The Harp and the Fiddle: Glenncailty Castle, Book 1 (24 page)

She cleared her throat, and Tim refilled her water cup from the bathroom.

“Thank you. On the day that I should have started university, I fell apart. I could have been in a class at Trinity, studying music, making friends, and instead I was sitting alone in a hotel room in Budapest. I was so angry with everything, especially myself. Every night they partied and every night I turned down the alcohol, the drugs.

“That night I didn’t. I took two ecstasy and drank rum for the first time.”

“Shit.”

This was the part that was hard to say, that was hard to admit, even to herself. “I liked it. I liked the way it made me feel.

“The next night I did it again, and again after that. The other men in the band would laugh and cheer me on. Soon I was the biggest partier in the group. It took less than a month for me to move from E to heroin and cocaine.”

Tim’s face was blank. She wanted to draw back the words, but he deserved the truth, not only about her, but about why she now behaved the way she did.

“I was using needles, until one night when someone slammed into me while I was shooting up and it ripped open my vein. I nearly died from blood loss. I went back to snorting and smoking and would tell anyone who listened that the high wasn’t as good, complaining about it the way normal people complained about a bad selection of fruit and veg at the store.”

She rolled the glass between her palms. Sometimes, alone at night when she was sad, she craved the euphoric nothingness that drugs brought. 

“When I was high, nothing mattered, everything was great.” She took a steadying breath. “I started fucking them, all of them.”

“Caera.”

“Don’t think I was a victim. I was willing. Before every concert, I’d blow them, one right after another. That’s why I pulled away from you that day. I reveled in it all. Nothing mattered to me except feeling good, and sex made me feel good, same as drugs.”

“You were a kid. They shouldn’t have exposed you to that.”

“Maybe, but it wasn’t just the guys in the band I was sleeping with. We met other bands, club promoters. Anyone who was down to party, I was game.

“I don’t actually know how many people I slept with. I don’t know their names or where we were when we had sex. I have vague memories of someone videotaping sex one time, but I don’t know if that’s true or not. I know there are nude photos of me, photos of me smoking and snorting.”

She met Tim’s eyes, wanted him to know that she was done hiding this part of her past. 

“That’s why I can never have a music career. It would only be a matter of time before these things would come out. Even if I were a rock star, those photos could ruin me, and no one wants a harp player, or traditional singer, with a past as a drug and sex addict.”

Tim rubbed his head, stared at his feet.

Caera’s throat tightened with sadness, but she kept going. She’d finish this story.

“One night, we were doing coke and drinking, just me and the band, in a hotel room. A hotel room like any other, a night like any other. But that night, one of them said something odd. They said that I had been a good choice for band girl. I asked what they meant, and they explained that they took turns finding girls to bring with them, that the girls were meant to be shared and that they preferred to find virgins so they didn’t have to worry about AIDS. 

“Until that point, part of me still believed that he’d brought me because he thought I was beautiful, special and talented. At the very least I thought I was there because he wanted me—and part of me had wanted to make him suffer by fucking his friends. Yes, he’d lied to me, but that was to get me to come with him, so I excused it. It wasn’t until then that I realized that I’d never been more than sex to him, and that getting me to come with them was a game, a game he’d won.

“Strangely, it was only after I went wild, drinking and doing drugs, that they valued me. I was fun, I’d have sex with anyone, and I’d try anything. They loved that. They spent the rest of the night talking about other girls they’d had as ‘band girl’. They mocked these girls who’d refused to have sex with more than one of them or who were so inexperienced and bad in bed that they’d leave them behind when the tour moved on.

“Hearing that sobered me, and I hadn’t been sober in a long time. I had time to think about where I was and what I’d done, and I disgusted myself. I took half a bottle of pills, snorted two lines of coke and washed it all down with Jäger, and then fucked each of them, one right after the other, until I was numb inside and out.

