You'll Always Have Tara

Different and bloody vexatious. Apparently, the English don’t do fried chicken. I missed Cane’s so much yesterday, I bought a carton of Ultimate Frozen Chicken Nuggets from Tesco, but I couldn’t make Aunt Pattycake’s stove work. It’s a cast iron antique that runs on oil. Oil! I swear Mrs. Patmore used the same stove on Downton Abbey. Good luck in Ireland. I hope things are the way you remember them and without vexations.

* * *

The last time I saw Rhys Burroughes he was a painfully shy boy who hid behind his thick thatch of hair, his tortoiseshell spectacles, and his library books to avoid having to interact with others—especially other children. He was Harry Potter, but with a wonky eye and far less confidence.

Winter Hastings phoned a few days before my departure to let me know Rhys rearranged his schedule so he could pick me up at the airport and drive us both to Tásúildun Castle, so I am looking for that awkward, uncertain little boy as I stride through the Dublin International Airport, pulling my suitcase behind me, feeling badass in my black denim leggings and thigh-high boots.

I’m not going to lie, y’all. I decided to wear my thigh-high boots and thigh-hugging leggings because they make me feel empowered, and I want Aidan Gallagher and Rhys Sinjin Burroughes to know who they need to bow down to if they hope to win the right to be king of the castle. I don’t know why my aunt put such an unusual proviso in her will, but I do know I need to be shrewd in how I proceed because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life battling for control of my aunt’s home.

The terms of my aunt’s will were clear: whoever I choose to be my co-beneficiary will share the ownership and maintenance of the castle and grounds. That means Rhys (or Aidan) could be knocking around the castle when I am in my Longhorn shorts and Keep Austin Weird tee, binging on Goo Goo Clusters, and Netflix series. It also means Rhys (or Aidan) might eventually marry and then bring his wife and children to the castle, perhaps to live. I imagine a brood of Bur-rougheses (or Gallaghers) lurking around the castle, peering at me over their thick glasses, and . . .

Sweet baby Jesus and all the cherubs in Heaven!

I stop walking. A man is standing near the exit doors staring at me in a mighty familiar way, a hand pressed to his chest, a grin lifting the corners of his mouth. A man as tall, dark, and handsome as Rhett Butler. He’s wearing a dark, expensively tailored suit that makes him look as if he just stepped out of the pages of a Dolce and Gabbana catalog.

If this is the way they grow them here in Ireland, take my passport, and file my application for citizenship because I’m staying.

I start walking again, slower, because I know any second now Mister Ireland is going to realize he is amping up the Colgate smile and feigning a swoon for the wrong girl.

“Tara!”

I stop and look around for Mister Ireland’s lucky girl—who must also be named Tara—but there’s only an elderly couple trailing behind me and an Italian soccer team crashed out on some gray plastic chairs nearby.

“Tara Maxwell!” Mister Ireland closes the distance between us in two long-legged strides. “You’re here.”

“Rhys?”

He leans down and kisses the air near my cheek in a very European greeting and I catch a whiff of his intoxicating cologne. Strong, peppery, and unapologetically masculine. I close my eyes and inhale. Cardamom. Bergamot. For a delicious moment, I am transported to a coastal village in Calabria, the sun hot on my skin, the scent of ripe lemons teasing my nose. When I open my eyes, he is staring at me with a grin on his handsome face.

“You smell good,” I say, without thinking.

“Thank you.” He chuckles. “You’re beautiful.”

My cheeks flush with heat.

“I am?”

He nods and a hank of his thick, dark, wavy hair falls onto his forehead. Sweet Baby Jesus in Heaven! It really is Rhys Burroughes. Little old lazy-eyed Rhys.

“You are so beautiful I thought I was having a heart attack when I first saw you walking toward me.” He reaches around me and grabs my suitcase, lifting it as if it doesn’t contain Aer Lingus’ weight limit in clothes. “Come on. My car is just outside.”

I reach into my purse and pull out my sunglasses, sliding them onto my face even though a downy blanket of fog is hanging low in the sky and blocking the sunlight. I slide my sunglasses on my face so I can check Rhys out, and you know what?

