Running Back Read online

  “Sorry about Mike.” Rachael frowned. “He’s usually a lot more—charming—than he was tonight.”

  I let out a scoff. “Charming? Him? Yeah, sure.”

  Rachael looked at me consideringly.

  “I bet that’s just his agent talking.” The wine felt warm and fuzzy, like a blanket draped over my sensibility. “A selling point. Each player needs a distinctive trait, something that will make them stand out. Mem’rable. Memorable.”

  “Interesting. What’s Ryan’s?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “That he’s pretty.”

  Rachael laughed until she had to sit down. “That’s true. But don’t tell him. He’s vain enough as is.”

  Across the room, Keith got up, leaving the seat next to Mike open. I eyed it.

  Rachael nudged me. “Go on.”

  Okay. Yes. If he was going to Dundoran—and I was going to Dundoran—well, I’d done my research, and there was only one inn in the village’s vicinity. Better go over there and make nice instead of spending the next two weeks freaking out over what would happen if—when—we ran into each other across the pond.

  When I plunked down beside him, his eyes immediately rose to mine.

  I folded my hands in my lap and looked up at him, trying to think of the exact way to break the news.

  He took one look at me and groaned. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  Okay, that was totally fine too. I mimed zipping my lips and throwing away the key, with wide, exaggerated gestures and an unwavering gaze.

  His brown eyes glinted with what might have been humor. “Good.”

  I nodded and leaned back against the couch. My forehead wrinkled and a small, sad frown pulled at my mouth.

  “What?”

  I leaned closer, as though reluctant to admit a tragic truth. “You’re not as charming as everyone says you are.”

  He scowled at me and took a long pull of his drink. “I’m charming when I want to be.”

  I laughed.

  He took another sip and thunked his drink down. And then, just like during dinner, everything about his demeanor changed. He propping his elbow on the couch back, he grinned down at me. “So do you do this to all your landowners? Chase them down and beg them to change their minds? Or am I special?”

  “Kilkarten’s special.”

  “Huh.” He leaned back, but kept his gaze trained on my face. Butterflies started fluttering around my ribcage. “You know, I don’t think that’s it.”

  I tilted my head and he leaned close to my ear, close enough that I could feel his breath. “Admit it. You’re just here because you like me.”

  “What?” I sat straight up.

  He laughed. “What’s that look of alarm? Struck too close to home?”

  I scowled at him. “I don’t like you.”

  “You sure of that? Or you have a boyfriend?”

  I wanted to lie and say yes, but the word wouldn’t come, and his smile broadened. But he released me from his gaze right before I could no longer breathe. “Don’t tell Rachael. She’d never admit it, but she likes to matchmake. See that girl over there?”

  I followed his nod, feeling the slightest tinge of pink dusting my cheeks. “Yeah.”

  “That’s Olivia Perez. Rachael met her at a farmer’s market. Or something. She’s been trying to set her up with Dylan for two weeks. Only,” he said, lowering his voice, “Rachael doesn’t know that Dylan’s been lusting after her friend Eva for months. Which he’ll never admit, ’cause she’s crazy about her boyfriend.”

  My eyes skipped to all the involved players, feeling like I was watching a play.

  “Rach’s real project is Abe. Abe seems like he’d be easy to set up—he’s friendly, eager to make Rachael happy, good guy all around, but he never stays interested in anyone too long.”

  “Maybe he’s secretly in love with Rachael.”

  He smiled at me. His gaze was direct and disarming, and my whole body flushed. “You know, I thought that too, but it’s much more of a sibling thing. No, I think there’s some girl from his past—which is funny, because Abe’s the least burdened person I’ve ever met.”

  I studied Abe. He gestured wildly in the air as he told some story, and it made me laugh.

  “You have a pretty laugh.”

  My eyes flew to Mike’s. I could feel my heart in my chest, in my head, a giant beat that thrummed all through my body. Mike reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, his hand lingering on my jaw line. Heat pooled in my skin beneath his fingers and my breaths shortened. His thumb stroked the sensitive spot behind my ear. “Pretty eyes too. Like...like storm clouds.”

