9781618857613SacredWaterMichaels

  Kelly chuckled. “What is it with you two? I have to admit I’ve never seen one of Braydon’s girlfriends that weren’t forever trying to be the center of his attention. You act like you couldn’t care less.”

  Samantha moved to a seat opposite Kelly and shrugged. “I’m not going to follow him around like some lost puppy. If he has other things to do…it’s his vacation too.” She certainly wouldn’t be following him around when Jen Miller already had the job covered.

  “And what about you, Sam? What do you hope to get out of this vacation?”

  “I don’t know. Some time to relax, experience the mountains, meet new people.”

  He nodded almost theatrically as if he were someone wise and not a wild disheveled man sitting shirtless in a pair of Scooby Doo pajama pants and nothing else. He reminded her of a rebel leprechaun. The way his hair spiked in clumped points, this way and that, almost gave his ears and eyes an elfin quality. Like the rest of them, he was beautiful in his own unique way.

  As he took a large bite of his kiddy cereal and slurped back a dribble of milk that ran down his chin, his eyes crinkled merrily. They looked at one another for a long, silent moment, the ticking seconds each passing with a loud crunch of cereal.

  Her gaze quickly darted to his unclothed chest. He, like Luke, had Celtic tattoos, but somehow Kelly’s seemed a bit more menacing. Gaelic verses wrapped his arm like a tribal brand. Maureen was right. He was a rogue.

  Kelly’s spoon clanked onto his empty bowl and Sam’s gaze returned to his and away from his body.

  “What?” she asked accusingly as if she wasn’t gawking at him.

  “Ah, my dear, no need to be ashamed. Look to yer’ fill. If you like, I’ll drop me drawers and show you where the real treasures lie.”

  “You’re an ass,” she mumbled, drowning her laugh in her coffee as she hid behind her mug.

  Kelly smiled knowingly and stood. As he walked past her he playfully tugged her ponytail.

  “Try all you want to deny you were eyein’ me goods, but there’s no denyin’ that blush turning yer cheeks pinker than a misbehaving youngster's bum.”

  She pressed the back of her fingers to her skin as the truth of his accusation burned under her touch. Kelly dropped his dish in the sink and stretched loudly beside her, his fingers locking and pressing far above his head as his torso lengthened, dropping his loose Scooby Doo pajama bottoms down another inch.

  “Rut-row, almost gave you that show you were wantin’. Better get dressed before you come after me lucky charms.”

  She still found it amusing how being in this house somehow altered their dialect. Anyone who didn’t know they were all American would’ve assumed they had come right off the boat from Ireland.

  Gravel crunched and Kelly peeked out the window. “They’re back,” he casually announced as Braydon made an inelegant entrance into the kitchen.

  “Morning,” he mumbled. To who, Samantha wasn’t sure.

  Bray only had eyes for the coffee pot. He clumsily poured a cup for himself as more cars pulled up and car doors opened and slammed followed by the slow build of McCullough voices.

  “Fuck. They’re all comin’ aren’t they?” Braydon mumbled.

  Kelly slapped his brother on the back and gave an overzealous squeeze which caused Braydon to wince. “Yup. Better take your woman and your coffee and hide now if you want to escape them. Once the Grans get here there’ll be no getting out.”

  Like the slow moan of thunder produced by a thousand hooves in an approaching stampede, the McCulloughs rolled in. While most were just beginning their day, Maureen looked as though her day was at its peak. She entered the house as if she had been there all along. Walking into the kitchen in the midst of a story being told to whoever was trailing behind, she somehow managed to tie an apron around her sturdy waist while lighting the burner, heating a pan, and shuffling an exorbitant number of eggs from the refrigerator.

  Frank came in silently holding a brown paper bag stuffed with something. He placed it on the counter next to Maureen while she continued to chatter without pause and crack egg after egg into an enormous skillet.

  “…And I’ll tell you something else that Francine needs to watch. She looks as though she’s loosin’ a pound a day. I’m thinkin’ I should send over a few baskets of food, Frank. Lord knows her boys aren’t lookin’ after her the way they should. A damn shame, boys with a mother who did nothin’ but worry over them for decades and now they’re all too busy to help her mend after such a fall. Bullshite is what it is!”

