Page 61 of After Indigo Irish Nights
She fought the smile twitching her lips. “You owe me a night out.”
He stood from where he’d been leaning and traced her jawline. “I owe you more than that. Am I forgiven? Because I hurt you. More than you could ever know, I’m sorry for it.”
Taking a few steps closer, she laid her face against his chest. His shirt was coated in sweat, as if he had raced over, not bothering to shower. “You’re forgiven. Come inside.”
He wrapped his arms around her, cradling her nape in one of them. “In a minute. My granny used to say to never let ill will pass over a threshold lest it bring bad luck to the house. I would never want that for you or for us.”
Wasn’t that like what Sorcha had told her earlier? That ghost really did know too much for anyone’s good.
Kathleen let him caress her hurts away as a gentle Irish wind blew around them. His tense muscles relaxed the longer he held her, while hers softened in response. When she heard the steady beat of his heart, she lifted her head and cupped his jaw.
“Now come inside and make love with me.”
Something flickered in his eyes, relief and longing, before he nodded.
There were no words as they undressed each other, using their hands and mouths to further heal and assure and arouse. The passion finally sparked between them, as if awoken from being banked earlier when he’d left and her heart had grown cold from his absence.
The fire this time was of the cleansing variety—the kind that burned away any impediment to growth and harvest, the kind that brought forth unimaginable bounty.
When they lay in each other’s arms at last, she took his face firmly between her hands and kissed him softly, communicating everything she felt in her kiss.
He cupped her neck to hold her there and accepted every offering she gave. In turn, he laid his mouth over hers when she broke the contact and shared with her his own deeply felt emotions.
When their eyes finally met again, the blues of his weren’t of the blowtorch variety—they put her in mind of a tranquil, open sea, a place she could happily find peace in. She smiled and watched as his mouth formed a beautiful smile as well.
Then they wrapped themselves around each other—a place where, Kathleen was coming to believe, they both belonged.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Declan knew he had to show Kathleen how much she meant to him as much as he had to train for his upcoming fights.
The day after their disastrous pub date, he took her on a challenging hike on the Nephin Wilderness Mountain Trail. Midway up the eight-kilometer trail, she’d punched him gently in the shoulder as they started to ascend a tough section with a fifty-degree ascent through rough-hewn rocks. “You’re using this as training, aren’t you?”
He watched the pulse pound in her neck and gave in to the urge to pull her close and kiss it. “You said you’d like to go on a hike and have whipped ice cream after, like Ellie recommended. It so happens this trail is good for my boxing regimen. I wanted to spend time with you this weekend and not be in the gym all day. Are you angry?”
She pushed him back and stared at him. “No, because I wanted to spend time with you too. I know your first fight is coming up. This is practical. Still, sometime, I’d like a real date where I can wear a skirt.”
He’d never seen her in a skirt, he realized, and he stepped back to appraise the long legs he loved wrapped in simple yoga leggings, now covered with spots of mud from the boggy patches on the hike. “So would I. How about next Friday? We’ll go somewhere really special.”
She agreed, thank God.
The next week passed in a blur of training and his sweet Kathleen, and before he knew it, the day had arrived. When he knocked on her door before their date, he felt both nervous and excited, as if he hadn’t shown up at this very door every day for the past weeks. She answered it in the deep purple skirt she’d chosen for their evening out. It skimmed her knees, and she’d paired it with knee-high black boots, showing no leg, he was sad to see. He made her laugh by telling her so. But she looked gorgeous and sexy, with her eyes painted with silver and navy and her lashes thick and curled with that black stuff women favored.
He took her to Westport for a fancy dinner at a place Brady and Ellie adored, where they’d had fancy Irish food—something of an irony to him—with potato leek patties along with a salad served with black pudding and rashers, which wasn’t bad, followed by batter-dipped cod served with curry sauce and cabbage relish, which he didn’t see the purpose of. Even the peas had been fancy, smothered in some sour cream and chives sauce, which Kathleen had agreed was weird but admitted to loving.
Afterward he held her hand as they strolled through the busy and packed streets, ending up at Matt Molloy’s Pub for a pint and some music.
She knew of the Irish band The Chieftains, God love her, and she’d been delighted to learn Matt was a member, a fact he advertised with the Grammy awards displayed prominently in the pub. Her love for Irish music was stronger than his own, to his mind, but perhaps that was a Boston thing. After all, how many reels, hornpipes, and jigs could a person stand?
Kathleen clapped and did her best to sing along with the band playing, missing words but making up for it with enthusiasm. She even took pictures to send to her brothers, but he noted that he wasn’t in any of them. They hadn’t spoken much about her family, and truth be told, he hadn’t told her much about his own family yet. She knew Brady, of course, but he had yet to introduce her to his parents as his woman.
They were still making their way in these early steps.
Her bright smile made it all worthwhile, and by the time they left, he’d decided to buy her one of the band’s CDs as a memento and arrange for Matt himself to sign it. He thought it would be a nice present to give her when the mood called.
On the hour-long ride back to Caisleán, he took another plunge. “Care to spend the night at my place?”
He knew it would be a big step for both of them. She’d never spent the night at Summercrest Manor by joint agreement. They had more privacy at her cottage, and it kept things separate from his brother and her best friend.
