Chapter Two

Ronan

I sense the storm but didn’t expect it would descend so rapidly. Already, the snows obscure my path through the forest, making my task more difficult. The plants I need remained hardy through the autumn, but will certainly freeze if left under snow cover overnight, rendering them useless to me. With a holly switch, I brush away the new-fallen flakes from the undergrowth as I walk along, scanning for the familiar leaves and roots required for the upcoming Yule celebrations.

The wind picks up, its high-pitched gusts whistling in the upper trees to remind me I should hurry up and get the hell back home before the weather worsens, and I can’t see my own hand in front of my face. My woven sling bag is nearly full of herb sprigs, corms, and cuttings, but I press on, determined to find an elusive specimen that’s not native to the island, but somehow found its way here on some ancient trading vessel. Its berries will be of ideal ripeness right now.

I’m nearing the road that leads into town, though it’s not much wider than a single vehicle. I decide if I don’t find any Skimmia Japonica between here and the roadway berm, I’ll turn back and tell Caris we’ll have to skip that ingredient for her wassail this year. She won’t like it, but I don’t see her out here making an effort to help. She has better things to do, like meeting the brewery truck for the weekly delivery. If I ran the local, I’m sure that’d be my priority too. Come to think of it, a pint of Guinness would go down nicely right now. Perhaps if the snow tapers off, I might ride into town and pay my lovely sister a visit. Nothing like a pint to chase away the icy cold fingers of a winter storm.

But that prospect looks none too promising. The overcast skies allow even less light than usual through the forest clearings, and the snowflakes fall fat and wet on the pine boughs, weighing them down. They cling to my eyelashes and beard, blurring my vision and forming icicles around my lips. Dammit, I knew I should have worn a hat. What I really should do is get my stupid arse back to my cottage and hunker down until this shite blows over. I shield my eyes from the oncoming sleet, searching for the end of the trail where it meets the road. I blink away the melting flakes to make sure I’m not hallucinating. Something big’s blocking the roadway—something that has no business being there.

Little enough traffic comes this way at the best of times and certainly nothing the size of what I see in front of me now. It’s perched in the middle of the road at a slight angle, snow caked onto the windows, wheels, and headlights. As I draw closer, I can hear a diesel engine running. What in the hell is a thirty-foot motor coach doing anywhere near Wintervale? Why isn’t it moving? This multi-wheeled, exhaust-belching beast belongs on the M-74 several kilometers to the east, not here, polluting my staunchly guarded forest home. My anger rises as the foul fumes assault my nostrils.

I move out of the trees and onto the roadway, giving the vehicle a wide berth, approaching it from the rear and stepping in a wide circle until I reach the front and stand in the beam of the headlights. The wipers pivot in a weak arc against the oncoming snow. Just as I look into the pitiful patch of cleared windshield, the engine stops.

Then a blood-curdling scream pierces my ears.

I step back, glancing left and right into the woods, but the sound comes from inside the coach. I stare into the glass again, just in time to see a pale face recoil from my sight and into the darkened interior. Shite! Someone is inside. A shrieking female with a high-pitched voice which can only mean one thing, and I hate it.

The dramatics.

I step to the driver’s door and give it a solid knock. Away from the cover of trees, the wind howls straight-on and turns the snowflakes to hard pellets that whip against my back. I’d like nothing better than to retreat the way I’ve come, get back to the shelter of my cottage before darkness sets in. But the motor coach looks warm and dry inside, and its occupant is clearly not from around here. In Wintervale, there are no strangers, only neighbors. This one might need help. Or directions. Or a good lecture for obstructing the roadway and polluting the virgin forest air. I pound on the hinged door again, annoyance fueling my grip.

Finally, it opens with a mechanical hiss. I peer inside, barely making out a figure cowering behind the driver’s empty seat as the pelting snow crosses my vision. “What do you want?”

Just as I suspected, a woman’s voice. What the feck is a female doing in there all alone? Does she actually drive this thing?

“To get in from the cold, for a start,” I say, placing one foot on the step. It appears that I can add rude to her list of faults before I even know her name. Who lets a man shiver from the cold when there’s a warm haven a few feet away?

