Chapter Thirteen: Separation
Willa Mae spent the rest of the day lounging by the pool while Niall swam laps and chatted with another guest who happened to be from Scotland as well. She took a swim just before they went up for the evening, and after a long shower, she put on a pair of cotton rompers and went into the kitchen. She would cook something simple for dinner…macaroni and cheese with some of the readymade chicken tenders and a salad.
Niall was nowhere in sight when she began puttering around, getting pots and pans ready, prepping for the meal. He appeared as she was spooning the mac and cheese mixture into a baking dish.
“May I help?” he asked, walking into the small space. “I’m pretty good with greens.”
“Okay, then make the salad,” she instructed him. “Everything’s already been washed and prepped.”
The feeling of intimacy that had been growing between them swelled as they worked silently to prepare dinner. Willa Mae found that she wanted to feel his arms around her again. She wanted to be close to him, to feel his heartbeats, to hear his breathing in her ear, to luxuriate in the warmth and strength of his arms around her. She wanted to make love with him again. Her plan, to have him so she could get over him, had fallen flat after her first orgasm the night before, and by the time he was holding her in the tub afterwards, she knew she could no longer hide her feelings from herself. Despite the short time they had known each other, she was falling in love with him, and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot she could do about it.
She sprinkled bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese over the top and placed the dish in the oven. Setting the timer for fifteen minutes, she turned away and bumped into him heading for the sink. She tried to step around him, but he grabbed her and pulled her close to him.
“I’ve been a good boy all day,” he began, “and good boys deserve to be rewarded.”
He bent to her ear, breathing heavily into his while he licked the lobe seductively. Willa Mae shuddered under his hands, her skin alight wherever he touched her.
“What kind of reward are you looking for?” she asked breathlessly, unable to catch a full breath as he kept up the sensual assault.
“More kisses, for starters,” he told her, stealing one from her amused lips. “More loving. More you.”
He didn’t let her respond. Instead, he kissed her again, nipping at her lips for a long moment before releasing them to stroke his tongue across her cheek to her ear again, where he breathed, “I find I can’t stay away from you, mo ghràdh. I don’t want to.”
“Is that…” she needed to distract him, just long enough for her to catch herself. “Is that another…” She gasped when he bit her bottom lip and then sucked it into his mouth.
“Another what, sweetheart?” He didn’t seem too interested in her answer, because he closed her mouth with a deep kiss, drawing a moan from her as he sucked on her tongue.
“Niall…oh god!” She forgot what she wanted to say when he pulled her into his body and rolled his hips over hers. His cock connected unerringly with the root of her clit, and she hissed when he did it again.
“Stop…wait…please!”
She was totally incoherent, and they were still fully clothed. He ignored her confused pleas, and slid a finger under the leg of her romper, finding her panties, which by now were damp with telltale need, and stroking over the distended lips of her sex.
“Will you let me have my reward?”
His voice was rough with retrained passion, and she could feel his hands shaking with his lust for her flesh.
“What do I get in return?” she managed to ask before he sucked on her nipple through the cotton of her romper top.
“Every conceivable pleasure that you desire.”
The talking ended after that. Dinner was forgotten, though Willa Mae had enough presence of mind to set off the oven behind her. Niall pulled her with him into the living room and pushed her down onto the sofa, crawling over her and kissing her mouth hungrily. They kissed each other with fervor and passion, and Niall ripped her romper, so desperate was he to get to her flesh. She heard the cloth tear and didn’t care. How he got her out of it was a mystery she didn’t care to solve, and when he pulled her panties off and bent his mouth to her wet center, she cried out in relief.
“Oh…Oh damn! Oh…Niall!”
He had made her incoherent again, and it hadn’t even been a full day. He kissed her lips deeply, sucking on her clitoris until it felt as hard as his cock. He flicked it with his tongue then, licking all round it, and sinking his tongue into the hole that was hungry for more of him. She writhed and pumped her hips and screamed his name when he sank two fingers into her as he was licking her clitoris. He kept eating her out as she convulsed all around his marauding fingers, and when he had dragged the last contraction from her core, she was left gasping for air and mindless with pleasure.
Cool air told her he had gone, and she dragged her eyes open to see where he was. His tall, hard body met her gaze, his proud cock pointing the way back to her body, which tingled again at the sight, as though she had not just come all over his fingers and tongue. She watched him greedily as he rolled on a condom and followed him with her eyes as he came back to crawl over her.
