A Past To Deny

‘Not particularly.’

‘So, you’re just an old-fashioned girl who likes to take care of a man…I think I’m going to enjoy this stay after all.’

‘My other reason for offering to cook this is simply that I’m not at my best first thing in the morning,’ retorted Maggie, having extreme difficulty in keeping her tone in any way civil. ‘I like to have something to keep me occupied, otherwise I’m quite likely to doze off.’ She unwrapped the bacon, unable to believe the rubbish she had just spouted. ‘And that wouldn’t be very sociable, would it?’

‘I’ll have to take you at your word about how you feel at this hour,’ he murmured, ‘but from where I’m sitting you look great. You haven’t drunk your coffee…I’ll make you some fresh.’

There was absolutely no need for him to lean over and against her as he reached for the kettle, but that was what he did. Her body responded in a way that both startled and horrified her, melting to a liquid state of unequivocal sexual excitement as the heady, newly bathed masculine scent of him engulfed her.

So unnerved was she by the totality of that involuntary response that an equally involuntary shriek exploded from her as, in her panic to escape, she leapt smack into the kettle he had just lifted.

‘Now, that wasn’t very smart, was it?’ he drawled, putting down the kettle and taking her face in his hands.

‘What are you doing?’ she protested, twisting violently in an attempt to escape those hands. ‘Stop it!’

‘For God’s sake, stop being so damned stupid!’ he exclaimed, his hands tightening in a vice-like grip. ‘Your nose is bleeding.’

‘Get your hands off me!’ she cried, a note of hysteria slicing through the words as her hands tugged frantically at his arms.

‘Hell, anyone walking in here and seeing you dripping blood and freaking out all over the place would assume I was trying to kill you!’ he exploded, his eyes blazing fury as he abruptly released her. ‘Just what in hell are you playing at?’

‘What do you mean, what am I playing at?’ shrieked Maggie, unable to exert any control over herself. ‘You’re the one who’s just broken my nose with the kettle!’

‘I don’t believe this,’ he groaned softly to himself, then reached over to a roll of kitchen paper and tore off a couple of sheets. ‘Here—dab your nose with that. And for God’s sake don’t blow it.’

Maggie took the wad of paper and gingerly did as he’d said, the madness at last mercifully subsiding in her. Then she wondered just how much of a mercy it was as she found herself face to face with a blackly scowling man, the angry heave of whose chest had loosened his robe and exposed an expanse of fine, silkily hirsute darkness.

It was when her mind’s eye began casually stripping the entire robe from that magnificent body that she was reduced to considering pinching herself to end what had to be a ghastly nightmare.

‘It doesn’t seem to be bleeding any more,’ he muttered, flashing her a distinctly hostile look before grabbing a teatowel and walking over to the fridge. ‘You’d better pack this around it for a while,’ he said, handing her the towel, now wrapped around a mound of ice-cubes. ‘It might prevent it swelling.’

Now feeling an utter fool, Maggie moved towards the cooker, the lumpy towel clamped to her nose.

‘Now what are you doing?’ he demanded in weary exasperation.

‘Cooking your breakfast’

‘Don’t you think you have enough to occupy you?’ he drawled, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Forget it—we’ll go have a look at the lab facilities, then get ourselves breakfast downtown…assuming, that is, you’re up to it.’

At first Maggie was surprised at how well Slane knew his way around, then she remembered that he had spent quite a bit of time in Dublin.

‘Did you come here on holiday regularly?’ she asked after a silent battle with herself. They had exchanged barely a word since getting into Connor’s car, but a subconscious fatalism in her reasoned that, having committed herself to stay, her best bet was to try to establish at least a veneer of civility between them before she got around to confronting him. The only alternative appeared to be a descent into out-and-out war…

Besides, there was this growing, insistent part of her showing an insatiable need to find out everything there was to know about him…Not that she had any intention of indulging it to the full.

‘Not on holiday, exactly,’ he replied. ‘We did visit quite a bit, but my dad had this thing about me not missing out on the Irish half of me. I went to school here as a kid—though I went through high school in the States. I was also here at Trinity before going on to Yale.’