  I jerked away from him, thrown out of the mad spell. “Don’t talk about my eyes.”

  I’d stunned him. Even with my head floating somewhere above me body, I could tell that. People usually reveled in or laughed at cheesy lines about eyes. They didn’t get angry.

  He laughed it off. “All right. So what is it about Kilkarten? It has to be something more than just research.”

  How could I describe it? The green hills, the water, the sun spread across all of it... The draw of being somewhere else, somewhere beautiful and peaceful and not here, not with my parents and their vicious, vitriolic hatred.

  I turned my glass in my hands. “Have you heard of the Iverni? And Ptolemy?”

  He shook his head.

  “Ptolemy was a second century Alexandrian who wrote about Ireland. Ivernis was one of the few cities he named, and the whole island used to be called after the people who lived there. Iouerníā—The Fertile Land. Pytheas, a Greek explorer, visited even earlier and called it Ierne.” There were barely any sources about Ireland and the ancient Mediterranean, but they gave rise to a contentious debate about whether Ireland and Rome had contact and trade. If the site I’d located was from the turn of the millennia, so many answers could be buried there. “I’m positive that the city of Ivernis is under Kilkarten. And I need to prove it this summer, while funding still exists. My advisor, Jeremy, can’t get any more money—he’s been unsuccessful for too long, and now most of academia’s decided he’s on a wild goose chase. Half mad with obsession to find a lost city. He’s not, of course. But I’m afraid that this might be our last chance to find Ivernis.”

  Mike smiled slightly. “So you want to save your falsely ridiculed advisor. I definitely saw this miniseries on Netflix.”

  I glared. “Don’t make fun. It’s all real. I’ve done the research, and the way the land was shaped, two thousands ago, made it perfect for Ivernis. The sources Jeremy’s dug up, notes in the margins of illuminated manuscripts about geography and location—we’re right. We’ve found it.”

  “So it’s for fame and glory.”

  I shook my head. “It’s for discovery. For knowledge. What greater motivator is there?”

  He studied me. “Do you really believe that?”

  I nodded emphatically. “That harbor can tell us things about a period of history, about a people, that we barely know anything about. I could bring that era back to life. Life from death. If that’s not magic, what is?”

  He stared at me for a long, long moment. I had nothing left to say.

  He stood abruptly. “I have to go.”

  “Mike,” Rachael called out from across the room, and we both turned. “It’s getting late. Why don’t you get Natalie a cab?”

  Apparently that was finally too much. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  And then Ryan Carter was there, drying his hands on a dishtowel, looking weirdly domestic and also like he would demolish anyone who hurt Rachael.

  We took the elevator in silence. He walked out of the building ahead of me, and I had to hurry to catch up. I reached for his arm, hesitated, and then my hand fell away. Still, I couldn’t stop the w
ords. “Mike, if you sign the papers, I will do anything.”

  He slowed to a stop, and I stepped in front of him, beseeching him with my eyes and voice. He didn’t look away. “Please.”

  His half-lidded gaze made me swallow. My toes curled in my boots while heat curled in my stomach. With his head tilted down like that, and standing so close, he took up my entire view. I could feel each breath he took, feel the heat in the tightly corded arm under my fingers.

  And then he drew back. “Don’t ever promise anything.” He shook his head.

  My shoulders tightened and I nodded, and then walked on. But everything moved too fast—the world, the lights—and I tripped and the sidewalk flew up toward my face.

  Fingers wrapped around my arm and hauled me upright and against a warm, broad chest. “You’re drunk.”

  Unable to deny it, I studied the way his head remained in focus while the world behind him danced. “Alcohol turns reality into avant-guard art.”

  “Yes, and bad eyesight turns the world into an Impressionist painting,” he said. “Now what am I supposed to do with you?”

  “You’re right!” I examined his eyes for a telltale ring of blue around his pupils. “Do you wear contacts?”

