Allison Parr - Running Back

He nodded. “Yeah. Is Paul here?”

The kid slouched back and crossed his arms. “Connelly! Your American cousin’s arrived.”

Every head in the pub swiveled in our direction.

From the back, a man detached himself from a clump of Guinness guzzlers. He was about my height and age, but he had thick black hair and dark eyes. Black Irish, they called it, Iberian blood. He shoved his hands in his pockets and sauntered over.

“Well.” Paul Connelly had a low, lilting voice, and I immediately thought of Cam’s Operation: Irish Boyfriend. “That didn’t take very long.”

Beside me, Mike relaxed very slowly. The great control that went into his apparent laziness was more alarming than if he’d tensed up all over. “’Scuse me?”

Paul propped his elbow on the bar and shrugged. “Seems to me you swooped right in as soon as you inherited some land.”

Mike curved his lips up. “Actually, my uncle just died. I’m here for his month’s mind.”

“After twenty-six years of never even talking to the man?”

Mike relaxed his body even more, like he was lounging in midair. “You’re pretty well-informed for a guy I never even knew existed.”

Paul scoffed and shook his head. “Just like a Yank.”

Mike didn’t even twitch. Like a snake before the death-strike. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Great. Could no one in this family communicate without weird accusations? If Paul Connelly’s body language was any indication, Mike was about to get punched in the face.

I squeezed between the two guys and stuck my hand out. “I’m Natalie Sullivan. Sorry for your loss. I never met your uncle, but we spoke several times. I’m an archaeologist from Columbia University.”

Paul waited a moment, his square jaw working, before he transferred his attention to me. When he did, surprise crossed his face. “You’re a lot prettier than I expected.”

“Hey,” Mike said sharply. He moved up beside me.

I stepped on Mike’s foot and kept my gaze trained on Paul. “Your aunt said you might be able to take us by Kilkarten today.”

Paul looked back and forth between Mike and me. “You two a thing?”

I refused to look at Mike. “No.”

Mike spoke at the same time. “What’s it to you?”

Paul smiled slowly and Mike scowled. Then, focusing all his attention on me, Paul said, “Right this way.”

Mike caught my arm as we headed out the door, leaning close enough that his breath brushed my neck. “Watch that guy.”

I shivered, focus stolen by the thrills of attraction running down my arms. “Why?”

“Because I have two younger sisters, and can spot an asshole a mile away.”

I shook my head at him and followed Paul out onto the street. We piled into Paul’s truck, and Mike and I had a brief, silent struggle for the front seat while Paul headed toward the driver’s side. Mike won.

Paul had to start and stop several times as oblivious pedestrians wandered into the streets before us. He didn’t speak. Mike didn’t speak.

So of course I did. “So your aunt says you live in Paris?”

“That’s right.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “You been?”

“No, but it’s on my list. Do you travel a lot, out of Paris?”

He slowly grinned at me in the mirror. For a moment, he looked shockingly like his cousin, despite the lack of blood between them, and the darkness of Paul’s looks compared to Mike’s brightness. He nodded. “A bit.”

I kept babbling. “I’ve never been to Paris but I did a whole circuit of Eastern Europe—Prague and Istanbul and Croatia...”

A spark of genuine interest lit, and some of the tension drained from the car. “You ever get to Dubrovnik?”

“I loved Dubrovnik.” I turned to Mike. “It’s this gorgeous walled city with red roofs and these winding streets—”

Paul interrupted. “Did you walk the walls? See the Old Town?”

I nodded. “Oh yeah, of course. Did you go out to that island?”

“With the monastery?”

“Yeah. Okay, listen to this. We met the weirdest old man on the ferry...”

Mike didn’t seem to like the conversation going on without him. “We might go to Paris later this summer.”

Paul switched his attention to Mike as though I hadn’t been in the middle of a sentence. “You and her?”

Mike shrugged non-committedly.

Please. Though if Mike’s family invited me to go to France, I’d have a hard time resisting. Think of all the croissants!

Still, I didn’t really appreciate Mike using me as a chew toy to make Paul jealous.

I looked back at Paul. “Are you from Dundoran originally?”

“From Dublin. Came down to take care of my aunt since my mum couldn’t get away from work and I have the summer off.” His accent was gentle and lulling. “Came for the funeral and everything too.”

My hands twisted in my lap. In front of me, I caught a quarter of Mike’s profile as he looked toward Paul. A muscle pulsed in his cheek. “Look, man, I don’t know what your problem with me is. Did you want Kilkarten to be left to you?”

Paul scoffed. “What do I want with a heap of grass? Not like there’s anything interesting there.”

I leaned forward. “I beg to differ. There’s a whole freaking harbor.”

Paul glanced back. “Sorry, love. Forgot about that.”

My lips twitched at the endearment. Mike let out an unimpressed hmph .

The ride to Kilkarten had taken us out of the village and through rolling hills. The sun glided over the land, picking out a dozen shades of green, so many that I found my brain stunted by color and the inability to think of anything new to say. We passed a turnoff for someone else’s farm and a few sheep watched us go. A handful of miles later Paul took another turnoff, and the road rambled upward before leveling out. Green and blue stretched out before us, the water a flat line in the distance.

Paul threw the truck into park in a dirt lot next to the dead remains of a building. Ah, the O’Connor farmhouse, burned years ago when Patrick and Mike’s father were boys. “Here we are. Good old Kilkarten.”

A chill of anticipation swept through me, and I fumbled for the door and fell out of the car.

The air caught in my chest. This land was everything. Ivernis’s past, my future, Jeremy’s redemption. My eyes scanned as far as I could see, and I knelt and threaded my fingers through the grass. Here had been dark blue water. A calm bay; a drastic change from outside the cove, from the great Atlantic waves crashing against the shore, whipped by frenzied winds into white foam and spray. Here—right here—the water had only rippled, surrounded on three sides by land. Small ships sailed from Ireland to Britain. Traded for iron, introduced a whole age. Beneath me could be the skeletons of ancient curraghs. Buried in the harbor’s mulch could be coins fallen overboard, from Rome—even Greece—there could be anything fallen over. There could be a whole story buried here just waiting to be read.

I sucked in a deep breath and stood, searching for Mike, wanting more than anything in that instant for him to share my happiness. I thought that he, out of all the people in the world, would also be able to feel how wonderful this place was. I jogged to his side. “Mike, isn’t it fantastic?”

He didn’t seem to hear. Standing like that, with his spine straight and his gaze distant, he looked just like the lord of the land, surveying his kingdom.

Because, of course, he did understand how special this place was. He owned it. As far as he could see, until the quiet strip of blue, this land was his.

To cover my disquiet, I kicked off my flip-flops. “Race you to the ocean.”

He blinked, and his attention shifted back to me. “What?”