The Harp and the Fiddle: Glenncailty Castle, Book 1 Read online

  Caera pulled back. In her haste, her shoulder hit the table, the sound loud in the quiet, dim kitchen.

  “Don’t do that,” Caera hissed.

  Tim knelt before her, palms up. “I’m sorry.” His eyes searched her face.

  Caera looked away, nodded.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Come here.”

  Tim drew her away from the table leg. Together, they stood. Tim bent and lifted her, arms under her shoulders and knees.

  “Where’s your bedroom?”

  “That door.”

  Tim carried her into the bedroom. He took a moment to look around before lowering her to the bed. He grabbed something from his pocket and then shucked his shoes, pants and underwear before joining her. Caera opened her arms to him, drawing him towards her, guilty and embarrassed by the way she’d reacted.

  Tim kissed her, and in the next heartbeat the awkwardness was forgotten. His hands roamed her breasts and belly while she gripped his hips. He paused to roll on the condom he’d taken from his pocket, then shifted to lie between her legs.

  The head of his cock brushed her thigh, glanced over her lips of her sex, her clit, before sliding down and finding the entrance to her body.

  “Are you ready?” Tim’s words were soft in his ear.

  “Yes.”

  He adjusted his upper body, bracing himself on his elbows, his chest firm against her breasts.

  Tim thrust his hips, his cock sliding halfway into her. Caera wrapped her arms and legs around him, pressing her face into his neck. He smelled good, like sex and man. He pressed deeper, filling her.

  Tingles of pleasure danced along the outsides of her legs, in her fingertips and deep in her belly. He pulled out a short distance, then thrust back in. Caera hummed in pleasure. She could feel the stubble of his cheek, the whorls of his ear against her face.

  They were connected, deeply and wholly. She knew it limited the depth and speed of his thrusts to hold him so tightly, she didn’t want him to move away. She wanted to be close, to feel held and loved and valued.

  Though she never said anything, Tim seemed to understand what she needed. His hips rocked between hers, cock thrusting in and out in a steady rhythm.

  The tingling within her built until her skin felt electric, until the heat from their bodies seemed hot enough to burn her up.

  “You’re close, I can feel it.” Tim’s breath puffed against her neck, making her gasp. “You’re tight.”

  Caera couldn’t speak, she could only feel. When Tim’s hand slid under her ass, lifting her hips so he could thrust deeper, she dug her nails into his back, holding onto the pleasure within her, willing it to spill over into the release she craved.

  He drove into her in hard, deep thrusts, and on the third one she came. Her nails dug into his back and she bit his shoulder as she gasped and shivered through her orgasm.

  Tim shifted, then drove into her in rapid thrusts, until he too came, gasping and shuddering above her.

  Caera lazily watched Tim peek his head out her bedroom door. Her skin was salty, the sheets damp with sweat, but she didn’t care. Post-orgasm ease filled her, the kind that didn’t allow her to hold onto a thought long enough to be worried or to question what she’d just done.

  Tim, fully naked and displaying a nicely muscled ass, looked over his shoulder. “Going to give me a hint on the bathroom?”

  “You mean the toilet?”

  “Either.”

  “Nope.”

  Tim’s sigh was disgruntled enough to make Caera giggle. “And I suppose you’ve got a roommate.”

  “Yep.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Figures.” Tim peeked into the hall again. “If I get arrested for walking in on her butt-ass naked, you better bail me out, woman.”

  With that, he disappeared into the hall. Caera giggled again, not worried because she knew Sorcha was at work in the castle.

  A few moments later, Tim reappeared, holding a towel over his privates. “I walked into someone’s bedroom. Luckily, they weren’t there.”

  “Sorcha’s.”

  “I knew I should have asked her where you lived.” Tim jumped onto the bed, making Caera bounce. He grabbed her and pulled her to him.

  “That would have been against the rules.” Caera wasn’t sure what Tim was doing. She tried to turn, to throw her leg around him so they could have sex again, but he held her firmly against him, her back to his front.

  “None of that now, I need some time to recover. Plus, I only brought one condom.” Tim laid his big, warm hand against her belly.

  “I’m on birth control,” Caera told him. It felt odd, being held like this. She’d seen it in movies plenty of times, but had never had it happen to her. She wasn’t sure where to put her arms or head.

  “You are?”

  “Yes.” Caera look over her shoulder. “You assumed I wouldn’t be.”

  “Er, yes.”

  “Because I’m Catholic or because I’m Irish and we breed like rabbits?”

  “There’s no good answer to that question, so I’m pleading the Fifth.”

  “You’re what?”

  “The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the You-nited States.” He laid on a thick American country accent, and Caera giggled again.

  As her giggling faded, Tim tucked a corner of the pillow under her head, answering the question of what she was supposed to do with it. They faded into warm silence.

  Caera was drowsing when Tim spoke.

  “I’m sorry. About earlier.”

  “For what?”

  “When you were undressing me. I didn’t mean to push you to do something you weren’t comfortable with.”

  Caera’s eyes popped up, her lethargy gone. “There’s no need to talk about it.”

  “I think we do.”