Rhys Burroughes is gorgeous, y’all! Just plumb gorgeous. He’s taller than the average man, with the trim, toned body of an athlete. An image of Rhys seated in a long, narrow shell, his arm muscles rippling as he pulls an oar through the Thames flickers in my brain. Who would have thought little old Rhys Burroughes would grow up to be so blazing hot? At least . . . I think this is Rhys.

“You are Rhys Burroughes?”

He stops walking and sets my suitcase down. I stop walking. He directs the full force of his gray-eyed gaze on me and my heart trembles like a crape myrtle blossom in the breeze.

“Forgive me. It has been awhile,” he says, in his proper, posh British accent, holding out his hand. “Rhys Sinjin Burroughes, at your service, but my friends call me Sin.”

Sin. I nearly snort. Sure as Beulah’s biscuits go with peach jam, you are sin in an expensive suit. Sin tumbled out of heaven so fast you lost your wings on the way down. Sin stepped out of my darkest dreams and into this watery, grayish Dublin light . . .

I shake his hand.

“It’s nice to see you again, after all these years.”

“It’s nice to see you, Tara.” He grins and my heart trembles again. “I only wish the reunion had been prompted by less mournful circumstances.”

“Me too.”

He lifts my suitcase and we continue walking to the carpark. Sin leads me to a stylish BMW coupe, opening the passenger door before stowing my suitcase in the trunk.

“Winter said you drove from London and caught an earlier ferry just so you could meet me at the airport,” I say, climbing into his car and smiling up at him. “Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure, Tara.”

For a few seconds, the whine of airplane engines, the squeal of car tires on the cement parking garage floor fades away as we stare at each other. Funny. I don’t remember him having such pretty eyes, fringed by the thickest lashes I have seen without use of fiber mascara or falsies. He bends down and leans into the car. Sweet Lawd! He’s going to kiss me. He grabs the seatbelt, pulls until the belt is slack, and hands me the clip.

“Buckle up,” he says, grinning. “I like to go fast.”

Remember what I said earlier? About not wanting to spend the rest of my life battling for control of my aunt’s home? Scratch that. I will gladly spend the rest of my life living with Sin.

* * *

A couple of hours later Sin and I (There now, doesn’t that sound nice? Sin and I?) are speeding down a narrow two-lane road, bordered by impenetrable hedges. We stopped for lunch at a little pub in Killashandra, a charming village located near the banks of Lough Oughter, warming ourselves by the small potbellied stove and eating Irish stew with soda bread.

Sin is really quite sweet, as sweet as he was when he was a bespectacled boy with his nose stuck in a book. Sweet, but with enough spice to make him intriguing. He reminds me of the Salted Chocolate Diablo Cookies I make each Halloween, soft chocolate cookies with crunchy edges that tingle your lips with the hint of cinnamon, ginger, and cayenne.

He’s a charming driving companion, too, deftly maneuvering his BMW and the conversation.

“What made you decide to go to university in Texas?”

“I wanted to get more out of my college experience than a bachelor’s degree and blurry memories of nights spent playing beer pong.” I study Sin’s strong profile and wonder if he is a stereotypical British man: uneasy with emotional conversations. Emotions, full-stop. “I felt pinched by the poverty of my situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“The neighborhood where I grew up is filled with the same, predictable types of people: old, white, conservative Christians. I felt trapped in a claustrophobic social circle. I wanted to move beyond my narrow sphere, broaden my horizons. I wanted to meet people who didn’t spend every Friday night drinking mint julips at the Gin Joint, Saturdays at the Farmer’s Market on Marion Square and the pier at Folly Beach, and Sundays eating after-church brunch at High Cotton.”

I don’t tell Sin that I was tired of being the odd tomboy out in a town full of flounce-wearing Southern belles or that I was plumb tuckered out from trying to compete for attention with my sisters. Manderley might be a jet-setter—winging her way from Hollywood to Tokyo—but she is a Southern belle clear down to her marrow, all pleasing and proper. With her grace and gorgeousness, Emma Lee puts the deb in debutante. I swear she came out of our momma wearing an all-white ball gown and elbow-high satin gloves.

Sin glances over at me, his eyebrow raised in question. “So if you didn’t want mint julips and farmer’s markets, what did you want?”

