Running Back nyl-2 Page 7

  “She won’t have loans. I’m paying.”

  “Maybe she wants to be fiscally responsible.”

  He shot me a look. “Yeah, that sounds like Anna.”

  “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 coup d’etat. “I should go.”

  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 am going.”

  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 hadn’t talked to his family about the excavation. “It’s complicated.” I shook the thoughts from my head and smiled at Anna. “So, how about you? You’re here to...” Oops. I’d just walked into depressing territory. “Because of your uncle?”

  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.

  “Did you have plans this summer?”

  She
snorted. “Obviously. I was going to work in Derek’s sister’s tattoo parlor.” She swung her foot impatiently. “But then they made me come here, so he broke up with me.”

  I looked at her. “Because you weren’t going to work at his sister’s tattoo parlor.”

  She shrugged. Her foot kept swinging. “Well. And I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

  Shocking.

  “I mean, I was going to.” She scowled. “Who wants to be a fucking virgin their senior year of high school?”

  Fucking virgin was my new favorite phrase.

  “Now he’s dating Kaitlyn Taylor.”

  “On the other hand, Kaitlyn Taylor is stuck back home, and you get to explore all of Ireland.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  I leaned my head back, so I could admire the morning sky, and lowered my voice confidentially. “So my best friend and I came up with a plan before I came here. You want in on it?”

  She seemed aware that she was too cool for plans, but still couldn’t resist asking, “What is it?”

  “Operation: Irish Boyfriend.”

  She threw a startled glance at me. “Wait, you want an Irish boyfriend? But what about—” She stopped abruptly.

  My mouth twitched. “There’s nothing going on between me and your brother.”

  “Why not?” She sounded almost defensive.

  I jumped up from the bench. “I’m hungry. Let’s get some breakfast.”

  And I headed back inside before Anna could press the issue.

  The rest of the O’Connors joined us not much later, and when the three women moved to go to Cork for the day, Mike excused himself. “Natalie and I are going to head into the village.”

  Kate agreed with such alacrity I suspected she still hoped Mike would be introducing me as his girlfriend shortly. Anna shot me a pointed look.

  I turned to Mike after they’d left. “I feel like your entire family has some sort of agenda.”

  “They usually do.” He stood and I followed. “Come on, let’s ask Eileen how to get into Dundoran.”

  Chapter Seven

  The coastal path from the inn to Dundoran Village curved along the shoreline. It rose and fell through the hills, but never touched the sand. Instead, we walked on flattened grass, while a haphazard stone wall herded us south. Pale green moss frosted the stones, and purple thistles fringed the bottom. Beyond the wall, wide green swaths rolled up into hills and sky, only interrupted by bushy trees and hedgerows.

  I let out a deep sigh.

  “You okay?”

  I waved my arm expansively. “I’m just happy. It’s so beautiful. All these greens—all the colors.” The land rose slightly and the path followed it upward, giving us a splendid view of the heather covered green that sloped down to the shore. The water lapped gentle against the pale yellow strip of sand.

  Mike stared at me. “You cannot get this turned on by nature.”

  I tossed a grin back at him. “Why not? What else is this amazing?” I closed my eyes and inhaled a warm, fresh breeze, grass and blooming flowers, all underlain by the sea. “In Ecuador, you can smell the eucalypti. It’s sickly sweet. Heady. The bark peels off like paper, and it’s everywhere—the Spanish introduced the trees as a source of cheap firewood, and then it spread all over. I dreamed of those trees when I left.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  I opened my eyes. “Why? Well, the dig was up.”

  “Hmm.” There was something in that noise, like I’d revealed a facet of myself I hadn’t intended to. “And what are you going to dream of here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the sea. Salt and earth and wind.” I laughed. “Am I getting too fantastical?”

  He studied me. I was learning that when Michael O’Connor fixed his attention on me, I felt like we were the only two people in the world. Out here in this rugged landscape, we could have been. “So you’ve lived in New York and Ecuador and now you’re here. You don’t put down roots, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I put down enough.”

  He lifted a challenging brow. “But you travel more than most people, don’t you?”

  I’d always been proud of my travel spiel before, but now I wondered if he had a point. “I spent a year abroad in London. Did my field school in Greece summer after my sophomore year and then went back there the next season. Worked in the Great Plains for the summer after that. Did some work on Inka fortresses for one of my profs last year. My degree’s archaeology, so not place specific, though I’ll just be focusing on Ireland for my thesis.”

  We kept walking, and he offered me a hand as we jumped over some mud. “Don’t you ever want to stay put?”

  The idea of remaining in one place for a marked period of time gave rise to a fluttering anxiety. I pulled my hand out of his warm one as we walked on. Staying put seemed synonymous with being weighed down. Trapped. Suffocated. “No. That idea terrifies me.”