  Sam found it amusing the way Maureen frequently dropped names into her dialogue as if she were having a conversation with a specific person when really she was addressing the room at large. Frank nodded, but remained silent as he poured himself a mug of coffee. Braydon’s mom needed no acknowledgement that he’d heard her. She just continued on.

  “Perhaps I’ll make her some soup and a nice apple pie. You know how people love my pies. Good mornin’, darling,” she said without breaking her momentum as she passed Braydon. “I’m going to have to take a trip into town to get her a bag of paper goods too. Francine doesn’t need to be standin’ ‘round at the sink doin’ dishes on her cast. Kelly, take this out to Rufus,” she instructed passing a large bowl of something that resembled canned meat to Kelly and bustling back to the stove to stir her eggs.

  Kelly opened the door and Finn walked in, appearing harassed as a little old woman with short orange hair and soft, but sharp wrinkled eyes the color of sea glass followed. The woman chattered in an accent so thickly Gaelic it first seemed she was not even speaking English. It took a moment for Sam to realize this was Mary O’Leahy, Maureen’s mother and Braydon’s grandmother, or Morai as he referred to her.

  Finn looked at Braydon, rolled his eyes and shook his head as if the tirade he was suffering had been going on for hours. Braydon laughed into his coffee and moved to greet his grandmother.

  “Mornin’, Morai.”

  The tiny woman squealed in the middle of her diatribe and roughly pinched Braydon’s cheek.

  Knowing he was hung over and that pinch must have felt more like a fork in the eye than an expression of affection, Sam smiled sympathetically at him. His grandmother pulled him down to her height and kissed him right on the lips.

  “Me beautiful boy! Yer mum tells me yer here with us fer a few weeks, aye?”

  “That’s right, Morai.”

  In a louder than usual conspirator’s whisper she said, “And she tells me you’ve brought a lassie home with ye?”

  Smiling he turned to Sam and said, “Morai, this is Samantha. Samantha, this is my grandmother, Mary O’Leahy.”

  Sam stood and held out a hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. O’Leahy.”

  She took her hand, but eyed Sam as if she were hiding something from the rest of them. Sam fought the urge to squirm under her scrutiny. Finally Braydon’s grandmother said, “Aye, she’ll do.” And then turned to help Maureen at the counter.

  Braydon leaned in as if to reassure her, but was interrupted when Sheilagh blew in like a tornado followed by Luke’s much more subtle entrance.

  The McCullough women were all a bit scary, Sam decided.

  Sheilagh snatched an apple out of a basket and wiped it on her shoulder before taking a large snapping bite out of it. Juice dribbled down her chin and she caught it with her thumb as she climbed into a chair at the table and tucked her feet onto the seat. “Luke, you wanna go to the lake today? Pat and Ry are going.”

  “So really,” Kelly butted in, “you’re planning on displaying your jiggly bits in a bikini for Tristan, is what you’re saying.”

  Sheilagh lobbed her half eaten apple at him and Kelly laughed as he caught it with surprising reflexes then, as if he’d just been given a gift, he took an appreciative bite of the fruit.

  Luke looked at Kelly. Sam wondered if Luke suffered from guilt for his secret affair with his sister’s crush.

  “I think I’ll hang back today. I have some stuff
to get done,” Luke said with transparent insincerity, yet no one seemed to question him.

  Sheilagh shrugged as if his attendance were inconsequential. “How about you, Samantha? Wanna come to the lake?”

  “Uh…” Sam fought the cold dread that swamped her belly at the thought of being near water. “Is it a beach?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, but I’ll have to just hang on the sand. I didn’t pack a suit.”

  Of course she didn’t. Sam didn’t swim, so had no reason to own a suit.

  “You can borrow one of mine,” Sheilagh offered.

  It would probably fit, but Sam would rather avoid having to make excuses throughout the day when asked to swim. “You’re smaller than me.”

