Authors: Glenys O'Connell
He couldn’t stop
himself. Call it moon madness, he muttered, capturing her mouth with his own.
When she didn't resist, he deepened the kiss and felt her response. His heart
- and other parts of him - pounded as hard as the waves hitting the rocks
below. A soft sigh escaped Cíara’s lips as he moved his mouth down to her neck,
his hands pressing the small of her back, bringing her still closer into him.
“I took quite a risk
there – I thought you'd either bite me, or knee me again,” he muttered against
her neck.
“The night is
but young,” she promised, leaning back in his arms to look into his face.
* * *
“Jonathon! I thought
you were never going to get back!” The woman’s voice sounded through the
twilight like whiplash, and they sprang apart like guilty teenagers. A lovely
blonde woman, tall and willowy, stood on the front doorstep, the light from the
hallway silhouetting her becomingly.
“Who the hell is that –
your wife or something?”
“No….”
“I think you have some
explaining to do, Winters.”
Giving a small cough,
he raised his voice. “Come and meet my friend Cíara, Alison. Alison, this is
Cíara – Cíara, Alison. Alison Wilson is my agent. I wasn’t expecting you until
later in the weekend, Allie.”
“No, I can see that,”
the woman said dryly, giving Cíara a searching look and then dismissing her.
Obviously, she hadn’t made much of an impression in her travel-creased pants
and low-necked cotton tee shirt. Especially not with her auburn hair all mussed
where Winters had been tangling his fingers in it.
Inside, Cíara excused
herself to go to the bathroom, and she had to try very hard to deny that the
pang she felt was jealousy when she saw Alison Wilson’s suitcase in what was
obviously Winters' bedroom. She carried her own things into the small spare
bedroom, but didn’t unpack. She had no plans to play gooseberry, and was
wondering if she should call Grace Muldoon in Waterford to see if the B & B
owner had a room for her. The drive down had worn her out and she was reluctant
to make another trip this late at night, especially as it meant driving through
the city.
When she returned,
Jonathon and Alison were deep in conversation, his dark head close to her fair
one. Edging closer while working on a disinterested expression, she caught some
of their words
: contracts, proposals, deals, royalties,
things with
legalese phrases that she didn’t pretend to understand, but her frown lifted.
Not a lovers' meeting, after all! However, the pair seemed more than happy with
their discussion. As she entered the room, Jonathon turned to her and said:
“Honey, it looks as though Allie has got me a movie deal on one of the books – and
a shot at writing the script!”
“That’s wonderful,” she
complimented him, whole-heartedly pleased at his delight in the news. But deep
inside she was aware of a little kernel of grief beginning to sprout. If there
was a movie deal, if Jonathon was going to write the script, the odds were that
he’d be flying off back to the States soon, wanting to use the time he’d got
off from work to do the Hollywood thing.
Well, at least she’d
have her life back.
She shrugged off the warmth that had spread in her belly
when he'd called her 'Honey'.
“My goodness,
you look so serious! Didn’t you know how well Jon’s writing career was going?”
Alison asked with a smile. “It often comes as a shock to people, the few who
actually know who he is.” She winked at Winters. “Because they have trouble
reconciling the New York cop image with the extraordinary talent he has in
touching women’s hearts.”
“Aw, shucks,
Allie, you sound like a walking advertisement!” the writer protested, laughing,
but Cíara could see from the faint flush on his cheeks that he was pleased at
the praise.
Winters the
Policeman. Winters the Writer.
Which one did she know? Which was the man
with whom she had shared such unfulfilled lust just a short time ago, outside
in the dusk? Which one of them had kissed her and stirred her senses until she
barely knew what she was doing? Was there a Winters the Lover?
“Ah, I always
guessed he was schizoid,” she retorted as she went to the kitchen to find a
decent cup of tea.
She heard his snort of
laughter behind her.
