“Hello?” I called, my voice croaky from sleep.
She whirled, a hand pressed to her chest. “Jaysusmaryandjoseph,” she said, her accent so thick, it took me a second to understand her words. “Gave me a fright, you did.” She gathered herself and smiled at me in such a way that all I could do was smile back. “Well, you look like you had a bad dose. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I said. “Good. I’m sorry . . . I don’t remember your name.”
“Well, I’m guessing so. You were pretty knackered when we met. I’m Sinead. This is my gaff.”
I guessed from the way she was gesturing around her that she meant the house was hers. “Well, thank you so much for letting us stay here.”
“Well, there’s no saying no to Ronan, is there?”
I felt a blush incinerate my face. “No,” I said. “Not really. I’m Poppy.”
“Well, it’s real nice to meet you. Formal, like.”
The cat sounded like a motor in the room. “What’s the cat’s name?”
“Rascal. I see you’ve been feeding her. I was going to take her with me, but the old broad doesn’t take to change and there’s too much chaos at my daughter’s place. I thought she’d sneak out the door here first chance she got and head up to Father Patrick. He’s known to leave her a bit of cream now and again.”
“He’s very nice,” I said.
“He’s not so bad.”
“Your cat is nice too.”
“No, she’s not,” Sinead said, giving the cat a scratch behind the ears, which made Rascal hiss. We both laughed a little.
“How . . . ah . . . how do you know Ronan?” I had this weird half idea that she might be Ronan’s family. An aunt of some kind? But I couldn’t actually imagine him having this warm person in his life and still being quite so feral.
“Oh,” she said with a wince. “That’s his story to tell. Not mine.”
A lot of that going around.
“Sure,” I said, falling back on old habits. “I’m sorry to pry.”
“You hungry, like? I’ve got—”
“Coffee?”
She smiled and turned to pour me a cup from Ronan’s French press.
“Where is Ronan?” I asked.
“Out on the wee wall over there,” she said, pointing behind her like I could see through the stone walls. “He wanted you to do this when you got up.”
She set the box of hair dye on the counter. Right. I’d forgotten. I flipped the color over and read the name. “Dark Chocolate.”
“Yeah.” Sinead looked about as sold on the idea as I felt.
“Thank you,” I said and took the box only to set it on the table behind me. She handed me a cup of coffee and I smiled at her. “I’m just gonna go have a chat with Ronan.”
Sinead’s merry laugh followed me out into the bright sunshine of the day. The air felt warmer, like the sun was just a bit hotter today than the other day. The wind, for the moment, was at rest.
Ronan sat on the hip-high stone wall. He was a black slice out of the green and blue of the land and sky behind him. I watched as he drank his coffee and stared out at the ocean as it made its way toward the rocks beneath us.
“Good morning,” I said as I got close enough to him.
He wore a pair of dark sunglasses that only added to the mystery and appeal of him, and all my body could do was remember, with one full-body shiver, what this man could do to me. How the other night I slept with his come on my skin and his scent in my nose and seven million questions about him rattling around in my brain.
“You haven’t dyed your hair,” he said by way of greeting. I couldn’t tell with him in those sunglasses if he were looking at me or not, so I pulled myself back into my shell, or whatever shell he allowed me to have around him.
“I just woke up. Are we in some kind of rush?”
“Father Patrick heard back from your sister’s number last night.”
“Zilla!”
“I don’t think it was your sister texting.”
“Someone else has her phone?”
He nodded.
“Someone bad?”
Again, he nodded.
“Oh.” That was all I could say. “What do we do?”
“The fake paperwork is going to be ready for you tomorrow morning. My contact needs a picture emailed to him straight away.”
“That’s why you want me to dye my hair.”
“The priest didn’t say what village we were in. Only that we were outside of Carrickfergus, which narrows things down. Even more if they were able to track where the message came from. As soon as your paperwork is ready, we’re leaving.”
I felt his fear more profoundly than I felt my own and it was strange, but instead of making me more scared, all it did was make me feel such worry for him. Braving an inevitable rejection, I stepped in front of him, and, to my surprise, he didn’t jerk away. I shifted forward between his knees and he let me. He let me put my hand against his face, stroking the scar along his jaw. I held my breath, waiting for him to bare his teeth.