I cast my mind back to those emotionally charged days before I plucked up the courage to submit my application to colleges located north of the Mason-Dixon Line and west of the Big Muddy. It’s not hard to do. That lost and searching little girl is still alive (and kickin’ it in new grown-up thigh-high boots).

“I wanted to do things that would shock any well-bred Southerner, like dance with someone outside my social circle, someone scandalous, and go to subversive political meetings, and think for myself, and speak my feelings out loud, without apology.” I look down at my hands, folded in my lap. “I wanted to do just about everything Miss Belle told me not to do.”

“Miss Belle?”

I groan. “Miss Belle Whatling. She taught Comportment and Etiquette at Rutledge Hall Academy, the private school my daddy made us attend.”

He laughs, warm and deep.

“What were Miss Belle’s prohibitions?”

“Lawd! It would be easier and more expedient if I told you what Miss Belle permitted.” I slide my sunglasses down to the end of my nose and glare at him, speaking in a slow, thick Southern accent, my words dripping off my tongue like molasses off the end of a spoon. “Hell yawns before you, Miss Maxwell, as it yawns before all who are unwilling to follow the basic commandments of etiquette. Hush now. I don’t want to hear your excuse for forgetting to place your napkin to the right of your plate before standing up from the table, nor do I want to hear your reason for laughing like a deranged savannah animal. Hyenas cackle. Young ladies do not. You are capable of being gracious and charming, clever and elegant. You’re from a respectable Southern family. It’s in your genetics.”

He whistles and I suddenly hear myself as if through his urbane British ears, gauche American girl whining because she’s expected to keep her elbows off the dinner table and make pleasant small talk with strangers.

“I had a Miss Belle.”

I look over at Sin.

“You did?”

He nods.

“Only mine was called Mister Greeves.” He sucks his cheeks in and lifts his chin high in the air, speaking in a rumbling voice. “An efficacious young gentleman endeavors to master the balance between cerebral and social pursuits. Get out of the library and onto the playing field, Master Burroughes. It’s your only hope for developing true grit. For true grit is a prerequisite for success.”

“Yikes! Your Mister Greeves sounds as miserable as my Miss Belle.”

“He was a right proper tosser,” Sin says, lowering his chin. “But, he wasn’t entirely off the mark. His prodding and condescension propelled me to toughen up.”

“Did you need toughening up?”

He turns, his eyes wide with incredulity. “Are you having a laugh? Don’t you remember what happened when Aidan dared me to swim across the lough?”

I shake my head and feign the expression of the oblivious, all blank-eyed and slack-jawed. I remember what happened. Rhys—Sin—made it about one hundred yards before he started wheezing. Did I mention Rhys—Sin—had asthma back then and wore a rescue inhaler around his neck, secured by a bright blue lanyard? He would have drowned if Aidan hadn’t jumped in, pulled him back to shore, and thrust the inhaler between his blue lips.

“Why, no,” I say, lying to spare his pride. “I don’t believe I do.”

“Liar!” He laughs. “But thank you.”

We drive along, cozy in his luxury car and our ever-warming conviviality. Rhys is a brilliant conversationalist, peppering me with questions about my life back in Charleston and my aspirations for the future. I talk until my mouth is as dry as a day-old biscuit. I realize, with a start, I haven’t spoken a word about Grayson, haven’t even thought of him until just this second. Guilty heat flushes through my body. I stop talking and stare out the window.

We have turned onto a single lane rural road on our final leg to Tásúildun. Out my window, St. John’s Point Lighthouse looms at the end of a long, narrow peninsula and the North Atlantic stretches across the horizon like a swath of blue fabric, unfurled and undulating on the breeze. During the potato famine, millions of starving Irish immigrated to America, hoping, praying for easier lives. I wonder how many of those ships sailed past St. John’s Point and how many immigrants watched the looming lighthouse shrink in size until it resembled a small white dot on the waves? Their last view of home. I narrow my gaze, peering far in the distance, in the direction of my home. Charleston.

“You’re awfully quiet. Is something wrong?”

“I suppose I am feeling a little guilty.”

“Guilty? Why?”

