Saint and Scholar (8 page)

Mentally and physically, she hit all the right buttons for him. That kiss had made him want to grab her up by the belt loops and toss her over his shoulder to carry home. He’d never considered himself to have an alpha personality, but whenever he thought of Carla he could feel the caveman tendencies bleeding out. He wanted to make her his conquest: tie her up and drag her back to Meath.

She could meet his helpless case of a father. She’d set up the home he’d been longing for since his mother died. Of course, he’d make her a mother several times over if he could manage it. His children would have the siblings he never had. But how would he get her to Ireland? He wasn’t so hip on going back
himself
after being fully indoctrinated in the cult of America. He knew one thing for certain: he wouldn’t give up on her until she gave him a flat-out “No” for an answer. Perhaps they could be pen pals for a while? He snorted at the thought and fell asleep thinking of her kiss.

* * * *

Carla gave two quick raps on the door and took a few steps back from the peephole. This wasn’t like her. She was timid–the sort of woman who spent a lot of time regretting missed opportunities because she was afraid to take risks. But where had that led her? To changing her major from what she was passionate about to something she thought would be
stable
. To being alone most of the time because heartbreak, no matter how temporary, seemed a worse fate than loneliness. At twenty-five, she was a cynic.

Living like that was so much work, and she was tired of feeling so empty, so she curled her toes in her shoes and anchored herself to the breezeway.
Run
, her fear said. In fact, her fear had made her turn her car around twice during the three-mile drive between her apartment and Grant’s. What kept her from running home was reminding herself Grant had
invited
her. He’d offered to help. Beyond that, he’d asked
her
to kiss him the night before. To her, that meant he didn’t see her as that mortified little girl who’d bumbled into his classroom all those years ago.

While she waited for the thud of footsteps from within, she turned and looked out over the balcony railings at the complex. The morning was utterly still other than one man in a business suit walking to his car two buildings away. This early, dew still clung to windshields. She looked at her watch. “Damn it.” Barely eight o’clock. The side effect of being a raging insomniac was that she often started her days at unseemly hours. Even though she hadn’t gotten home from the club until nearly three, she wasn’t really tired.

She walked to the steps and had made it down to the landing when the apartment door opened.

“Hold on, Carla.” Grant closed the door again, slid the chain across the track, and pulled the door open wide. “Come in, please.”

She assessed him from her spot on the landing and mumbled “Shit,” at a volume only dogs could hear.

He stood in the doorway wearing a faded heather gray FAI shirt and blue sweatpants that had a few bleach splotches. He was barefooted and his cheeks and jaw bore dark shadow. His curly hair fell into sleepy eyes. He pushed it back and rubbed his closed lids with the tips of his fingers.

“Good mornin’,” he said, stifling a yawn. When he stretched his arms over his head, his shirt lifted a few teasing inches to reveal pale taut abs and a trail of silky black hair starting at his navel and disappearing into the waistband of his underwear.

She cleared her throat and averted her gaze. “If it’s a bad time, I can come back later. I…I don’t sleep well, and I was already up. I guess when I saw the sun was up I…well.” She hooked her thumb in the direction of her car. “I can go back out and bring you back some breakfast in an hour, or–”

“No, no, you’re quite fine. Come on in. You want some tea? I make it strong enough to make you twitch. Or coffee, if you prefer. That’s what I’m having.” He gestured to the inside of the apartment, once more indicating she should step through.

She grazed his side with her own as she passed through the narrow doorway beside him. “Sure. Coffee sounds nice,” she said. She’d already had three cups. One more couldn’t hurt. It’d give her something to do with her hands.

He closed and locked the door, and with a smile padded toward the kitchen.

She scanned the open living space, furnished with several pine bookcases, an abused leather sofa and an ottoman piled high with textbooks and exam booklets. There were also a couple of barstools shoved beneath the kitchen pass-through window, but the sofa looked like the safest bet. While Grant puttered about measuring coffee grounds and pulling down mugs, she scanned the studio apartment until her eyes landed on a dozen or so flattened cardboard boxes at the ready, dozens of unshelved history books and a trunk and suitcase laying open.

She got up from her comfortable spot and picked up the topmost book in the pile: a thin volume about Irish-speaking communities in the United States. She hadn’t been aware there
were
any. She took it back to the sofa and started flipping through it while making a casual assessment of the rest of the apartment. In the sleeping area at the opposite end of the open space, Grant’s bed was stripped, his open closet empty, and dresser drawers dangling open. Items from the kitchen cabinets were piled onto the countertops, some already wrapped in paper and taped.

“Are…you
going
somewhere?” she asked warily. She already knew the answer.

“Oh. The boxes and such.” He approached the coffee table with a tray bearing two mugs of black coffee, a sugar bowl, a carton of half-and-half, and the remnants of a package of muffins. He sat next to her so they were touching thigh to thigh, and at the memory of how he’d gripped her thighs the night before, she felt things down below clench.

She crossed her legs at the ankles. It didn’t help. He smelled so damned good she found herself leaning closer as he stirred his coffee. He had the kind of smell that made girlfriends steal their boyfriends’ shirts and sleep with them while they were away–the kind of smell people wanted to curl into: slightly musky, with a hint of the previous day’s cologne. And that reminded her to ask Sharon about her odd new fragrance.

“Carla?” He held her cup out to her.

“Oh! Sorry.” She took the mug and started doctoring it with half-and-half.