If Cos were here, he’d call her a townie tramp and spit in her face. But Cos likes to stay in Wintervale common and never ventures out for a visit during any type of weather. Cos doesn’t have much time for strangers.

“Don’t come any closer,” she breathes, her American accent noticeable. All the pieces are falling into place. Rude. Check. Inhospitable. Check check. Go the feck back to your garish country, woman. “I don’t know you. Who are you?”

Fecking hell. In the middle of a raging snowstorm, in a foreign country, and the molly wants me to produce some kind of physical identification? She’s the intruder here. “Freezing me arse off, so I am.” I take another step up. “Mind?” I say, closing the folding doors behind me to stop the wind and slush from spoiling the toasty warm inside.

“Don’t come any closer.”

“There.” I turn to have a closer look, but the lass shrinks herself down to a wee midge peering out from behind the seat like a frightened sheep. Jaysus, you’d think I just asked her to lick Stinker’s Bridge.

“Don’t hurt me,” she whimpers.

“Hurt yer?” I ask, squinting in her direction. As I wipe the wet from my eyes, I realize I must look like Sasquatch in my fur mack and icicles crusting in my beard. “I won’t be hurtin’ nobody, woman. But I’ll thank yer to move this beastie along, out of my forest.”

“I can’t,” she squeaks, sounding on the verge of a crying jag. I shut my eyes, not wanting to witness even a single tear. I can’t take it. If women would stop for one fecking second, they’d realize their holes are meant to play the flute and not spew their incessant demands. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s broken, and the engine just died. I’m waiting for a tow truck.”

“Yer be havin’ a long wait, then,” I say, assuming she means a lorry with a winch. I look around the bus and see no one else with her. What’s she doing here? “Yer all by yer onesie?” Her green eyes widen, as though my reason for asking is to do her a nasty. At that moment, something strikes me as familiar. Those eyes and the heart-shaped face framed with silky, long hair black as a raven’s. Have I seen her somewhere before? Impossible. But she looks a fine ride, for all of that. The kind of woman who looks best on all fours with my cock splitting her wide open.

Her pretty forehead spurs a wrinkle. “You mean alone? No,” she says, shakily rising to her feet. “Of course not. My driver’s gone to get help.”

“On shanks pony?” I say in disbelief. “Is he daft? That’s a fool’s journey with weather settin’ in. There’s nair a town for eight kilos. Yer best come with me afore the storm gets worse. In good faith, I can’t leave yer here to die. My sister would ‘av me hide, just like me long-sufferin’ ma afore her.”

“I’m sorry. I can barely understand you,” she says with a shake of her dark head. Truth be told, I have to strain my ears to fathom her speech as well. But I can’t help the way I talk in my thick brogue, and I can’t help but notice the tight-fitting threads she’s wearing underneath her open coat. Almost indecent, that. The neckline of her blouse plunges in a deep vee, her ample tits nearly hanging out. Not that the view isn’t savage, the kind to harden my tool if it weren’t so damn blistering cold. But any lass around here would have more kit on. These American girls give a new bent to the word indecency. “Please leave, sir. I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here.”

I start to lose patience with this uppity young wan. “Listen, if this here bombardier’s banjaxed, there’s nair a mechanic that can fix it in town. And if yer driver doesn’t make it back soon, yer be completely buggered by morning. Now, let’s be off. I won’t take nay for an answer. The only corpses on me watch are the ones that I kill meself.”

A drop of melted snow drips off my nose and splats on the floor of the coach, adding to the puddle I’m already creating around my feet. Her expression goes from confused to panic-stricken as she backs away down the aisle between the seats. Does she not ken the seriousness of this situation?

I said corpse.

“Get out!” She points toward the door. “You paparazzi will try anything, won’t you? Dressing up like some kind of Irish Grizzly Adams, trying to lure me out into the open. Where’s your camera crew? Hiding in the woods?”

