“It’s not exactly easy, having perfect older brothers.”
He raised a brow. “Which you know about?”
I shrugged. “Maybe not perfect. But I always felt second-best.”
“Why?”
“Oh.” Now I felt silly, because I hadn’t meant the conversation to come around to me, and I actively avoided talking about my family to anyone besides Cam. “My brothers are from my dad’s first marriage, and I think he kind of preferred them. Not a big deal or anything, he just didn’t know how to relate to me.”
He tilted his head. His hair, still straightened from his shower, was beginning to dry and curl. “Sounds like a big deal.”
Suddenly edgy, I jumped up and walked to the window. He had a view out the back of the inn, toward several cottages and the endless rolling hills and hedgerows. Lavender clouds rolled across the deepening blue night. “It really wasn’t. What about you? Where’s your dad?” A second after the words left my mouth, I remembered that his dad had to be gone for him to inherit Kilkarten. I turned to see him, my eyes widening. “I’m so sorry—”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”
We were both silent, but neither of us looked away. I could feel the space of the room constraining, or his presence growing, until it was as though I could only see him. My head felt light. I broke contact first and headed back to the armchair, busying myself with settling back in. “Anna must have been little.”
“Seven.”
Wow.
“What’s that look for?”
I raised my eyes, startled at the question. “I wasn’t giving you a look.”
His smile contained a hint of skepticism. “Yeah, you were.”
Fine. “Sounds like you’ve been father-figuring your youngest sister and supporting your whole family for a long time.”
He let out a wry breath. “Lauren said about the same. She wants to ‘fix’ things while we’re here.”
“‘Things’?”
“Us. Our family.”
“How?”
He met my eyes again, with that same powerful intensity, and gave me a crooked smile different from the regular one he used to charm people. “I wish I knew the answer.”
I acknowledged the difficulty of that with my own wry smile. “How do you usually deal with problems?”
He watched me with a very odd, very aware expression. “Usually I smile a lot and people end up agreeing with me. Or liking me, so they alter things to go my way.”
I blinked but couldn’t look away. He looked back, his gaze bright and focused, like he saw something unusual and worth studying. I swallowed. “And of course, you’ve already figured out that I do the same thing.”
“You were shocked when I said no to the dig. I bet people don’t say no to you very often.”
“I don’t put myself in positions where people can say no to me that often.”
He tilted his head. “What does that mean?”
I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d meant, myself, so it was difficult to parse into words. Maybe I just didn’t ask or go after things when there was a chance I’d be turned down. I shrugged helplessly.
“What are you going to do while you’re here? I mean—you don’t know anyone here, do you?”
I shrugged. “My advisor’s in Dublin, but he’ll probably come down in two or three weeks. He was planning to, originally... And tomorrow I’m going to talk to your aunt, actually, and she might introduce me to some people who know about the land.”
He straightened. “You are?”
I nodded “I’d been corresponding with her husband for months. It seemed appropriate.” I paused. “What’s she like?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I haven’t actually met her. We’re having lunch day after tomorrow.” His eyes lit up. “I’ll go with you tomorrow.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
He raised his brows. “I’ve been with my family a solid week. I think I deserve the company of someone I’m not related to.”
I raised mine right back at him. “So you deserve my company?”
His voice was little more than a murmur. “Don’t I?”
I sucked in a quick breath. I was suddenly aware of how late it was, how much I’d enjoyed talking to him this evening, how whenever I was in his presence I was always so, so aware of him... And that he had unflinchingly refused to let me excavate Kilkarten, and just several hours ago I’d had the thought of enlisting his sisters for a
He shook his head. “Must be our catchphrase.”
I paused halfway to the door. “What?”
“You said something like that when we first met. Then I tried to leave Ryan’s fast. But we never seem to get very far from each other, do we?”
I pulled the door open. “I
He nodded. “See you in the morning.”
I could feel the intensity of his gaze long after I’d tucked myself into bed and turned off all the lights.
I woke to birdsong. The sun had already risen, and morning light filtered through my window, lying in panels across my bed and the floor. I stretched and twisted and considered my jogging gear, but the time difference had thrown me off and I didn’t have time for a run if I wanted to meet with Maggie O’Connor in two hours. Still, I headed outside so I could get some fresh air and give my appetite time to wake up before breakfast.
I settled on a white stone bench under a cypress tree with my volume of Yeats, which to be honest I never would have read if I hadn’t been in Ireland. My last poetry had been along the lines of Dr. Seuss, who I held in great esteem, but other than him my attention usually drifted off during the first stanza of a poem.
I’d only been there fifteen minutes when Anna walked toward me, clearly coming in for breakfast from the cottage where she was staying. We both hesitated when we caught sight of each other, and then she angled her path to my bench.
I nodded at her. “Morning.”
She nodded back, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her faux leather jacket. The pockets didn’t look like they were actually built to support hands. “Sorry if I was kinda bitchy yesterday.”
I smiled. “We can blame it on jetlag.”
She grunted. “So. Are you a model or something?”
People had asked me that before—mostly because I’d inherited my mother’s height, cheekbones, and famous gray eyes—but I always hated the question. “Definitely not. I’m an archaeologist.”
“Seriously?”
I closed my book and slid over on the bench. “I study Irish history, from about two thousand years ago. I’m interested in the contact between Ireland and Rome, and your family’s farmland might cover an archaeological site that would give more information on that.”
Her jaw dropped open, and she fell onto the bench. “Seriously? Kilkarten? The farm? Are you going to, like, dig it up? That’s awesome.”
Something twinged in my chest, but I ignored it. “I don’t think so. I’m mostly going to be looking at old local records. Sometimes in these rural villages, papers don’t get digitized, so.”
Her brow scrunched up. “Well, why don’t you dig it up? Isn’t that easier?”
“Um.” I glanced back at the inn. So Mike
She shrugged and scowled. “Yeah, I guess. But seriously, who the fuck goes to Ireland because of some dude they never met?” She cut me a measured look, as though waiting for a reprimand, but I didn’t bite. She could curse her tongue off if she wanted.
