Page 14 of Edge of Whispers

Over the years, after a few relationships went sour, I’d given some long, hard thought about what I really needed in a lover. No, in a wife. Enough dicking around. I was a grown-ass man. I wanted to take root. I wanted to have a family. I wanted someone who fit in my life. Who wanted what I wanted out of life, at least roughly.

I didn’t need to look any further than my own parents to see what happened when you messed with that cardinal rule and tried to jam square pegs into round holes.

My mother’s dream had been a big, noisy family, lots of kids. My father had been driven by professional ambition. He’d had no time to spend with me. He’d leave early in the morning for work, come home after my bedtime, never make it for meals. He’d always been working—holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, ball games, recitals. It was almost comical how consistent he was.

Mom had begged, schemed, and nagged for years. She finally accepted that he would never change and told him to leave. I hadn’t seen my father since that day.

Not that I’d seen much of him before. I was eleven when that happened.

Mom eventually found the kind of man she wanted, but at that point, she couldn’t have more kids. She’d wasted too much time waiting for Dad. She’d missed her window.

I’d taken the lesson to heart. When my time came, I knew what to look for, and what to avoid. I was plenty ambitious too, in my own low-key way, but I liked my life. Living on my land in the countryside, running my own business, keeping my own hours. I liked playing the occasional seisiún in the Irish pubs with my fiddle, whistles, and flutes, downing a few pints with friends now and then. I liked growing my garden, tending my small orchard of walnuts, apples, and pears. Someday, I hoped to buy a couple of horses, when I could afford a bigger pasture and had some kids to ride them.

I wanted to build my own house on that land, from the ground up. A big, beautiful, comfortable, rambling place, made exactly to order. Full of kids, noise, color. Life.

I’d tried to picture the woman who might fit into that fantasy. She didn’t have to be a raving beauty. I wasn’t all hung up on that. It was more important that she be kind, good-natured, have a sense of humor. That she like gardening, canning, baking her own bread, that kind of thing.

But my body wasn’t thinking about my long-term contentment. It wanted what it wanted, and it wanted that slim girl with big, mysterious eyes behind her trendy glasses and the high-heeled, pointy-toed boots on her tiny feet.

Nancy D’Onofrio definitely didn’t make her own bread. Her type lived on yogurt, carrot sticks and take-out sushi.

The results were nice, though. I loved how her back stayed so straight, her head high, chin up. I liked the jut of her shoulder blades, the smart, nipped-in fit of her short black jacket. The delicate shape of her upper lip, the lush swell of the lower one.

I wanted to smooth away the anxious crease between her dark brows. Those shadowy hazel eyes were full of sadness. Secrets.

Problems. Sadness, shadows, secrets. Those were synonyms for problems. Always.

The voice of reason shouted at me from a far, echoing distance, but I was too lost in my fantasy to listen. I wanted to pamper her. Scramble her eggs. Butter her toast. Pour cream into her tea.

Crash. Thud. I’d knocked over a flower arrangement with my boot. Bruised white lilies scattered across the floorboards.

I laid my boxes down on the pile forming in the middle of the floor, gathered the flower heads up, and threw them away. The sweet, heavy smell of lilies reminded me of my mother’s funeral, and the memory still made my belly clench, after all these years.

It didn’t matter how attractive Nancy D’Onofrio was. By her own mother’s admission, she was a compulsive workaholic. She would make me frustrated and miserable. But I kept visualizing her ass in that tight skirt. Her breasts were nice, too— small, but perky and firm, with a brash, in-your-face personality all their own. Taut nipples that poked audaciously through the fabric of her dress. No bra. No need.

God, enough. I was thirty-six and I still hadn’t found my earth mother type. I was looking around in a relaxed sort of way, hoping destiny would kick in and help me out. I didn’t want to force it, but damn. I didn’t do casual affairs anymore. I hated that flat, feeling when one of those scratch-the-itch things had to end. It was just too depressing.

The morning passed in grim, sweaty silence. Two trips to Latham, loading, unloading, loading and unloading. It was late afternoon by the time we were done.

When we got back to my place, we were ravenous, having worked through lunch.

I put on the kettle to make a pot of tea for me and Eoin, who was currently boarding in my basement. Eoin cooked some hamburgers, or charred them, rather. I lunged for the gas and turned it off. “Making lunch?”

“I made one for you, too, if you fancy it,” Eoin said timidly.

“Keep the flame a bit lower,” I advised.

Eoin’s freckled face flushed. “Sorry.”

“Speaking of stoves, I found you a secondhand electric range. After we eat, maybe you can help me haul it down into the basement.”

“Great,” Eoin said. “Now I can make myself a cup of tea without bothering you.”

I grunted. “It was never a bother.”

“Thanks anyway,” Eoin said earnestly. “For the place, the work, the stove.” He laid the burgers on the table. “Are you going to the seisiún at Malloy’s Saturday night?”

“I might. You going?”

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