HauntingBeauty
Chapter Six
SEAN didn’t know where else to go after he left Danni’s little antique store, so he walked, hoping the activity would loosen the hard knot of tension deep in his gut. It had been burrowing and coiling since the first time he’d laid eyes on her. It ached, it comforted.
How long had it been since he’d felt anything but the grief and shame his father had brought on them all that night so long ago? How long since he’d felt more than the shattered splinters of life festering beneath his skin? Longer than he could remember.
But when she’d opened her front door this morning, when she’d looked at him with her huge gray eyes . . . He’d felt something stir deep inside him. Felt it in every pore, every nerve, every part of his being. And he wanted more.
He’d been confused when his grandmother had insisted he come here to bring Dáirinn MacGrath home. He’d understood that Danni’s survival threw into doubt his father’s guilt and that bringing her back might clear the family name. But there’d been another reason Nana had sent him—one he couldn’t see or understand at all, one as mystifying as Nana was herself.
Whatever her reasons, though, they didn’t seem to matter anymore. They’d been eclipsed by his own wants and needs. He was here for Danni. Nothing more, nothing less.
He found himself standing in front of her house again and wasn’t the least bit surprised that his feet, like every other part of him, had chosen to come here. While Danni’s crazy little dog worked herself into a fury on the other side of the door, Sean made himself comfortable in the chair on the porch. The afternoon breeze danced through the shrubs and grass, bringing with it the fragrance of roses blooming in a neighbor’s garden. A few houses down, someone started a mower and soon the sharp scent of cut grass joined the mix. If not for the lunatic dog, it would have been peaceful, calming even. He leaned his head back against the wall, trying to block out the annoying barking. He needed some calm. He needed some perspective.
But all he could think of was the pale glow of her skin, the scent of her hair, the delicate shape of her ears. How it might feel to lean close to her, breathe her in like a fine wine. He remembered how she’d watched him with that bewildering anticipation. As if she’d been waiting for him. As if she’d expected him.
He shook his head, confused by the very clarity of the feeling.
He saw a flash of movement to his right and glanced over in time to see the yellow cat stalking him from the bushes. When it realized he’d seen it, the enormous creature bolted across the lawn and up the tree like the Hound of the Baskervilles was on its tail. Were all of Danni’s animals mad? At least the dog seemed to be giving up. She gave a final, hoarse yap and then there was silence.
He didn’t know how much time had passed with him sitting there, soaking in the tranquility of the place, before he heard her car turn down the street. A moment later she pulled into the driveway. He remained seated on the porch, unsure of what to do now that she was here, certain that he shouldn’t have come, but convinced he couldn’t have stayed away.
The day had warmed and she’d taken off the blue sweater, leaving just a thin white T-shirt and black trousers. Her hair had been twisted up and was held, he saw with amusement, by a pencil. She looked flushed, disheveled. Beautiful. As alive and earthy as the riot of flowers blooming all around him. As unattainable and mysterious as the fairies that lived beneath the hills of his homeland. He wanted to lose himself in her. Strange enough, he felt that in doing so he might actually find the missing pieces of the man he wanted to be.
She’d taken several steps up the walk before suddenly her back stiffened and her shoulders squared. She hadn’t seen him yet, but she’d obviously sensed his silent perusal. Slowly she lifted her gaze to his and the look on her face, the wariness in her expression . . . it cut him to the bone.
She knew about his father—that he was the one held responsible for the MacGrath murders.
It was there in the hardening of her lips and the angle of her chin. In the coldness that seeped into the glittering gray of her eyes, turning them into a stormy sky ready to erupt. He’d seen the look before, every day of the past twenty years to be exact. When they deigned to notice him at all, the people of Ballyfionúir—his people—did so with the same suspicion and apprehension Danni showed him now. He’d grown used to it. Convinced himself that it didn’t bother him anymore.
But on Danni’s face, the look was like slivers of glass in his gut.
“Hello,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her voice was flat, but her eyes . . . Ah, her eyes. They were bright with emotions she wouldn’t let surface. Lightning bolts should have shot from them. Perhaps they still would.
“I wanted to speak with you,” he said, taking a deep breath as she passed him on the way to the door.
She glanced back. “To explain?”
He shook his head, drowning in the condemnation on her face. It was nothing less than he deserved. He’d come to her lying. He couldn’t even say he wouldn’t leave that way, too. He’d do whatever it took.
“There aren’t many ways to explain that everyone thinks your father is a murderer,” he said. “I generally avoid it altogether.”
He meant to sound mocking. Cool and unfazed by the shame that lived and breathed with him every day. But somehow she’d captured him with those fierce eyes, and now she brought him to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
There was confusion on her face now and anger, brittle and sharp. “You’re sorry,” she repeated. “About your father.”
