The Rousing: A Celtic in the Blood Novella (11 page)

"Never felt more alive," he replied. "Nothing like a near-death encounter to get your priorities all lined-up in a row, wouldn't you say?” His mouth curled in a crooked grin that melted something inside me. “This is for you," he said, all business as he pushed a white envelope across the desk towards me.

Ah, so he'd come to hand over the deeds to the house. A huge gilt mirror on the wall behind him reflected my disappointment back at me, and I had to school my expression before he read it.

But why come in person, when his legal team could easily have dealt with the paperwork
? Unless he'd come for an apology. I certainly owed him one, and the sooner I got it said, the sooner we could conclude this business, and I could go hide under a rock someplace for the rest of my reproductive life.

Chicken that I was, I went with apologising for the least personal of my affronts to him first.

"About Adriana," I said, glancing at my feet when the intensity of his gaze proved too much. "I'm sorry about the whole pepper-spray thing."

He waved me off. "Don't be. It was self-defence. Adriana got what was coming to her."

"I'd like to apologise, all the same. Is she here?" I asked, risking a look over my shoulder.

One dark brow quirked in amusement. "If she is, she's breaking the restraining order I had my lawyers put on her."

My jaw went slack, and my mouth took the shape of a silent 'Oh.' Quickly snapping it shut, I struggled to fill the awkward silence. "She told me, well, actually she led me to believe you two were married."

"Yeah, in her tiny, deluded mind," Jack scoffed. "We dated once, as in one single date, years ago. I knew right off it was a big mistake, but she begged me, swore it wouldn't interfere with our professional relationship, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Turns out you're not the first woman she's scared away." He laughed drily. "And here I was, thinking I had halitosis or body odour, or I just wasn't cut out to be boyfriend material."

My brows shot up. Who was this gorgeous man kidding? He wasn't boyfriend material, he was the stuff of any woman's wild, debauched fantasies. Well, all of my wild, debauched fantasies, at least. Too bad I'd blown it with him when I had the chance. Regardless of that, though, I still felt the need to explain myself.

"She mentioned the ring you wear, that's why I believed her. You'd told me you were married to the job. I thought you were being economical with the truth."

He twisted the gold band from his finger and handed it to me on his outstretched palm. "This ring? Take, it. Examine it."

"That's really not necessary," I said.

"Take it, please."

I tentatively plucked the ring from his hand. Engraved on the inside were the names Kathleen and Jonathan and a date.

"It belonged to my father. I found it, not long after he disappeared. I was playing in the mound of stones up on the hill and there it was, glinting at me in the sunshine. I never showed it to mother. I knew it would make her angry. Just the mention of his name and she'd be off on another month-long ritual cleansing of both me, and the house. So I kept it with me, for sentimental reasons, and occasionally, when it suited, I wore it on my left hand. I get propositioned a lot in my job, sometimes it's less complicated to let potential clients assume I'm unavailable. Adriana chose to read something more into that than there was."

God help my misguided foolishness, but there was a part of me that also relished the idea of Jack making himself unavailable to other women.

I handed back the ring and he slid it onto his finger. "Thank you," he said.

“You think she’ll be okay?” I asked.

“I expect so. I arranged a good severance package for her, and her psychiatric bills will be taken care of.”

“That’s really generous of you, considering.”

He shrugged. “Adriana and I go back a long way. She claims to have no memories at all beyond arriving in Ireland, and getting lost on the coast road whilst trying to find my hotel. After that, everything’s a blank, up until you Mace’d her.”

Wow. I wondered if she’d found her way here, to Bronach, and the Dearg Due had possessed her somehow. We might never know for sure.

“How about you?” I asked, recalling what the police had told me. “Do you remember?”

“Every detail,” he replied.

And wasn’t that a loaded comment?

"I'm sorry for not hearing you out that night. I ... I've been hurt in the past. Once bitten, and all that jazz. You Americans would probably say I've got trust issues."

"My blood is as Irish as yours," he replied.

"Except you don't plan on living here," I said, unable to disguise the note of regret that crept into my voice. "Are these the deeds?" I asked,
quickly sliding the envelope from the table. This was proving to be much harder than I’d thought. "I'll see they're in safe hands until the sale is finalised."

"There's not going to be any sale," he said.

"There isn't?" I frowned, perplexed.

"Nope," he shook his head and leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms behind his head. "I've decided to make Bronach my home."

"You have? But what about the ... what about
her
?" I asked. My voice dropped to a whisper, as though the mere mention of a name might bring the Dearg Due back from the dead.

"The way I see it, I've been hiding from this family curse all my life. I just didn’t know it. We know now how to keep
her
contained, and I've been doing some research." He motioned to the faded books around him. “You might find these enlightening,” he said, turning the dusty, leather-bound manuscripts in my direction. “There are Pembroke family histories here going back many hundreds of years. I’ve unearthed records of the marriage into the family and the subsequent untimely death of a certain young village girl. You might want to take a look at her name.”