What the feck? Papa-what-sy? I rake back the wet thatches of hair that flop over my eyes with my hand. “Lass, I’ve got nay feckin’ idea what yer on about. There’s nothing hidin’ in the woods. Me cottage’s only twenty minutes from here. Yer be safe there. Again, me sister is a feisty one. If I leave yer here to meet yer maker and Caris gets wind of it, she’ll nag me ‘til I’m old ‘n gray. Not to mention the rest of me folks in Wintervale. Yer could be the reason I don’t get any gee from now ‘til eternity. Now, listen up and do what a man tells yer.”

Her face transforms from panicked to surprised to ornery, all in the space of a few seconds. “Bullshit. I’m safe right here. If you think I’m going anywhere with a stranger, especially one who looks like a yeti, you’re out of your fucking mind. Don’t you know who I am?”

I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. The drip of melting snow becomes just as annoying as her prickly attitude. “How would I be knowin’ that? I’ve never clapped eyes on yer afore.” I take a step toward her. “But I’ll not be leavin’ a stranded lass by herself. If yer dead set on stoppin’ here, I’ll make yer a deal. I’ll set with yer for a ‘alf-hour, and if yer driver’s not back by then, I’ll take yer into town meself.”

“How?” she asks doubtfully. “Got a Polaris parked outside?”

I grit my teeth. No point in arguing right now, or kenning what the hell a polaris might be. In any case, I don’t have anything parked outside or she would have heard it approach. Don’t believe in motorized vehicles, I don’t. Too toxic for the environment and too fecking hard on my sensitive ears. I set down my sling bag and make myself comfortable on one of the seats.

“’Alf-hour,” I repeat. “What’s yer name, woman?”

The girl lowers herself cautiously onto a seat across the aisle from me, her expression somewhere between astonished and outraged. Shite, her eyes are hypnotic, glowing green as emeralds. The arched eyebrows above them almost looked painted on like a porcelain doll Caris once had as a lass. Their black color matches the waves of hair that flows down past her shoulders like two rivers of raw coal, even longer than my own, which says something considering I haven’t cut it since I was a lad. And she has some meat on her with those delicious fun bags hinting at the continuing landscape of curves beneath her long coat. I like a lass with some weight to her, not some skinny stripling that might blow away in a stiff wind.

“You really don’t know who I am?” she asks again, intimating I’m either a few bricks short of a load or I’ve been living under a rock. The latter isn’t far from the truth. To say Wintervale is back of beyond is an understatement. Some might call me a bogger. Right before they get the shite kicked out of them.

“Ain’t the foggiest. But I’ll spare yer the guessin’ game yer teasin’ me with for some sadistic reason. Name’s Ronan O’Farrell,” I say, extending my hand. When she tentatively reaches out to grasp it, her milky white skin contrasts drastically with the dirt-worn grubbiness of my own. Obviously, this townie hasn’t done a lick of real work in her life.

Lazy. Check.

“Savannah Starr,” she says, her palm meeting mine in a gentle press. The warmth of it radiates right past my calluses. Nothing short of my own lit woodstove normally cuts through the thick skin of my hands. There’s something distinctly different about this girl, and it nearly gives me the shivers. She seems foreign yet familiar, like bits of a fable my granny told coming back to me. No, not a fable. A song. One I’ve forgotten the words to but not the haunting melody. I rarely forget a song. Music’s too important to me.

“Savannah,” I repeat with a nod. Sounds like a stripper name to me. I’ll be all in for that show, if it’s the case. “Where is it yer from, and what yer be doin’ here in Ireland, Miss Starr?”

She shakes her raven-haired head in disdain and folds her arms across the magnificent rack that’s been drawing my attention more than it should. She’s a traveler and not from my world, so she’s not for me…even for a quick tumble. “L.A. I’m here on tour with my band. Or at least I was until we broke down here in the middle of nowhere. We played Waterford last night. Hope we can still make the ferry. We have a show in Glasgow tomorrow night.”

“Glasgow?” I nearly laugh outright. “Yer a fair sight from Glasgow, miss. If yer mean the ferry out of Belfast, yer gonna be a tad late, I’m afraid.” A band? I don’t see any band, but I take another glance around and notice a guitar propped up on one of the seats. She’s a musician? That catches my interest even more than the mounds of plump flesh I want to suck and bite.

