The Last Bride in Ballymuir (4 page)

“
I’d tell you not to ruin
the meal, but it’s far too late for that.” He leaned back in his
chair. “No more talk of money or the future, Vi. I’ve spent
fourteen years doing what others commanded. I’ve no idea what I
want to do for myself, and no idea what I
can
do. I need time. Time to think
about it, and time to just
be.
Can’t you understand?”

She sighed. “I can, it’s just I can’t bear
not seeing progress made.”

“
I’m out. That’s progress,
I’d say.”

“
No, that’s justice. You
shouldn’t have been in there at all. You’re no terrorist and never
were.”

“
Among my padmates,
paramilitary was the preferred term,” he dryly
corrected.

“
Call them what you will,”
his sister said, unwilling to be swayed from her point. “Progress
is when you can pick up and move on.”

No arguing that. The soup best left uneaten,
Michael grabbed some bread, then slid his chair back from the
table. “Have you anything to read?”

Vi pointed to shelves built into the wall
next to the fireplace. “You’ll find Roddy Doyle and Joe O’Connor,
as well as some poetry and a few of the classics.”

He nodded. Making his way to the bookshelf,
he said, “I’ll be seeing you in the morning, then.”

“
Mass is at nine,” Vi said
in a tone that was more order than point of information. His
thoughts must have been clear on his face because she continued in
the same major-general tone. “It’s one morning a week I’m asking of
you. And I might point out that you stand a chance of gaining
something from your effort, too.”

He raised one brow. “We still have politics
to argue over. Care to give it a go?”

Vi sat back and smiled. “We haven’t changed
at all. I’m still trying to bully you and you’re still swatting me
down.”

“
And you need it, sweet
Violet,” he said with a broad wink, then laughed at her answering
growl. No, some things hadn’t changed at all.

By half past five the
following morning, Michael was
willing to
concede that some less pleasant aspects of his life remained the
same, too. He’d not slept ‘til past three. And even Roddy Doyle’s
wit hadn’t been enough to keep his mind away
from Kylie. To Kylie it went and to Kylie it
stayed.

To have felt his mouth
against a woman’s for the first time in over a dozen years was
surely an event grand enough to rob him of sleep. It was more
than
that, though. It was the rightness of
her taste, the soft
ness of her lips. It was
the fleeting thoughts he’d had when their mouths met. Thoughts of
days to come.

Michael gazed at himself in the tiny square
of mirror above the bathroom sink. While he shaved away a day’s
growth of blue-black beard, he pondered the fact that a man who
looked so—well, to be truthful—dangerous could be so damned
inexperienced. A fine irony there, and one he’d bought and paid for
with his own rash acts. Perhaps these feelings for Kylie O’Shea
could be reduced to just that— rash acts and inexperience.

After sluicing off the last of the shaving
cream and toweling dry his face, Michael scowled at his reflection.
He summed up his life in two words: “Bloody fool.”

Downstairs by six, he took
pleasure out of settling into Roger’s chair, then reading some
more. An hour
or so later, Vi, eyes still
half-shut and red hair wild as
any
Medusa’s, staggered from bedroom to kitchen.

“
Kettle’s still warm,” he
told her and tried to look apologetic as she jumped nearly to the
low-beamed ceiling.

Clutching closed a wild crimson silk robe
that made Michael wonder whether his sister had spent time in a
seraglio, Vi asked, “What are you doing up and about so early?”

“
I’ve been trained better
than your dog. I expect it’ll take me some time to unlearn it
all.”

Vi said nothing in return, not that much
could be said. She clattered about in the kitchen for a while, and
then settled at a small desk not far from where he sat. “I’m
phoning Mam—promised her I would. I need to catch her early. She’s
still singing in the choir, did you know?”

He didn’t. Michael rose. “I’ll be—”

“
No, stay. Talk to her, too,
Michael. She’s worried
about you. She truly
is.”

“
She has an odd way of
showing it.”

Vi lifted the phone and began to dial. “Talk
to her.”