“Hold me, mo ghràdh,” he begged her hoarsely. “Put me where you want me.”
She reached for him, hissing when her fingers curled around his rod. He groaned, and she stroked him, making him groan again.
“Oh love, you don’t know what you do to me.”
If it was anything like what he did to her, she had a pretty good idea, she was sure. She stroked him again, and pumped him a couple of times before setting him at her opening. She raised her hips, beginning his slide into her, and he thrust in all the way, swallowing her gasp of pleasure in his kiss. She gave him back thrust for thrust, opening herself to him, letting him have whatever he wanted as they took each other over the edge again.
Finally, their bodies emptied, they collapsed gasping into each other’s mouths. Kisses slipped off lips, tongues slid across mouths sucking in air. Willa Mae felt the emotions she wanted to keep subdued welling up inside her. She fought the urge to tell the man barely holding himself off her that she was in love with him, already so much in love. Instead, she kissed his sweaty neck, and hugged him to her heaving chest until they were both calmer.
Finally, he seemed to find the strength to move, and he rose above her, pulling her up with him and leading her into the bathroom. While he disposed of the condom, she set the temperature for the water and they showered together, keeping their hands to themselves, exchanging only chaste kisses as they dried off. When they walked back into his bedroom, each wrapped in a towel, she said,
“I’ll have to go get something to wear. You tore my romper!”
“Sorry,” he said, but his eyes said he wasn’t, and she laughed. “Here, wear this.” He took something from his drawer. It was a long-sleeved gray Henley shirt bearing the words “If you love me let me sleep.”
Willa Mae laughed and laughed, suddenly feeling almost lightheaded. She took it from him, still chuckling and pulled it over her head. He pulled on a pair of sweats and they wandered back out to the kitchen. Mercifully, the mac and cheese had not been burned to a crisp. She reheated the chicken tenders, and put all, plus the salad, ketchup and salad dressing on the table. They ate as they watched sitcoms, and finished a bottle of wine.
After dinner, they packed the dishwasher and set it going and settled onto the sofa they had just made love on to watch reruns of “House’. Willa Mae didn’t know when she fell asleep, but she woke with a start to find herself propped up by pillows. Niall was sitting at the dining table on his laptop, his cell phone at his ear. She knew he was speaking, but she couldn’t make out the words he was saying, and she was too sleepy to care. She rolled over and went back to sleep. The next time she woke up, he was nowhere to be found.
Making herself get up, because her body ached from sex and cramped sleeping positions, she stretched and went to use the bathroom. After she washed her face and brushed her teeth, she went back into the living room to find Niall there, his suitcases packed, dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt.
“What…Where are you going?”
He turned regretful eyes to her face. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I have to go. Trouble is looming over the project that needs me to be there.”
He walked over to where she was standing, her mouth open like a dying fish, and pulled her into his arms.
“You can have no notion of how much I do not wish to go home. I have enjoyed every single moment I have spent with you, mo ghràdh, and I plan to do it again, as soon as I can. But now I must go.”
She stumbled over what to say to him, and said the first thing that came into her head. “What does that one mean?”
He smiled sadly. “It’s another version of the same thing, sweetheart.”
“It’s very pretty,” she said inanely, her mind refusing to accept that he was leaving her, after she had given in and let him make love to her. She wasn’t ready for a departure so soon.
“I will call you as soon as I can, I promise. Enjoy the rest of your holiday, and please give my regards to your grandmother when you see her again.”
He leaned in and kissed her, hard and deep, raising her blood pressure and her temperature at the same time. She kissed him back, wrapping her arms around his neck and swallowing her tears. He hugged her tightly to his chest, each not wanting to be the first to let go. But then he was pulling her arms from around his neck and stepping away from her, pulling his suitcase with him.
“Take care of yourself, sweetheart,” he said, leaning in to kiss her once more by the door before he opened it and walked out.
She watched him till he disappeared around the corner, and she stayed there till the ping of the elevator told her he had gone. Then she let the tears fall, shutting the door and sinking down to the cool tile floor. This was why she shouldn’t have given in. Now she was alone again, and far sooner than she had expected. She hadn’t had time to prepare for the separation that she had known all along was coming.
Eventually, she got up, washed her face again and made breakfast. Cleaning up, she sat idly at the table wondering what she would do to while away the time until she would visit her grandmother again. She spent the next hour checking out what the resort offered in terms of entertainment, and decided that there were a few things she could do that would distract her from her loneliness without Niall.
