Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Ciaran swore viciously under his breath, and it took everything she had not to flinch. She repeated over and over in her mind that, though her words were making him angry, he wasn’t angry with her.
She hung on to his fingers like a warm anchor keeping her from getting swept away by the cold wave of Ciaran’s emotions. Even so, her words were not so lucky and the silence stretched out between them, interrupted only by the grumbling radiators across the room.
She didn’t blame him for not knowing how to respond, either. It wasn’t every day the woman you barely knew just admitted to almost being beaten to death by her last boyfriend.
The silence was interrupted by the faint ring of a cell phone coming from somewhere. They looked at each other for a moment, both listening to the ringtone. “That has to be yours,” she told him.
Ciaran cocked his head, listening, and then something dawned on him. “Christ, what time is it?”
Jal shrugged and glanced around the room, but there were no visible clocks, at least not ones she could read from this distance. “No idea.”
A corner of her mouth twitched up as he leapt to his feet and followed the sound, circling ever closer to the door and his discarded jackets where they had been unceremoniously dropped last night.
He dug through the pile, his movements becoming more and more frantic.
“Come on, come on,” he urged himself on.
He let out a crow of triumph as he yanked the phone from a pocket and jabbed for the answer button, perching a hip on the armrest of the chair closest to him. “Hello? Catherine, hello?” He lifted the phone to check the screen and put it back to his ear, still calling the name.
Catherine?
“Oh Ciaran, thank god,” came a relieved female voice through the phone.
Ciaran moved it away from his ear, realizing he’d somehow hit the speakerphone button.
He glanced at the screen again, and his eyes widened, his eyes shot to the windows, gauging the brightness outside in disbelief. “How is it already ten a.m.?”
“It comes after nine a.m. which is when you should have been here,” she remarked. Her voice was distinctly American, so that ruled out family.
Ciaran ran a hand down his face and scratched the stubble on his chin.
“I’m feeling a bit peely-wally,” he replied, the twinkle in his eye, suggesting he’d chosen that particularly Scottish-sounding phrase on purpose.
He coughed. Unconvincingly. “You'll tell Cliff, aye? Peely. Wally.” he repeated slowly, smiling now.
The noise that came out of the phone was the auditory equivalent of an eye roll. Jal almost spit out the mouthful of tea she’d just sipped.
Ciaran cut her a glance and she gave him a mock-contrite grin.
“Yeah, yeah, fine.” Catherine grumbled. “Only if you tell me where the plans for the Murphy academic building at New York College are. OMD is on the warpath and I can’t find them on the server.
He needs it by end of day, or, and I quote, ‘it will be both your asses.’” Her voice descended into a deep baritone.
Jal snorted through her nose and clapped her hand over her nose and mouth.
Ciaran directed an annoyed, but amused, look her way and started searching for his computer.
“That’s because I was working on it at home on Tuesday and forgot like an idiot to save it to the server.
” He disappeared into the bedroom at a half-run as he talked, appearing a moment later with a laptop under one arm.
He went to the kitchen counter and turned it on.
“Okay, give me a second and I’ll upload it.
” He turned to Jal and mouthed, “sorry.”
“Thanks Ciaran,” she replied. “You owe me one.”
“Aye, I do.”
The phone beeped as Catherine hung up. Ciaran’s fingers flew over the keyboard.
“OMD?”
“Huh?” he asked without looking up. The question sunk in a moment later and he shrugged but continued typing. “Oh! Short for Old Man Dougherty, my boss. Though he’d be my ex-boss, and Catherine’s, if he ever heard us calling him that. Or OMD.”
Jal chuckled. She set her cup down and rose to her feet, drawing the robe tighter. His scent rose from the cloth and she glanced over her shoulder at his hunched figure bent over the keyboard before raising the cuff to her nose.
It was a thoroughly female thing to do, to relish the feeling of wearing something of his, soaking in his scent that clung to the soft kiss of terrycloth against her bare skin, but Ciaran certainly wasn’t paying attention.
Jal took a moment to look around, finger combing the tangles from her hair as she did so.
His living room was larger than hers, decorated in browns and tans with a bank of large windows along one wall.
Her bare feet sank into the thick cream carpet as she wandered her way over to an antique iron fireplace set into one wall.
The narrow wooden mantle held a collection of photographs, but her eyes were drawn up to the stunningly life-like portrait hung above, presumably of some ancestor.
The woman sat in a wooden chair with upholstered arms and back.
She gazed out of the frame with kind, but watchful, light-brown eyes.