Grant smiled and suddenly she felt a bit less dolt-like. “To answer your question, I accepted the position in Ireland. I’m flying home on Monday.”

She stared agape before squawking, “Home?”

“Yeah, well. It may have taken me the better part of a decade to finish my degree, but I’m still an Irish citizen.” His voice was flat and listless, which stunned her because he was generally so cheerful. He tidied the stack of paperwork on the storage tote in front of them and put his feet up.

“Well, I’m sorry you’re going.” She rested her hand on his knee and gave it a consoling squeeze.

“Are you?” He angled his torso sideways so his shoulder leaned against the sofa back and he faced her.

“Sure. I…uh…I was looking forward to getting your help with my project.” She tried to avert his gaze by staring into her coffee mug, but he tipped her chin up again like he had the night before.

“Look at me,” he said. “You’ll give a guy a complex.”

“Sorry.” When she looked at him she felt like she was committing some sin and would turn into a pillar of salt. He was far too decadent a sight. “So, Monday? Wow. That’s not much time to…” She cleared her throat.

His cheek twitched from his apparent attempt to suppress a smirk. “Yeah, as soon as I get this place packed up and my things sorted. I’m going to leave pretty much all of the heavy stuff here, since I can just buy new once I get settled. Good thing about not having attachments is I don’t have to wait around for anyone else.” His smile waned. “So, tell me what you’ve brought me.” Grant put down his coffee mug and took her sheath of documents into his hands.

She stopped ogling the disheveled man and straightened up. “Oh. Apparently some distant aunt of mine kept up my father’s family tree until she died. She was able to get as far back as this man.” She trailed her finger down the page and tapped it when she found relevant entry. “A Phillip Callaghan.”

“Mm hmm. Probably came into the country as an indentured servant and earned his freedom by fighting in the war. Quite a few folks of Irish descent get admittance into the S.A.R. and D.A.R. that way. Likely came in through Philadelphia.”

“Can we tell where in Ireland he came from or where he lived? I’m wondering how the family ended up in Virginia.”

“And now North Carolina? Why do you want to know?”

She sighed. “If you were to study my family tree right now, it would look like it was struck by lightening and one side burned off. I know so much about my mother and her family, but am struggling to feel some connection to my father. His family was so small and there’s only me and my brothers left, so now I feel like I’m grasping at straws. I guess some part of me thinks if I can piece together the history, I’ll find some deep-rooted link that binds us all together. Maybe I’ll just feel…less…” She shrugged. The hell if
she
knew. All she knew was that it was important.

“Alone?” he whispered, pushing back a swath of hair that fell into her eye.

“Yes,” she confessed.

He pulled his hand back from her face and picked up her pile of research. “Well, most folks left Ireland during that time because abject slavery was preferable to the conditions they were enduring at home. They were all so poor and there was no public aid to be had like there is now. At least in America, they had a chance to improve their condition…if they survived their tenure. Sturdy crop of people. They were known to be hard workers, but what choice did they have? Actually, sometimes unscrupulous sorts kidnapped poor children from Irish streets to be sent here to work. The abductors would get a bit of a bounty. We’ll hope your ancestor doesn’t fall into that stolen bunch.”

She slumped against the sofa back. “Wow. I hadn’t known that was…a possibility.”

“Slavery has existed in different forms and with different names since the dawn of man. People don’t much like talking about it.”

“Apparently not.”

Grant drained the contents of his coffee mug and straightened up. “Well, I’ll tell you what. I have to go to campus today to clean out my office. There are a couple of books there I can consult and some people I can call. I think your case will be a simple matter of finding Phillip on a ship manifest. It’ll list where he’s from, at least generally. Alternately, if the original contract he signed to indenture himself exists, that should give us some information about his origins.”

She stared at him in a stunned haze. She had started the project thinking she would hit the same dead end Minnie had, but all it took to surpass her own limitations was to ask the right person for help. “I appreciate it. You don’t know what this means to me.”

“No worries. It’s easy when you know where to look.” He stood and cleared away the empty mugs and coffee accoutrement to return them to the kitchenette counter.

“Hey, Grant?”

“Hmm?” he answered with his back to her.

“You all didn’t get arrested last night, did you?”

He forced out a ragged breath. “No.” He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. His jaw grated side to side.

“Well, what
did
happen? I felt like an idiot sitting at the table. I should have followed you outside to make sure there wasn’t a problem. I know most of the officers who would have been on duty last night.”

“We just got thrown out of the joint onto our asses and told to never come back. Good thing you
didn’t
come outside, because Fran would have probably picked a fight with you.”

“Fran?”

“Yeah.” Grant walked back over to the sofa and sat on the arm farthest from her. “She’s why I needed the kiss. Thank you, by the way, for the rescue. I owe you a boon. Fran would have harassed me until I flew out. I got back onto her radar a couple of years ago and ended up having to change my number and email address. She said she was willing to put the past aside because she missed me. Anyway, the guys told her I had a girlfriend, but I guess she didn’t think it was possible.”

“Why not? And
do
you?” Her heart thudded at the sudden possibility, but she remembered he’d said he had no attachments. A man who had attachments shouldn’t be able to kiss like that.

He shrugged and fondled the drawstrings of his pants. “No. I haven’t been in a serious relationship in a while. Dated some, but nothing came of it.”

“Well,
why
?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?” He narrowed his eyes as he smiled so the tiny wrinkles at the sides creased. “Aren’t
you
single?”