Eoghanan woke the next morning energized in a way unfamiliar to him. Lying with his eyes still closed, he reveled in it—the newness of the feeling of a good night’s sleep. Instead of waking on edge, his jaw clenched and shoulders tight, he woke to find a pleasant numbness radiating down his body. His shoulders loose, his mouth still wide from sound sleep. He usually never slept more than a few brief moments each night, waking often with his mind churning.
He’d not always been that way. As a young boy, still free and na?ve of life’s inevitable woes, he’d been able to sleep until the sun was far into the sky each day. The night of Osla’s death, his brother Baodan’s first wife, everything changed for him. Unable to save her, an impenetrable sense of failure and guilt settled over Eoghanan. Impenetrable, until now.
While the blade Niall had run down his body nearly killed him, it had also saved Eoghanan in ways he was just beginning to see. Without such an injury, he would never have journeyed to this strange time. He would never have met Grace.
Her presence here was no accident, of that he was now certain. Morna had lied to him before, when she’d said she didn’t control where he went on his travels. She was too much of a matchmaker and the coincidence too strange to explain Grace’s arrival at the small inn otherwise. The old witch had shown him the lass for a reason. Eoghanan couldn’t help but hope it was to fulfill some missing piece of his soul.
For over seven years, he’d shut out any possibility of love for another woman, paying a silent penance for sins that weren’t his own. Now that his brother knew the truth and his burden had been lifted, he was free to start his life anew. Free to become the man he’d once been, a man filled with passion, desire, and love. All of the things he’d denied himself for far too many years.
With his eyes still closed, he listened to Grace’s voice near him and smiled. She stood outside his door, chattering so quickly he couldn’t understand a word of what she said. He was content to simply listen to the rhythm of her voice.
Just thinking of her pushed away any remnants of sleepiness that remained. He couldn’t remember the last time a lass stirred such a desire in him, and she desired him as well. Whether she intended to or not, she’d all but admitted as much to him.
Swinging his feet over the side of the bed to stand, he suddenly recognized the sound of his own name muttered amongst Grace’s quickly spoken words. Moving silently across the floor, he pressed his ear against the door, anxious to hear what she said about him.
“What?”
Grace’s voice sounded shocked. He waited for whomever she spoke with to repeat their question. When none did, he realized she spoke to the telephone—an odd contraption Morna had spent the better half of an hour trying to explain to him with little success. He couldn’t understand the need to reach someone so immediately, unless to bring news of a death or threat thereof. Still, he pressed his ear closer, hoping to learn enough from Grace’s side of the conversation to gain its meaning.
*
“What?” I laughed, more from shock than my thinking her funny. It couldn’t have been a serious question.
“You heard what I said. I asked if you’d let him bury the bone yet?” My sister snorted as she asked the question a second time, pleased at her own juvenile wittiness.
“Ok, first of all, of course I haven’t. And second of all, eww. Please don’t refer to sex that way ever again, Jane.”
“Goodness, it is so easy to get a rise out of you, Grace.” Jane laughed loudly into the phone, and I could imagine her delighted smile.
“All I said was that there was someone else staying at the inn with me and Cooper. He…” I stuttered. It only made sense that Jane would come to the conclusion that something was going on between Eoghanan and me. Why else would I bring him up? It’s not as if it was unusual for operating inns to have more than one guest at a time. I’d simply found myself wanting to talk about him, to discuss him with someone who wasn’t five years old. “He seems very nice is all. Cooper really likes him.”
“Hmm…” Jane waited a moment, presumably hoping I would say more. When I didn’t, she continued. “Cooper, likes him huh? It isn’t Grace that likes him? Are you telling me that not even a small part of you wants to see him naked?”
I smiled, unable to repress a grin at the memory of him standing gloriously nude in his bathroom. “I didn’t say that. Maybe it’s not just Cooper that likes him. And actually, I’ve already seen him naked.”
The guffaw-ey gasp that came from the other end of the phone made me immediately regret the admission.
“What? I thought you said you hadn’t slept with him.”