“
Can’t.” As he trudged up
the stairs to his room, Michael tried to recall the last time his
mother and he had truly communicated. Not the bits and
busi
ness of being in the same family, but
real talk. Before
his brothers were born,
for certain. From the day they arrived, Pat and Danny had usurped
what little time his mother had ever found for him. And now she
used them like shields. “You’d best not come to Kilkenny,” she had
said when he’d called with news of his impending release. “It would
be unsettling for the boys.”

He doubted “the boys”—now seventeen—gave a
dead rat’s ass whether he came to town. Hell, they scarcely knew
him; he’d been gone since they were three years old. His mother
would be the one unsettled, her placid life of charity work,
luncheons, and friends blown to hell. And his father, he’d do as he
always had—work late, then come home to read the newspaper and
avoid direct conversation with his family.

Home ... He thought again of Kylie O’Shea and
her rocks and wretched cooking, and knew he was indeed a bloody
fool for doing it. He deserved no home and would have none.

Michael glanced at the clock on the bedside
table. An hour ‘til church. Perhaps a sermon filled with dire
warnings of devil and death would brighten his day. God knew
stranger things had happened.

Chapter Three

A little always tastes good.

—
Irish Proverb

Each Sunday morning when she slipped through
the plain doors of St. Brendan’s Church, Kylie carried a guilty
little secret with her: she liked going to Mass not only for what
she got out of it, but for being seen. Her father hadn’t been much
of a churchgoer. Perhaps he stayed home out of fear of a lightning
bolt striking straight to his heart, but more likely because
sitting still for an hour and more was inconceivable to Johnny
O’Shea. As was the concept of a Higher Authority.

Kylie was not her father;
she believed. Each Sunday
was a
reaffirmation of the way she tried to live her
life—
tried
being
the operative word. Last night, for instance, she’d had far too
many uncomfortable and inappropriate thoughts about Michael
Kilbride. And today, as she settled early in a pew, she fought not
to
crane her neck like a spectator at the
Ballymuir Races.

How she wanted him to be there. Coming in
with Vi, as he would, there’d be no missing him. Between her height
and her flame-red hair, Vi stood no more chance of being
inconspicuous than Kylie did of being bold. And Michael was no man
to be easily lost in a crowd, either. Even one packed into tiny St.
Brendan’s. Kylie shifted as subtly as she could to increase the
range of her peripheral vision.

Breege Flaherty, who had sat next to her,
reached over and patted her hand. “All morning you’ve been as
nervous as an ewe come mating season. Whatever’s the problem?”

“
No problem, none at all,”
she assured her friend, secretly amused and appalled at how close
Breege had struck to the truth.

Widowed Breege was Kylie’s closest neighbor,
both in proximity and in her heart. When the rest of the town had
turned from Kylie after her father’s arrest for fraud, Breege had
remained steadfast. The fact that her dearest friend was eighty-two
years old didn’t seem odd in the least.

“
If you’ve no problem, then
slide down, dear. You’ve left people waiting in the
aisle.”

Embarrassed, Kylie glanced back up and found
herself looking straight into Michael Kilbride’s unforgettably
green eyes. Her heart did a low, lazy loop as she took in exactly
how splendid this man was. He was wearing nothing grand—just dark
trousers and a thick fisherman’s knit sweater. Ah, but he wore it
well. She’d not mind looking at him ‘til time spun to a stop.

Breege’s subtle nudge called
Kylie back to her surroundings. She tugged her gaze away from
Michael. Right behind him stood his sister looking none too pleased
to be biding her time in the aisle. Kylie hastily moved closer to
Breege, making room for the two Kilbrides. After giving what she
hoped
passed for a polite smile rather than
the half-hysterical
grin she felt painting
its way across her face, she focused on the service about to begin.
For a few brief minutes she even succeeded.