He directed me to a place half-way down one of the pages. The paper was yellowed and cracking with age, the handwritten words archaic, but very beautiful. I underlined the name with my finger as I read it aloud. “Áine d’Arcy.” I looked up at him in disbelief. “She was a Darcy?” It had been my maternal grandfather’s surname, and I’d been named for him. I’d known the family ties to the village went way back, but I’d never in a million years imagined I might share some genetic link with the creature that had tried to kill Jack and my brother. Could that have explained Adriana’s reaction to me in the pub? John-Joe’s death? The Dearg-Due leaving me al
one, while she targeted the men? Answers to questions I’d been pondering for weeks seemed to be slotting into place, while at the same time the events of that night grew more mysterious than ever.

“Hardly a coincidence,” Jack said. "All of this seems predestined, wouldn't you say? I think this is where I'm supposed to be. I believe you and I were fated to meet, Darcy McShane. This is my ancestral family home, after all. If I'm not here to see the cairn remains intact, then it's only a matter of time before this tragedy repeats itself. I won’t have any more deaths on my conscience. I believed my mother hated me, when, all along, she was only trying to protect me. She sacrificed everything she had trying to keep me safe. Now that she’s gone, I owe it to her memory to stick around.”

Oh, so that explained why he was sticking around. Guilt and a sense of family responsibility. I knew all about those. But ... "If you're not selling, then why am I here? And what’s this?" I asked, clutching the envelope.

"I wanted to apologise," he said.

I gaped at him, incredulous. "You? I'm the one who owes you the apology."

"Call it a peace offering, then. Open it," he said.

I peeled back the sticky fold of the envelope and drew out a single sheet of paper. It bore the letterhead of a private clinic, Jack Pembroke's name along with some personal details, and two columns, one listing a long slew of diseases they only taught you about in sex-ed classes to scare you off doing the act, the other that was an equally long line of negative results. "I don't understand,” I said, growing more flustered by the moment. “What’s this about?"

"You expressed your concern that I might have transmitted a disease to you when we were together. I wanted to reassure you that you have nothing at all to worry about on that front."

I felt the flush spread from my neck all the way up to my hairline and down to the tips of my toes. "I ... Oh God, I swear that was just something I said in the heat of the moment. I didn't actually mean ... Oh my God. I'm so sorry." I let the paper fall onto the table and covered my face in my hands, but with my whole body burning in shame, it was pretty useless.

"There was something else you pulled me up on that night," he said.

There was? What else had I said? My brain rattled through a rapid rewind of the night, before the Dearg Due had shown up and things had gone ballistic.

"I was hoping you might give me the opportunity to prove you wrong about that too."

Oh Jesus. I remembered now, I'd called him a bad lay.

All I could do was laugh. It was that or break down in a blubbering mess.

"You find it funny?" he asked. He placed a hand over his heart, as though my laughter had mortally wounded him.

"No, of course not. Well, actually, yes. It is funny, it's downright ridiculous. You and me together, that night? It couldn't have been better. You must know I only said what I did because I was trying to save face."

"Couldn't have been better, huh?" His grin was wickedly smug. I could see his confidence growing in the squirming shadow of my admission. "I do love a challenge," he said. He sucked on his lower lip and raked me with a covetous, head-to-toe gaze that heated every inch of my skin.

Not knowing where to look, I picked up the sheet of test results and waved it in his face.

"You know, most men go with the standard flowers or chocolates, maybe buy a girl a drink. You've certainly got a unique approach going here, Jack Pembroke. Not sure it'll work on just any woman."

"I don't want just any woman, Darcy McShane. I told you. I want you, and I'm prepared to do whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes?"

"Umhmm. So, is that a yes?"

I remembered my promise to myself, to grab life by the horns.

"Yes," I said. "That's a very definite yes." I couldn’t hold back the stupid grin tugging at my lips. "You're really staying?" I asked, scared to believe.

"I'm really staying," he said. He rose fluidly from the chair and walked around the desk until he was standing at my back.

Resting his hands on my shoulders, he smiled at me through the mirror, the kind of secretive smile that conjures up all manner of mischievous thoughts.

“May I?” he asked. He hooked his fingers behind the lapels of my short trench coat and drew it back off my shoulders, like a true gentleman would do for his date at a fancy restaurant. But the hot growl of his breath and the graze of stubble behind my ear told me Jack Pembroke had no intention of playing the gentleman with me.

He swept my hair over one shoulder, his fingertips raising goose bumps on my sensitive skin as he slid the zipper of my dress all the way down to the small of my back, and just as the dress gave way to his deft hands, I too found myself surrendering, fluid to his touch. The smallest push was all it took to send the silky fabric shimmying down my body to the floor, and all my inhibitions went with it.

Instinct told me to be still, to let this predatorial man take his own sweet time unwrapping me like a gift. To give is to receive. Something told me giving him control was going to make me freer than I’d ever been.

Looking at my own half-naked body, bathed in candlelight, I found a new appreciation for Jack’s subtle lighting choice. I should have felt self-conscious, staring at my own reflection, wearing nothing but my underwear and heels, but the noise he made in the back of his throat, a mix of pure male appreciation and raw arousal, empowered me in ways no designer clothing ever could.

“Don’t move a muscle,” he drawled, in that sexy American accent.

As if I could. I was deer-in-the-headlights frozen to the spot, vibrating with the blind anticipation of his next move.