  “Hardly. And besides, it’s a string bikini. You can adjust the hips and neck.”

  Sam jumped when Braydon hugged her from behind. It was always awkward when he displayed affection in front of the others.

  He pressed his face into her neck and whispered, “Come on Samantha, let’s do the lake today. You’d look great in a bikini and you know it.”

  Although the others probably couldn’t hear his comment she blushed anyway. He smelled of coffee laced with whiskey which she knew was left over from the night before.

  The kitchen door swung shut again. At the sight of Colin dressed in a formal button down and dress slacks she tensed. Suddenly very uncomfortable with Braydon’s position, she eased out of his embrace and stood.

  Sheilagh’s brows lowered the slightest degree as if she noticed Sam’s sudden change of disposition. The sharp redhead looked to her eldest brother and Sam feared she’d detected her impure thoughts, but then Sheilagh’s nose crinkled as if the whole idea of seeing Colin as anything other than a holy figure was ridiculous. Her expression showed she’d dismissed the entire byplay as meaningless.

  “Come on, Samantha, come to the lake. It’ll be fun to have a girl there for once.”

  As if drawn by her name, Colin watched her as he poured coffee into a mug. Never taking his gaze from hers he somehow managed to pull the pot away without spilling a drop just before his cup overflowed.

  Unaffected by her withdrawal, Braydon took a seat along with everyone else, sans Colin and Maureen, who was placing a heaping pile of home fries on the table followed by a steaming plate of eggs. Feeling more the center of attention by standing, Samantha quickly dropped back into her seat and looked at her plate.

  Sheilagh was still watching her, but Sam couldn’t expend the energy to care because she was too focused on ignoring Colin’s penetrating stare.

  “We should take the boat out,” Braydon suggested as he piled food on his plate. “Samantha would probably rather go tubing than sit on the beach all day.”

  The blood drained from her face and her stomach flipped horribly at the idea of being dragged behind a speeding boat on a tube whipping over water. Suddenly, a day with Sheilagh on the sand sounded perfect.

  “I think I’d rather go with your sister if you don’t mind.”

  He shrugged as if how she spent her day made no difference to him.

  “That’s fine. We’ll probably all meet up there at some point anyway.”

  Colin took a seat in her peripheral and unbuttoned his collar and rolled up his sleeves before reaching for a dish. He seemed oddly comfortable within any setting. This aggravated her. She had some preconceived notion that he should appear more proper than the rest.

  She froze mid-nibble when he asked, “Do you like boats, Sammy?”

  Placing her fork on her plate she wiped her mouth on her napkin and looked into those piercing green-blue eyes. The rest of the family, including Sheilagh, was busy eating and chatting without the courtesy of eye contact. It was as if they were standing above the rest on a cloud of privacy.

  “Not particularly.”

  He nodded as if he understood there was more to what she said than was actually spoken. She frowned at him and he silently laughed. Her stare shot back to her plate and spent the rest of the meal avoiding his gaze.

  An hour later she was staring in the mirror, tugging at her cotton shirt, frowning again. Sheilagh wasn’t kidding when she said her suit had strings. That was pretty much all the bathing suit consisted of, strings and a couple small patches of navy blue nylon.

  Her body was incredibly exposed even with the cover of her shorts and shirt. One wrong move and a nipple would fall out. There was no way she was taking off her shirt at the lake. Her underwear and bra would’ve been a more decent cover.

  When there was a knock at the door she turned. Braydon walked in before she could answer.

  She scowled at him, wondering what he would’ve done if she were indecent. Not that he seemed to even look at her. He marched over to his dresser and grabbed a key attached to a spongy keychain from a dish then went to the closet and retrieved a pair of flip-flops. It was his room, but she still bristled when he intruded on her privacy without apologizing.

  “Are you gonna drive over to the lake with Shei?”

  Sam sat on the edge of the bed and watched as he removed items from his pocket and sorted through them as if taking inventory then returned the items to his pockets in a more organized manner. Good thing she wasn’t an overly sensitive girl or an attention whore, because his disregard for her was starting to get really old and she considered herself a rather tolerant person.

