A Time Apart: Book One of The Macauley Series Page 3

  You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head with that one, Paul.

  “Why would I have it any other way?” she asked. “I can come and go as I please and I never have to answer to anyone but myself.”

  “Yeah, that’s true, that’s true,” he replied, seemingly lost in thought.

  Olivia could tell he was trying to come up with another tactic in the “let’s get you married” game that all old folks of her acquaintance loved to play with single females.

  “What do you do at home when something needs fixing?” he asked.

  “Ah, so a woman can’t know how to fix things in her own house? She needs a man to do all that for her?” Olivia responded, somewhat more sharply than she had intended to.

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt, especially the dirty or messy work.”

  “I’m rich Paul. I hire people to do that sort of thing for me.”

  “Aye, that you do, that you do.”

  She could tell his agreeing with her was another stall tactic while he prepped his next angle.

  “But don’t you ever get lonely at night?” he asked, his voice suddenly gentler, all traces of teasing gone.

  Olivia paused before answering, deciding between pulling out a quick-witted retort that would end the conversation, or the honest, heartbreaking one. She went with honesty.

  “Aye Paul, I get lonely, and not just at night. It’s a lonely world I live in. I hope someday that changes.”

  Hoping to lighten the mood in the vehicle, she gave Paul the statement she knew he’d been hoping for.

  “Maybe I’ll find me a nice, handsome Irishman such as yourself and cart him back to America.”

  “That’d be good, dearie. You get yourself a sweet, young Irish lad on this trip.”

  He smiled in the rearview mirror, letting her see that he meant what he was saying. Shrewdly, he had also picked up on the way she had tried to change the tone of the conversation and was more than happy to take them back to a point in the conversation where they were haggling over the things men should be doing for women.

  “You take him back to America so that you can save money on hiring fix-it men to take care of your broken electric and appliances. You have to let a man do that sort of thing for you, m’dear. Otherwise, how’s he to know he’s the man in the relationship?”

  “I imagine he’d know by his plumbing,” Olivia responded, deadpan.

  Paul jerked his head up to stare at her again in the rearview mirror, jaw agape, as if he was trying to figure out what crazy language she was speaking. Olivia figured that while he’d dealt with plenty of sassy lassies in his family, he’d likely never heard something so outright bawdy from them. She was willing to bet her Louis Vuitton, however, they’d often mumbled similar thoughts under their breath in the face of such old fashioned chauvinism.

  Before Olivia could apologize for overstepping the bounds of propriety – she’d have to remember to do a better job of respecting her elders – he threw back his head and bellowed a great big old seal’s bark of a laugh, his eyes crinkling up into the many folds of his face, as he slapped his leg like he was hearing the best joke of his entire life.

  “His plumbing, she says. Oh, that’s a real good one. I’ll have to share that with my Mary. She’s a real firecracker, always wanting to put the boys in their place. I can see you’re a real firecracker too,” he said, making eye contact in the mirror, paying obvious attention to Olivia’s general air of indifference to convention.

  “Better than being a wallflower,” she offered up, a pre-emptive strike against what had become a frequent lecture from older generations on her varied tattoos, which often led to further statements about how only bad girls did things like that to themselves.

  “Oh, indeed. Men like their women spirited,” he said, winking at her in the mirror while he deftly maneuvered the car through rush hour traffic, en route to the ancient Celtic city.

  Though she was excited for her time in Ireland to begin, Olivia was somewhat sad to see her time with Paul come to a close as the car eventually pulled up in front of The Shelbourne Hotel, across from St. Stephen’s Green.

  Rather than leaving Olivia to sit nervously in the car’s backseat, uptight and fidgety, Paul had engaged her in a real conversation. Aside from his questionable commentary on race relations in the Irish capital, Olivia had adored his witty banter and obvious thirst for life. If her novel called for it, she decided that she’d definitely put someone exactly like him in her book.

  As Olivia exited the vehicle, Paul laid his weathered, strong hand on her arm.

  “I know you’re a tough one alright, and you can take care of yourself, but if you ever need anything, you just call the service and they’ll tell you how to get in touch with me. All alone here in the big city, and as pretty as you are, I somehow feel a bit responsible for you.”

  She turned to grab the handle of one of her smaller bags so that Paul wouldn’t see the tears welling up in her eyes. Olivia had never known her grandparents, but if she had, she wished they’d have been just like Paul.

  CHAPTER 3

  Once Olivia checked in and made her way to a suite of rooms overlooking the park, she reviewed her book notes and began to sketch out plans for additional research now that she was on the ground in Ireland. She knew the general story she was going to write but she needed to get out and explore and meet people so that she could better understand the traditions and emotions that had fueled Irish culture for millennia.

  As part of her ongoing research, she had identified four private estates to use as possible settings that she wanted to spend some time wandering around to determine if they were as good on paper as they were in person. Olivia had no doubt that based on conversations with locals that she would also identify even more places that could feature in the story – pubs, shops, churches, and other locales and landmarks that her readers – regardless of where they were in the world – would identify as typically Irish.