  Then the warmth of his eyes distracted me, the way they weren’t really brown, but had depths that shone in the light. You couldn’t tell how long and curled his lashes were from far away, but this close I could see their bright shimmer in the lamplight. My throat worked and my tongue darted out to wet my lips.

  He set me back. “Let’s get you a cab.”

  “A cab?” My eyes widened to saucers, and I shook my head decisively. “I don’t believe in cabs. They’re for parents and rich people.”

  “And drunks. Come on.”

  I nodded, and then watched as he started away. I tilted my head back. In Ecuador, you could see the stars almost every night, scattered across the domed sky, but here everything was just a grayed out blackish-blur. I heard a sigh and found Mike back before me. He took my hand and tugged, so I obediently followed him. “Natalie. Look at me. Where do you live?”

  I laughed. Who knew? In my parents’ house. At Cam’s. In the field. At Kilkarten. I wanted to live at Kilkarten. “Who cares?”

  “I’m not taking you to my place,” he warned.

  I barely managed a wave of scorn. “Like I’d want you to. No, I will sleep on the streets! I will wander the knolls of Central Park, beneath the stony stone-eyed poets—”

  “And pickpockets? Or murderers?” He stretched one hand behind my back and lifted me up. Then we were moving, and then we were in a taxi.

  The city blurred past in a streak of lights and colors. I think he tried to take my purse at one point but I yanked it back and buried it under me because only thieves took purses. The cab turned and here came Lincoln Center, bright and open, banners falling down the side of high white walls. People walked about in the carefully chic and cultured uniform of New York. We sped through the restaurants of Hell’s Kitchen, then that knot of congestion from Times Square to Penn Station. Out here on Tenth Ave, everything looked more industrial and rundown, and you got hints of the Javits center off to the right, the giant convention center that looked toward Jersey. Horses clomped along beside us, pulling their elaborate carts as they headed home for the night. I fell asleep watching a feather bob above a Clydesdale’s head.

  I woke when the cab drew to a stop. When I opened my eyes, Mike’s face blurred above me, his hair shining even in the dim light. “You have pretty hair.” I reached up and ran my fingers through a curl. “Like fire.”

  He blinked. “Thanks.”

  My eyes closed again. “My mother has beautiful hair. She’s beautiful. Like a doll. I was always a bad doll.”

  He didn’t answer, and so I peeled open a lid to see him. He frowned at me, a deep furrow etched along his brow.

  My gaze dropped and I realized he was ransacking my purse. “What are you doing?”

  The furrow vanished as he laughed. He held up his hands. “Relax. I was just finding your license so I could give the driver your address.”

  “Oh. Right.” I leaned forward and told the driver myself.

  Mike handed my purse back and put his hand on his door. “Well, then. See you.”

  I caught his free hand and he stilled. “Have you ever been to Ireland?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.” I sighed. “And I know it’s not magic.” I turned my head so I could see into his warm brown eyes. “I’m not crazy. Not Ireland or Ecuador or Greece. But I can pretend they are, see? At least for the weeks leading up and the first weeks there and then I can always go somewhere else, and who’s to know it wasn’t magic...”

  Empathy flickered in his eyes. “I think you should go home now. He disentangled from my grip. “Goodnight, Natalie.”

  And he was gone.

  Chapter Five

  Two weeks later, I descended into Shannon International Airport in the pale morning light. I relaxed as soon as we left the plane, as soon as the flood of Americans dispersed and the accents started to be tinged with what was, stateside, referred to as an Irish brogue. I was finally in Ireland.

  Linguistically—the fourth branch of American anthropology, as delineated by Franz Boas who Had Opinions—Ireland was all torn up. There was no one Irish English accent, no “brogue” stretching from one end of the island to the other. In Ulster, they spoke similarly to the Scots, while suburban Dublin could sound almost American, and Dublin working class was non-rhotic, dropping their “r” just like in Boston. And the accent of County Cork, where we were heading, was supposed to be unusually musical.

