Winters & Somers (21 page)

“I seem to
remember getting whacked over the head for my troubles,” Winters prompted.

“Well, Grace
came in the direction of the scream. Wallace had already taken off but she saw
you there and jumped to the wrong conclusion – it’s a bit of a habit of hers,
I'm afraid. So she thumped you with her umbrella.”

“Does Wallace
know who you are?”

“I think so, but
I think he's keeping quiet because of my relationship to the Henleys.”

“Which it seems
everyone knew about but me,” he said, taking a deep drink and wiping the creamy
foam off his upper lip with the back of his hand.

“Look, there's a
bad history going back a long way. I haven't exactly bragged about being
related to them, because I thought they were responsible for some bad things in
my life. But after listening to them the other night, I think maybe the whole
feud has gone on too long and there really are two sides to every story.”

“My goodness,
Cíara Somers, could it be you're growing up at last?”

“Go to Hell,
Winters.” They sat in almost companionable silence for a while, and then she
said “I suppose we should go back to the office.”

“Do you think
the Three Stooges will be gone?” Anxiety laced his voice.

“It's okay,
Winters, they scare me, too. I think they'll be gone, although there may be
blood on the carpet.”

“Just so long as
the new furniture is okay…”

“God, you're all
heart, aren't you?”

* * *

They'd almost
made it back to the office building when they were hailed from the window of a
pub. Cíara needed another stiff drink herself when she saw Granny Somers, Grace
Muldoon, and Margaret Henley all hanging out of the window of McCluskey's Bar.
Their cheeks were already getting that red hue that only the demon drink can
give.

Maybe she should
call the President of Ireland;
she
could call out the army and put a
stop to whatever the three old witches were brewing up.

“I just wanted
you to know we'd brought that poor scrap of a mutt with us. It seemed a shame
to leave him fastened up in that office, all alone,” Margaret Henley said,
making it sound as if Cíara had been abusing a child.

“He's a nice old
thing, too, if you don't mind the fleas,” Granny Somers said, patting the dog's
head.

“And a thirst on
him that reminds me of my auld one, God rest his soul,” Grace Muldoon chimed
in. The three ladies all crossed themselves and muttered a quick reverence for
the late departed Mr. Muldoon.

Watching the way
The Dog was slurping down Guinness, Cíara reckoned he didn’t have much of a
life expectancy, either.

“I've just
thought, now, we can't sit here all afternoon. Why don't you all come over to
my house? My husband's away and there's lots of room. Besides, it gets
lonely….” Margaret Henley held out the invitation like a surrendering army
colonel.

 Cíara held her
breath. She knew that if there were to be a new alliance formed between her
grandmothers, it would be made or broken on the rock of mutual hospitality.

“Nah, too far
and all with my arthritis. Why don’t you both come and stay at my place, I'm
only a spit away on the Dublin bus.” Granny Somers, who'd vowed the Henleys
would never darken her door, was trumping Margaret's gesture with one of her
own.

The two women
stared at each other, with Grace Muldoon watching the stand-off with knowing
eyes but wisely not getting involved.

There is
about as much chance of my receiving a visit from the Pope as there is Margaret
Henley being seen dead or alive in Granny Somers little council flat,
Cíara
was thinking. And had to revise the thought when her paternal grandmother
nodded. “Sure, that sounds like a good plan. Give us more time to relax,” she
declared. “How about we get fish and chips and pick up a bottle on the way
over?”

“Cíara, what are
you standing there with your jaw on the carpet for? Think we old women can't
have a bit of a good time?” Granny Somers eyed her severely. “Pity you and your
man have so much work to do, or I'd invite you to join us.”

            “Yeah, well – if you're
sure you're all right?” She wasn't at all sure her Granny was all right. Not in
the head, at least.

            “Of course we're all
right. But just tell me – what does that man of yours drive?”

            “He's not my man,” she
snapped, walking off towards her office with a bemused Winters in her wake.