“When they were asleep, I went out on the balcony, ready to throw myself off. I’d ruined my life, and there would be no one to mourn me. But I couldn’t do it. I kept thinking that suicide was a mortal sin, and that if I did it, I’d never see my family in Heaven. I’d committed too many sins to count, but that one I couldn’t.

“I left the next day. I found a church—I didn’t know where else to go. They kept me safe, helped me get to a shelter that protected me while I detoxed, while I screamed and cursed God and myself for what had happened to me. When I left there, I had nothing but clothes and the money they gave me. From there, I started working my way home. It was easier than I had any right to expect, because no matter how large or small the place, there’s an Irish pub, and they were always willing to take me on. Work in pubs turned to work in hotels. Eventually I found my way home, but I wasn’t the person who’d left. I’d destroyed my dreams. My relationships with family and friends were long dead. 

“I knew I could never sing again professionally, knew I would never fall in love or get married, though I’d tested clean, thank God. I accepted that…until you came. You made me want things I shouldn’t, made me remember what it was like to be alive.”

“Caera…”

“I know this changes things, but you had the right to know.”

She sighed, her story over. She felt hollow, as if the telling had emptied out her heart and soul.

Tim was sitting on the edge of the bed near the foot, while she was curled up at the head. When he stood, her heart clenched. He was going to leave. She could live with that, because now she’d know that she hadn’t let her own hurt and past stand between them.

Tim didn’t leave. Instead, he dropped to one knee at the head of the bed and took both her hands in his.

“Caera Cassidy, I love you and will always love you. This changes nothing.”

Caera smiled even as tears fill her eyes. “Tim, I have no right to expect this.”

“Loving isn’t about who has the right to be loved or who deserves to be loved. I love you. Ta meh, something something.”

She laughed. It felt good. 

“Ditto,” she said with a smile.

“I love you too, now and always.”

Their lips met in a warm, soft kiss. Caera leaned away to say, “But now you understand why I cannot sing? It would ruin your reputation if I were part of your record.”

“Caera, my sweet Caera. No one would believe that a beautiful, innocent Irish folk singer had a dirty past. Even if they
did
see the pictures. And honestly, it’s not that big a deal. Ireland is a bit conservative, so maybe it would cause a scandal here, but the rest of the world wouldn’t really care about some naked pictures.”

“But…”

“I’m going to guess that you didn’t look the way you do now.”

“Well, no, I’d cut off my hair. And dyed it blonde, then green.”

“Even if there were a picture of you holding your passport up for all the world to see your name, people wouldn’t believe. Plus, we’d tell them it was photoshopped.”

“But the men I had sex with, they knew my name.”

“If you don’t remember theirs, why would they remember yours? I’m assuming they were as high and drunk as you were.”

Caera stared at Tim, utterly astonished. He’d taken her greatest fear and shrunk it to a little thing.

And he was probably right.

“It’s a risk,” she stammered, struggling to come to grips with the idea that her past really wasn’t an insurmountable barrier.

“Getting in a car is a risk, eating sushi is a risk, falling in love is a risk. I do all three.”

“Tim, I don’t…I’ve spent so long being afraid.”

“You don’t have to be afraid anymore. I’ll protect you.”

Caera’s mind was going a mile a minute. “We’re going to record an album?”

“Yes. We’re going to record an album.”

“But where? I have a job. And what if we want to live together, where will we go? You have a life in America.”

“Do you really want to figure this all out at 4 A.M.?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Tim climbed onto the bed with her. “First, the album. There’s got to be a recording studio somewhere in Ireland. I can work with any engineer, so we’ll record it here.

“As for where we’ll live, well, when we’re touring in Europe, we’ll live here. If we’re touring in America, we can live in Boston.”

“Touring? But I have a job.”

“If you don’t want to tour, you don’t have to, but I’d rather you tour with me.”

“Tour,” Caera savored the word. “We’d go on a music tour.”

“Yes. Though we have to plan and record the album first.”

“The album. Our album.”

“Yep. Anything else?” Tim yawned in her ear.