  In the weeks leading up to her departure, Olivia had been able to confirm visits with three of the estate owners but the fourth was proving to be elusive. Whereas the others had responded quickly and courteously to her inquiries, she couldn’t get so much as an acknowledge of her request from the fourth. Based on photos she had seen of the castle, Olivia’s intuition told her that there was something incredibly special and moving about that particular estate and it was the one that spoke most to her – the location she’d pictured as the perfect ancestral home of her latest heroine – but if the owner refused to let her visit to get a lay of the land and a feel for the place, she would need to come up with a different game plan.

  Before her visits to these country estates, however, Olivia’s first week in Dublin would be spent learning all about the city and what made it so special. She had vowed not to hole up in the hotel, engrossed in her research and plotting; instead she wanted to get out and actually experience all that Ireland, and this special city in particular, had to offer. Having a tendency to get caught up in worrying about the future or obsessing about the past – both her own and that of her characters – Olivia didn’t want to let that happen this time. She recognized the need for a new approach to her writing, one that would enable her to imbue each setting with a true sense of history and place. Olivia felt that to deeply know the essence of a place she was writing about was the only to provide color, depth, and emotion to all of her characters.

  Even though she was out of her element in this new country, she wanted to make sure that its rich and varied history was adequately represented and told as honestly as possible so that her readers would be transported when they read her books. While Olivia’s obsessive personality had brought a lot of added stress and pressure to her adult life, she knew it made for a great foundation for her work.

  Olivia had run her outline past Heather two months before she left and with a few words of advice, Heather had given her free reign to do what she needed with the narrative, only asking that Olivia make an attempt to appeal to a
wide audience. In turn, Olivia had promised that she’d make both of them look good with the publishing house by delivering a solid first draft in six months’ time.

  “I know you will – you’re a great writer, Olivia. That’s not really what I’m worried about. You always deliver what you say you will. What concerns me though,” Heather had said to her one day during a working lunch, “is how much your proposed storyline mirrors what you have going on in your own life. Minus the great new love part, of course.”

  Of course Heather was right. Olivia did intend for her time in Ireland to be a period of self-discovery, and she would be searching for personal redemption in the face of what had been her life’s biggest loss. Swap the centuries and that was her storyline in a nutshell. Of course she saw the parallels between her reality and her novel’s outline, but Olivia assured Heather that it was all about the context of the story and the heart of the characters, reiterating several times that she wasn’t looking to write her own biography masked as a work of fiction.

  What Olivia didn’t have to tell Heather was that she, much like her heroine, knew all-too-well what it felt like to wonder whether it was worth getting out of bed in the morning, or if after days of deciding that it’s wasn’t, if she’d ever be able to get out of bed at all. Or that she knew what it felt like to put a smile on her face and go on living as if she wanted to, even when she really didn’t care to. She didn’t need to relive her own experiences to have sufficient background information to fuel her heroine’s journey. She didn’t have to say any of that because Heather had seen her at her worst and had innately known – the way only a best friend can – that the experience would color Olivia’s writing for years to come.

  Wrapping up lunch, Olivia had assured Heather that she’d be careful not to put too much of herself into the book and that if she ever felt she was stepping over an imaginary line she expected Heather to provide the necessary ass kicks along the way.

  The night before Olivia had left San Francisco she’d spent the night at Heather’s house in Berkeley where the two had quickly and easily downed three bottles of very expensive Cabernet Sauvignon while reminiscing over their years of misadventure together. Hesitantly, Olivia had admitted that while she was taking the trip to help fuel her professional growth, she wasn’t opposed to finding love with some handsome Irish man along the way.

  If not love, she’d whispered conspiratorially, she would happily settle for a blissful state of lust. Heather knew it had been quite a while since anyone had made Olivia’s blood boil enough for her to take him to her bed. She also knew that despite that fact, it wasn’t for lack of effort on Olivia’s part. If flirting and dating were an Olympic sport, Heather thought that Olivia would certainly be a medal winner several times over. The two friends often joked that Olivia’s personal philosophy right after college had been that a good man in one’s bed could make the world a much better place, even if only while he was in it.

  Olivia closed her eyes and shook her head to clear the memories of that last evening spent with her best friend and confidante. She’d spent far too much time in her head since arriving at the hotel that she had barely noticed when the sky dimmed outside her window, first turning a pale, luminescent purple, and then finally into the deep dark of night.

  * * * *

  Before Olivia could do anything productive, first she needed a shower – she took her time, letting the hot water sluice down her tired body, the scalding water easing the tension in her neck, shoulders, and back. By the time she emerged, Olivia felt almost like a new woman – or at the very least an upgraded model of the one who’d entered the hotel room earlier in the day. She ordered room service and threw on the cashmere robe she always traveled with. Only then did she pull out her laptop again to check her email and jot down some new narrative ideas she had had while in the shower, before they were forever lost to her.

