Chapter 4

Avery was wet by the time she got back on, and she shivered. Brrr. She could have done with fewer of the T-shirts and leggings and more of the fleece jackets everyone else seemed to have produced from their hand luggage. The weather forecast had suggested it would be warm, but this biting breeze ate through to your bones.

Just as she’d settled into a comfortable position to review the photos and videos she’d taken at Eask Tower, she got a prickling sensation at the back of her neck, the kind you get when someone’s watching. She spun around and found herself peering through the seats straight into the olive eyes of the blond giant—Weirdo.

“Oh,” she said. “Didn’t realize anyone was behind me.” Embarrassed, she swung around again and stuck her earbuds in, contriving to look busy on her phone, opening up a random Star Wars blog entitled Six Things You Might Not Know About Happabores. She caught Brenda’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

“So, Cathal, what’s it like up in Monaghan?” Brenda asked suddenly.

So that’s his name.

“We don’t have this,” came the mellow voice from behind. He sounded wistful. “The Atlantic.”

“No,” Brenda laughed. “Now, I only know the poems of Patrick Kavanagh, and they make the place sound bleak. Is it?”

“It depends on how you’d define bleak,” he said, a touch stiffly.

Brenda picked up on it, and she smiled kindly. “I’m sure it’s beautiful, unspoiled nature anyway.”

Avery no longer wanted to pretend she wasn’t listening. “Where is Monaghan?” She craned her neck to look over the head-rest at him.

“It’s in the northeast,” he answered quickly. “You flew in via Dublin?”

“Yes.”

“Well, had you travelled north instead of south, you’d have reached Monaghan if you’d turned to the west after Dundalk.”

These place-names meant little to her but she liked the cadence of his voice. “Why don’t you sit here so we can chat?” she suggested through the seats before she could think better of it.

He blinked in surprise but his mouth gave a little upturn at one side. He rose.

Brenda gave her an astonished look in the mirror. Avery returned with a smile. Hah, weren’t expecting that, were you?

The older woman’s astonishment morphed into a knowing smile. Hussy, she mouthed, and Avery had to laugh.

They both watched the big man stand up and ceremoniously place the rucksack up in the luggage hold, giving it a final, stern glance before he came forward to take the aisle seat beside her.

When he sat down, the sheer size of his legs and arms enclosed her into a space that was unexpectedly cozy. The rain evaporating off his body mixed with a natural scent of something like heather and turf. Although they weren’t touching, his welcome heat seeped into her space. He was stocky in a Viking-ish way. Now that it wasn’t blowing about in the breeze, his chin-length blonde hair was neat, as was his trim beard. He had the air of a domesticated lion.

“What’s your name?” he asked in that lilting tone, catching her eye.

“Avery.”

“Avery,” he nodded. “I’m Cathal.”

She nodded back. “That must be Irish. How do you spell it?”

“C-a-t-h-a-l. The ‘t’ is silent. It’s Irish.”

“Got it.”

“You’re from America?”

“That’s right. LA.”

“Do you want my jumper, Avery?” He tugged at the sweater that hung around his neck. “You look cold.”

She blinked at him and his earnest expression, then looked at the baby blue sweater, which didn’t match the rest of his brown and black ensemble. She returned to his face. His gaze was unflinching.

Was it normal for Irishmen to offer their jumpers like this? Her gaze darted to Brenda’s in the mirror, who was very conspicuously trying not to laugh as she navigated the winding road.

“Um, well, why not?” She shrugged.

With a twist of those broad shoulders, he pulled the woolen garment off his neck. Instead of putting it in her hands, he reached around and draped it around her shoulders, leaning in just enough for her to get a new blast of his wild man scent. He tied the sleeves into a simple knot at her collar bone, and she was so very conscious of those long, thick fingers deftly moving just an inch from her chest, an inch from Jar Jar’s loopy face. Her whole body gave an involuntary shiver. In her twenty-six years on the planet, it was the most singularly sexy thing that had ever happened to her.