  “Sure.”

  “Good.” He glanced at her as he was about to leave then paused. “Did you get a suit?”

  She nodded.

  “Can I see?”

  “I’m not planning on taking off my shirt.”

  He walked over to her and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers reached for her hand and tugged her to her feet. He was going to kiss her. There was that odd change in the atmosphere that told her so.

  Standing, she looked him in the eye. He smiled and she knew he was feeling tickles of emotion that were absent from her.

  “So modest,” he commented softly as he touched her bottom lip with his thumb. She somewhat resented that her body couldn’t produce even the most mediocre reaction to his attention when he gave it. It was as if her rational conscience was too involved around him to ever let her forget herself.

  His lips touched hers and slowly coaxed her mouth open. The kiss was pleasant, but nothing more. His hands rested on her hips, softly massaging the slight curve. As his tongue slowly played with hers he moaned and pulled her closer. He was slightly aroused, but nowhere near fully.

  How could he be satisfied with this lackluster chemistry? There was something about their interactions that made Sam believe it would never be anything more, and anything appearing as more between them would be completely artificial.

  She pulled back. “Braydon, I think we need to talk.”

  He looked down at her with lowered lashes. “About?”

  “Us.”

  “What about us?” He attempted to kiss her again and she turned away. He frowned. “What, Sam? Just say it.”

  She really wanted to avoid setting him straight until it was time for her to leave. There was nothing fun about having to awkwardly be a guest in the house of someone you broke up with, especially with his entire family there.

  Once she finished college she’d probably acquire more of a social life. She never really dated seriously. It wasn’t that she wasn’t sexual. She simply led a more pragmatic life. Always crossing point A to get to B, all the while remembering she’d soon be approaching point C. Apparently, losing her virginity was on a whole different end of the alphabet.

  She was an excellent student. School had been an amazing distraction for her when life was simply too hard for her to cope. She invested all of her energies in her studies rather than examining her fear and regret. She never allowed herself to surrender to the pain that would swallowed her whole. Instead, she put all her energy into school and became a straight A student, but now that school was ending she’d need something else to occupy her time. Perhaps she should
start on her Masters.

  “I don’t think this is working.”

  His mouth opened and she suspected this was coming out of left field for him. They really were on two separate wavelengths. “Sam, you haven’t given us a chance.”

  “I have. I like you, Braydon, but I’m not sure us dating is the best idea.”

  He stepped closer, placing his hands on her hips as he looked into her eyes. “Why? We’re good together. We have fun.”

  What fun? They’d barely hung out. “I just…” The sound of someone clearing their throat and a soft knock on the door had them breaking eye contact.

  When Sam saw that it was Colin she jumped away from Braydon so fast she nearly stumbled, but Braydon caught her by the elbow and steadied her.

  “Bray, Luke’s waiting for you in the truck.”

  Braydon turned and retrieved the key he placed on the dresser again then quickly kissed her cheek. “Thanks. I’ll see you later, Samantha.”

  She looked down at her bare feet as he left and waited for Colin to follow him.

  He didn’t. She felt him watching her once again, knowing he probably saw them kissing.

  “Are you about ready to go to the lake?”

  She looked up at him and felt some sort of invisible barrier between them as if he were hiding an emotion he didn’t want to share. Suddenly swamped with guilt as if she betrayed him, she nodded. He was dressed in loose fitting swim trunks and an old faded O’Malley’s T-shirt, this one kelly-green with a washed out shamrock on the chest.

  “Aren’t you going with the guys on the boat?” she asked.

  “I was going to go to the lake, but I…I just remembered I have something I need to do.”

  It was a poorly disguised lie, but Sam was grateful for it. “Oh.”

  His gaze left hers and traveled over her body from her shoulders to her feet. The dark triangles of Sheilagh’s bikini were visible under the soft cotton of her shirt. By the time his stare wondered over her exposed thighs a second time she couldn’t help the chill that ran up her spine. Her nipples tightened.

  “Right,” he said meeting her gaze once more. “Well, have fun, Sammy.”