Chapter Eighteen
Sin strolls into the kitchen the next morning as I am mixing whiskey-soaked fruit into Barmbrack batter. He sniffs the air and presses a hand to his flat abdomen.
“What smells so good?” He looks around the kitchen. “Has Mrs. McGregor made more of her gingerbread?”
I tuck an errant hair into the bun at the back of my neck and grin. “Mrs. McGregor has abandoned the laboratory. There’s a new scientist in the mix and she’s madder than Victor Frankenstein. Beware!”
Sin laughs.
“Mad, perhaps, but you are no Victor Frankenstein,” he says, leaning against the counter. “That is, unless old Victor was utterly charming and beautiful.”
“Flatterer.”
“Guilty.”
He watches me fold more whiskey-soaked apples and raisins into the batter, his lips curved in a dangerous, flirty smile. Lawd! I feel naked. Nekked as a jay bird walking from one end of the prison to the other. I self-consciously run a hand over my apron, wishing I had dressed in something more sophisticated than boots, black leggings, and a soft denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Sin reaches over and brushes my cheek with his finger.
“You have flour on your face.”
“Th . . . thank you.”
Why, why does this man make me jumpier than a nun in a sex shop? Why can’t I just relax and be myself around him? Why is he staring at my lips? Do I have something stuck in my teeth? Please, sweet baby Jesus, tell me I don’t have a raisin stuck in my teeth. So I had one little whiskey-soaked raisin . . .
“Will you let me have a little taste?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your biscuits. I would like to try your biscuits.”
He’s talking about my cookies, right? The cookies I just took out of the oven, not my lady bits. He’s not asking to put his tallywag near my . . . hoo-hah.
“Of course.” I stop mixing my batter, grab a spatula, and scoop three cookies onto a small plate. “I hope you like them.”
“I’m sure I will.”
His phone begins vibrating in his pocket and a wicked little voice in my head whispers, “Is that your phone or are you just happy to have my biscuits in your hand?” His phone vibrates again and it takes all of my self-control not to look down at his bulging, pulsating pocket.
He pulls his phone out and looks at the screen.
“I better get this.”
“Absolutely.”
“See you tonight, six thirty?”
“Sure. Yes. Six thirty.”
He strides out of the kitchen, the plate of cookies in one hand, his vibrating phone in the other. A second later, I hear him say, “Ohayou gozaimasu.”
I feel a pang of disappointment—not because Sin has gone, but because I had hoped it would be Aidan strolling through the door, pressing his hand to his stomach and sniffing the air appreciatively. I didn’t see him yesterday, even though I waited up to give him some of my cookies. I heard him moving about his room early this morning, but he was gone before I got up.
The cakey, fruity Barmbrack is cooling on the counter and I am pulling another batch of Bánánach Brew Bites out of the oven when someone knocks on the back door. I slide the cookies off the baking sheet and onto a wire rack on the counter to cool, before answering the door.
I expect a deliveryman or a curious tourist to be standing on the step, but it’s a beautiful, leggy blonde with a long fishtail braid hanging over her slender, sweater-clad shoulder. She has sparkling blue eyes the same shade and shape as . .
“Catriona Gallagher!”
“Tara Maxwell, as I live and breathe,” she says, in a lilting Irish accent. “Will ya be givin’ me a hug, then, or are ya too important for the Gallaghers now that you’re Lady Tásúildun?”
“We don’t do hugs, but we will permit a single, chaste kiss pressed to the back of the royal appendage,” I laugh, holding out my flour-dusted hand.
“La-dee-da! I’ll tell ya what to do with that bloody appendage, Tara Maxwell.”
We fall into each other’s arms, giggling and squealing like two schoolgirls, the time and distance that separated us for the last ten years instantly vanishing.
In the kitchen, we sit at the table beside the fire, a fresh pot of tea and plate of cookies between us, filling each other in on the important details of our lives, peppering each other with questions.
Catriona, I learn, handles public relations and events planning for a luxurious castle hotel and spa down the coast. She lives in a cottage just outside the village with her boyfriend—despite her Catholic granny’s frequent, embarrassing protests—and has no plans to get married.
“What about ya? Do ya have a fella pining away for ya back in the States?”
“No.”
“What do you think of our Aidan?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ya know what I mean, ya divvy cow.” She takes a cookie from the plate. “Do ya still fancy me brother or not?”
I think about Aidan, bare-chested and covered in tats, muscles bulging as he exercises, and my cheeks flush with heat.
Catriona laughs. “Ya do!”
“I don’t fancy Aidan.”
“Ya don’t? Me bollocks!” She takes a bite of her cookie. “Ya fancy our Aidan, ya do. I’d wager he still fancies ya something chronic, too.”
“Go on with ya, Catriona Gallagher,” I say, waving my hands in a spot-on imitation of Mrs. McGregor. “Himself hardly knows I exist.”
“Hardly.” She rolls her eyes. “He hardly knows you exist.” She finishes her cookie and takes another off the plate, breaking it in half and dipping it into her tea. “Did ya be making these biscuits, Tara?”
“Yes,” I say, smiling. “Do you like them?”
“Like them? I fecking love them.” She finishes the other half of her cookie and wipes her mouth with her napkin. “Are they an American recipe? What do ya call them?”
“They’re my creation. I call them Bánánach Brew Bites.”
Catriona covers her mouth with her napkin and looks at me through wide, unblinking eyes.
“Bánánach Brew Bites?”
“Yes,” I say, confused by her strange reaction. “Bánánach Brew, after the locally made craft cider. Have you heard of it?”