Caera leapt out of bed. “How can you be tired? We’re making an
album.
We need to
plan.
”

“Ugh, what is it you people say? Jaysus.”

“You said ballads, right? I have a cassette copy of The Dubliners’
Irish Ballads
. That’s a good place to start. And then—”

“Caera.”

“Yes?”

“Come here.”

He opened his arms. 

The man she loved, the man who’d helped her find the dawn after years of night, was waiting for her. Caera climbed into his arms, pillowing her head against his chest so she could hear his heartbeat. This was nice. This was good. 

“Woman, I can hear you thinking.”

Caera laughed. “I love you.”

He kissed her, then whispered, “Ditto.”

About the Author

Lila Dubois is a tech writer by day and a romance writer by night. She’s living her own version of a romance novel with her Irish Farm Boy, who she imported to Los Angeles. Having spent extensive time in France, Egypt, Turkey, Ireland and England, Lila speaks five languages, none of them—including English—fluently.

To learn more about Lila, please visit
www.liladubois.net
or email her at
[email protected]
.

Look for these titles by Lila Dubois

Now Available:

Sealed with a Kiss

Calling the Wild

Monsters in Hollywood

Lights, Camera…Monster

My Fair Monster

Gone with the Monster

Have Monster, Will Travel

Coming Soon:

Monsters in Hollywood

A Monster and a Gentleman

The Last of the Monsters

Glenncailty Castle

The Fire and the Earth

She’d always heard Hollywood was full of monsters.

She didn’t know they meant actual monsters.

Have Monster, Will Travel

© 2012 Lila Dubois

Monsters in Hollywood, Book 4

All of Hollywood is talking about Calypso Production’s new top-secret action movie, and Joanna is tapped to be the Production Designer. There’s just one big issue: the lead actors are monsters. Literally.

Bound by tradition and discipline, Tokaki’s clan of shapeshifers has maintained the old ways even as they’ve retreated from the human race. When members of another clan come up with a plan to expose and explain their hidden existence, he agrees to help. As the warrior who trains all others, he knows how to inflict both the maximum, and minimum, amount of damage. Because of this experience he’s asked to become something they call a “stunt coordinator”.

When Joanna and Tokaki meet it’s electric, and not just because Joanna watches him shift from a massive white tiger into a handsome, naked man. Tokaki is fascinated by the outside world, especially Joanna, who’s colorful in more ways than one. When he takes Joanna to a hidden temple deep in the Chinese mountains, neither expects she’ll be risking her very life. In order to save the woman he loves, Tokaki must turn to his family for help, risking the secrets his clan has kept for a millennium.

Warning: This title contains an artistic woman, a demanding warrior, and sexy misuse of temple grounds.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Have Monster, Will Travel:

“I know you.” The lightly accented voice was close, almost whispering against her ear.

The shiver morphed into a total-body skin prickling.

Jo turned, her bags bumping the man behind her. She was eye level with his chin and his sexy lips. They were thin and sharply defined, a salmon-rose color compared to the tapioca of his skin.

Jo always thought of people in food terms when she found them attractive.

The Farmers’ Market was crowded, but still, the Asian man was standing too close. Jo shifted her bag forward, so it rested in front of her, smiled slightly in his direction and turned away.

“I know you.”

Jo turned back. “Sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong girl.”

“No.” He shook his head once.

Jo cocked her hip to the side and winked, trying to ease out of the situation in a fun and playful way. The skin on her arms was prickled into goose flesh despite the heat. “Good lookin’, I’d remember you. I’m sad to say I think I’m not your girl.”

He was wearing a pair of jeans too big for him—she could see the fabric bunched under the belt on his hips. His T-shirt seemed equally big, the shoulder seams hanging on his upper arm. At first glance it made him seem smaller than he was, but he topped six-foot and his forearms were ropes of muscle. He was an XL in XXL clothes.

“You are one of my human women.”

“Come again,
kimosabe
?”