‘I’m about to leave for New York,’ Rafael divulged.
Stark disappointment swallowed Harriet alive. ‘Oh…’
‘We’ll talk tomorrow afternoon at two. My place or yours?’ he quipped.
‘Here would be the better option.’
‘In the meantime, I never did return your friendly salutation on the phone.’ His dark eyes locked to her innocent puzzled face as he closed light hands over hers and drew her close to his tall, muscular frame. ‘Hello, partner…’
He kissed her breathless. She wasn’t prepared, and there was no time to muster her defences. She fell into that kiss and the heat of a passion that burned her from inside out. Gasping, trembling, suddenly painfully alive to the tingling reaction of every nerve ending she possessed, she was shaken by the seductive strength of her own pleasure. She didn’t want to breathe, she didn’t want him to stop, she just wanted to stay where she was, feeling what she was feeling for ever.
But Rafael pressed open the door behind her, eased her into the dim kitchen and said goodnight. In a daze she stood there for several minutes, not quite sure what had happened to her.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NEXT MORNING, Harriet tried to avoid waking up: a wheel of fire was turning inside her head. She embraced the pain with the masochistic conviction that she thoroughly deserved to suffer for being so foolish with the wine.
At the same time, Rafael Flynn had kissed her—and she couldn’t quite credit that development. Possibly the isolation of life in County Kerry had driven him to lower his standards. From what she had seen Ballyflynn wasn’t exactly heaving with young women. But he hadn’t simply kissed her once, she recalled. He had done the deed twice—and very thoroughly. Of course there was a more obvious explanation for her sudden startling pulling power: she was on the spot and single and he was over-sexed. That made the best sense of all to her, for she felt that it went without saying that a womaniser of international acclaim would probably be extremely over-sexed.
The tentative knock that sounded on her bedroom door provoked a faint moan of self-pity from her. It creaked open. ‘Harriet?’ Una stage-whispered. ‘Do you want your first plaiting lesson?’
Discomfiture ate Harriet alive. Ignoring her headache, she sat bolt upright. ‘Yes…what a great idea.’
‘I’ve been here for an hour. I let you have a lie-in,’ the teenager told her chattily from the doorway.
Harriet lodged an anguished eye on the alarm clock, which confirmed that it was still only seven in the morning, and forced a valiant smile. ‘Give me ten minutes.’
‘It was so quiet here while you were away. I hardly saw Fergal,’ Una lamented, while she demonstrated her failsafe methods on Snowball’s somewhat thin mane. ‘I’m starting to think he’s avoiding me.’
‘I expect he’s very busy.’ Harriet attempted without much success to make her fingers match the younger woman’s nimble example. ‘But I do have a couple of things to discuss with him. Do you know where I would be most likely to find him mid-morning?’
‘In Dooleys Bar, of course.’ Una was evidently surprised by what she considered to be an unnecessary question.
Harriet’s eyes widened, but she made no comment and offered the teenager a lift home. It was a bri
ght sunny morning. While she waited for Una to load her bike into the pick-up truck, she stood at the fence admiring the view down to the sea. The green fields stretched down to the deserted white strand and the sparkling sapphire blue of the Atlantic: it was so beautiful it almost hurt her eyes.
‘There’s a rumour going round the village that you’ve been fighting with Rafael Flynn. Obviously you’re a lot cheekier than you look.’ The teenager gave her a teasing glance.
Thinking of the kiss the night before, Harriet reddened, and to cover her blushes quipped, ‘Don’t you think I have to avoid him?’
‘No. If you’ve got the nerve to fight with him, you could be just the woman for him!’
Harriet laughed. ‘I don’t think so.’
Una asked to be dropped off in the middle of Ballyflynn. It was market day and the village was busy. On the colourful main street Harriet bought fresh vegetables out of the back of an ancient lorry and fretted guiltily over the fact that she had still to pick a patch on which to grow her own. Dooleys Bar appeared to share space with the post office. She walked through the low green painted door into a cosy, impossibly crowded room floored with worn flagstones and warmed by a turf fire. The smell of burning peat made her think of lonely stretches of sweeping moorland. The bar was packed tight with farmers, who twisted round to look at her, and several offered a few pleasantries in greeting. It amused her that although she had not met one of them before they every one to a man knew exactly who she was.
‘How you doing?’ Fergal asked cheerfully
Harriet blushed at her uncharitable assumptions. He was not propping up the bar with a pint in his hand but serving drinks from behind it. ‘There’s been some developments at the yard, but we can catch up later.’
‘Fergal…I’ll mind the bar while you have a break.’ A pale little woman with a tight perm and sharp eyes bustled out from behind the post office counter. ‘Introduce me to your visitor.’
For some reason that request turned Fergal the colour of a beetroot. At the same time the noisy rise and fall of conversation in the busy room suddenly died. ‘Ma…’
Marvelling that his mother’s friendly welcome should have reduced Fergal to the level of an inarticulate schoolboy, and awakened so much apparent interest from the locals, Harriet stepped into the awkward silence. ‘Mrs Gibson…I’m Harriet Carmichael.’
‘Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Fergal…don’t keep the lady waiting!’ the older woman urged her son. ‘Now, where would you like to sit?’