Chapter 17

Cathal woke feeling on top of the world. This was disconcerting until he remembered why. Avery. She made him feel like nobody else in this world. Kissing her yesterday made the world seem brighter, even hours after the event. The blue of the curtains, the yellow of the ceiling seemed supercharged. Life suddenly had possibilities, beautiful, shining, incandescent possibilities.

He’d almost lost control last night. Was she awake in her room next door, thinking of him? He glanced sleepily at the clock. It blinked 08:15.

What?

He bolted upright up. No, no, no, how could that be? It was way too late to get a taxi to Portmagee. The boats were already gone and there was no doubt that they would have gone today, because it was sunny. He flopped back on the pillow and let out a frustrated groan.

Okay, get a grip. Take a shower. Make the most of the weather.

He met Avery in the corridor when he was coming out of the bathroom. He became very conscious that all he had on was a towel around his waist. A child-sized one at that.

She was yawning and looking into her phone. “Shit, we missed Skellig Michael.”

“Never heard of it,” he joked.

She glanced up at his face in surprise. Then in a delayed reaction, her eyes widened. Her gaze traversed his chest, flew down to his toes and then crept slowly back up the full length of his body, finally to meet his eyes. Her cheeks became infused with a pink that matched the wallpaper.

“Oh. You’re, um—” She motioned to the towel that only barely circumnavigated his thighs and did a terrible job of concealing his erection.

“Not dressed,” he finished for her. There was no point in being squeamish with a woman he had kissed, and wanted to kiss again and do many other things to.

“No,” she confirmed.

He leaned over her, grazing his lips over her forehead. “I’ll put on some clothes then. Skellig Michael’s not going anywhere.”

She smiled sleepily up into his face. “I like you, big man.”

“I like you too, little one.”

She giggled. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that. Sorry, I’m normally more articulate than this, but—”

“You’re rendered speechless by your passion for me?”

She blinked in open surprise. He closed his hand over hers. Within seconds, they were in each other’s arms, his lips sweeping hers. She pressed against his chest, her cool fingers caressing his chest hair. He kissed her hotly, gripping her neck with one hand. He had to use the other to keep a grip on the towel to prevent it sliding down his thighs.

When they broke off, she said, “You really need to stop talking like you’re in a cheesy porn.”

“You know cheesy porn because?”

“I watch them.” She blinked insolently. “Occasionally. You don’t?”

He laughed. Then, sensing she actually expected a reply, he said, “Well no, actually. I’d have to download them, and with my mother creeping around next door, liable to knock on my door at any moment or just let off a barrage of coughing at the wrong moment, well, it just… I prefer to get to sleep with a bit of historical adventure.”

She smirked. “Mediaeval monks and other violently moral creatures?”

“For example.”

Her face grew more serious. “Do you mind living with her?”

“It’s not a question of what I mind, Avery.”

“Well, I don’t know many men our age who would live on a farm with their moms.”

“It does me no harm.”

She let out a small chuckle. “Don’t tell me she does your laundry.”

“Not quite. She’s not to be trusted with a washing machine. Any electrical appliance really.” He trailed off, remembering the time she short-circuited the whole neighborhood when she poured water over a socket. Was Caelan dealing with such a catastrophe now? Maybe the house had burnt down, the chickens starved, gone feral, the pigs eating the neighbors’ carrots? His erection was officially dead now.

Avery wrung her hands in front of her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“None taken.”

“Well,” she said, with a cock of her head indicating her bedroom door, “Farm Boy, I need to contact the world here.”

From experience he knew this would take longer than he was prepared to wait for food. “I can grab us breakfast from downstairs, if you like. Call it DIY room-service.”

“Oh yes,” she said distractedly. “Do that.”

“But do you really need to check in with them?”

“Mm-hmm. They expect me. They’ll want to know if I got lucky at Skellig Michael.”

“What’ll you tell them?”

“That I didn’t get lucky.” Her bright blue eyes did a new sweep of his body, this time with more confidence and more accurate targeting. “Not yet.”

Not yet.