“I have been talking for the last four hours, telling you every little thing about my life in Charleston, and I just now realized I didn’t mention my . . .”

My childhood sweetheart. Lifelong boyfriend. Almost fiancé. Ex-lover. What do I call Grayson Calhoun?

Sin looks over at me, his eyebrow raised in question.

“Your boyfriend, Grayson?”

“Yes! How’d you know?”

“I guessed.”

“No, I mean, how did you know about Grayson?”

He looks back at the road. “In my profession, not knowing things can kill a deal.”

What does that even mean? I am embarrassed to admit I don’t know what Sin does for a living. I don’t know much about him. Period. Everything I know about Rhys Sinjin Burroughes—the man—could have been gleaned from glancing at his picture in a Dolce and Gabbana advertisement. He looks amazing in a suit and has a lethal amount of sex appeal, the sort of sex appeal that drives smart women to mindlessly buy men’s cologne or cigarettes or salad dressing. I am ashamed. Gone from Charleston for a day and already I’m forgetting my manners.

“What do you do?”

“I am an Independent Strategy and Financial Advisory Consultant, but we can talk about that later,” he says, shifting into a lower gear. “Right now, I want to know more about your relationship with Grayson and why you feel guilty for not mentioning him in the last three hours.”

“Four hours. I have been talking for four hours.”

“You’re not answering the question.”

“Was there a question?”

He shifts into a higher gear. “So what if it has been four or twenty-four hours,” he says, frowning. “Why the compulsion to not talk about your boyfriend?”

“Actually, he’s not my boyfriend. At least, not anymore.”

I give him the Twitter version of my relationship with Grayson—one hundred and forty characters or less—because, well, I reckon I have already exceeded the limits of polite conversation. Besides, a true Southern woman doesn’t air her tattered old laundry. She keeps her dirty wash hidden in a pretty, pink, monogrammed hamper. She keeps a brave face and a strong back.

“You said you have been in an on-again, off-again relationship with Grayson since you were teenagers. Maybe this is just another one of those off-again times.”

“It’s not.”

We arrive at a crossroads. Sin pulls to a stop and looks over at me.

“How can you be certain?”

“Because, on the evening I thought he was going to ask me to marry him, he proposed to someone else.”

“Bloody hell!” he says, staring at me. “That’s a brutal business.”

I pull a Kleenex out of my purse and clean my sunglasses even though they’re not dirty just so I don’t have to see the pity in his eyes, so he can’t see the lack of grief in mine. The driver in the car behind us honks their horn. Sin shifts into first and we are off again.

I slip my sunglasses into my purse, chew my bottom lip and wonder what Sin thinks of me, a single American girl stomping through the Dublin Airport in thigh-high, man-slaying boots just weeks after breaking up with her childhood sweetheart. Worry is gnawing at my insides, making my gut ache. I don’t want Sin to think I am a heartless, unfeeling hussy.

“I am sad about Grayson, but . . .”

“But?”

“I feel as if I should be mourning the end of our relationship.”

“But you’re not. Why?”

I take a deep breath and hold it for several seconds. My thoughts are whirling around in my brain like cottonwood seeds on a windy day, wispy, elusive, too many to gather. Sin is British. I thought the British avoided emotional conversations and public displays of affection. Even my friends haven’t asked what happened with Grayson. They’ve just continued on as if nothing happened. There’s no rubbernecking in the South, not when it comes to someone else’s personal business. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Why didn’t I throw my arms around Grayson’s neck and beg him to marry me instead of stinky old Crawdad? Why didn’t I drink a bottle of wine and drunk text him, or drive by his house just so I could catch a glimpse of him, or internet stalk him like normal women do after they’ve been dumped? I mourned my baby sister leaving more than my man.

The wind stops blowing, the cottonwood seeds settle, and the answer materializes in my brain as clear as day.

“I guess I didn’t mourn losing Grayson because I suddenly realized I didn’t love him with the all-consuming, breath-stealing kind of love a woman should feel for the man she wants to marry.” I am still holding my Kleenex, bunched up like a boll in my hand. “Wow. I can’t believe I just said that out loud.”