  Tim rolled her onto her back so he could look down at her. “I can’t figure you out.” His eyes searched her face. “Every time I think I know what you’ll do or what you want, you do something, say something, unexpected.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Last night you were this sexy, demanding, admittedly slightly crazy sexpot. Then today you looked at me like you’d never had sex before, like you were unsure what was happening.”

  Caera licked her lips, tried to roll away, but Tim held her close, didn’t let her run from his words.

  “I’m not good at this kind of sex.”

  “The making love kind?”

  “Oh.” Caera looked away from the pity she saw in his eyes. He touched her cheek.

  “I’m not, wasn’t, a virgin,” she said.

  “I know that. I mean, last night I knew that.” He shifted, settling on his side, head propped on his hand. His other hand was on her waist, his index and ring finger tapping and stroking softly, as if he were playing music.

  Caera wondered if he were playing her.

  “I made some poor choices when I was young.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No one but me should be sorry.” Caera looked at the window, not seeing it, but rather the stupid girl she’d been. “I believed in a dream, a stupid dream, and let it lead me far from home and those that I love.”

  “No dream is stup—”

  “Mine was. And I suffered for it.”

  She could see the awareness in his eyes, a growing understanding that she wasn’t talking about a failed love affair or teenage indiscretion, but something much darker and harder.

  “Tell me.”

  Caera sighed, breath catching on the first hiccupping sob. She pressed her fist to her mouth and turned away from Tim, drawing her knees to her chest as she bit down on her knuckles.

  “No, Caera, talk to me.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “I can see that.” His hands smoothed over her skin, gentling her. “You’re hurting remembering it, or trying not to remember it. Tell me—a burden shared is a burd
en halved.”

  Caera smiled fleetingly, the old sentiment sounding strange as it came from him. As quaint as they were, the words were true.

  But, no matter what he might say, she couldn’t, wouldn’t share with him the full truth of her shame. The details were her burden, and hers alone.

  “It’s simple in the telling.” Caera let him roll her onto her back once more, but she drew the sheets up over her chest, not wanting to be naked as she spoke of it.

  “I’d just finished the Leaving Cert.—the exams we take at the end of secondary school—and was working in the pub for a bit of extra, a bit of money to take with me to university. A man came in one night, a musician. He said I was born to sing, with a brilliant voice and great talent. He said I should be touring Europe. I was thrilled, thinking I’d been discovered, as if this were some Hollywood movie.

  “He was older, though he didn’t look it, not really. He was thirty-one, I was seventeen. He’d come to Ireland to see a friend and stayed to take a break from his tour. He told me stories about traveling around Europe as a musician. Every night for a week he came to the pub where I worked. He would watch me while I sang and played. Friends and family had been telling me that I was talented for years, but from him the same words felt different. Sometimes he’d pick up a guitar and play and sing Spanish ballads about love and war.

  “I fell in love with him—or at least I thought it was love. One night he took me to his hotel room and we had sex. I’d always planned to wait until I was married before I had sex, but I was a virgin and scared—both of the sex and to disappoint him, so I went along with it.

  “He laughed when he realized it was my first time.”

  Tim stroked her arm. Caera took a shuddering breath, trying to keep herself from getting emotional.

  “Two days later, he invited me to go on tour with him. He said I could be the opening act. My parents found out and forbade me from seeing him, and lectured me about being responsible and protecting myself and my future.”

  Tim leaned down and kissed her shoulder.

  “It sounds stupid now, but at the time I thought it was my chance to do what I’d always dreamed of.” Caera swallowed hard, past the lump in her throat that demanded that she cry, weep for what she’d lost.

  “Young dreamers are the most vulnerable, and yet we all need to have a dream.”

  “There are young dreamers, and then there are those that are young and helplessly stupid. I was one. My parents told me it wasn’t real, that he had bad intentions towards me. My father forbade me to go. Friends, family, all said I should stay, go to university.

  “I didn’t listen. I snuck out one night, met him on the road and drove away, thinking I was on the start of some grand adventure and by the time I came home next, I’d be famous and wealthy, having played all over the world.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Ah, so you’ve figured out it doesn’t end well?” Caera smiled wryly.

  “They almost never do.”

  “So I was told.” Restless, she sat up, blanket still held to her chest.

  Tim propped his back against the wall, then drew her to him, her back against his chest.

  It was easier now that she wasn’t looking at him. “We flew from Dublin to Prague, where I met the rest of his band. It was a metal band, the music nothing like what he’d sung for me, with me. He laughed when I asked what I should play as the opening act, told me that no one wanted to hear my little Irish songs. I was heartbroken.” Caera swallowed down the rest of the tale, the truth of what she’d become.

  “That son of a bitch.”

  “I’d lost my virginity to him in Ireland, and as we traveled Europe, I lost my innocence. We did not…make love.”

  “Did he…?” Tim’s words trailed off.

  “No, it wasn’t rape. I’d gone with him willingly, and I was never forced.”

  “Why didn’t you just go home?”

  “I was ashamed, afraid.” And I became as bad and worse as they were. “I thought maybe if I stayed, eventually I’d be able to play, to sing. It was the band’s first large tour, and I thought that somewhere there’d be a time when they’d ask me to be more than a roadie.”