He nodded.
“That’s it?”
He didn’t know what more she wanted, but it was obvious that she expected something to follow. Some confession he wasn’t prepared to make. Would he ever understand what turned the wheels of a woman’s mind?
With a dismissive sound, she turned away to unlock the door. He stared at her back, noting the stiff but fine line of her spine, the soft curves beneath the slacks, the slender and shapely legs they hid.
Most of her hair had escaped the twist and curled against her shoulders. The muted browns and golds and burning reds caught in the sun and shone like some indescribable treasure. He wanted to touch it, see if it felt as soft as it looked. He wanted to press his mouth against the salt of her skin, inhale her heat, taste her.
He followed her into the house when she didn’t slam the door in his face, figuring she would feed him to the rodent dog for certain. Instead she scooped the mutt up and gently put the snarling thing out the back door. Without looking at him, she moved to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out two bottles of water, setting one beside him before moving away. He’d have preferred a beer, but was just grateful she didn’t throw the bottle at him. She perched on the kitchen counter, twisted off the top of her water, and drank half in one long gulp, all the while watching him.
This morning she’d watched him, too. He’d felt the intensity, the grudging interest in her gaze. Without saying a word, she managed to flip switches he didn’t even know he had. She lowered her water, and he caught her stare, holding it a baited moment, not trying to hide the heat burning low inside him.
It was wrong, perhaps. Insane, for certain. But there it was, between them. A friction. Awareness. He saw it spark across her skin, saw her sharp intake of breath. And then she exhaled, narrowing her eyes as she did. She was still waiting, still expecting something of him he didn’t quite comprehend.
He could tell her the ugly history of his family, tell her about the anger and disgrace he felt whenever he thought of his father, but he didn’t have the heart to go there. Not yet, not until he had to.
Knowing it wasn’t the right place to begin, but choosing it anyway, he said, “My grandmother, she sees things.”
The obscure statement brought no reaction. Danni sipped her water, not answering. But she was listening.
“We’re superstitious, we Irish. Half the town is afraid of her. The other half thinks she has magic. That she can change what she sees.”
“Can she?”
Her question startled him. Of course she couldn’t. He shook his head.
“What does she see?”
The words were absent of rancor but they held something else, something that raised the hairs at the back of his neck. They surprised him. No, they troubled him.
“She saw you,” he answered softly.
The kitchen was dim, the windows shaded from outside by ancient trees. But it seemed Danni paled.
“She’s seen you since you were little.”
“How does she see me?” Danni asked.
He shrugged. “I can’t be knowing that, can I now? It’s her who does it.”
“But she knew I was alive?”
He nodded.
“Why didn’t she tell anyone?”
Before he could say, Who would believe her? Danni averted her face, and he knew she’d thought it on her own without any explanation from him. He’d never spoken of his grandmother’s gift before, but he’d anticipated questions Danni wasn’t asking. It was as if she knew exactly what he meant.
Put off by it, he said, “Well now, she did tell people she thought you were alive. But never did she know where you were or how you’d survived. And no one took her for telling the truth. Oh, some believed her, sure, but years went by without you being found.”
“Did you believe her?”
“Aye. I did.”
Danni’s face was like a porcelain mask, beautiful and unmoving, revealing nothing of her thoughts. But he had the startling impression that behind that mask emotions raged, emotions not born of confusion but of comprehension. She understood. As strange and perplexing as it was, she understood.
“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you Danni?”
She gave him a hard look. “I haven’t a clue.”
But it was a lie, as sure as he’d told them himself.
“Tell me something,” she said, “does she see you, too?”
The question was bland, yet so pointed that at first he didn’t know how to answer. What the fuck did it mean, did his grandmother see him, too? “Why wouldn’t she see me? She’s not blind. Just old.”
Danni considered this with the same distant edge. He couldn’t grasp what was going on inside her head.
“You’re not drinking your water,” she noted, nodding at the untouched bottle beside him.
Once again, he heard something in her voice that baffled him. Was it so important to her that he quench his thirst? He felt like an errant puppet who’d hopelessly tangled his strings. Yet she still tried to pull them. Scowling, he looked at the water bottle, but didn’t lift it. “I’m not thirsty,” he said.
“No?” she answered. “Of course you’re not.”
Before he could even guess what the hell she meant by that, she went on, jumping to another topic, keeping him unbalanced. “My dad doesn’t even know you’re here looking for me, does he?”
“No. He doesn’t even know I’m gone.” Doesn’t even know I exist, he added silently, thinking of the cold dismissal in Cathán MacGrath’s eyes whenever they passed over Sean. That same chill lurked in his daughter’s eyes now.
Danni tipped her bottle and drained it before setting it aside. That sparking tension seemed to shiver through the room as she stared at him.