Alison announced that
she was going to retire early, she had to catch a plane at Shannon the next
morning and was still suffering from jet-lag, despite having had four days of
meetings with publishers on behalf of Jon and other writers she represented in
the States. “I’m here so often these days, my boss is suggesting we open an
office in Dublin,” she said between yawns.
After Alison had gone,
Winters suggested a short walk on the beach to blow the cobwebs away after the
drive.
Cíara was quiet until
their feet scrunched in the sand. “Are you sleeping with her?” she asked
bluntly.
He was silent a moment.
“No. What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“Well, her things look
very at home in your room!”
He was glad the
darkness hid his delight.
So she was curious enough to check on the
competition – and interested enough to be jealous!
“That’s because she’s
sleeping there – alone. I usually sleep in the smaller bedroom on the odd
occasion she visits here – like, about twice in the three months since I moved
here – and she has the bigger room. She’s claustrophobic and small bedrooms
drive her crazy. “
“Have you ever slept
with her?”
“How come women can
always tell these things?” He blurted, and then regretted his words. “Okay,
years ago, Allie and I had a quick fling. We were pretty much kids, and we
didn’t even see each other again until I went looking for an agent. A mutual
friend told me Allie was working with an agency, I got in touch with her and
the rest, as they say, is history.
“And, in case you’re
wondering, I guess I’ll be sleeping on the settee there tonight – unless you
have any other ideas?”
“Well, actually, I
have,” Cíara said, putting her arms around his neck and bringing his mouth down
to hers. As his arms tightened around her, she pulled her mouth away, and
suggested he could sleep in the garden shed outside.
Winters spluttered with
laughter. “I should have known there’d be no mercy from you, my darling. Shall
we head on in?”
“I think I’ll just walk
a bit more. I’m stiff from the drive, and I’ve something I need to think about.
I’ll be in soon.”
“Well, in that case, I
think I’ll spend a few minutes on the computer, check my email and go over my
last few pages,” Jon told her. He was stretching the truth a little – he’d been
finding it hard to write before he made that trip to Dublin, and it had been
impossible since he’d met her.
Lord, he could barely string a sentence
together without thinking of her, she flooded his mind. Wanting her was making
him plain crazy.
Cíara was almost back
at the cottage when she heard a familiar ring. Her cellphone was still in the
dashboard of the MG, and she reached in to rescue it, pressing the OK button to
answer the call.
“Cíara – it’s Frank
O’Keefe – listen, this is urgent. My secretary said you were in the office with
Winters – are you still with him?”
“Yes, er, no – he’s in
the cottage, I’m….”
“Never mind where you
are…what’s he doing?”
“Oh, look, Frank,
You’ve got to get over this – Peggy and Jonathon aren’t…”
“Dammit, Cíara!” The
voice exploded in her ear, “This is important! Don’t let him turn his computer
on!”
“Surely his writing’s
not that bad?” she quipped, trying to calm the usually sedate man who seemed to
have turned into a raving lunatic.
“I don’t know why I did
it, it was one of those revenge things – just don’t let him turn on his
computer…”
“Revenge things?”
Suddenly everything clicked into place. The repairs to the electrical outlets.
Frank’s anger at Winters. She hurled herself towards the cottage, screaming at
the top of her lungs – but she was too late. A blue flash enveloped the cottage,
and a strange, distant-sounding boom echoed in her ears. She screeched to a
halt in the hallway, looking into the living room where Jonathon kept his
computer. There, with a shocked expression on his face, eyebrows singed, the
writer stood gazing down at a twisted plastic object that had once been a
laptop computer.
“Ohmigod,” she
whispered. The cottage was in near darkness, the only light from the flames of
the peat fire.
“I’m going to kill that
electrician,” Winters muttered, along with some very interesting expletives as
he reached for the small fire extinguisher that was clamped to the wall by the
fireplace. Outside there was a screech of brakes as a car swerved to a stop,
and a few seconds later Frank O’Keefe ran white faced into the room.
“Jeez, Winters, I’m so
sorry…. I didn’t mean to….”