But inches away sat Michael Kilbride, seeming
almost oblivious to her presence. The less he noticed her, the more
she did him. Or so it seemed to Kylie, who had begun to hear only
his deep voice as he sang, his steady responses. A crowd of
hundreds and she had reduced it to one. Not once, though, did he
glance her way. By neither word nor gesture was he anything other
than impersonal. In fact, his disregard seemed to wave itself like
a flag of challenge.

Lately, she had fixed upon
the idea of committing an act so wild and unexpected that for a
short while it would lift the weight of respectability from her.
And for that short while, she could sink her teeth
into life—not be proper on the exterior, ready to
shatter inside, Miss Kylie Soon-to-be-a-Saint O’Shea.

Here and now—in the middle
of church—she’d
like to shake Michael
Kilbride by his broad shoulders
and hiss,
“Have you forgotten me already? Did that kiss mean nothing to you?”
Sanity kept her in her seat. It was a blessing, too, considering Vi
Kilbride’s watchful gaze was upon her almost as much as hers was on
Michael.

By the end of mass, Kylie had herself firmly
convinced that the man didn’t even recognize her. And though she
told herself she should be relieved, that he was far too rough and
masculine for her to handle, she was sure her heart would
break.

When Breege stopped to chat with a group of
friends, Kylie kept her head down. She didn’t know where Michael
Kilbride was, and didn’t want to. She’d not embarrass herself
further. At least now her humiliation was a private thing. When
Breege announced that she’d be staying in town for supper with Mrs.
McCafferty, relieved, Kylie turned heel and fled.

With Vi’s hand firmly anchored in the crook
of his elbow, Michael saw no way of polite escape. He’d been
trotted past half the citizens of Ballymuir and the other half
appeared to be queuing up for their turn. All except Kylie O’Shea,
who’d skirted the throng and stood with a group of women near the
edge of the car park. And now it looked as though she was
leaving.

Michael tried to shake free
his arm, but Vi held
fast. “Michael, I’d
like you to meet Jenna Fahey. She’s
a grand
friend of mine, for all that she’s another blow-in Yank come to buy
up our land. Jenna’s opened a restaurant out Slea Head
Road.”

“
Hello,” he managed without
turning his gaze from
the spot where Kylie
had been. Then the heel of Vi’s
shoe came
down in the middle of his foot. In deference
to their location near the church steps, he bit back
the
oath that came to his lips. Settling
for a meaningful glare at Vi, he turned his attention to the woman
in
front of him. She was a small thing,
willowy with short
chestnut curls framing a
friendly face.

“
It’s nice to finally meet
you,” she said in a voice so crisp and American that he had to
smile. “I’d love it if you and Vi could come to Muir House for
dinner some night soon. I’ll make something special.”

“
That would be grand,”
Michael answered out of politeness, then glanced back over the
crowd to see if he could spot Kylie.

The American followed his
line of vision and
smiled. “If you’re
looking for Kylie O’Shea, she’s
already
gone.”

“
How’d you know who I was
looking for?” Michael
asked, carefully
reappraising the slight woman in front
of
him.

“
Don’t confuse me with your
mind-reading sister. No second sight here,” she said, raising a
cautionary hand. She gestured toward the women still at the edge of
the car park. “Kylie was the only one there less than eighty years
old, and besides, what man in his right mind wouldn’t be looking at
someone that pretty?”

“
Ah,” Michael said with a
returning grin, “then you’ll be understanding if I move quickly to
catch her.” Prying loose his sister’s hand, he said, “I need your
car, Vi.”

Her mouth curved into a complacent smile.
“Buy your own car, love.”

Michael frowned. “Blackmail, is it?”

“
Whatever works.”

Blackmail deserved no honesty. He’d give his
sister the words she wanted and save the truth for later. After
he’d seen Kylie O’Shea. “Fine, we’ll open an account tomorrow, and
I’ll buy my own car. But right now, Sis, give me yours.”

Vi dangled the keys in front of him, jingling
them so they sang a cheery, tempting tune. “No dancing around me
with half-truths on this one, Michael. I’ll have your word. You’ll
take the money—all of it.”