  She knew so much about her characters – what they looked like, how they felt about things, the way they spoke – but she was completely lacking in the location that would surround the two. Looking back through the pictures she’d printed out of each of her potential locales, Olivia knew that it would be easy to use any of them as the central location for the book as they all conveyed the atmosphere she wanted, but something kept her drawing her eyes and mind back to the castle tower house, shrouded in fog, down by a river.

  There was not a mule alive that could match Olivia for stubbornness, so while the owner of the tower house had been completely unresponsive to her inquiries, she hadn’t yet given up on seeing the castle up close and personal. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, she sent yet another email to the owner, hoping that he would be more open to speaking with her if he knew that she wasn’t some regular tourist, but was rather scouting locations for what she was sure would be another best seller.

  When Olivia had first seen photos of the castle and its owner in an architectural magazine article that recounted its long and laborious restoration process, she found herself more intrigued than she normally would have been about any other project of similar magnitude. The undertaking had been painstaking, costing millions of euro over the course of many years. While the article’s accompanying photos had presented the perfect location for her book’s narrator to discover her family legacy, Olivia found herself equally compelled by photographs of the owner, a man every bit as visually appealing as the room he was pictured standing in.

  The six story tower-house, which sat on nearly 50 acres in County Kilkenny, was first erected sometime in the 1400s to house and protect local families in the case of raiders from neighboring, and oftentimes, warring clans. The castle had been constructed of stone and mortar and overlooked a grassy slope that descended to a river stocked with the area’s most prized fish. It was secluded, but its inhabitants and its history was as much a part of the nearby village’s gossip as what was happening at the local pub.

  The castle’s neighbors spoke rather informally in their reference to the owner – they called him William, or Lord William – and they openly remarked that if it weren’t for him pumping so much extra money into the village, drawing artisan workers from around the county, as well as prize anglers to the river, they didn’t know what would have become of their village. It seemed that Lord William had singlehandedly turned the village into a tourist attraction, despite the fact that his castle was not open to the public.

  It wasn’t a grand castle like Ashford or Waterford but the photos showed a richness that was perfectly balanced against a relaxed, lived-in feel. Crystal chandeliers lighted rooms carpeted with antique, multi-thousand dollar rugs that sat under distressed, oversized chesterfield leather couches acting as beds for two large Irish wolfhounds.

  While the castle’s exterior was formidable and off-putting, the interior was as warm and welcoming as any luxury boutique hotel, retaining its medieval charm but focusing on the conveniences of the modern era. The fireplace in the main hall, however, was purely medieval, easily fitting three people Olivia’s height in its massive open firebox, while the pictured master bathroom was outfitted in the most modern features. That room included a large egg-shaped soaking tub, a separate steam shower set off by gleaming white tile that practically shimmered in the photograph. At the opposite end of the master bedroom stood a formidable stone fireplace, seemingly out of place in the modern sanctuary. The four-poster bed next to it was piled high with down pillows and, according to the article, always dressed in Fretté linens. The massive bed was topped by a somewhat worn and threadbare plaid cashmere throw that was said to have been in the family for centuries.

  The room was very masculine with touches of leather and wood but Olivia knew a woman would be comfortable there too. Especially if that woman was her, she thought before she had the good sense not to.

  CHAPTER 4

  Instead of venturing out Temple Bar for music and a pint of beer as she had originally intended, Olivia had accidentally spent a significant portion of her first night in Dublin resear
ching William Macauley, trying to find something she could use in order to gain access to either him personally or the castle he owned. Over the course of her obsessive research she had learned that the castle had been in the same family since it was built but that it had stood uninhabited until 2000 when William had begun restoring and refurbishing it for his private residence.

  Before midnight she had pieced together that Lord William had lived in the castle by himself for the last five years and that he was independently wealthy. She couldn’t find any significant information that discussed the specifics of his personal life outside of rumor or conjecture. Nor were there many details regarding what he did for a living outside of a couple of newspaper article snippets that briefly mentioned that he had made quite a bit of cash from technology investments over the last fifteen years. Several additional articles mentioned that he spared no expense when it came to the renovations of the castle or on his rather indulgent lifestyle.

  By one o’clock in the morning, Olivia was beyond intrigued. For some inexplicable reason, she really wanted to know more about the man and why he would go through such extensive efforts to restore a building that was by all accounts a ruin before he got ahold of it. She continued digging, finding one society gossip column after another that speculated about the various women he had taken to parties, and then a list published last year conjecturing which of those women would be able to call herself Lady Macauley in the coming year. Having turned 40 with no bride in sight, and a vast estate at his disposal, William had become fodder for the gossip machine.

  Olivia snorted in disgust. A man in his early forties dates a bevy of unquestionably beautiful women and he’s lauded for his exquisite taste. A woman in the same position would have been derided for her choices and called a host of unflattering names. The double standard between the two sexes never ceased to amaze her. Unfortunately, Olivia knew this to be true from her own personal experience with the San Francisco society gossips. Unmarried at the ripe old age of 27, she had fielded her fair share of derisive questions about her romantic entanglements from people she’d never met yet who felt it was completely acceptable to inquire as to who she was sleeping with.