“Well, she canna sleep yet. Her inner clock would be totally awry if she were to sleep now. She must at least make it through the day before resting.” Jerry’s wife stepped toward me in greeting, placing her hand on my shoulder, much as Jerry had done. “I’m Morna, I’ll get ye some coffee.”
I said nothing to her as I continued to stare at the man who remained in the doorway. Scars or no, this couldn’t have been the man Cooper believed he’d seen. The attendant had said herself the man wasn’t on our flight. Even if he had been, how could he have beaten us here? We’d been shuttled straight from the airport to the car rental and come straight from the car rental here. Besides, Jerry had said this man had been a guest at the inn for months.
Allowing myself to rationalize the man’s presence and Cooper’s reaction to him as a simple case of mistaken identity, I allowed myself to look him over without such a sense of overwhelming alarm. Much like the stranger Cooper spoke of, I found nothing about this man’s appearance frightening, although intimidating was another matter entirely.
Despite his ridiculous outfit of stark white tennis shoes, socks that went halfway up his calves, black athletic shorts, and a simple white undershirt, he exuded such confident masculinity it made something within my veins hum to life with awareness of him. He filled the width of the doorway with his wide shoulders and was tall enough to have to crouch underneath it. I imagined he stood at least six feet five and, despite being quite lean in stature, I guessed him to weigh a good two hundred and sixty pounds—all muscle.
His eyes were shockingly green, highlighted by specks of gold that seemed to reflect light in a way that made his eyes stand out amongst the mass of red hair that reached his shoulders. His state of dress made little sense to me; there was such a raw manliness to him, a note of pride and refinement to the way he carried himself that I couldn’t imagine him wearing such a laid-back outfit on a day-to-day basis.
Only when I tore my gaze away from his eyes and focused on the scar that ran from the top of his temple on his right side, all the way down to the top of his sock, did I understand the garb. He didn’t bear the scars of an old wound but a new one. They were still fresh—pink and angry in their appearance, still soft and, I supposed, very much still sore.
Cooper’s voice startled me, and I glanced down at the plate Morna placed in front of me with embarrassment. I’d unapologetically been staring the man down, most likely the last thing he needed after whatever horrible thing had happened to him to cause such a wound.
“Hey, mister, didn’t you hear what I said? Did you come here on the same plane? What’s your name?”
I glanced up from my plate with reddened cheeks and watched the man’s reaction to my son closely. He too seemed to have to pull himself away from something. Only then did I realize that he’d been studying me just as closely as I had him.
He coughed into a clenched fist seemingly to find his voice and took a step into the kitchen, pulling himself up to his full height for the first time. Looking at Cooper, he shook his head and smiled. “No, I dinna. Me name is Eoghanan. What shall I call ye, lad?”
Cooper beamed at the oddity of the man’s name. Pushing himself away from the table, he stood and approached the man who towered over him.
“Yo-yu-what? My name is Cooper.”
He stuck his hand out toward the man who took it gladly, allowing Cooper to shake it for far longer than was customary. At least the man seemed to have patience when it came to children. That said something about his character.
The man announced his name again, only a little more slowly, making it sound even more unusual. Cooper couldn’t refrain from giggling.
“I’ve never heard a name like that before. Yo-yun…yo-yun..” Cooper fumbled with the strange syllables before finally throwing his hands up in exasperation. “I give up. How about I just call you E-o? Would that be okay?”
E-o, as my son renamed him, let loose a smile so bright that it seemed to ease some of the tension in the room before his deep laughter made everyone smile in curious wonderment at what he found so funny.
Cooper seemed especially intent on finding out. “What’s so funny? I just gave you a nickname is all. Lots of people have those. Mine is Coop. Mama calls me that a lot. You can call me that if you want to, too. That, or just Cooper, I don’t mind either one.”