            “Why does everyone want
to know what I drive?” he asked.

            “It's a long story, and
people around here have long memories and like to poke their noses in where
they don’t belong!”

            Hearing her tone of
voice, he decided to drop the subject – for now.

            There was a message on
the answering machine for Cíara when they arrived back at the office. A
distraught sounding woman, calling herself only Mary, asked her to return her
call.

            Ignoring Winters' quizzical
look, she waited until he went out for coffee before dialing the number.

 “I got your
name from a friend, who says you did a job for her. You have to help me,” Mary
said straightaway. “I'm sure my man's cheating on me. He comes home smelling of
perfume, late every evening, and just falls into bed like a dead thing. It's
just not like him…”

            “Yes, I can understand
the perfume would be worrying..”

            “Not that, you eejit!
We've been married ten years and he's never,
never
, turned his back on
me and gone to sleep. Sometimes I've wished he would. But now…now I wish he'd
just touch me like…”

             Cíara issued a brief
prayer of thanks that Mary's next words, whatever they might have been, were
drowned out in a hiccupping sob. “All right, just give me some details. Can you
drop off a photograph of him, and where he's likely to be?”

            “If I knew where the
lying scoundrel was, don't you think I'd be there myself, and with the kitchen
knife in my hand? I'd cut his bollocks off, I would. Oh, and he bought me such
a lovely set of knives for Christmas – how can a man change so much in such a
short time?” Mary wailed.

Cíara, who
didn't figure a set of knives to be the most romantic of Christmas gifts,
wisely kept her mouth shut. Mary said she'd drop a photograph of the
'philandering beast' over to the office, and finished with a plea to her to
'please, prove me wrong!'.

            Not wanting to upset
the woman further – coming home late smelling of perfume and not wanting sex
with the missus didn't sound very promising – Cíara made non-committal soothing
sounds and promised to report back as soon as she could. She was just replacing
the phone when Winters returned with fresh coffee in take-out cups and a small
white bakery box.

            “Bagels?” She asked,
examining the contents of the box.

            “Yeah, bagels. Had to
go half-way across this damned city to find them,” he told her grumpily,
flopping down in his office chair and taking a massive bite. After chomping for
a few moments, he gulped down a swig of coffee. “Not exactly up to New York
standards, but at least they're bagels. How do people here eat so much sweet
pastry? Seems like everywhere I go, there’s cakes and teacakes and dainties…the
per capita sugar consumption must be off the dial. And if you don’t eat,
everyone takes offence!”

            Cíara, busy munching a
bagel, thought perhaps it was an acquired taste – maybe the round bits of bread
would be nice toasted hot with melting butter and good strawberry jam. She
glanced up guiltily at his complaints.

            “Well, you see, it all
goes back to the famine. People were starving to death all over the place –
more than two million of them. At least that number left the country on famine
ships and who knows how many died?”

            He rolled his eyes.
“Not you, too – how come a simple question ends up with a history lecture?”

            “If you don't like the
country, there's plenty of flights out,” she snapped. “I'm just saying that
after the famine, it was considered bad manners not to offer someone food with
hospitality, because you never knew whether they were starving or not. And it
was equally bad manners not to show a bit of appreciation – after all, your
host was maybe offering you the last bit of food in the house. So you had to
eat something and be grateful.

“And anyway, why
are you so damned grumpy?”

            He snorted. He knew why
he was grumpy. He was grumpy because his hormones were nearly eating him alive.
He didn't exactly sleep around, but neither was he exactly used to a state of
total celibacy, either. And being around Cíara had him in a state of constant wanting.
But of course, he couldn't tell
her
that. So he chose another subject on
which to vent.

            “I'm waiting for my
partner
to share the information about
our
new client,” he snapped.

