Better Together by Sheila O'Flanagan Read Free Book Online

around to party with, and the guesthouse had been both a blessing and a burden as far as socialising was concerned.
    ‘I suppose I could take a bit of time tomorrow,’ she said slowly.
    ‘I’ll pick you up at two.’
    ‘You will?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘See you then.’
    She couldn’t quite believe she was going out with Sean Fallon.
    She’d had three boyfriends in her whole life and none of them could match him for wit, or humour, or sheer good looks. He was handsome in a matinée-idol sort of way with his black hair, square jaw and deep blue eyes, and she couldn’t help catching her breath every time she saw him. She didn’t know what he saw in her; why, even after his mother had recovered from her illness, he went on coming to Ardbawn to see her. She continued to remind herself that Sean was a heartbreaker and that she didn’t have time to have hers broken. She told herself that he was a pleasant diversion for her and she was an equally pleasant diversion for him. It wasn’t love, she knew. Sean didn’t love her. And she couldn’t possibly love him. She said the second part out loud every night but she didn’t really believe it. Because she’d utterly fallen for his easy charm, his casual nature and those darkgood looks. She hadn’t been able to help herself. And how could she? Every woman she knew was a little bit in love with Sean Fallon. But she wanted to keep a part of her heart intact so that she had something for herself on the inevitable day when he’d dump her, just as he’d dumped so many women in the past.
    Besides, she was sure that he had a far more exciting life in Dublin, where he was a part-time actor, a job that sounded exciting and exotic to someone whose only experiences of theatre had been the pantomimes she’d occasionally been brought to as a child. Sean’s acting career was far more authentic than panto. He’d been in a number of plays and had one or two walk-on parts in TV shows, but the work was sporadic and not well paid, so he also had a job as a van driver for a delivery company. Nina thought it sounded a glamorous sort of life (although she accepted that spending your days in a delivery van probably wasn’t all that glamorous), but when she went to Dublin to see him in a walk-on part in the theatre and then to a party afterwards, she asked herself why on earth he still visited Ardbawn when there were so many exciting things to do in the city instead.
    ‘Although I probably don’t get the most out of Dublin,’ she told him that night as they lay side by side in his single bed – Sean shared a flat with another part-time actor. ‘I’m a country girl at heart.’
    ‘You could make me into a country man again,’ he murmured as he slid his hand between her legs. ‘Because you’re far more exciting than anything that this city has to offer.’
    Nina laughed at that but Sean wasn’t entirely wrong about her, because, although she had initially been tentative about sleeping with him, he discovered that she was surprisinglyenterprising between the sheets, even if she did have a tendency to suddenly sit up in the bed after making love and scribble in the notebook she always carried around with her. When he asked her, the first time, what she was doing, she said that she’d just thought of something else that needed looking after in the guesthouse. If, she added, she ever got the damn loan from the bank. It was nearly three months since she’d asked for it and Dominic Bradley told her that they were still discussing it.
    ‘What do they need to talk about for three months?’ he asked.
    She shrugged. ‘I think they believe that I’m a silly young girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing. They’re right up to a point. I’m terrified I’ll make a mess of it. But I’ve got to try. If I don’t get the money, though, I’m not sure what I’ll do.’
    She’d been astonished the week after that conversation when Dominic had phoned her up and told her that