The words haunted him all the way back to his own room. The way she’d said it. And the way she looked at him. It was clear what she meant. He was breaking out in a sweat just thinking about it. He pulled out his clothes from the wardrobe, made himself decent, and wandered down to hunt food.

Mrs. Nolan let him take the coffees and pastries from the breakfast room, as if she understood something was going on upstairs.

He knocked and entered Avery’s room silently so as not to disturb her video-making—and more to the point, to avoid becoming the main star of the show. But she wasn’t speaking. Hunched over the laptop, she was grunting and banging a key repeatedly, in a manner that in his experience never tended to solve computer problems.

He set down the cups on the far end of the table. Her furious tapping caused concentric ripples to appear on the surface of the coffees. “What’s up?”

She flopped back in the chair. “I can’t get it to connect. It says it’s connected to the wifi but then doesn’t connect in the browser. Aaagh, I don’t need this, not now.”

He moved behind her chair and watched her screen. She was using Chrome, but her taskbar showed she’d tried other browsers too, so the problem was at the OS level. Then he spotted the weird flashing window. Uh-oh. He’d seen this one at work the other week—it was a nasty virus doing the rounds in Ireland and Britain. It wouldn’t be fixed unless he messed around in the registry, applying the same fix he’d painstakingly worked out last time.

“I’ll take a look.” He handed her a coffee.

She huffed and took the mug. “Be my guest, Farm Boy.”

He took the seat she’d vacated. She stood behind him and he could sense a strong “I told you so” vibe emanating from her. He opened a command shell and typed in it to check the status of running programs. Finally, he opened the registry.

“Oh no you don’t,” she warned.

“I know what I’m doing.” He quickly edited the line of code, shut down the registry, and hit restart. He reached for his coffee watching an image of an X-wing spaceship on her screen while he waited for the reboot. “Hope that does the trick, but sure we’ll know soon enough.”

“Cathal.” Her voice was sharp.

He spun around.

“Where did you learn that?”

“I fixed something similar for Garret McCrawley when we switched payroll system a while back.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I mean, in general, computers. Hacking the registry? I don’t even like to do that. You worked that like a sysadmin. There’s no way you could have done that without a background in computer systems.”

“Well I did a half degree in it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “But you’re an accountant.”

“That’s right. I studied accountancy and computers. I worked for a while in Dublin as a sysadmin. Then I got a job in at Morrissey & Scanlan as an accountant.”

“But your day consists of, what… Excel sheets and telling people they spend too much?”

“That’s about the long and short of it.”

She seemed confused but was soon distracted by the chime of the OS starting up. She set her mug on the table. “Holy crap, you did it—thanks!”

With a swivel of her chair, she faced her screen and typed rapidly, like her life depended on it. She was so engrossed she didn’t notice him vacate the room, go into his own room to pick up his Monastery book, and then return. From the comfort of the armchair, he divided his attention between his book and what she was doing, which involved quite a lot of talking.

She kept calling out greetings like “thanks for joining” “I see you in Seattle.” “Good morning, London” to people with names such as Angelface, Luke Moonraker, and the Ewok twins. He watched her assert her confident, smiling, public persona, all hand gestures, and exaggerations and funny asides. Much of what she was saying made no sense to him. He could tell it was Star Wars related but that was about it.

“Yep, it’s day four here, folks,” she said cheerfully, “and the saga continues. We’re still, hashtag, waiting for Skellig.”

He followed along as she answered questions coming in through her headphones but which he could easily guess.

“Well, yeah, I missed the alarm this morning. ... No—not jet lag. I don’t know... Maybe... I’ll just have to live with it. Farm Boy? Oh yeah. What? No! I mean…well, maybe. Yeah, maybe, something like that. Okay, I’ll tell you more tomorrow.” She pressed some keys clumsily and ended the video linkup.

“Are you blushing?” he asked, turning a page.

“Oh, is my face red? I should have put on makeup.”

He shook his head. “You’re beautiful as you are.”

She waved the compliment away. “So, are you ready over there for a day of Avery’s Plan?”

“Hit me with it.”

She wandered over, behind his chair and draped her arms around his neck. “It starts like this.” Her lips pressed against his jaw.

Life in a Medieval Monastery fell to the floor with a clatter.