“What do you mean? We’ll make it. We have to make it!” Her voice gets louder with each word. “I can’t disappoint my fans.”

Fans?

“Well, with yer transport gone arseways, there’s nay way yer makin’ Belfast tonight. ‘Tis hours away. Even if yer man gets this hulkin’ bus goin’, the roads will be diabolical in this weather. Why are yer not on the motorway? The M-74s a straight shot to Belfast. ‘Ow the feck did yer get on this backwater boreen?”

“Could you please speak English?” she fairly shouts. “There was a big wreck, okay? I wanted to blow this ass-backward country as fast as possible so we tried going around it. So far, no one’s given me much of a reason to stick around.” She pierces me with a deadly glare. It doesn’t faze me. As the leader of my people, I tolerate a woman’s ire more and better than most. If anything, it makes me even more interested, except the part where she slagged my homeland.

“Oh, so yer been here five minutes, and yer fit to judge, are yer? Perhaps yer should see a bit of the countryside afore yer shite all over it.”

“I don’t need to,” she shoots back. “By the look of you, I’ll bet you’ve ‘shite’ on it plenty of times. And without the benefit of a roll of Charmin.”

“Roll of what? And yer ask me to speak English,” I scoff, hating her prickly personality while lusting after her generous curves all at the same time. She’s a conundrum, she is. “But,” I say, clapping my hands on my knees. “If yer gonna hurl insults, I’ll just be on me way. Clearly, me help is nay appreciated.” I stand and reach for my bag. “Good day to yer, Miss Starr. Enjoy yer evenin’.”

Daylight wanes fast at this time of year, and I don’t fancy slogging through the snow in the dark. I also don’t fancy hanging about with a smart-mouthed shrew that has no sense of gratitude or manners. I brush past her on my way to the door.

“Wait!” She takes a deep breath, her hand on my arm. “Ronan, was it? I’m sorry, I just…you frightened me. You’re gruff and kind of large.”

I stop and turn around against my better judgment. This is usually the part where the manipulation comes at me full force. “Yer best be afraid of what’s outside this bus, not in.”

“Can you blame me? You’re dressed like a grizzly bear. You came out of nowhere. What was I supposed to think?” Her pomegranate-red lips rise into a childish pout. Oh, don’t do the pucker up, woman. It makes me want to do things to that bonny mouth. My cock twitches in my underwear as I imagine her sucking it down the back of her throat, her hands squeezing my arse until she takes my load. “Please don’t go, I…I think I heard a wolf earlier. Can you stay until my driver gets back?”

I promised her a half-hour, and it’s almost up. No wolves have been seen in this vale in decades, but she wouldn’t know that. However, there will very likely be other animals lurking about at twilight, and full dark will soon be upon us. I can’t change the Wheel of the Year. As much as I need to return to the cottage before nightfall, I can’t leave her alone. That would hardly be civilized, despite her opinion of my uncivilized appearance. There’s no way to know what’s become of her driver. I hope she’s not too attached to the man because he’s most likely a frosty American popsicle by now.

“No. I can’t stay. It’s almost dark. Yer can either wait for him on yer own, or yer can come with me. I’ll get yer to town, but we’ve got to move now.”

“But what if Mel comes back, and I’m not here?”

“Leave him a message.”

She sighs, looking desperate, then flops back against her seat. “I’ll stay here.”

What? Fecking hell! This is the most stubborn little gee I’ve ever come across, American or Irish.

“Suit yerself,” I say, turning away again.

She’s immediately on her feet. “No! Stay here with me, please…” I glance over my shoulder. “I’ll pay you,” she adds, tilting her head to the side, that full lower lip tucked between her teeth.

Pay me? As if money makes a difference to me. I have everything I need in my land, my cottage, and my people. And far more accommodating bettys than this squawking bird. “Look, yer either come with me or stay here and accompany the wolves’ serenade with yer dulcet chords,” I say, gesturing at the guitar. “Yer decide, but either way, I’m leavin’ now.”