Chapter 25 An Experiment in Still Life with Sandwiches
The sun hurt.
I pulled the duvet over my face and wrote out a text.
Are you alive over there?
Barely. Finn woke me for a walk at six, then we went back to bed.
Lazy. I’ve been up sightseeing since seven. I’ve seen it all now.
Really?
No.
It’s too early for your mischief, Davis.
Never. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.
Lobby in 15?
Yep.
I arrived looking like something a cat had coughed up, because of course I had gotten into the shower drunk the night before and washed my hair and then gone to sleep with it wet, because I have my most excellent ideas when I’m drunk.
Tadhg arrived looking so aggressively beautiful that I almost hissed and made a cross with my fingers.
This is what he looks like hungover? I wanted to rail at him about it, but then I remembered the rules, and even with a headache so bad that I could taste it in my back teeth, I could guess that telling this man he looked so goddamn gorgeous that the golden rays of his perfection might burn my clothes right off was probably bending the rules a bit. Keep it in your pants, Maya.
“Hey.” His voice was even deeper and more gravelly than usual, and a thick, glossy wave of chestnut hair fell into his eyes. Bastard. How dare you!
“You look awful,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “Did you sleep in a wind tunnel last night?” I caught sight of my hair in the mirror, choked back a laugh, then scrunched it up into a bun-like mess and jabbed some pins into it. “All right, you unnatural abomination. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“No idea. Let’s just walk until someone hands us pastries.”
“Done.”
We threw our suitcases in the car, put the furry little beast on a leash, and walked until we found a cute café where we ordered fancy breakfast sandwiches and sat outside among the potted plants.
I was surprised to see that, instead of taking the table and chair on the other side, as I expected, Tadhg slid down the bench next to me so we were both people-watching from the same side of the table, close enough for our elbows to jostle over our sandwiches.
He nodded down at the book that I had on the table. “You wanting some peace and quiet?”
“Yep!” Rude, Maya. “I mean . . . it might be nice to read a bit with a coffee after I finish gorging myself on this delicious thing. Would that be . . . Would you mind? My head is killing me. I’ll probably need a day or two to recover from yesterday’s sensory overload.
Doesn’t mean you have to move, though. You’re a man of few words.
” I smirked. “And even fewer of them, interesting.”
“Yeah. I think I can probably manage an hour or so without your whiny American accent interrogating me about every single decision I’ve ever made, or shoutin’ to the world that you don’t have syphilis.”
I smirked. “Deal.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up, then he leaned down and grabbed his backpack, pulled out a book of his own, and plopped it down on the table. It was a proper door stopper.
“Wait. You can read? Books?”
He gave me a dirty look and took a bite of his sandwich.
“Let me guess—sheep almanac?” I reached for the paperback, but he was too quick and snatched it off the table to smack my hand with it.
I laughed. Now I know what Pretty Woman felt like.
Holy crap! It was The Name of the Wind. The massively long high fantasy The Name of the Wind.
“Wha . . . What the hell? Is this some sort of joke? Are you pranking me right now?”
“What?” He took a casual bite of his sandwich and ignored the shrill decibel of my astonishment. “What are you on about now?”
I gasped and stared at him, but he just kept eating his stupid sandwich.
“Okay, let me break this down for you—this is a book.”
“Yep.”
“To read.”
“Yep.”
“For pleasure.”
He rolled his eyes.
“I didn’t know you even read books!”
“Well, I guess you don’t know everything after all, do you, smart-ass?”
“Furthermore, if memory serves me, this is a book without a single sheep in it.”
“It does mention some sheep, actually.”
“And even furthermore than that, this is not just any fiction book, this is a fantasy! A fucking high fantasy in a dense magical world complete with a magic university and mysterious dragons.”
“So?” he deigned to say between bites.
“I’ve read this book. I love this book!” Finn suddenly sat up and gave me a stern look like she would just love to bite the crap out of me if I didn’t stop shouting at her dad.
“All right, you. You need to take a breath, roll your tongue back into your mouth, and stop drooling all over my paperback.”
“But I don’t get it. You know I love fantasy! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Look, you may want to crunch the figures on this one, but I’m pretty certain that we’re not the only two people on the planet who read fantasy books.”