‘Didn’t you mind?’ exclaimed Maggie involuntarily.

‘What was there to mind?’

‘Surely it must have been disruptive—switching between the Irish and American education system like that? And what about leaving your family and friends?’

‘I was a bright kid, so the differences didn’t bother me,’ he replied. ‘I guess I was also a pretty secure one. It wasn’t as though I was packed off to Ireland against my will; I was given the choice and I couldn’t wait to live here for a while. As for family and friends, I knew they’d still be there when I got back—which was most vacations.’

Bright, well-adjusted and utterly modest, thought Maggie wryly, and that had just been the child!

‘I guess you had a more conventional childhood,’ he murmured as, with the outskirts of Dublin behind them, he speeded up along the coastal road, beside which angry grey seas sent foam-tipped waves hurtling across mile after empty mile of pale gold sand.

‘I guess you could say that,’ responded Maggie drily.

‘Oh, I see,’ he chuckled, the sound sending shock waves of heat rippling through her. ‘This is to be a “tell all” for me and a “tell nothing” for you. Great.’

Maggie bit back an angry retort, reasoning with herself that she could hardly blame him for the effect he was having on her—an effect of which he seemed, thank heavens, mercifully unaware.

‘I’m sorry if you got that impression,’ she said, trying so hard to feign normality that she ended up sounding prissy, ‘but there really is nothing to tell. I went from one school to the next, in the same town, then on to university—there’s hardly anything exotic about that…Where exactly are we heading?’

‘To a place just outside Dun Laoghaire,’ he replied, taking a sudden right turn from the coast road. ‘In fact, we’ll soon be there.’

Maggie frowned in puzzlement as with each turn they took they drove deeper and deeper into what was obviously a most affluent residential area. ‘We are on our way to a laboratory, aren’t we?’ she muttered, peering out through the rain-bleared windows at houses that were getting grander and sparser by the minute.

‘We sure are,’ he replied, with a soft laugh, as they entered what was more of a lane than a road, at the end of which stood huge, wrought-iron gates set into a massive, creeper-clad wall. He stopped the car in front of the gates, released his seat belt and opened his door. ‘Your turn to drive.’

Before Maggie could utter a word he was out and drawing aside the heavy, creaking gates.

He motioned her to remain where she was once she had driven through, and got in beside her, spraying her with droplets of rain as he shook his glossy dark head like a boisterous puppy.

‘Straight on up,’ he directed.

It was like driving through a miniature forest, and then a house loomed into view.

‘This looks more like a minor stately home than a laboratory site!’ exclaimed Maggie as they neared the impressive, ivy-clad building. ‘Who on earth owns it?’

‘Maurice Ryan—an old friend of my father’s,’ replied Slane. ‘Just follow the drive round to the back of the house and on down to that line of trees—you’ll see where to turn once we’re there. Maurice is a character and a half, but unfortunately we won’t see him—he’s off picking daisies at the end of some rainbow or other.’

‘He’s what?’ exclaimed Maggie, following the curve of the drive and bringing the car to a halt in front of a white, single-storey building, hidden from view by the trees behind which it stood.

‘Maurice is a botanist. He eats, sleeps and breaths botany. Fortunately he has vast independent means with which to indulge his passion.’

‘I take it he’s the one who’s grown this plant you’re going to test?’ said Maggie.

Slane nodded. ‘Yes, he—Ah, that must be John,’ he said as a man clad in waterproofs and wellington boots appeared from around the side of the building. ‘You might just as well stay here in the dry while I have a word with him about setting things up for the morning.’

He got out of the car and approached him, and a while later the two of them disappeared inside the building. In less than five minutes they reappeared and stood deep in conversation, the other man every now and then pointing towards a row of greenhouses of varying sizes and shapes and sometimes to the land beyond.

What am I doing here, and with this of all men? Maggie asked herself incredulously as a shiver that was entirely unrelated to the bleakness of the late November weather shuddered through her.

She busied herself for a while, moving back to the passenger seat, but, with that little distraction over, her eyes were drawn back to the taller of the two figures. Whatever it was his shorter companion had said, Slane suddenly threw back his head and laughed, oblivious of the rain now deluging down on them.