Irish Fling Read online

  Her hair blew against his arm softly.

  Carefully, Aidan caught a silken strand between his fingers. The tight ringlets tried to curl around them.

  He smiled.

  “Ali Dearborn,” she said, holding her hand out to him. “Pleased to meet you.”

  With a smile, he took the offered hand. It was small, soft and warm. He was surprised at the strength in it.

  “Aidan O’Connell. Pleased as well.”

  He had a good strong handshake, Ali reflected, neither bone crushing nor quick to release. That was something else she liked. He also had a charming, sexy smile that melted a little bit of her heart each time he used it.

  With an effort, she recalled herself.

  “If you need a cell phone, though,” she offered, “I have one. You’re welcome to use it.”

  She reached behind his seat, her eyes on the road to fish around in her bag for the little phone.

  In the small car her shoulder brushed against him.

  This close Aidan could smell her scent, something light and fresh, see the fine texture of her soft skin, the neckline of the dress revealing the smooth, round tops of her breasts. A punch of lust went through him, reminding him how long it had been since he’d last touched a woman.

  Since Devon.

  One thing was certain, Ali Dearborn was nothing like Devon, absolutely. In point of fact, in all ways they were polar opposites, dark to light. Ali was open, friendly, not cool and reserved.

  Shifting back into her own seat, she handed him the phone.

  Flipping open the tiny phone, he called and made arrangements to have the car towed before settling back in the seat corner once again to study her.

  They zipped over the roads fairly quickly. He glanced at the speedometer and was impressed. She handled the car well and competently, a woman after his own heart.

  “Thanks, then,” he said, “there’s a turn up ahead to the left you’ll need to make.”

  Aidan could actually see her reason it out, looking down at the hand on the stick shift to reassure herself it was the correct one. So, it was no lie, it truly was a problem for her to tell the difference. He hadn’t quite believed her at first. Well then… Wheels turned in his mind.

  “So,” he asked, “where in America are you from then, pretty Ali?”

  She gave him a glance, neatly negotiating a sharp curve without even a blink. A blush touched her cheeks.

  “Pennsylvania,” she said, with a grin, “a small town in the northeast called Millersburg that you’ve probably never heard of.”

  “You’d be right,” he said, thinking about his many trips to the States. “I haven’t.”

  So she was a nice small-town girl travelling through Ireland on holiday. Perfect.

  “And you?” she asked.

  “The same, in my own way, but in County Kerry.”

  With a smile, Ali said, with a glance at him, “That’s on my itinerary somewhere. Is it as beautiful as they say?”

  The memory of the green hills and rugged coast of Kerry made him smile, too. It suddenly struck him how long it had been since he’d been home, or to the cottage he’d bought back in the day when the company he’d named for his home county had been young. The cottage had been one of the first things he’d bought when the company took off. He’d intended to use it fairly frequently. As he remembered, he’d only been there once or twice.

  Oddly, it was where he’d been headed before the car had packed up on him.

  “How long are you here, then?” he asked, curiously.

  “A few weeks perhaps, more or less,” she said, with a quick glance at him.

  That gorgeous hair fluttered and blew in the wind to brush against his arm teasingly.

  She was truly lovely, especially when she smiled.

  “Where were you headed now?” he said.

  Her mouth twitched in a quick wry smile. “Tara.”

  “You are lost,” he said, incredulous.

  Laughing, a delightful and lovely sound coming from her, clearly amused she said, “I did say so.”

  He considered it a moment longer. With the little car in the shop, he’d have to find an alternative to his own holiday.

  Or perhaps he’d already found it. And a better one than spending it alone.

  Impulsively, he said, “You did. Are you needing a tour guide, then, Ali Dearborn?”

  She glanced at him again, pulled the sunglasses down a little to look at him with those remarkable eyes, giving him the same instant jolt. The question in them was clear, amused but clear.

  With a shrug, he tipped his head back in the direction of his car, far behind them now. “As it happens, I was on a bit of a holiday myself. Those plans have now obviously changed as I have no car.”