“What do you want from me, Sean?”
That he could answer truthfully enough. But what he wanted now—right now—was hot and carnal, deep and abiding. She wouldn’t take kindly to him saying it.
“I want to bring you home. It’s where you belong.”
“If that’s all, then why the lies?”
“Why the lies?” he repeated incredulously. “I should have told you the truth? Would you have opened your door had I begun with that?”
“Begun with it? I haven’t heard a word of it yet. What really happened to my family?”
He made a sound that combined both pain and irony. “I swear to you, about that I’ve been honest. No one knows the truth of it but them that lived it. You’d have a better chance asking yourself.”
“But you were there. Weren’t you?”
He frowned at her and shook his head. “In Ballyfionúir, aye. But I was not with my father that night.”
“Where were you then?”
The question was sharp, like a ruler rapping a desk. It commanded attention and response. He frowned at her, sensing it held more importance than the simple demand it formed. “Home, I suppose. It was a long time ago. Why do you ask me?”
She stared at him, her frustration palpable. He didn’t know what she expected of him or why she’d made such an assumption about where he’d been, for it seemed she had. That much he could read in her eyes.
She said, “You told me they’d pinned the murders on someone who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those were your words.”
He nodded. “’Tis the truth of it. My father was always that.”
“Do you miss him?”
“My father? No, and for certain I don’t want to.”
“Even now that you know I’m alive?”
He shook his head helplessly. He didn’t want to tell her that nothing would ever make his father innocent in Sean’s eyes. Niall Ballagh may not have killed Danni and her mother, but he’d destroyed Danni’s family, left it in shambles, decimated and irreparable. And it wasn’t just her family he’d devastated. Before he’d wreaked havoc on the MacGraths, he’d shattered his own small and trusting unit. Niall would always be a monster to Sean.
Sean glanced away from Danni’s face. “I can’t know what your being alive really means, can I now? Where is your brother? Your mother for that matter? I’ll not be forgiving him so easily for what he’s done.”
“You think he murdered my brother? Tried to murder me and my mother? You think he was capable of that?”
“I’m sorry but I do.”
“Jesus,” she breathed. “Jesus.”
“It gives me no pleasure to say it. But you asked me.”
“And you’re telling me the truth?”
“I swear it.”
“You used those words this morning.”
“Aye, I did. You asked if Cathán MacGrath was really your father. It is still true.”
“I asked if you were for real.”
“As real any man can be, Dáirinn MacGrath.”
She stared at him and the raw pain he saw made him want to cross the room, to hold her as he’d wanted to since the first sight of her lovely face.
“But you haven’t told me who you really are, have you Sean? Why is it you who’s come to bring me home?”
“And why shouldn’t it be?”
“Because you think your father tried to wipe out my family, that’s why. Can’t you see how crazy that is?”
“What better reason would I need for wanting to bring you back? No one doubted for a minute that he’d done what they accused him of. Murder. Yet here you are.”
“You talk in circles, Sean,” she said, pushing off the counter and crossing to stand in front of him. “You just said that my being alive proves nothing but the fact that he wasn’t efficient enough to kill all of us.”
“And so it could be. Or maybe he told the truth all those years ago. I’ve no way to know, do I now? But you, Danni, you were there. You saw it all and you’ve got it locked up in that pretty head of yours.”
“I was five. Until you walked through the door, I didn’t even remember I had a brother.”
“I’ve faith it will come back to you, what you’ve forgotten.”
“You think returning to Ireland will make me remember?”
“It’s certainly worth the effort.”
She thought about that, and he hoped perhaps he’d distracted her, but in the next moment, she was back to him.
“How old were you when it happened?”
“Fourteen,” he answered, remembering that painful year, the feeling of no longer belonging to the world of children but not yet having a place in the order of men. His body had grown, and he’d been able to see manhood waiting for him, just out of reach. Try as he might to speed it up, it would come no faster than it chose. And then his father had ended everything in one bloody night, leaving Sean neither a boy nor man, but an adolescent carrying the weight of an adult’s responsibility on his too-thin shoulders. Suddenly school and the future were not so important as peat to be harvested for their fire or fish hauled from the ocean for their livelihood.
He shook his head. “I see you wanting to make this about me,” he said to Danni. “But you can’t. It’s only ever been about you.”
Her brows shot up at that. “Nice try, but no. From where I’m standing, this looks like some twisted game, and I’m just a pawn you think you can move around the board. Well, I’ve got news for you, Sean Ballagh. I’m not going anywhere with you until you answer my question. Why you? Why are you here?”
Her demand shifted the ground beneath him, pushing him ever closer to an edge he hadn’t seen before, hadn’t suspected lurked just in the distance.
