn’t.

She wanted to trust him, but
couldn’t let go of this.
Not without the
risk of stepping into the same role she had held for her father. A
role she’d been able to see through unclouded adult eyes upon her
father’s return. She wouldn’t aid another man down the road to
disaster.

“
Trust comes through
honesty,” she said.

His arms left her. Kylie
faced him. She watched as
he turned away,
dug about in his duffel bag, then pulled out a pair of denims. He
dropped the towel, exposing a somehow vulnerable stretch of muscled
buttock and haunch. After pulling on the denims without
consideration for niceties such as underwear, he turned back to
her.

“
And you’re thinking I’m not
honest?”

Ripe that was, considering
the way he was hiding the truth.
“Tell
me who hit you.”

He
scrubbed his hand through still-wet hair, leaving it wild. “I
happened across an old acquaintance.”

“
Happened across?” she
echoed, weighing the words with her vast disbelief.

“
Fine, maybe I was doing a
little research. But let’s
not get bogged
down in details.”

“
And this—ah—friend, would
he be looking much like you do?”

A smile hovered at the corners of his bruised
mouth. “A bit worse, I’m hoping.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and patted its
white tufted spread. “Come sit.”

She hesitated. It was too
hard thinking clearly
when Michael was
close, and her terrible day had left
her
feeling muddled enough.

“
Please.”

Against her better judgment, Kylie joined
him. He took her hands in his. Staring down at their clasped
fingers, he began.

“
I told you once about Brian
Rourke, about what he and Dervla had done to me.” His throat worked
with the obvious difficulty of getting this out She couldn’t help
but feel for him. “He’s been calling Vi’s house and saying things.
Ugly things. Anyway, our friend Gerry Flynn’s been dropping word
for the past several weeks that I might find Rourke up this
way.”

He bloody well was trying to
fix the world, and at
the risk of his own
life. “God, Michael! You might as
well have
served yourself up on a platter—”

He squeezed tighter on her hands. “Let me
finish, love.”

She swallowed her frustration and alarm, but
still rugged her hands free. “Go on.”

“
I was doing what I had to.
Rourke knew about you, Kylie. He’d been to Ballymuir and seen you.
I couldn’t let him...let him do what he said he was going
to.”

“
And you couldn’t have
called the authorities, either?”

He snorted. “Flynn? And said exactly
what?”

“
Not Flynn, but someone
else.”

He stood and began to pace the room. “And
still said what?”

At her silence, he wheeled
on her. “What, dammit?
That a man who might
or might not be Brian Rourke and might or might not be in Galway
was making threats? They’d have laughed themselves sick at that
one, and I couldn’t blame them. Don’t you see? I needed to know for
sure.”

She nodded, for she did see. Through hard
experience, Michael Kilbride had been led to believe that absolute
truth was no defense, and sometimes an impediment.

He looked down at the floor, then back to
her. “You want honesty, so I’m giving it you. He threatened to
kill you, so I came here to kill him.”

She was left feeling empty, old, and
hopeless. “And did you?”

The pause before he answered stretched out
endlessly. “I didn’t, but I wanted to, which I figure is pretty
much the same thing.”

She tipped back her head, allowing her tears
to track down the outer curves of her cheeks. “It’s not the same
thing at all. It’s what separates you from Rourke and the rest of
them, knowing the end never justifies the means.”

He made a sound close to a laugh. “I’m not so
different as you’d like to give me credit for. Sure, I felt good
for a few hours, but now that it’s night and I can’t protect you
from the shadows, I’m regretting not having killed him.”

“
I think we’ve all known a
few regrets.” She drew in a ragged, teary breath. “We’ll call the
authorities. Let them take care of this. Please, Michael. They
won’t fail us.”

“
I already called
anonymously from a pay phone. With luck, they’ll have some reason
to hold him. And once we’re back home, we’ll try the Gardai in
Tralee, where hopefully saner minds prevail.” He paused, cleared
his throat, then said, “As long as we’re going for honesty, I’ve
never told you this straight out like I should—partly because I
couldn’t believe what I was feeling and partly because I was bloody
terrified—but I love you, Kylie. I think I have since that night
you almost ran me down on the road, then called me a damn fool for
being there.”