  “What’s the longest you’ve ever spent in one place?”

  I smiled grimly, picturing the silent, echoing halls of my parents’ house. “Eighteen years.”

  “And since then?”

  I shrugged. “Nine months, tops? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere longer than that.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged, staring ahead. The land turned back in on itself, the coast curving and forming small coves. Yellow gorse carpeted the fields to the left. A hedgerow wound closer, enough that I could see the fuchsia flowers tangled in the green. “I don’t know. I just get such wanderlust, and if I can’t go I feel empty and constrained and whenever I move I feel like I can breathe easier. Don’t you feel...exhilarated when you make the perfect drive, and you didn’t think you were going to but you do, and everything is just perfect for a moment?”

  I glanced sideways to see if he thought that was silly and mad and impractical, like most people did, but a small, crooked smile lifted the corner of Mike’s mouth. He stopped walking and regarded me with those warm brown eyes. “Yeah.”

  I took a step closer to him. I could smell his aftershave, a scent already becoming familiar to me. “That’s how I feel when I’m in a new place. When I excavate a new site.” I hesitated. “That’s how I feel about Ivernis.”

  His throat and jaw worked, his brows tensing, but he didn’t look away. “Why can’t you just go back to Ecuador? Why does it have to be here?”

  I smiled a little wistfully. “Don’t get me wrong. The Inka were badass. I mean, they conquered most of South America. They had an advanced road system and they drafted soldiers intelligently and they had the most gorgeous ashlar masonry you’ve ever seen.

  “But it’s not the same. I know that’s silly, and part of it is just me...anthropomorphizing the site, but it doesn’t get to me the same way Ivernis does. It doesn’t sing. Sure, I would be happy working there—I was happy, it was amazing—but Ivernis— This is the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life.”

  “I understand that.”

  I glanced over at him. Most people I knew cared about what they were studying, maybe even loved it to a degree, love mixed with irritated and aggravation—but they didn’t obsess. But Mike O’Connor... “You do, don’t you?” I looked out over the endless fields. “What would you do, if you couldn’t play football? How would you feel? Like a musician with broken fingers? Like a runner who’s lost her legs?”

  He pressed his lips together. “You’re not being fair.”

  I sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  We were silent until the hill crested and the land fell away before us. To the west, the water stretched out, a flat blue under bright sky, while a mile in the distance a tiny village lay nestled between two hills, a patchwork of pastel houses with slate-gray roofs. Beyond it, the hills climbed again, brushed with green grasses and black stone dotted with purple.

  Before the village, midway down the hill, a church rose up, the Gothic steeple perfectly piercing the sky. Moss covered the roof of an ancillary building. It looked so surreally perfect that my heart ache
d and my feet stopped.

  Mike must have been paying attention, because he turned impatiently. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  He grinned. “Kind of like the fields were beautiful? You’d probably find something good to say about the subway.”

  I made a face at him. “And you’d probably say Rome is just a pile of rocks.”

  He laughed. “I’m not that bad.”

  We reached the church. Cypress trees stood before it, their branches curved tightly up toward the sky like they had been cultivated, while apple trees formed looser circles, blue peeking in between the leaves. Everything felt still and quiet as we curved around the old building. A tidy graveyard spread down the hill, while manicured grasses framed plots and placards.

  “Oh, look.” At the back of the cemetery, by swooping, draping trees, a Celtic cross stood alone. I cut through the graves, fixed on the marker. Beneath the dark green moss, the stone was worn and dark, smoothed by age and pitted by weather.

  “Natalie, I don’t think—”

  I crouched down and tried to make out the year. 1158. I reached out and then hesitated, my fingertips centimeters from the stone. The instruction not to touch art hovered between me and the cross.

  But with living history, maybe it was meant to be part of our world. My fingers landed on the stone, cold even after an afternoon soaking up the sun. I could feel the aerated bubbles of rock as I brushed my fingers over the surface. “Look at this. Eight hundred years old. Eight hundred years old. And just sitting in a village graveyard, of no note, no record, just...here.” I shook my head. “It’s amazing.”

  My fingers traced the carvings, the Celtic knots, etchings that had been chipped out eight centuries before I was born. This was the direct work of some nameless artisan. That’s what always got me. How very close I was with this unknown person. How very far away.

  So many people, lost to obscurity. So many stories I could bring back.

  It took me a while to notice the silence. I got lost easily, tangled in thoughts and time and other worlds. Usually someone called my name or touched my shoulder to get my attention, but this time Mike’s silence outgrew my own, and I turned to see him standing across the small graveyard, silent as the stone saint behind him.