By the time she went back to see her grandmother, she had gone on an evening dinner cruise that the resort organized, where she’d rebuffed the attentions of a man who thought she’d be interested in him because of his job as an ex-Air Force officer. She had had temporary henna tattoos painted around her ankles and in the small of her back, she had taken a snorkeling lesson, and she had spent some time at the pool.
Niall had called when he got back to Scotland, and the news had not been good. The one contractor whom he had been sure would remain with his project was threatening to pull out if Niall wasn’t ready to begin within the month. It was a purely business decision, and Willa Mae could understand it, as no doubt could Niall. It didn’t make it easier for him to deal with, especially as it appeared the fights with his family had increased in volume and bitterness.
She spent a whole day with her grandmother, taking her shopping, and back to the hotel for an afternoon by the pool and for dinner in one of its fancy restaurants. Her grandmother had asked to stay overnight with her, and Willa Mae suspected that she knew why. Her suspicions were confirmed when the old lady, fresh from her night ablutions, sat up in Willa Mae’s bed and patted the sheet next to her.
“Come and tell your ole granny what’s bothering you,” she said. “You’ve been down all day.”
“It’s nothing, Grannie,” she said. “I guess I’m a little tired being on holiday can be exhausting.”
The older woman laughed, nodding her head in agreement. “That may be true, but there’s somethin’ eatin’ at ya. What is it? Are you worried about your man? Do you think he’ll forget you now that you’re apart?”
“Grannie, Niall isn’t my man!” Willa Mae protested, and the pain she felt as she spoke the words was piercing. She wanted him to be her man. Her heart said she needed it to be so.
“I’ll never understand you young folk,” Grandma Jamison said. “You wish for the moon, and when you get it, you call it sod.”
Willa Mae looked away. She didn’t really want to have this conversation with her grandmother, mostly because she didn’t want to name the feeling openly. That would only make the loneliness harder to bear.
“We’re just friends, Grannie, honestly.”
Her grandmother harrumphed. “Friends with benefits, eh?”
Willa Mae gasped in shock. “Grannie, what…what do you know about such things?”
“How old do you think I am, girl?” the old lady snapped irritably. “I wasn’t born yesterday, and I do listen to the news and watch those young folk shows. It doesn’t take a genius to know that you and that boy were sleeping together! Am I lying?”
Willa Mae tried to hold her grandmother’s gaze and couldn’t. She looked away, shaking her head as she did so. She knew her grandmother wasn’t a prude, but she didn’t know how she would take the news that her favorite grandchild had been sleeping with a white man. Those were the kinds of things that didn’t ordinarily get discussed at the Jamison dining table.
“Did you use protection?”
“Grannie!”
Grandma Jamison laughed, a merry sound. “I’m still your grandma until the day I die. And I’m not gonna let you make a foolish decision because your panties are wet!”
Willa Mae thought she would die of embarrassment, her face was so hot. She shook her head. “I’m a grown woman, Grannie. I know how to take care of myself.”
“Not when it comes to men, you don’t. And that Scottish fella seemed like he was as tied up as you are. Have you talked to him since the last time he called?”
“No, Grannie. He’s busy, and there’s no reason to call him.”
“Do you love the man or don’t you, girl?” Impatience was creeping into her grandmother’s tone.
“We haven’t even known each other two months, Grannie! Nobody falls in love that fast.” Willa Mae had to believe that, or she would have to admit that her heart was breaking, being so far away from him.
Grandma Jamison shook her head in despair, sighing heavily as she did so. “Will you listen to yourself? What do you know about how fast people fall in love when you’ve never been brave enough to give it a try? You spent your whole life looking for Mr. Perfect, and when every man you’ve ever met failed you, you decided it wasn’t to be. Then Mr. Perfect-for-You shows up, and your excuse is it’s too soon?”
“Grannie, it isn’t that simple!” Willa Mae felt like she was fighting a losing battle.
“It’s only as complicated as you make it, child. Love ain’t about time or distance…it’s about feelings, about heart connection, about souls tying themselves together so tight nobody can break them apart.” The old lady paused for a moment, then went on, her voice sad. “Your mama and daddy never had that. And it took them thirty-four years to find out.” She reached for Willa Mae’s hand. “Don’t you deny your feelings because they happened so fast. If you let this man escape you, you’re gonna end up settling for some man who’ll tickle your sweet spot enough to make you think it’s the real deal, but then one day you’ll wake up, and he’ll just be another man who let you down.”