  He had others but they were back in Dublin. Not so far away but not in a direction he wanted to take.

  “We can give it a try and if it doesn’t work out, you can drive me to the nearest train station. No strings attached.”

  No strings. Ali didn’t have to consider it. Spend a day or more with an incredibly handsome Irishman as her personal tour guide? She wasn’t an idiot.

  “Won’t it be boring for you, surely you’ve seen it all?” she asked.

  He shrugged and smiled, lifted her hand and pressed his lips to the back of it. It send a little thrill through her.

  “Better than what my plans had been or were. Spending some time with a beautiful woman seems a much better alternative.”

  To his surprise, he watched color bloom beneath her skin at the compliment. Surely, she knew how pretty she was?

  Beautiful but not beautiful the way in which many models were beautiful ― as he well knew having dated one or two, including Devon. Ali’s face was too mobile for that kind of beauty. No, Ali was simply lovely, her face animated, alive, and warm. Then there were those incredible, magical eyes. Fairy eyes.

  A small smile touched her lips.

  The moment his lips touched her hand, Ali felt warmth flood her, racing from where his mouth touched to spread through her body.

  She’d never been the pretty one, that had been Molly and Jesse. She’d always been the smart one, the one who couldn’t resist popping her hand up in class to answer the teacher’s question. Jesse had been the impulsive one, but Ali had never been far behind.

  She glanced at him as he rested his head back against the seat and smiled at her.

  “In that case,” she said, “I’d be pleased.”

  This had possibilities, Aidan thought and smiled. She knew nothing about him. To her he was just Aidan…nothing more.

  “So,” he said, curiously, “what is it you do in America, Ali Dearborn?”

  Flashing him another of her quick smiles she said with a shrug, “I’m between careers right now, checking out my options, trying to see what my choices are. I needed some breathing space to make that decision.”

  “So you came to Ireland,” he said.

  “And so I came to Ireland, more or less,” she said and then glanced at him over the sunglasses. “And you, Aidan O’Connell?”

  She mimicked his accent fairly creditably. Those fairy eyes sparkled.

  Aidan smiled. “Much the same.”

  With a careless shrug, he said, “I own my own company but I have a partner and a board of directors. They want to stay the course. I don’t know that I want to do the same. I have ideas. There’s a safety to it, though, to staying.”

  It was clear to Ali he was talking as much to himself―if not more so―than to her.

  Giving him a glance, Ali said, “Is safety what you’re looking for? You don’t strike me as the‘safe’ type, Aidan.”

  A little startled at her perception Aidan gave her a wicked smile. “Oh, you have the right of it there, pretty Ali. I’m not.”

  She shook her head and laughed at the glint in his eyes.

  Chapter Two

  As happened in the spring, the weather changed in what seemed like moments. The sky above them clouded over and b
y the time they reached Tara it was misting. A cool breeze blew, forcing them to put the roof up on the little car but it only made it seem the more cozy as they talked.

  To his surprise, Aidan found Ali remarkably well educated and a thoroughly pleasant traveling companion.

  Ali pulled to a stop in the car park, a little surprised and pleased at what she found there.

  Tara didn’t have the kind of garish accoutrements that accompanied so many historic sites in the States. There was a little coffee shop, a few signs, a lovely old church with a graveyard beside it and a few standing stones. She smiled as she reached into the back of the car for the shawl she’d bought at the airport. It was a romantic thing to wear but she liked them anyway. She drew it around her shoulders as Aidan joined her.

  What was amazing to Ali was how green it all was. She understood now why they called it the Emerald Isle far more truly than she ever had. Pictures simply didn’t do it justice. They simply couldn’t, there wasn’t enough green in a photograph to hold all the shades of it here.

  With the loss of the sun, she’d had pushed her sunglasses up into her hair, freed it from the confining scarf, and now the mass of it flagged in the breeze. She loved the feel of it blowing, knowing the mist would make it curl more.