             Cíara drew a deep
breath.
If she told him it was another of her 'hunt and seduce' cases, he'd
hit the roof. If she didn't tell him, he'd hit the roof.
“It was just a
friend of a friend, wanting some advice,” she tried, and was relieved when a
tap sounded at the door. She hadn't liked the cynical way he'd been looking at
her, one black eyebrow raised in a disbelieving arch.
Something like a snake
watching a mouse.
She bolted for the door.

            A little boy of about
eight, wearing a green and white Ireland football shirt, stood in the hall.
“You Somers?” he asked in a broad Tallaght brogue.

            When she admitted she
was, he thrust a brown envelope at her. “Me Mam said to give you this. She
couldn't manage the stairs, you see. I'm going to have a little brother or
sister, soon. Another one.” He rolled his eyes.

“Well,
congratulations,” she said, taking the envelope. “Yeah, whatever,” the eight
year

old going on fifty-something kid
said, turning and loping off down the stairs.      

            “Kids today,” she said,
turning back into the room and coming nose to chest with Winters, who deftly
reached for the envelope. He had the photograph out in lightning time.

            “So who is this?”

            “That's my target for
this evening. Why don’t you just let me get on with my work and you go off and
find something to do yourself? Seeing has how you're so intent on building this
business? Aside from the fancy office chairs, I don’t see you bringing too much
else in.”

            “We're supposed to be
investigating the Diamond Darling – as your grandfather hired us to do.” He
spoke between clenched teeth
. Much more of this nonsense and he'd be banging
his head against the wall.
Which he supposed was better than banging
Cíara's head against the wall.

            “Look, this is a client
who needs my help. I've been thinking of getting out of this line of work, as
soon as I could get something better going. But this is something like an
emergency, and I can't just turn my back.” Her voice dripped reasonableness.

He still looked
about a nanosecond from an explosion.

            But she was well-versed
in distract and conquer. She flung her arms around his neck and captured his
mouth with hers. Fireworks went off more brightly than on any civic holiday.
She could hear her hormones singing the Halleluiah Chorus as his strong arms
wrapped around her, his low groan of need lost in her mouth as his tongue
accepted her invitation to dance with hers.

There was only
one way to go from here – down to the carpet where his strong body made a
comfortable perch as she lay along his length, their mouths still caught
together and his fingers already playing with the hem of her t-shirt. Her
fingers disobeyed her warnings and deftly opened a button on his shirt, gaining
entry to the hard, smooth flesh of his stomach and eliciting more gentle growls
of need from him.  It was her turn to gasp when his thumb stroked her pebble
hard nipple through the silk of her bra.

            And just as that
Halleluiah Chorus reached a crescendo, the whole hormone choir singing in
urgent harmony, his hands were gone and so was he. Winters set her gently aside
and struggled to his feet. Granted, his face was definitely flushed, but he'd
moved out of reach. Cíara, fortunately, had had the presence of mind to snatch
back her envelope and photograph.

            “What – why?” she asked
through lips bruised with passion. “I thought this was what you wanted – a few
minutes more and you'd have won your bet.”

            “Minutes? You don’t
have much respect for my staying power, do you?” he grumbled. “Or maybe your
experience hasn't been so good.”

            She had to resist
throwing the envelope at him. He reached down and caught her hands, pulling her
to her feet.

            “So? Explain yourself.”

            He did that little pant
crease-adjusting thing, and she wished just this one time that women could have
a gesture equally as effective in smoothing down their lust. Maybe a cold bath
would help, but right now she wanted an answer to her question.

            “Because…”
God, how could he tell her that he wanted her properly, wanted to enjoy every
moment in comfort, not just a brief – and no doubt very enjoyable – coupling on
the office floor?
That maybe, just maybe, he wanted her more than that.
Wanted more from her than that.

“Oh, Hell!” He
slammed his hand, palm flat against the wall.

Cíara grinned
nastily, but stayed silent.

            “When I take you to
bed, Cíara, and I most certainly will, it won't be just a quickie on the office
floor. Oh, no, it'll be a lot more memorable than that.” Then he grabbed his
jacket and stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him.