  In any case, Cosmo just rated Irish the hottest accent for the third year in a row.

  I grabbed my bag and coffee and a bus south. The driver loaded my luggage into storage and smiled broadly. “Looking for your roots?”

  I didn’t mind playing tourist when I was a tourist. I’d tramped around the Vatican in sneakers, and carried my camera in one hand and map in the other as I walked through Prague. But if I worked or lived somewhere, I wanted to blend in enough that people stopped me for directions. “No. I’m here to—study.”

  The driver didn’t pause in throwing my luggage into the storage. “That so?”

  “I guess.”

  The ride to Dundoran was long and meandering but I didn’t mind, since the landscape absorbed my attention. Ireland was green; green like Oz, like emeralds and soda bottles and moss. A dozen shades of green, and to my eyes, parched by the yellow straw grasses of the Andes and the cement towers of New York, it was bliss. I leaned my forehead against the window, charting the rolling fields dotted with sheep. Sheep. I loved sheep.

  I loved llamas more, but you couldn’t have everything.

  The bus carried me into Cork which, much like my home, was both a city and a province. Ten thousand years ago, glaciers covered Ireland and much of northwestern Europe. When they retreated, they deposited rich soils all over Cork, making the land perfect for farming. Forests of elm and birch, hazel and alder, used to blanket the ridges and valleys of the land, but that had been cleared and replaced by bogs and peatland. Three large rivers wound through the country, forming fens and marshes. Ragged bays and peninsulas created the wild coastline: Beara, Sheep’s Head, Mizen’s Head.

  I took another bus from Cork to the coastal village of Dundoran. The inn was located in the Dundoran civil parish, a mile and a half from the village and ten miles from the farm Kilkarten, well positioned for hill walking tourists and sprawling views of fields and sea. A peaked olive green roof rose over warm sandstone walls. Tall dormer alcoves curved out on either side of the main door, topped by stone balconies and more rounded windows. Baskets of flowers spilled out around the entrance, pink daises and white carnations and red tulips. Tall bright bushes backed the house, whil
e pines cast shade over the parking lot.

  The inn was the only one in the vicinity, since Dundoran wasn’t precisely a tourist location. If I’d been hiring out-of-town workers for the season, I might have tried to find a house to rent and set it up dormitory style, or set up camp near the land we were digging. But considering I’d planned to hire locals, they could have driven or taken the bus themselves, and the rates here were reasonable enough that I’d booked rooms for Jeremy and me, along with the two Irish archaeologists we’d planned to work with.

  Now it was no longer relevant. I’d do what research I could, but after I’d walked over the public land and looked at the local records, I might go to Dublin and finish out the summer near Jeremy, though he’d also talked about coming down here to look at the land and local records, depending on whether I thought it worthwhile.

  Inside the inn, warm sunlight slid across wooden floorboards. Across the room, a woman smiled at me from behind the counter. She reminded me of a sparrow—small and gray and fast. “Hello there, dear. You must be Natalie.”

  I smiled back and rolled my suitcase over until I stood right before her. “That’s me. Are you Eileen?”

  “That’s me. We’re all so excited about the dig.”

  “Oh.” Taken aback, I struggled for words. “Um, well, uh, it might be delayed.”

  She tilted her head. “Why?”

  “There’s some problems with—the land. Land rights. It’s a thing.”

  If she noticed my incompetence at speaking, she had too much kindness to raise a brow. “But Patrick agreed to it.”

  I bobbed my head. “That’s true. But now that he’s passed, there are some—complications.”

  “Hmm.” Eileen sounded like a bird whirling. “I’m sure that can be cleared right up by talking to the new O’Connors. They’re staying here, you know.”

  Oh, how I knew. “Is that so?”

  Wait. They? “Are there multiple O’Connors?”

  Eileen smiled as she handed my key card over. “Oh, yes. Mrs. O’Connor and her three children.” She leaned forward. “You should speak to the son. He’s a tall drink of water.”