Willa Mae sighed. Reminders of her parents only served to point out how lonely she was, that she hadn’t even been able to find someone she could have chemistry with…until Niall, who lived a world away, and whose family would no doubt hate her. They already disliked her for what she was doing with him to make the property viable. As an in-law? She couldn’t see it.
“Whatever’s going on behind those eyelids of yours needs to stop right this second. Give that boy a call and tell him I said hello.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and then said, “Help me lay down. It’s way past my bedtime.”
Willa Mae took Niall’s room for the night. There was nothing in it to indicate that he had ever been there. The housekeeping staff had come and cleaned, and had changed the sheets. All she had of him was the tee shirt he had let her sleep in the night before he left. She went to get it now, and lay in the middle of the bed, huddled around a big pillow, wishing he was with her. She tossed and turned, trying to shut her brain off, trying to relax her tense muscles. Nothing worked. It seemed like it was going to be another sleepless night, and this time she didn’t have anyone to wear her out so she could sleep. She missed him.
Maybe Grannie was right. Maybe she should call him, just to say hello. Maybe he was missing her as much as she was missing him. She took her cell phone off the nightstand and searched for his number. She had saved it after he had called her to say he was home. Checking on the time, she saw that it was six in the morning in Scotland. He would be awake by now.
She pressed the Call button and waited, listening as the distinctive British ring tone sounded in her ear.
“Sweetheart, good morning!”
His voice made her warm all over. “Good morning, Niall. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
She could hear the smile in his voice when he answered her. “You did not. But I have to wonder why you’re up so late.”
She knew he was waiting for an answer, but she couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t give away the secret she was so desperate to keep from him. Finally, she settled on a half truth.
“I was talking to Grannie,” she said. “She says hello.”
“You kept your grandmother up until the wee hours of the morning?” He sounded scandalized.
“No. She went to bed a couple of hours ago. But I couldn’t sleep…”
Niall inhaled deeply, and Willa Mae could almost see the wicked smile that deepened the dimples in his cheeks.
“I miss you too, sweetheart,” he told her. “And I wish I could be there to put you to sleep again.”
She changed the subject before she said something stupid like “I love you.” She didn’t want to spoil things between them with precipitous declarations of love that would probably end up being untrue, no matter what Grannie said.
“So, how is everything going now?”
“I’ve decided to go ahead with the renovation. Nothing can begin until Fergus and his team arrive, and they’re finishing out a job in the islands. Between now and then, I’ve told my family and the village board that they’ll need to sort out whatever hearings they wish to hold. I’ve told them I’ll override all their decisions if they don’t line up with mine. And I’ve told them I’ll take them to court if they keep pushing me.”
“I take it that they wouldn’t want that?”
“No, they wouldn’t. Aside from the fact that my family doesn’t have enough funds to pay a solicitor, the litigation would be tied up in court for a while. The estate would be making zero euros, and I would withdraw further financial backing until a decision is made. I would be the only one winning.”
“Would you really do that to your mother, Niall?”
A small pause told her she had probably asked the wrong question. She waited, though, not willing to apologize for asking what she thought was a perfectly reasonable question. She had issues with her parents, too, but she would never deliberately hurt them because they aggravated her.
“Nothing that would happen to my family would be of my doing,” he replied eventually. His voice had a decided chill in it this time. “I’ve made my position clear, and when it comes out in court that I am the one holding the estate together, and keeping them from relative homelessness, I don’t think anyone will fault me for ending the charity. My mother will be fine. She can set up house in a small senior citizens’ apartment. My siblings will have to do what every other self-respecting young person does…go out and look for work. I am not their parent. I don’t owe them anything.”
Willa Mae felt like a rebuked child standing in front of an angry parent. She knew she had caused the change in his tone, and now she didn’t know what to do to fix it. She should never have started a conversation about business. This whole debacle was her fault.
“I have to go now. I have an early meeting in Perth. Please say hello to your grandmother for me.”
“I will.” Willa Mae kept all emotion from her voice. “Have a good day.”
“Thank you. Get some sleep.”
He rang off without waiting and Willa Mae threw the phone across the bed angrily. Why had she done that? They had been having a perfectly civil conversation, and then she had shot herself in the foot and made him angry enough to leave only a few minutes after telling her he missed her. She lay back, so upset with herself that she couldn’t even summon the respite of tears. Closing her eyes, she lay still and waited and prayed for sleep to come. Tomorrow, she would see about changing her return date. She needed to be busy, and staying in Florida was only going to drive her crazy. Time to get back to work.