“We could have been talking about books this whole time! You told me you didn’t like to read!”
“Maybe I didn’t want to talk to you any more than was absolutely necessary.”
I scowled and poked him in the arm with a pointy finger. “Well, guess what? Too fucking bad, because we are absolutely going to talk about books!”
“Fine. We might talk about books. One day. Maybe. If I’m in the mood. But not now, because this is supposed to be quiet reading time, and you told me you wanted to wallow in the drudgery of your own company, and I would never want to disappoint you.”
“Pffft. That’s literally all you want to do.”
He turned slightly away from me and opened his book on his knee, and after feeling the full minute’s annoyance that he had intended, I followed suit.
“Damn! The Name of the Wind. I don’t think I know you at all, Tadhg Kelly.”
“Good,” he grumbled. “Just the way I like it.”
But there was humor in his voice, and he had sat next to me, after all. And I belatedly noticed that he’d said “didn’t want to talk”: past tense.
We quietly finished our tasty breakfast paninis, a glass each of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a bowl of fat, delicious chips (see: fries) that Tadhg had ordered to split “to chase off the hangover.”
When we were done, I bought us two cappuccinos and we stayed for an hour, and then two, with our legs stretched out to the other bench across the table, sipping our coffees, reading our books, and watching people go by.
Finn, after receiving pets from strangers and a few sandwich scraps, had a bowl of kibble and water and curled up under Tadhg’s legs for a little nap.
It was . . . really nice. I was so glad we’d had that conversation the night before.
I had wanted things to go back to the way they had been, but this was nothing like the way it had been.
Somehow, after all the drama, what we’d needed was an earnest talk and a drink together, and this new something, whatever it was between us, felt suspiciously like the first stirs of not loathing each other.
It was strangely cozy and companionable. At some point, he quietly got up and left me with Finn and came back with two different slices of cake. He slid them between us on the table and, without a word, put down two forks and went back to his reading.
We ambled back to the Jeep looking for all the world like a couple on a lazy Sunday stroll with their sweet dog. But when we got there, one particular memory from the night before flooded into my dehydrated brain. Oh no.
I looked at Finn, tongue lolling, totally oblivious, and then I looked at Tadhg. His eye caught mine, and a world of things that probably should have been left unsaid the night before thickened the air between us.
“So . . .” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Well. Here goes nothing.”
Tadhg leaned down and whispered something to Finn and gave her a few extra head scratches.
She gave him a lick on the cheek, unsure what was happening, but delighted with the extra attention.
Then he opened the door, pulled the seat up, and held it back the way he had done for me so, so many humiliating times.
“Come on, girl. Jump up.”
Finn took a few confused steps back.
“Come on, baby. Hop in.” He leaned in and patted the backseat.
She let out a confused whine. Oh, come on, you big faker!
“Finn.” He was a little bit sterner this time, and it made my skin prickle. “Let’s go.” Anywhere you want, big boy. No! Shut up! I should see a therapist. She finally jumped up and sat her rump in the seat with a huff.
“Good girl, sweetheart.” Tadhg leaned back in and ruffled her ears. I wondered what I would have to do to get him to say that to me. And then I passed out.
Tadhg got in and braced his arm firmly between the two front seats, presumably to stop Finn from changing her mind about the arrangement and/or trying to take a chunk out of me in a jealous rage.
“Now it’s your turn.” He leveled me with a look that I assumed was meant to tease me. “Come on. You can do it. Sit. There you go.”
Hot flashes!
Tadhg’s arm was still between the seats, hand curled around the back of my headrest, and it felt oddly intimate.
We waited for a minute in silence, wondering what Finn would do next. She gave the tiniest of growls, huffed out some hot air, and then stretched her legs out and lay down across the seat.
“There you go, baby. Daddy will give you a bone when we get in tonight.”
Holy shit. Is he doing this on purpose now?
“What about me?” I tried to fight back a smirk.
Tadhg’s eyes flashed, then his eyebrows bunched up, and he sucked in a deep, long breath. Shit, it was sexy.
What was I thinking? Protocol was in place for a reason—breaking it was out of character, dammit!
“No. You’d better not be breaking the rules, Davis, or there will be consequences.”
Goose bumps. Everywhere.