Page 1 of After Indigo Irish Nights
CHAPTERONE
Nothing rocked Kathleen O’Connor’s world more than a girls’ trip.
Ireland’s rolling green hills zoomed by, dotted with soaring ancient stone ruins that made her heart trip. She nudged her best friend, Ellie Buchanan, who was singing off-key with Prince about partying in 1999. “OMG! It’s so freaking gorgeous I want to pinch myself!”
“And it never gets old,” Ellie replied as she navigated another death-defying narrow turn. “Some days I wake up and think, I must be on vacation.”
But Ellie lived here now, and so did Kathleen—for the next four months. Clenching the car’s grip handle, she reminded herself there was plenty of crazy driving back home in Boston. It didn’t ease her nerves as her friend zipped around another turn. “Promise me I’m going to get used to the driving. I didn’t expect it to be even crazier than back home! I mean, we have crazy drivers but not crazy roads and driving on the left. Jeez!”
Ellie laughed darkly and shot her a grin as she took another insane turn. They were at the end of the nearly three-hour car trip from Dublin airport to Caisleán. She could grit her teeth through this last bit. Of course, she’d been here once before, to visit Ellie, but it felt different now that she was coming to stay.
“You’re having way too much fun scaring the hell out of me, Ellie.”
“I’m keeping your mind occupied,” her friend shot back, her Southern accent making the words drip like pecan syrup on buttermilk waffles. “You’ve never been away from your family for longer than a few days. I know how big this is for you. You said your pop and all seven of your brothers about cried when you left after Easter dinner. That kills me.”
Seeing those crumpled male faces had made her sneak off to their ancient bathroom and mop her face so they wouldn’t see her crying. O’Connors weren’t criers. Still, as tough as Kathleen was, taking the bull by the horns and leaving Boston for the first time in her life had taken real courage.
Only the competitive artist residency she’d won through the Irish Arts Council could have lured her away from home—and even then, a big part of why she’d come was because Ellie was here. Being back with her best friend was going to be awesome. She’d missed her former roommate. “Pop and my brothers are so proud they could bust a button. They’ll handle it.”
Her family was as tight as they came, even more so after her mother had died when Kathleen was five. Her pop and her brothers had raised her tough, but they’d also given her wings. She planned to fly.
“It’s not just my residency. Pop is thrilled to have an O’Connor back in Ireland.”
Her parents’ ancestors had left this beautiful yet troubled place for a better life, landing at Ellis Island and settling in Boston, specifically Southie. As with so many Irish immigrants, tradition ran strong in her family. Their family pub, O’Connor’s, was considered one of the best Irish pubs in the city.
“You’ll have to pick your Irish dancing back up,” Ellie said with a grin. “I’ll bet you looked like a cutie pie in the outfit.”
“The wig itched, and it threw my timing off when I had to scratch.” She shuddered. All these years later, she could still feel the nylon wig. “I was booed at the St. Patrick’s Day parade one year. Of course, the guys who were doing it shut up after I threw a rock their way.”
“That’s why I love Southie.” Ellie laughed as she downshifted to take a crazy narrow turn, making Kathleen bite her lip. “No polite bullshit or backtalking. Everything is out in the open and in your face.”
Being a Southern girl, Ellie hadn’t experienced much of that directness in her childhood, so she’d embraced the rough honesty of Kathleen’s neighborhood. “Stop reminding me of home. You’ll make me tear up.”
“Wait! I’ll take your mind off it again. Hang on to your butt.”
Kathleen winced as her friend took another hairpin turn. They might as well have been careening down a fluorescent crazy straw. “Driving here isn’t for wimps. You’re doing pretty good for someone who’s only been here four months. I mean, you don’t even slow down when we come to a curve in the road.” Her knuckles might be white for days after this.
“I hear the censure in your voice. You get used to the curves and the speed. Out here along the Wild Atlantic Way, people usually lurch to a stop if they meet another car around a bend.”
“Then someone has to back up and find a place to pull over on the turnout,” Kathleen said, giving in to the urge to clutch both her seat belt and the handle as they thundered around another curve. “I’ve noticed. You and the Irish could teach the crazies in Boston something about driving, especially on the Pike.”
Ellie pointed an accusatory finger across the dashboard. “With Massachusetts having the highest car insurance rates in the States, I doubt that.”
“We don’t have ditches on either side of the road in Boston—or escaped animals. Only the breakdown lane.”
Her city girl was showing, and she knew it. She peeked out the window at the deep ditch to her left. They had obviously been designed to keep animals of all kinds—sheep and cows mostly but also horses and the cutest donkeys alive—from overtaking the road after clearing the aged aluminum wire fencing, sometimes barbed and downright gnarly.
As a metal sculptor, she knew her metal. She’d used barbed wire in her most acclaimed work to date—theHeartbreak Series. The knotted, twisted metal had perfectly showcased her theme. Love sucked when it was laced with betrayal, and damn it to hell, did it leave deep wounds. She was mostly over hers, but once bitten, twice shy.
An image of the man who’d most recently made her crazy came to mind—Declan McGrath. He’d popped into her mind several times since their insane, lust-inspired meeting on her last trip to Caisleán—at a reception at the Sorcha Fitzgerald Arts Center, where she’d be working for the next several months.
Her knees had gone weak the minute she’d seen him standing against a wall, a whiskey in his large hand. He had an arrestingly handsome face framed by blue-black hair and a hard muscled body, dripping with attitude, the kind she never could ignore. She’d almost dropped her own whiskey, and her skin had sparked as though the wires on a car battery had touched.
She didn’t believe in love at first sight anymore. But one thing she did know—he fired up her senses like no man had since her ex, Axl. The rare feeling he induced tantalized her.
Apparently, he’d felt the same way because they’d launched themselves at each other and shared a kiss unlike any she’d ever experienced. If they’d been metal and not flesh, they’d have turned white hot, that rare temperature when heat becomes incandescent.
She’d railed over her impulsiveness after she’d left Ireland and finally come to the unassailable truth—they were combustible.