The writer turned a
smoke-stained, murderous glance on him.
“You! You did
this!” he growled, “You could have killed me, man.”
“I didn't mean
any real harm – it's just that, well, I thought….you and Peggy…”
“You thought I
was fooling around with your wife and you wanted a little revenge,” Winters
finished for him, his face furious. Cíara cringed, thinking Winters was going
to wallop the other man – if he didn't throttle the older man first. Feverishly
she ran through the first-aid class she took on helping cardiac arrest victims,
but little seemed to have lodged in her memory.
“You thought
what?” The whispered phrase came from Peggy O'Keefe, standing surveying the
scene from the doorway. “What did you think Frank?”
Cíara took one
look at Frank's wife, and wished the ground would open up and swallow her. She
saw Frank gulp, and his face turn from white to puce. Winters, at least, had
the good grace to look ashamed of his outburst, but she really didn't think the
older couple stood any chance with a marriage guidance counselor after all
this.
“I thought…I –
Peggy, this is Cíara Somers. She's the private detective I hired because I
thought you were having an affair with Winters here.” Frank was a plain-spoken
man, and he couldn’t break the habit of a lifetime. The room fell into total
silence, aside from the occasional hiss from the turf fire and a steady
dripping of fire suppressant foam over the remains of the laptop.
Then Peggy began
to laugh. In seconds she was laughing so hard she was doubled up, holding on to
the doorframe for dear life. Knuckling tears away from her eyes, she gasped:
“You thought…you thought…a young man like that would be attracted to an old
married woman like me?”
“You are a
beautiful woman, Peggy O'Keefe, and why wouldn't he be?”
Cíara glanced
sharply at Frank. Either he was a honey-tongued beast or he truly loved his
wife. And she was willing to bet on the latter. So was Peggy. The older woman
held out one arm, the other still supporting her against the doorframe, and
said between spurts of laughter: “Come here to me, Frank, darling.”
And he went,
with all the quick familiarity of a man who knows he's found a good thing, and
never intends to let it go. Within seconds the two were twined in a steamy
embrace that left the younger couple in the room eyeing each other with a
mixture of envy and embarrassment.
“Well, well – I’ve
lived in New York all my life and never seen even a mugging. I come to a
distant part of rural Ireland and witness a near murder in the very cottage I’m
staying in.” Alison Wilson’s voice was droll as she surveyed the mess.
“Jonathon, you told me the craic was good – but nothing in my wildest dreams
prepared me for this!”
Frank came up for air
and gave a throat-clearing cough. “Er, Peggy and I have some things to discuss,
we'll be leaving now,” he said. “Maybe we can discuss, er, the damage,
tomorrow?”
“You could stay
over, Frank – you guys don’t look as if you'll make it home,” Winters said
without malice.
“No, no, we'll be
just fine. And there's a motel on the way if we need it,” Frank said, his eyes
glittering a promise that made his wife grin like a teenager.
“Well, if the
fun is over, I'm off to bed. Guess there's no chance of a cup of tea? Power's
off, eh?” Alison asked. Frank flicked her a guilty look he and Peggy made good
their escape.
Leaving Cíara
and Winters to clean up the mess.
“I'll be sure to give
it a decent burial – it was a good friend,” Winters said mournfully as they
dropped the fried laptop into a garbage bag.
“Did you lose much of
your work?” she asked, eyeing the ruined mess of the desktop.
He shook his head.
“Fortunately, I always tidy and file research papers before I go away, so the
desktop was clear. And I back up everything to an external drive or a cloud
drive. I was just going to check email, so none of the disks was loaded when I
powered the machine up.”
“That's good, then.”
She flopped onto the
settee, and he joined her after opening the window. “Actually, we can't make
tea but I do have something better, courtesy of duty-free,” he declared,
reaching down into the cupboard beside the settee and pulling out a bottle of
amber liquid. Cíara grinned. She held the two glasses while he poured, and then
they toasted the 'Winters & Somers Agency'.