  Aidan was amazed at the length of it, falling nearly to mid-waist. Gorgeous. Mist sparkled in the deep gold curls.

  Standing next to her he was surprised to find how tiny she was as she’d seemed taller in the car but she only stood perhaps five two or five three, a little bit of a thing with a dancer’s lithe grace, the long crinkly skirt swirling around slender ankles.

  “So,” he asked, “why Tara?”

  It wasn’t a common American tourist destination―they preferred Castle Blarney, the pubs and breweries.

  Glancing at him, she gave him that bright smile, her unusual eyes merry, visibly amused at herself.

  “The history of it. I’m a closet romantic,” she said and sighed as they walked up to the churchyard. He was intrigued when she avoided the small cluster of people that milled around the standing stones there.

  She continued, “I love the stories, the people in them. And the time in which they lived. The closeness these people shared. They knew each other well. They had to with no TV, no radios, no rush and bustle to distract them, keep them separate. Only fili, bards and seanachie for entertainment.”

  Automatically, Aidan held out a hand to her as they walked up the hill. She laid that small hand in his almost unconsciously, smiling at him as she talked. Those enchanting eyes were going to kill him.

  “Then there are the stories,” Ali said, smiling as they walked over the hillocks, “the romances and tragedies. Grainne and Diarmuid. Niall of the Nine Hostages, Cormac MacAirt… Niamh and Oisin. The children of Lir, turned into swans by their wicked stepmother.”

  Stories from Aidan’s childhood.

  “You know them?”

  She smiled. “All of them.”

  Watching her as she stood by the Lia Fail, the stone of kings, with her bright hair blowing in the wind, the shawl wrapped around her shoulders, the long skirt fluttering, and with those incredible eyes, she might have been Grainne herself, or some ancient Celtic goddess. Brid perhaps. She was beautiful, oddly ethereal. She glanced back at him; eyes alight as she touched the rail around the great standing stone of the Lia Fail lightly.

  “Can you imagine what it was like here back then?” Ali said, turning to look out over the hills of Ireland. “When people still lived here? When Cormac ruled? Back when the Gods were close and people still believed in magic…”

  “Do you believe in magic, Ali?” he asked, smiling at her fancy. With those eyes, he could believe it.

  She glanced up at him and those gilded eyes twinkled.

  “I do,” she said. “I still believe in magic. At any moment I expect the fair folk to come out of hiding to dance.”

  Truthfully Aidan wasn’t certain they already hadn’t, in the form of a small, slender woman with eyes of tarnished gold and hair the color of sunshine.

  As they talked, he noticed she’d picked up a lilt in her voice, a hint of Irish in it.

  “So, are you Irish then, Ali?” he asked as they walked to the Mound of Hostages.

  Most American tourists were and those that weren’t wanted to be, it seemed.

  Her eyes twinkled again as she gave him another flashing look.

  Ali liked to listen to him talk, to hear the smooth lilt of his voice.

  “My mother was, straight off the boat. She died when I was a little girl,” she said, with a wistful smile. “I loved to listen to her talk.”

  In memory, Ali saw again the small yellow kitchen and heard the Irish music playing on the little bookcase stereo. Her mother laughed as they danced together the way her mother had when she was a little girl, their feet flashing.

  Those had been good days.

  “I’m sorry,” Aidan said, seeing the old grief in her eyes.

  Shaking her head, she smiled. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago.”

  Close with his own mother, and his father as well, Aidan couldn’t imagine them not a part of his life although he didn’t see much of them either these days. It had become more difficult there, too, since that article had been published. In her pride of what he’d accomplished his mother had made the mistake of showing it around the village. Now it seemed whenever he visited the neighbors would come calling with their unmarried daughters in tow.

  Bad enough to have found one woman who only wanted him for his money on his own but now his own folk were doing it for him.

  “So you were raised by your father, then? Was he Irish, too?”