“You’re not grieving because your relationship hasn’t ended, it has simply been redefined. Grayson is your friend now.” He glances over at me and smiles a broad, toothy smile. “Which means some other man is going to step into your life and steal your breath. And what a bloody lucky bastard he will be.”

He returns his attention to the narrow, twisting, road. I am pretending to stare out the front window, but secretly I am studying Sin’s profile out of the corner of my eye. Will he be the lucky bastard? My lucky bastard? He’s definitely stolen my breath, with all of his cheek kissing and bag carrying and seatbelt adjusting attentions.

“Enough about me,” I say, shoving my balled up Kleenex in my pocket. “I want to know about you. Do you have a girlfriend?”

One corner of his mouth lifts in a wicked grin and warning bells sound in my head. “A girlfriend? As in, one remarkable woman who has inspired me to forsake all others? No, I definitely do not have a girlfriend.”

Sin indeed. If I were the betting sort, I would place all my money on Rhys Sinjin Burroughes being a major London player.

“Wouldn’t you like to settle down, have kids?”

“With you?”

Heat flushes my cheeks. “You’re a wicked flirt.”

He laughs. “Keep smiling at me like that, Miss Maxwell, and I just might be tempted to repent.”

My word. Is it getting hot in this car? I swear he turned the heat on when I wasn’t looking. Probably pushed one of those little buttons on his steering wheel.

“What about your job,” I say, shrugging out of my jacket. “What is an Independent Financial . . . doohicky?”

“Independent Strategy and Financial Advisory Consultant,” he says, laughing. “I operate at the highest level of the consultancy market, specializing in corporate and organizational strategy, economic policy, government policy, and functional strategy.”

Either he is speaking fast or I am feeling the effects of jetlag already because I swear his words blended together.

“Dahlin’, you’re going to have to slow that way down for me,” I say, in an exaggerated Southern drawl. “In case you forgot, I’m from Charleston. We have two speeds where I come from: nice and easy.”

Sweet baby Jesus in Heaven! Did I really just tell this fast driving, smooth talking London player that I like to do things nice and easy? Why didn’t I just wriggle out of my panties and throw them on his dashboard? Please, please Lord, don’t let him think that was a double entendre.

Luckily, Sin continues speaking as if I didn’t just perform a metaphorical strip tease.

“When someone is ill, they go to a doctor. The doctor asks questions, orders tests, and, eventually, comes up with a diagnosis. I am a doctor for corporations. After ruthlessly scrutinizing every aspect of their business, I develop and recommend strategies to increase productivity and profitability.”

I suddenly feel ridiculous for having spent so much time telling him about “I Do So Like That Yam,” my segment on the many ways to prepare yams, inspired by Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham. Never mind that “I Do So Like That Yam” won the Southeast Regional Emmy for Outstanding Feature.

“I am impressed.”

“Thank you.”

“How will you work if you have to live in the castle with me for the three months?” I ask.

“Don’t forget Aidan.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have to live with you and Aidan Gallagher.”

Aidan Gallagher. I almost forgot about Aidan.

My stomach suddenly feels rotten as curdled buttermilk. It’s the same feeling I used to get right before I went on the air. Strange that I didn’t feel it before now. “Have you kept in touch with Aidan?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I haven’t talked to him in years. Have you?”

“Not since I was eighteen. That was the last full summer I spent in Ireland before going off to college. After that, I only visited for a few weeks in the summer, but Aidan had left home. I used to keep in touch with his sister, Catriona. We were thick as horse thieves when we were kids, me and Catriona.”

We have left the rolling green hills and hedgerows of the middle counties behind and have arrived in the Northern Headlands, the most rugged and remote area of Ireland. A short drive up the Wild Atlantic Way and we will arrive at Tásúildun. I stare out at the sea. Memories of my summers at the castle come rushing back, like the tide crashing on the rocks below. How strange it will be to arrive at Tásúildun without Aunt Pattycake waiting to greet me.

And how strange it will be to see Aidan Gallagher after all these years. He was always energetic and sociable, ready with a good story and laugh. The Irish would say he was full of the craic. I had a wee bit of a crush on him that last summer, when we went rowing on the lake and he kissed me in the rain. I even thought we might have a long distance romance, visiting each other on holidays and long breaks. Then Catriona wrote telling me Aidan left home to make his mark in the world. I never heard from him again, not even a postcard.