A red, white, and green tartan draped over the shoulders of a white blouse, pinned at her throat with a large golden stone that seemed to glow like the sun, reminding Jal of the glow of Ciaran’s eyes.
Jal stepped closer, placing a hand on the mantle as she studied a ring made with the same stone, flanked by smaller diamonds that glittered on the woman’s hand where it rested on the arm of the chair.
Jal put her in her mid-sixties, noting that the artist had captured only a few wrinkles on her forehead and hands, the hair bound up in a neat but elegant style at the back of her neck was the soft white-gold a redhead took on as they aged.
A strip of the same tartan was draped over the frame and pinned back like a curtain.
“That’s my Gran.”
Jal jumped, her hand flying to the neck of her robe.
Ciaran put a hand on her back as if he couldn’t help himself.
Jal waited for the instinctive urge to pull away from his touch to come, but it didn’t, and she found herself leaning into him instead. He made small, soothing circles on her back. She glanced up at him through her eyelashes to find him looking down at her.
Catching her gaze, he smiled.
Something deep inside released further. After what she had put him through, the fact that he could smile at her so easily was a tremendous relief. “Thank you for last night.” she said. “For everything, really.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple and for a moment, they just looked up at the painting.
“You look a little like her,” Jal said, finally. “It’s the eyes, I think. You both have the same whisky-colored eyes. Kind eyes.”
“Kind eyes?” he asked and grinned down at her. “You think I have kind eyes?”
Jal couldn’t help but blush as she nodded. “Among other things, some less than complimentary,” she kept her voice serious by sheer force of will.
“Oh? Like what?”
“Well, you’re great with a soccer ball for one, and you have one wicked tongue.” He smirked, and somehow, she managed to keep her face neutral. She tapped a finger on her chin. “But you can be one cocky SOB.”
“‘One cocky SOB?’” There was a flash of white teeth in his smile.
Jal lost the battle with her smile and shook her head. “That sounds so wrong in your accent.”
He flicked a finger down her nose. She playfully nipped at it, but missed, and he hooked it under her chin to bring her gaze to his. “Oh, aye? Well, let me show you what this wicked tongue can do.”
He bent his head and fused his lips to hers. She opened for him and his tongue swept in, twisting with hers, tasting every corner of her mouth. The kiss was brief, but thorough, and her legs were shaky when he stepped back a moment later.
His eyes were dark, his breathing as ragged as hers.
He cleared his throat as he sat on the arm of the chair behind him and drew her to stand between his knees.
“Now, let me see what I can call you.” His thumb stroked once across her lips.
“When I first met you, you had yourself so tightly guarded by sarcasm and anger that I couldn’t see the real you.
But the closer we became, despite your efforts to the contrary, I might add, I began to see the real Jal Morrow. ”
“Oh?” she asked. “And who is the ‘real’ Jal Morrow?”
“You’re smart,” he replied, brushing a kiss over the inside of one wrist. “And talented.” He kissed the other wrist. “I wouldn’t even have attempted half of the picks that you pulled off so easily.”
He brushed her robe back from one shoulder. “You’re resourceful, canny, trustworthy, and beautiful.” Each compliment was punctuated by a kiss, to her shoulder, her collarbone, her neck.
Her eyes widened and she put a hand on his cheek turning his gaze up to hers. “No one’s ever called me beautiful, except you.”
He brushed his lips across one cheekbone.
She shivered at the brief contact. “The rest of the world be damned.” he told her.
“You are beautiful, but with one fiery temper. If you didn’t have all of this,” he buried his hands in her hair, tilting her head up.
“I’d swear you were a ginger. A redhead,” he clarified at her furrowed brow.
She laughed. She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “My father’s grandmother was a ‘ginger’.” She tried to pronounce it as he had, but failed miserably.
He rewarded her attempt with a kiss, speaking the next words a breath from her lips. “And you’re so, so brave.”
“I’m not brave.”
“But you are,” he insisted. “After everything you’ve been through, you’ve managed to rebuild your life, even as you have struggled through what Andy did to you. It’s one of the reasons that I lo— “
Her entire body went cold. She closed her eyes and staggered back out of his reach, shaking her head furiously. “No, please don’t say that you love me.”
His hands remained hovering in the air, and it took every ounce of her to resist stepping right back into place. She craved the comfort of his touch, more than she’d ever thought possible, but there was no way he could love her. There was still so much he didn’t know.
“Why not?”
“Because—" her words choked off as her throat grew thick with tears. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Because anyone who has ever said that they loved me, and really meant it, has died. That’s why.”