Chapter 53
Liam’s arms closed around her. “Oh my darlin’, what is it? What’s happened?”
She pressed her face against his bare chest, inhaling the clean scent of his soap, breathing it in like an oxygen-starved high-altitude mountain climber.
“There was a rat,” she said, hiccupping as she said it. “A huge rat that ran right across my foot, and the dog got it, and I think … I mean, there was blood on his fur. And there were spiders everywhere, and it stank, really stank, and it was so cold…”
“Whoa now,” Liam said, stroking her hair as though she were a child waking up from a nightmare. “What sort of hell on earth are we talking about?”
Maeve was sniffling and sobbing, twin trails of tears and snot streaming down her cheeks. He took her arm and gently guided her into the living room. “Sit. I’ll make some tea.”
“Tea … would be good.” She couldn’t stop shivering.
Liam’s dog edged closer, her expression wary. After a moment, Lucy rested her muzzle in Maeve’s lap, as though it was a perfectly normal part of her routine, comforting hysterical women who showed up on her doorstep.
And then Liam was back. He handed her a tissue and a mug. “Blow your nose and sip that now. Don’t try to talk.”
He sat down beside her on the sofa and waited. He was dressed for bed: barefoot, shirtless, wearing only baggy flannel pajama pants.
The tea was steaming hot, with honey and lemon and something stronger, she thought.
He stretched an arm around her shoulders, and she curled into him. “There’s a jigger of brandy in the tea,” he advised. “That’s what my mum always gave us when us kids had an upset.”
Maeve closed her eyes and let the hot liquid trickle down the back of her throat and the warmth of the brandy warm her belly.
Lucy nudged her hand, so she scratched the dog’s head and then her ears.
When she’d finished the tea, Maeve set the mug carefully on a coaster on the coffee table and said the first thing that came to her mind.
“I can’t get over this place. I’ve never met a man with such an immaculate house. I never met a man who owned coasters.”
Liam threw his head back and laughed. “So you’ve come to me, out of the blue, to compliment my housekeeping, in the midst of whatever trauma you’ve just suffered?”
Maeve sniffled and nodded.
“What can I tell you? I was raised with two brothers who were world-class slobs. I swore that as soon as I was on my own, with my own place, I would live with peace and calm and order. My shameful secret is my recessive tidy gene.”
“When I told Therese what a neatnik you were she said she thought maybe you were gay.” She ducked her head to hide the blush blooming on her cheeks.
His lips twitched with barely repressed amusement at her expense. “I hope to eventually prove otherwise to you. Feel up to talking yet?”
“I think so.”
“Where was this hellish place that drove you here in a fit of terror?”
“Esme Rossington’s house. Actually, her gardener’s shed.”
“Were you abducted? Held hostage?”
“Sorry. I think I’m sleep deprived. There was a mix-up at the airport hotel last night and Therese and I had to share a double bed, and she spins like a top, and we had to get up early to get to the airport…”
“Which is where you discovered your passport was missing,” he put in.
“Which was the beginning of my day from hell. I read this book as a kid, about Alexander and the Very Bad Day…”
“Hold on now,” Liam said. “I know that book quite well, but I think you mean Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”
“You know that book?”
“I’ve lived that book. Remember—two older brothers? Come to think of it, I’ve lived it as an adult too. Haven’t we all?”
Somehow, it made Maeve feel better to know that Liam, who could make whiskey, and assemble a Jeep from spare parts, and run a distillery, and keep a meticulous house, had experienced epic bad days.
“First, I lost my passport, then I had to miss my flight and the only car Hertz had on the lot was a stick and I’m terrified of driving it, and then I got here, and I don’t have a hotel room because of china painters and sacred music freaks, and I can’t get my passport replaced until Friday…”
“Erm, but that doesn’t explain…”
“After I saw you at the Willow Tree, I was walking back to the inn, and I’d decided to just sleep in the car, but Esme Rossington was driving by and she pulled over and offered me a ride, and the next thing I knew she said I could stay in her handyman’s shed.”
“And this seemed like a rational choice to you? To sleep where Reggie slept? The man is a walking trash bin.”
“Did I mention the sleep deprivation? Esme claimed the shed had been ‘fixed up.’”
“Have you seen the hovel that poor old woman lives in?”
“I have. She summoned Therese and me there yesterday. But it was only going to be for tonight. And she said she’d only charge me twenty euros…”
“Charge you? She was going to charge you twenty euros to sleep in a shed? Christ Almighty, Maeve!”
“I know,” she said. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
“You should have called me,” he said.