“Uh, thanks,” she said. She couldn’t meet his gaze, if indeed he was looking at her, which she would never know. Suddenly the view outside was even more interesting than usual. She skipped getting Brenda’s reaction this time because she was too confused.

Brenda started humming. It took Avery a while, but she soon identified it as a slightly off-key “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”

She was not letting this happen. “So, Cathal,” she said breezily, tucking back a stray lock of hair and fixing him with her most cool, objective gaze, “are you doing the whole Ring of Kerry?”

“Ah, no. I’ll just be in for this part, a day or two at the most. And yourself?”

She puffed out a breath. “Me too. I…” Did she want to tell this stranger her whole spiel? Yes, yes, strangely enough, she did. “I want to get to Skellig Michael.”

His eyes widened, just a fraction, but noticeably so. “I do too.”

“Wow! Are you a fan?” It came out in a whisper.

“Of the films?” he asked, in such a way that it was clear he was not.

She nodded enthusiastically anyway.

“Not so much.”

She waved it aside. “You know, it doesn’t matter,” she said generously. “I’m sure it’s lovely for its own sake too. All those amazing beehive huts. And the cute puffins, of course.”

This earned her a curious look from him. “Well, it did exist as a place of penance and spiritual warfare twelve centuries before those films with lightsabers came out.”

She gave a forced laugh. “Okay, look, sorry, rewind here. Backtrack.” Spinning both hands, she pantomined a film reel rolling in reverse. “As someone who is a complete Star Wars geek and spends hours a day researching it to know everything about the galaxy far, far away, I get really annoyed by simple things—like, you know, calling Endor a planet when it's a moon, or putting an extra ‘t’ in Tatooine. So, Cathal, I have to say, you’re killing me. Just… uh… no. Please, please, please, watch Star Wars before you go to Skellig. Preferably episode seven. No, better seven and eight.”

Cathal shifted in his seat. “I’m not going there for the films.”

“Ye-ah, I think we established that. But watch them for my sake?” She had her charm turned up high, but it didn’t seem to be working. Did Irishmen tune into a different frequency or what?

He simply shook his head and looked away.

Wow.

The silence grew… and grew. Brenda threw a sympathetic look into the rear-view mirror, but it was unclear which side she’d taken.

Finding the situation impossible—blocked in by a giant who seemed to think her tastes juvenile, and moreover whose jumper she was wearing—Avery decided, in the interests of intergalactic peace, to listen to what he had to say for himself. She turned to him and asked, trying not to sound snippy, “Well, Cathal, tell me why you want to go to Skellig Michael.”

His olive gaze landed on her again, square in the eyes. “I want to spread my father’s ashes there.” His tone was somber. “It was his last request.”

Oh.

Oh.

Her eyes flickered to him, to Brenda, back to him, and finally up to the rucksack in the luggage hold. “Is that—?” she pointed limply upward. “Is that—?”

“That’s him.” Cathal’s expression was one of grim amusement. “Avery, meet my father, Conor Seamas Cosgrave.”

The bus gave a sudden lurch and she let out a half scream, afraid the rucksack would topple down.

“Sorry!” Brenda’s voice came from in front.

“It’s not going anywhere,” he said. “I secured it properly.”

Avery looked down. Cathal’s thumb was resting against her forearm, a gesture of reassurance that sent pinpricks of awareness to her nerve endings. She tried to hide her goosepimples behind the sleeve of his jumper.

When he removed his hand and settled back, she sank into her seat too, spying out of the corner of her eye as he opened his hardback book. It had one of those pages in the front where you ink-stamped it in a library. She’d only ever seen such a thing on Pinterest.

She watched him for long enough to determine that he was a fast reader. The movement of his fingers flicking over the pages was pleasant to watch. She wasn’t face-palming. Not yet.

His concentration assured her she wasn’t needed, so she lay back and closed her eyes, snuggling into the wool of the jumper, half-listening to Brenda recounting to Angela Merkel a story from her youth in Cahirsiveen. The bus radio sputtered out merry Irish jigs, interspersed with commercials for fertilizer and furniture showrooms.

Eastside and Venuscode seemed like another galaxy far, far away.