  With a shake of her head, she said, “No, I never knew him. I was raised in foster care.”

  She didn’t say that he’d abandoned them when he’d found out her mother was pregnant. Not that her mother had ever said, but Ali had figured it out once she was old enough to put two and two together.

  That pain was so old it was no more than a twinge. She’d gone through a brief phase of believing her father would suddenly appear in her life now after her mother was gone, but over time it had passed. She didn’t even know his name. Now she had no way of finding him and wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Aidan couldn’t imagine it. She’d said something before about foster parents, which implied there’d been more than one. What had it been like to grow up like that, going from one place to another?

  Yet she seemed happy, confident and comfortable in her own skin, always only a step away from laughter.

  “So, are you here to find her family then?”

  A little startled Ali looked at him and said, “Good Lord, no, I couldn’t imagine imposing on them that way. I’m a stranger to them.”

  Curiously, Aidan eyed her. It was clear she meant it. It was a shame, as he was fairly certain she would have been surprised at her welcome. Most folk here were happy to see their American relations home again. Yet, raised as she’d been, he could understand it all too well.

  “What about you, Aidan?”

  “My mother and father are back in Kerry, my brothers and sisters, as well.”

  “Older or younger brothers and sisters?”

  Ali was curious. She’d had foster brothers or sisters but it hadn’t been quite the same as the real thing. There had been times when it had been awkward, especially once everyone realized just how smart she was ― as much as she’d tried to hide it from everyone. She’d been closer to her friends Cam, Molly and Jesse than she’d ever had been to any of her foster families.

  With a smile, Aidan said, “I’m the oldest of the lot, there’s Liam and Connor beneath me, and Etain and Rosaleen.”

  His obvious fondness for them made her smile in return.

  “It seems I’m not the only romantic,” Ali said, recognizing the last two names from Irish history and song.

  Aidan laughed. “No, you’re not alone in that. My mother loved the old stories, too, as you can tell. So,
where next, fair lady?”

  “Yes, I think we’re done here,” she said, “I wanted to see it. Newgrange, then, I think.”

  “Ah, ancient history, next, then? Will you trust me to do the driving?” he asked cautiously as they walked back toward the car.

  While it hadn’t been a trial, her obvious difficulty with right and left had made the journey here a little bit more of an adventure than it needed to be.

  Eyes twinkling, she said, “That bad, was it?”

  “Welll,” he said, grinning.

  For a moment, Ali hesitated, looking into his blue eyes, at the challenge there. She threw caution to the wind, reached into her pocket and pulled out the keys.

  “Catch,” she said and tossed them to him.

  With a grin, he snatched them neatly out of the air.

  Her heart caught a little at the grin, it was charming and a little roguish as well. His blue eyes sparkled as the wind ruffled his thick dark hair.

  Aidan slid behind the wheel. It was no simple little car she’d rented, but something a spot above the one he’d abandoned.

  It seemed they shared something else in common, Ali discovered as he pulled them out of the parking lot ― a need for speed.

  Ali grinned.

  Glancing at her, Aidan saw the smile. Something inside him lightened even more as he pulled the little car out of the car park and shifted it into gear.

  Newgrange was more what Ali expected Tara to be, with a large visitor’s center and buses to take them out to the mound.

  It was in some way the Irish Stonehenge in its commercialism.

  Aidan swung into the seat ahead of her an arm stretched across the back of the seat so she had to slide in beside him. Ali slid into the seat next to him, all too aware of the sheer presence of him, of his arm across the seat back, the warmth of his body and his scent. She felt oddly charged, almost energized.

  She fit nicely, Aidan discovered, into the curve of his arm. Once again he caught that light scent and her hair drifted over his arm, drifting over it like curly silk. Idly, he trapped a strand of it between his fingers and toyed with it, relishing the soft texture as the tight curls wrapped around his fingers.

  Briefly, Ali glanced at him, intensely aware of his fingers in her hair, each small touch sending a small electric charge through her. She felt strangely warm.