“I thought we were … sort of fighting.”
“We were not fighting. But do go on.”
“It was … unspeakable. Like something out of a horror movie. There were holes in the walls and spiderwebs everywhere. And the smell…” She nearly gagged at the memory.
“There was this cot with a moth-eaten blanket, and all of a sudden, I saw something scurry across the floor. It was the biggest rat ever. And Sinead pounced on it…”
She shuddered. “I think the rat screamed as loud as I did, and the dog just shook it…”
“Never mind.” Liam touched a finger to her lips. “You paint a very vivid and disturbing word picture. Have you ever considered making a career of writing?”
“It’s crossed my mind.
“I’ve never run so fast in my life,” she continued. “I wasn’t even thinking. I got in the car and drove like my hair was on fire.”
“To me. As you should have done in the first place.”
Maeve looked down at Lucy, who had slowly managed to crawl entirely onto her lap. She realized that her own sobbing and shivering had subsided.
Liam’s presence—solid, unwavering, wordlessly reassuring—had warmed her as thoroughly as the brandy-spiked tea.
“Have you eaten anything since I saw you earlier?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“Come into the kitchen and we’ll see what we can do about that.”
She sat on a barstool at the kitchen counter. He held up the brandy bottle and a bottle of his Tarrymore whiskey. “I’ve wine too,” he offered.
“Maybe just the whiskey,” she said.
“I know, ice and water back. A terrible crime, but you’ve been traumatized so I’ll spare you the lecture tonight.”
He stood with his back to her, with the refrigerator door open, and she tried not to ogle his perfectly muscled wide shoulders, bare back, and the pajama pants that hung loosely on his hips.
“I didn’t get to the market this week, so this’ll have to be a bit of a make-do,” he said, producing a bunch of grapes, a couple slabs of cheese, and some other bits and pieces.
He whistled under his breath while he sliced an apple, then set it on a cutting board along with a salami, a few olives, and part of a loaf of brown bread.
Maeve marveled at his ease as he moved around the kitchen. Lucy sat at her feet, and when she thought Liam wasn’t looking, she tossed the dog a chunk of salami.
“I saw that,” Liam said. He pointed to the charcuterie platter. “Eat.”
He poured some of the whiskey into a cut-glass tumbler and pulled up a barstool next to hers, helping himself to a few grapes.
“You’re not eating?” she asked.
“We did brick-oven pizza on the patio at the distillery for the china painting ladies,” he said. “Had I known you’d be joining Lucy and me for dinner, I would have brought some home.”
Maeve layered a slice of cheese on a hunk of bread and chewed slowly, then washed it down with some whiskey.
“D’you know what I think?” Liam asked, swirling whiskey around in his own tumbler, watching as the amber color caught the light.
“About?”
“This. You. Me.”
She gulped down the rest of her drink and pushed her chair away from the counter.
“Is this the part where you psychoanalyze the rigid, frigid, emotionally and sexually repressed middle-aged spinster? Because if it is, I’m out.
Been there, done that. Thanks for the dinner and the sympathetic ear.
Now I’m gonna just go ahead and drive toward Dublin.
I’m sure there’ll be a roadside motel somewhere along the way. ”
He caught her hand in his. “Don’t go. Please? Nobody’s calling you frigid. A little on the rigid spectrum, yes. Also, I would never call you middle-aged. But I do think you’re afraid of what it might mean if you stayed.”
She bristled and pointedly stared down at his hand until he released hers. “I’m afraid of rats. Definitely. And spiders. But I’m not afraid of a man who I’ve basically just met.”
“Ahh, but that’s the thing, Maeve. You told me yourself, and very clearly, that Maeve Dunagin is not the type to hook up with some random chap she meets on vacation.
No. You are a woman with a plan. An agenda, one might say.
Someone who never acts on impulse or strays from her self-imposed rules of behavior. ”
Maeve’s eyes burned with fatigue and her legs felt like concrete. And she was emotionally spent. She desperately needed sleep, and she wanted this futile conversation to end.
“You’re right about one thing,” she said, relenting. “I am too tired to drive tonight. So if you’ll loan me a blanket, and your sofa, I’ll not trouble you for anything else.”
Liam’s eyes took in her travel-worn appearance: the hair tied back in a messy bun, the hollow eyes, wrinkled clothes, and lack of makeup.
“Just one more thing. You told me you’ve recently lost your mum, your job, and the expected bit of inheritance from your mum’s estate. So, I’m just wondering what it is about your old life that you’re so almighty determined to get back to?”
She blinked and rubbed at her eyes.