“I have.” She lowers her napkin, revealing a toothy grin. “It’s not very well known, that cider. How did ya come to hear about it?”
“Aidan gave me a bottle the other day.”
“Our Aidan gave ya a bottle of Bánánach Brew? Did he now?”
She chuckles.
I feel like I missed the punchline of a joke.
I tell Catriona about running into her brother when I was hiking in the hills, the sudden rainstorm, the abandoned cottage, and his rucksack filled with apples and cider.
“Did our Aidan tell ya how he came to have the cider?”
“No.”
She presses her lips together as if she is trying not to laugh. “Did ya use the cider in the biscuit dough?”
“Yes.”
“This is gas!” She laughs and claps her hands. “Does our Aidan know about the biscuits?”
“No,” I say. “He got home late last night and was gone before I got up this morning. I wanted to take him a tin, but I don’t know where he works.”
“Grand idea, that one. Take yer man some of these biscuits.” She drops her folded napkin on top of her empty plate and stands. “Let’s go.”
“You’ll drive me?”
“I will indeed, Tara Maxwell. In fact, there’s nothing I would rather do.”
I find two tins in the pantry and fill them with the freshly baked cider cookies, untie my apron, grab my jacket off the hook behind the door, and follow Catriona down the gravel drive to where her car is parked. We climb inside. Catriona turns the key in the ignition and we are off, flying down the drive in a spray of gravel.
“Where does Aidan work?”
“It’s not too far from here.” She turns left out of the drive onto the road leading north. “I saw Rhys Burroughes in the village a few days ago. I hardly recognized him. I can’t believe the little boss-eyed fella with the thick Harry Potter glasses and wheezy breath has grown up to be . . . If I wasn’t in love with Cillian I could have a glad eye on Rhys.”
“He’s certainly changed.”
“Do ya fancy him, then?” She looks over at me. “More than our Aidan?”
“No!” My cheeks flush with heat again. I look out the window. “I mean; I don’t fancy either of them.”
Catriona laughs. “Ya might want to tell that to your face then, because it is saying something different. Ya know what I think?”
“Lawd help me! Do I really want to know the answer to that question?”
“Aidan hasn’t been himself since he returned from Afghanistan.”
“Afghanistan?”
“Our Aidan did two tours over there.”
“Was he wounded? I noticed the scar behind his ear.”
“Yes.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“He seems different, more intense. The Aidan Gallagher I remember loved the craic.”
“What has Aidan told you?”
“Nothing. Why?”
She draws a breath, sucking the air between her teeth so it makes a whistling noise. “It’s not my place to tell me brother’s tales. He’ll tell ya, when he is ready.” She turns off the road onto a dirt track lined with fruit trees. “Until then, try not to take his moods personally. Our Aidan is haunted by ghosts he can’t exorcise.”
I think of that day in the cottage, when I asked Aidan if he believed in ghosts, the sad, faraway look in his eyes, and my heart aches. I don’t know what happened to Aidan in Afghanistan—I’m not sure I want to know—but it must have been dreadful to have made such a profound impact on him. How strange. I’ve listened to the news reports about the problems in the Middle East, watched footage of soldiers fighting insurgents in places like Kandahar, Kabul, and Mazar-i-Sharif, but they always seemed like scenes from a gritty movie. Flickering scenes that shock, sadden, then fade away. In my mind, I put Aidan in one of those scenes. I see him crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, bullets whizzing over his head, and I feel sick, even a little panicked.
We have reached the end of the dirt track. Two stone barns lie straight ahead, separated by an asphalt parking lot. Ailean, Aidan’s great beast of a dog, is stretched out in a patch of grass between the two buildings, sound asleep despite the pervasive, drizzly rain.
“Here we are,” Catriona says, parking beside the first barn. “Are ya ready?”
“For what?”
“We have come to see your man, remember?”
“Aidan is not my man. Stop calling him that!”
She looks over at me, grinning. “Ah, but he will be, to be sure. And if I am wrong, I will eat an entire tin of those biscuits.”
I roll my eyes.
We climb out of the car and walk toward the barn. A heavy wooden door opens and a man in orange coveralls steps out.
“Catriona! Didn’t expect to see ya here today.”
“Hiya Billy,” Catriona says. “This is my friend, Tara. She’s brought a little something for Aidan. Is he inside or is he acting the maggot in the ring?”
“Johnny is putting him through the paces.”
Catriona shakes her head. “Bowsie eejit.”
“You know the way.”
“Ta Billy.”
Billy smiles at me.
“Pleased to meet ya, Tara.”
“Nice to meet you, Billy.”
Catriona links her arm through mine and we walk in the drizzling rain to the second barn, a big, beautiful modern building designed to look like an old, traditional Irish barn, with arched doors painted glossy red and steep slate roof.
“So Aidan works on a farm?”
“Mmmm,” Catriona murmurs.
Aidan. A farmer. He always said he wouldn’t be like his father, toiling over a patch of earth to eke out a humble existence. Now, there isn’t anything wrong with being a farmer. After all, my six times great-grandfather started Black Ash Plantation with only a handful of rice seeds. It’s just, well, I always imagined Aidan working as a deep-sea fisherman, police sniper, Coast Guard rescue swimmer, or covert operative. An adventurous, testosterone-heavy job. I look at the rolling countryside, hear the wind rustling the leaves of the apple trees, and I think I get it. After surviving two tours to the war-torn Middle East, Aidan’s soul probably craves the peace and quiet of the country. Solace and the softer things in life. That’s what he’s after.