Why was he here? Why was he here?
Because of her, the answer came simply enough. He’d come only for her.
It made perfect sense, and yet the why of it eluded him. He stood there, staring into those thunderous gray eyes and the only explanation was wrapped around his heart, bound so tight he couldn’t separate it and analyze it.
He’d come for her because . . . because . . . she belonged with him. That alone was the reason he’d come to bring her home.
The simplicity of it rolled over him like a great wave. It forced him under and towed him out as it washed everything else away. He felt bewitched, bewildered, beset. The possessive need of her cast a shadow in his mind that he couldn’t see past, though he knew he should. What waited on the other side? What was it that flitted in and out of the recesses of his memory?
He raised his eyes to Danni’s and something of his confusion must have shown through. He sensed a softening in her, a reaching out. And like a drowning man, he grasped.
“I came for you,” he muttered, propelled forward by the power of the statement. He backed her to the counter in three quick steps. Surprise widened her eyes while something else—something deep and conceding—darkened them. The moment had been inevitable; he saw it there in her face, and it charged his blood, infusing him with fire.
Slowly, deliberately, he braced his hands on either side of her and lowered his head to hers. A fraction of breath kept them apart, but the intimate rhythm of her racing pulse beating at her throat, of his heart pounding in his chest—it made them one. “I came for you,” he said against her mouth.
And then he kissed her. The feel of her lips, the heat of her breath as it expelled in a rush went through him like an electric charge. He’d dived in, expecting the water to be shallow, the act painful. But if this was pain, he hoped to die of it.
Her hands came up to his chest and he knew she meant to push him away, but that surely would kill him. He did the only thing he could think to stop her. Bringing his fingers to the silken warmth of her face, he deepened the kiss, letting his tongue tease her soft, yielding lips until she opened for him. A shiver went through them both as the cold sweet of her tongue touched the hot need of his. She tasted of mint and warmth and intoxication. He was drunk from the effect. He couldn’t have stopped the groan of relief, of satisfaction, had he tried.
He focused on Danni, wanting her to feel what he felt, needing her to want what he wanted. He leaned his weight against her, pinning her body between his and the cupboards, making her know how much he desired her. The hands on his chest clenched, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt as she strained against him—not pushing him away but urging him closer. He felt dizzy with the awareness of her melting softness, the surrender of her body. He slid his hands to her throat and his mouth followed, kissing, tasting, the sweet salt of her skin an aphrodisiac he’d only imagined. Her shoulders were small and fine boned beneath his hands. He felt the press of her breasts against his chest. He wanted more. He wanted contact at every point possible.
He wrapped his arms around her again and lifted, setting her on the counter so he could move between her knees and pull her closer still. The new height put her face level with his own and gave him access to the curve of her neck, the hollow of her throat and the tantalizing swell of her breasts.
She murmured his name in a low, hoarse voice. “This isn’t real,” she breathed.
“The hell it isn’t,” he said, moving back to her mouth to prove to her that it was as real as the blood racing through his veins.
It was like holding a flame, having her in his arms. She burned, she writhed, she singed his nerves and seared his control. He wanted to strip her clothes from her body and take her right there on the kitchen floor, but it seemed every inch of silken skin he touched distracted him from his goal. He slipped his hands beneath her shirt and slid them up, across the heated softness of her flesh to cup her breasts, rub his thumbs across the peaks. A small sound slipped from her lips, making his blood hotter, faster.
But then she stilled. “Sean,” she said. “Stop.”
The mixture of desire, hurt, and confusion in her tone did more than the simple command. It mirrored too closely the complex labyrinth of feelings inside Sean, passions raging wildly from one deceiving passage to another. There was a way to find what he wanted, but it was obscured by his pounding heart and overpowering need.
“I can’t stop,” he said simply, but he forced his body to do what his mind couldn’t and pulled away, slowly. He didn’t understand the turning point that had brought him here, but he knew there was no going back. Somehow she’d become a salvation that he was desperate to reach.
Her steady gaze felt like a spotlight, exposing what was inside him. He moved away, angry with himself. When had he become so pathetic? He’d learned to survive in a world that had turned its back on him when he was fourteen. He wasn’t some vulnerable boy yearning to be loved anymore. He wasn’t weak, like his father. He was a man who made his own way, alone.
He moved to the sliding door where he stared out at her garden and yard. The dog lay on the other side of the glass. She lifted her head and growled at him. He could see Danni superimposed on the surface, pale skin against the T-shirt and slacks that molded every intriguing curve of her body.
“I’d like you to leave now,” she said, her voice toneless, cold when he craved her heat.
In the blurred reflection he saw her confusion and determination, and it only stoked his anger and hurt. But he could do nothing more than what she asked.
Without a word, he left.
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