“Please, Miranda, accept my apology and allow us to begin this evening again. Sit back down and eat. I do not like the idea of you working while you are hungry. I promise I’ll be on my best behavior.”
He stood back and gestured toward the table with an inviting smile. Her chest went tight at his apology of using Karen to satisfy him when she wouldn’t. The idea of him as violently jealous as she had been made her wonder what was beneath his cool exterior. His cool was unlike any other Irishman she had encountered in and around the city. His lack of swearing alone surprised her. The truth was she wanted to know more about him. So although she wanted to refuse him, she didn’t want him to think she couldn’t contain herself in the face of his seduction. With a heavy sigh, she gave in.
“Fine, whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”
His hand was at her back guiding her into the chair, and his touch, even through her clothes, set off a fire inside her. Seeing nothing, her whole body was focused on his touch. When he moved away, she trembled at the loss of his heat. She avoided his eyes as she removed the silverware and settled the fine linen napkin over her lap. Forcing a smile of thanks as he filled her glass with wine, she was relieved when she finally got her body under control.
“One glass only. I’m not much of a drinker.”
“Please don’t feel you must drink, then. There are other options, and I do not want you to feel as if you must.”
“It’s fine. I didn’t say I never drank. I do enjoy a glass of wine with dinner from time to time.” She shrugged as she tucked into the still-steaming plate. The salmon was delicious, and the soft, fragrant jasmine rice and lightly crisp asparagus fit the salmon perfectly.
“This is good. Did you cook this?”
“No, my housekeeper did. I’ll admit, if it were up to me my eating habits would be rather poor. She makes sure I manage to get my fruits and vegetables in. I’ll pass along your compliments. So tell me about yourself, Miranda.”
Shaking her head, she sipped the wine, which was, of course, absolutely perfect for the meal. “No, you know just about everything about me. It’s your turn. I’m interested in knowing what would have happened to me after you finished making some poor man who had no idea you existed breathe through a tube.”
He smiled and met her eyes, his amber eyes gold. “I would have dragged you to bed and spent hours wiping the memory of his touch from your mind. Your body might feel pain through the night, but never violently, always with your pleasure in mind. I have no taste for violence aimed at a woman or pain for just the sake of pain.”
His answer twisted her up inside, and she sipped her wine to cover it. Frantically, she thought of a question to fill the silence. “Were you born here in the States? Your accent is often thick, yet it doesn’t quite sound like it.” The question had nagged her since the first day she met him.
Declan was quiet for a long minute, and then he answered her question. “I was born here in Chicago, in this house. Apparently I took my parents by surprise, and by the time they were ready to leave, I had made my appearance. My da settled here just a year before I was born. One of my uncles felt the need to return home, and my parents’ marriage wa
sn’t doing well, and they decided a change of scene might help. For a while it worked, because here I am, but it didn’t last, and after only three years she left without looking back.
“The lack of an accent is actually from my father’s insistence I attend private schools throughout my education. He knew that times were changing and that education and the connections I would make in school with children of men with money would be important. In private schools, everything is uniform, even the way you speak. When I went to Ireland, I caught it bad, the heckling for lack of an accent.
My da passed when I was fifteen, and I was shuttled back to Ireland to live with an uncle. I enjoyed my time there, but it never felt like home, and by the time I finished school I asked my uncle if I could return. He agreed, but only if I continued on to university. I applied to Northwestern and got in, and moved back in here with a cousin who had taken over when my da died. My cousin was relieved and ready to return to Ireland, and pushed me to finish university so that I could take over for him.”
She wanted to ask more about his mother, but his tone had gone completely flat when he spoke about her, and she let it go. “How many uncles do you have, and what’s your degree in?”
“I’ve three uncles and five aunts. Economics, I picked it on a lark, thinking I would change it eventually, but I never did. Much to my surprise, I grew quite fascinated.”
“A lark? Usually when people pick a major as a lark, they don’t pick economics, they pick psychology.”
“Psychology. Alas, the Irish put no stock in such nonsense. Fairies and saints carry more weight than Freud or Jung.”
She couldn’t hold back her laughter at his teasing smile. “So this is a family business? How come your family keeps going back to Ireland? Don’t they like Chicago?”
“Ah, there are many things said about an Irishman’s ties to his home country. With my family it seems to be true. They never seem to stay very long, except Mark. He’s one of my many cousins, and he was smart enough to wait and marry a wife here in Chicago so she isn’t pushing for a return to home.”
“Has that been a problem in the past?” There was a way he said it that gave her pause.
“For one uncle, yes, and it was the reason my wife and I divorced. Which is quite ironic, in that it seemed the main reason she wanted to marry me. She wanted to leave Belfast and come to the States, but within a few years she was crying to go back. As I didn’t share her desire, she returned and I stayed.”
It shouldn’t have surprised her that Declan had been married. In many ways she was shocked he wasn’t currently married. Yet the very idea of him married to another woman nearly blinded her with jealousy. To cover her response, she sipped her wine and fought the desire to swallow the entire glass in one go. Miranda was proud of herself for the control she maintained. “That must have been a disappointment.” Even as the words tumbled from her numb lips, she wondered why she said what she did.
He shook his head with a sad smile. “It should have been, but it wasn’t, and I think that’s maybe the saddest thing. My uncle wasn’t keen on me taking over without first being settled. It wasn’t a clear condition, but I knew it was what he wanted. So many of the women I encountered at school wanted to take on the world and conquer it, and that didn’t appeal me. After a few months, my uncle invited me back to Ireland, saying he had several women he thought would do me well.
“I knew Mary in the time I was in Ireland, and we had dated for what seemed like a long time to a teenager, nearly a year. When I met her again she already knew what I was looking for, and she was still pretty, and I figured, sure, why not? For the first year it wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t long after that before she started hungerin’ for home. It quickly went downhill after that. What about your marriage?”
As she listened to him, she knew she should be dismayed by his obviously traditional desires for his wife to be without any ambition other than to be his wife and likely mother to his children. Yet she couldn’t fault him, when she had grown up it was all she wanted, and only became the climber she was now because of her ex-husband. “It’s funny the things we do for family, isn’t it? I more or less married my husband to make my father happy. He didn’t just hint, he came right out and told me he hated the idea of me not married. He wanted a man to take care of me. His cancer was progressing fast, and it was pretty clear he didn’t have much time.
“While I didn’t like his fifties attitude that I couldn’t take care of myself, it was obvious how much it meant to him. I had been seeing Michael for a year at the time. We met my first year in college at DePaul. He was a friend of one of my professors, and he came early to have lunch with the professor, but the next day he came back to talk to me. He had built a small brokerage house that was very successful. Added to that he was ten years older than me, and I was in awe someone like him would be interested in me. He took the not-so-subtle hint from my father. I knew it was what my father wanted, so even though I did worry we hadn’t been together long enough, I said yes anyway.
“The first year it wasn’t so bad, definitely a honeymoon period but little by little he became more and more controlling. I kept thinking it wasn’t so bad until I was given a promotion that would require me to travel, and he told me I couldn’t take the job. I think we had just passed our five-year mark, and I was done. I took the job, and the very next day he turned off and tuned me out completely. As far as he was concerned, it was over. He started to do his own thing, which included other women. When he found one he liked best, because she was young and stupid enough to be his new toy to shape and mold, he moved on.