  Instead, the band had lost control of itself. The privileges and excess of tour life had led them to do things they never had before, and Caera had fallen into the darkness along with them.

  She didn’t say that to Tim, instead glossing over it. “I realized that would never happen. I stayed even after…even after I shouldn’t have, because I hated myself and what my stupidity had brought me to.”

  “When it became too much—” and I almost jumped off a balcony, “—I got a job tending bar. I worked my way towards home, finally ending up in a hotel where I realized I was good at catering and events work. I stayed in England for years, only returning home to Ireland when I was successful. I got a certificate in Hotel Management. I met Elizabeth when she spoke to my class, and she offered me the job here.”

  Tim hugged her, kissed the top of her head. “Beautiful Caera. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  Lacing her fingers in his, Caera said nothing. Instead, she leaned back into his embrace and let herself pretend, if even for a little while, that she was loved.

  Chapter Seven

  Dare to Hope

  Tim pulled on his coat, his attention on what Caera had told him a few hours ago. His heart ached for the girl she’d been. He’d had a charmed career, always meeting the right people at the right time, the support of his parents and understanding employers giving him the time he needed to play low-rent venues as he made a name for himself. But his story was the exception, not the rule. Most musicians bore heavy scars from their perilous journey to success.

  Tim considered himself an easygoing, likeable guy, more likely to break up a fight than to start one. But he wanted to punch in the face of whoever had done this to Caera. The more time he spent with her, the more he liked her. More than liked her—really liked her.

  She was funny, sassy, complicated and beautiful. And she played the harp and sang like an angel.

  What troubled him the most about her story was that she made it sound like a career in music wasn’t a possibility for her, as if by making a bad decision when she was young she’d forfeited her chance at her dream. Or maybe not pursuing music was her way of punishing herself for what she’d done.

  As sad as her story was, it wasn’t one he hadn’t heard before. Musicians were prone to dating other musicians, people who didn’t mind that they lived like vampires for weeks at a time, writing songs all night long, then sleeping most of the day. A few thrown shoes had taught him that girlfriends did not appreciate being told that the reason you missed a date was that you were asleep.

  The “girl-musician meets boy-musician and follows him around on tour, slowly realizing that while she’s on tour with him she’s not respected as an artist but seen as groupie” story wasn’t exactly as old as time, but it wasn’t new.

  He needed to show her that she hadn’t done something so drastically wrong, and that she should pursue her dream. Before he was a career musician, he was a music lover, and she was like the spirit of Irish music come to life. He couldn’t stand the thought of not hearing her sing, of others not experiencing what it was to hear her.

  And most importantly he’d seen, on that first day, how happy playing made her, how calm she was when she played. He wanted her to be happy.

  With a sigh, he finished tying his shoes and stood from the kitchen chair. Caera had left a few minutes ago to go start the set-up for tonight’s event in Finn’s Stable. She’d said a local group was hosting a ceilidh to raise money. She’d told him all about it, from what the kitchen was preparing and how they’d transport the food the stable, to the DJ who was coming and where she planned to tell him to set up for the best acoustics.

  Once they’d climbed out of bed, a wall had gone up between them. Though her personal shields were clearly back in place, she wasn’t the eth
ereal, untouchable woman he’d first met. She was rattled, as her chatter and a broken mug could attest to.

  He was supposed to leave today, take a cab to the closest big town where he’d catch a bus and start zig-zagging his way across the country until he reached Galway, where he had a headlining gig at a world music festival. She knew it and on her way out the door, she’d said goodbye while chastely kissing his cheek.

  He wasn’t ready to leave Caera. He wanted, needed, more.

  With a last look at the kitchen table, where he’d had her moaning and ready for his touch, Tim left Caera’s little cottage, closing the door behind him.

  He smiled as he walked away. He’d be back. She wouldn’t push him away that easily.

  The entrance hall of Glenncailty Castle was bustling with people. Suitcase wheels clattered over the old stones of the floor, while voices echoed off the mint-green walls. There was a line at the registration desk, a pile of luggage by the door. A group of middle-aged women stood together, still wearing coats and scarves. A castle staff member slid up to them, gesturing towards the double doors that led to the morning room.

  One woman listened to the staff member’s words, then shrugged her small brown purse higher onto her shoulder before leading the group away. As they left, the noise quieted, though there was still chatter from the line at the registration desk. Checking his watch, Tim cursed and quickened his step as he headed towards his room. He should have checked out at 11 A.M., but it was 1 P.M., and by the looks of the lobby they needed him to check out. He took the stairs, sprinting down the hall. Sorcha and a young blonde woman stood at the open door to his room.

  Sorcha indulged in a brief glare as he skidded to a stop beside her, before her face smoothed into a pleasant smile.

  “Mr. Wilcox, we were getting worried.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Check out was at 11 A.M., Mr. Wilcox.”

  “I know. I went for a walk and got distracted.”

  Sorcha’s eyes widened, then she nodded. “I understand, but housekeeping does need to clean your room. We were about to start packing your things.”