Hot Whispers of an Irishman by Dorien Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

killed the other. Realizing he was in for a wait, he refilled his wine glass and settled in.
    Dishes rattled, silverware clinked, and voices grew marginally louder. Liam filled his glass again. He was half through it when Mam pushed her way into the dining room.
    “She hasn’t changed a bit,” she said, then stalked upstairs.
    Liam expected that she hadn’t meant the words as praise.
    Vi joined him.
    “Are you all right?” he asked.
    “Fine, of course.”
    She looked weary to Liam, with her milky skin nearly sallow, but he’d do neither of them good by pointing it out.
    “Your mother and I needed to reach an understanding,” Vi said.
    “And that would be?”
    “That I’m no adversary.”
    At least not one to be taken lightly, he thought.
    “Would you mind walking with me a bit?” she asked. “I’d like to feel the night on my skin.”
    He was discovering that he still had a great many things he’d like to do with her. Walking was a start. Liam gathered her cloak and draped it over her shoulders. She neatly fixed it in place with a large silver pin.
    “Nice piece,” he said, touching the pin simply so he could touch her.
    She glanced down. “It’s the work of a silversmith friend. I took a fancy to it, so we traded for one of my paintings.”
    It seemed a bargain to the smith’s benefit, but Liam wisely kept his mouth shut. He opened the front door. Once they’d cleared the threshold, he said, “Let’s just call tonight the Last Supper.”
    She laughed, but the sound lacked its usual rich depth. “You mother would be boxing your ears for sacrilege.”
    “Una did it often enough when I was little, which might explain the way I flinch during Mass.” All right, maybe he was exaggerating matters a bit, but the cause was a noble one.
    “I have my doubts you even go to Mass, Liam Rafferty.”
    “You caught me there,” he replied.
    Without plan or talk, they walked west out of town, toward the King’s River and Castle Duneen. It was a walk they’d taken many nights before. Those nights had been warmer, and he had passed them trying to meet Vi’s challenge of giving her a kiss for every star in the sky. He took a glance upward, noting it had grown cloudy. A bad omen for kisses, that. He knew the time had come to talk about the unspoken subject that was darker than the clouds blotting out the moon.
    They had reached the park on the river, a refined place with streetlights and benches. He stopped and took both her hands, warming them between his. She didn’t pull away, for which he was grateful.
    “Vi, it’s not as though I was trying to hold my marriage from you, or Meghan’s existence, either. It’s just I wasn’t sure where to fit the words. I’ve never been in a situation like this, and I’m making a mess of it.”
    “I know you meant no harm, and you’ve given none,” she said after a moment’s pause. “It’s just all so much to take in. I feel…” She shook her head. “There’s the thing, Liam, I feel something, which believe it or not is a great change as of late. I just don’t know what it is riding me. I’m angry when I have no right to be, and I’m sad, too.”
    “I’ve had a life, and you have, too,” he said. “We’re neither of us the same person we were fifteen years before.” He thought of his marriage, doomed to fail from the start, and of his business, now in tatters, too. He thought, and he knew some of Vi’s anger. “Life’s so damn complicated. Can we not just take a grab at some happiness while we’re here in the same place?”
    She led him to a bench, and they sat. Liam liked the feel of her body next to his, liked that she had substance to her. He moved closer and tried to relax.
    “Where’s your daughter tonight?” she asked, and he hoped the question was a sort of tacit acceptance of his past.
    “At Catherine’s house watching her three little ones.” Liam sat in silence before adding, “Meghan’s not happy in Duncarraig. She’s so