Kate Hoffmann - Kellan

“Is any of that true?” Kellan asked.

“No. Aren’t you glad it isn’t? The truth is much less interesting. And if you really cared about me, it wouldn’t matter.”

He circled the bed and sat down beside her. “You’re afraid,” he said. “You’re afraid that I’ll find something about you that I don’t like.”

“No,” Gelsey said. “I just don’t care about who you were before we met. That part of your life didn’t involve me. Our lives began that morning on the beach. We’re like…goldfish.”

“Goldfish?”

“They live completely in the moment. If you watch a fish in a bowl, by the time he gets across the bowl, he’s forgotten where he was. It doesn’t matter to him.”

“That’s bollocks,” Kellan muttered. “I don’t live like a feckin’ fish. I’m willing to take the good with the bad. If we don’t start to be honest with each other, then we don’t have any chance to make this work.”

“You want to make this work? What does that mean? It already works. If you try any harder, you might wreck it.”

“Maybe so. But this is it, Gelsey. This is the deal breaker. I need some answers.”

She considered his demand for a long moment, then nodded. “Have you ever played the game Twenty Questions? It’s a game I used to play with my nanny.”

“You had a nanny?” Kellan asked.

“Yes. Her name was Marie and she was French. She’s the one who taught me how to speak French. My mother thought it was important. That’s one question. And I’m only giving you five. So you have four left.”

“What’s your name?” Kellan asked.

“I’m Gelsey Evangeline Woodson. I’m named after my mother’s favorite ballet dancer and my father’s favorite poem.”

“Where are your parents?”

“I have no idea,” Gelsey said. “My mother is probably in New York. And the last time I heard, my father was in Hong Kong. We don’t really communicate. They have their lives and I have mine.” She sent him a sideways glance. “See. Some of the answers aren’t very pretty. My parents divorced when I was eight and sent me off to boarding school. I used to come to Ireland every summer to stay with my grandmother at Winterhill, her house.”

“Boarding school?”

“Yes. And that’s four. In Switzerland. It’s as awful as it sounds. I was lonely and homesick and I had trouble making friends. Last question.”

Kellan considered his options silently. “I think I’ll save my last question,” he said.

“You can’t. It’s against the rules. You have to ask me now or lose the question.”

“This game has rules?” Kellan chuckled. “Doesn’t that go against the whole ‘living for the moment’ thing? Why not seven questions? Or eleven? Who cares how many questions were asked in the past? I say that we should play with forty-six questions. Just to live in the moment.”

“Ask your last question,” she said, bristling at the sarcasm in his voice. “Or don’t.” Gelsey crawled out of bed and picked up her clothes from the floor. She tugged on her shirt without putting on a bra, then pulled on her jeans. “I think I’m going to go.”

“Go where?”

“Home,” she said. “And that’s your last question.” She brushed past him. She found her boots at the door and slipped her bare feet inside, then put on her jacket. But by the time she opened the door, Kellan was beside her, pushing it shut again.

“Don’t go,” he murmured.

“I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to fight with you.” This was all so familiar, she mused. It had happened with every man she’d ever known. Accusations, recriminations. Why did every man have to dwell in the past?

“I’m sorry. It’s just difficult for me.”

“Why? It’s so easy. We know how we feel, right now, in the moment. And in a few minutes, it will all be forgotten.”

“Is that the way it works? You’ll forget that I’ve been a bloody caffler?”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Gelsey said.

“An arse of the highest order. An eejit. A proper prick.”

She smiled. “Yes, I believe the description suits you quite well.”

He slipped his arms around her waist and kissed her, lingering over her mouth until she parted her lips. The kiss was perfectly executed to make her forget the argument they’d just had and by the end of it, Gelsey was convinced.

“Stay with me,” he murmured. “I don’t want you to go.”

“If I stay, no more questions.”

“No more questions.”

“All right. I’ll stay.”

Kellan picked her up and wrapped her legs around his waist, then carried her into the bedroom. “Gelsey Evangeline Woodson,” he murmured, kissing her neck. “I like that.”

“My friends used to call me Gigi,” she said. “But I hate that name now.”

“I like Gels,” he said. “Will that do?”

KELLAN STRODE INTO the Hound, searching the dimly lit interior as he walked to the bar. Overnight, the place had been decorated for the holidays with twinkling garlands draped from every spot possible and a Christmas tree sitting in the corner.

But there was something a bit nicer about it all, he mused as he took it all in, he could see Jordan and Nan’s influence on the family business already. Kellan recognized his brother’s Christmas CD playing over the sound system.

Riley was washing glasses and nodded at him as he approached. “Big brother, what are you about on this fine day?”

“The place looks grand,” Kellan said. “Very festive. But the music is crap.”

Riley chuckled. “Thanks. I’ll let the management know.”

“Have you seen Gelsey? I stopped up at the cottage to pick her up and she wasn’t there.”

“She’s over at the church. The ladies’ guild is meeting this afternoon and they asked if she might come and speak to them.”

“About what?”

“I guess what it’s like to be a mermaid?”

Kellan ground his teeth. “If I hear that mermaid shite once more, I swear, I’m going to pummel someone. It’s not funny anymore.”

“She’s over there demonstrating something…something to do with kelp?” Riley chuckled. “I find it quite amusing that she gets you so riled up. I have precious little entertainment here in Ballykirk, but you’ve been providing more than enough these past couple of weeks.”

“How would you feel if Nan went about telling everyone she’d once been a seal?”

Riley thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “I see your point. But, hell, if it sold more Guinness at the pub, I’d be all for it. Who cares what a bunch of tourists believe? And I hear that business is booming at Maeve’s and she’s only been working there a week. Five customers yesterday. That’s more than Maeve used to have in a month.”

“Well, the ladies’ guild isn’t a bunch of tourists.” Kellan pushed away from the bar and walked back outside, then headed toward the church, all the while thinking about what he was going to say to her. She’d told him the truth a week ago. He knew where she was from and how she grew up. He’d just assumed that the mermaid stories were finally going to stop, at least to the locals.

The ladies were gathered in the meeting room of the church. Kellan threw open the doors only to be greeted by surprised silence and twenty or thirty pairs of inquisitive eyes.

“Perfect!” Gelsey said. “You’re right on time.” She hurried up to Kellan and grabbed his arm, pulling him into the room. “Now, ladies, as I was saying, all these products work just as well on men as they do on women. Many of your men are exposed to the elements every day in their work world and the skin can become wrinkled and leathery. It’s no good walking around town with a man who looks as if he’s twice your age, right?”