“Will you be happy to see the castle again?”

“As happy as I can be without Aunt Patricia there,” I say, pressing a hand to my churning buttermilk belly.

“I miss her,” Sin says. “She was quite a character, always planning her next adventure. Sometimes I reach for my mobile to call her and then remember she is gone.”

“Me too.”

He removes his hand from the steering wheel and grabs my hand, squeezing it gently.

“Are you happy to be going back to Tásúildun?”

“Of course,” he says, turning off the road and onto the gravel drive leading to our aunt’s castle. “I love the castle. It’s my second childhood home.”

“Did you spend a lot of time there?”

“Every Christmas and Easter break.”

I turn to look at him. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I had no idea.” I am astonished. “I thought you only visited the one summer.”

Even though Aunt Patricia’s husband died a few years after they wed, she continued to forge a close bond with her sister-in-law, Sin’s mother. It makes sense—and fits with her warm, loyal character—that she would spend time with Sin. Yet, somehow, I imagined the bond between us to be unique and stronger than her bond with her other nieces and nephews. It’s selfish and childish, but I am jealous of the time Sin spent with our aunt.

“Aunt Patricia knew things weren’t easy for me at home, so she opened her home and heart to me. I felt more like her son than her nephew. Tásúildun became my refuge.”

“Mine too.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Aunt Patricia told me a lot about you.”

I am now beyond astonished. “She did?”

He nods. “She used to say she believed you and I were kindred spirits and that our life circles would intersect again someday.” He makes a noise low in his throat, something between pain and disbelief. “Strangely prescient of her.”

“Unless she added the proviso to her will years ago.”

“Still strange.”

We drive through the tunnel that runs through the middle of the medieval gatehouse in silence. I am trying to understand the logic in my aunt’s bizarre request—that I choose a co-beneficiary from either Aidan Gallagher or Rhys Burroughes—when Sin turns onto the drive leading to Tásúildun. I remember Sin for the awkward, shy boy he was and wonder if that is the way Aunt Patricia saw me, a misfit.

“Why did Aunt Patricia think we were kindred spirits? What reasons did she give?”

“She told me you weren’t happy in Charleston because you often felt lost between your sisters, overlooked by your father. She said when you learned your unique worth you would find your place, be it Charleston or Cairo.”

I turn to look at Sin.

“What did you just say?”

“She said you would find your place in this world once you accepted that you were special and remarkable.”

My place.

You could knock me over with a chicken feather. I always knew my aunt was a clever woman, but—

We reach the top of the drive and Tásúildun appears on the horizon. From this vantage point, with the sea stretching as far as the eye can see, it looks as if the tumbledown stone castle is perched on the edge of the world. It’s magnificent, even if it isn’t as grand as it appeared in my memory, with an outer wall and two four-story towers connected by a small rectangular main building that was once the great hall. Like Doe Castle, located up the coast, it is one of the few whitewashed castles left in Ireland.

“Okay,” I say, pulling my jacket back on. “So Aunt Patricia thought we were kindred spirits. Why not just leave Tásúildun to the both of us? Why name Aidan Gallagher in her strange inheritance scheme?”

“I don’t know”—he pulls to a stop in front of the southern wall—“but I think we will soon find out.”

An Irish wolfhound comes bounding around the corner, a massive gray beast that could easily be mistaken for a small horse. He is galloping toward the car—as if he might leap onto the windshield and paw the glass—when he suddenly stops and whips his shaggy head around, looking back. I follow the dog’s gaze and that’s when I see him. A broad-shouldered, thick-necked beast of a man with a fierce scowl on his face. He’s wearing his sandy blonde hair in an undercut, the top longer and textured so it looks as if he just ran his fingers through it, the sides close-cropped like the GI Joe doll he used to play with when we were children. I don’t think I have ever seen a man with such a haircut, except on Peaky Blinders.

I’m not gonna lie, y’all, he looks like he might sew razor blades into the band of his flat cap. I am about to ask Sin if he thinks we should lock our doors when . . .

“Wait a minute!” I say, narrowing my gaze. “Is that—?”