A Time Apart: Book One of The Macauley Series Read online

  Just before Olivia was ready to call it a night she stumbled across a photo that she hadn’t yet seen that was taken as William entered one of the Georgian buildings lining the park outside her hotel. He was on the arm of a ravishing, wisp-thin, raven-haired beauty and both had the look of people who very seriously did not want their pictures to be taken. The caption under the photo – dated last fall – revealed that it was a rare sight for him to be making a public appearance accompanied by the same date three events in a row. The dinner was for a prominent politician running for re-election, which told Olivia that not only was William incredibly wealthy, but that he was also well connected in the highest level of politics. He was rich, sexy, and powerful, a combination that she was sure kept plenty of young beauties – raven-haired or not – vying for his arm, and his bed.

  There was no use denying that she found William Macauley a very attractive man – shiny black hair falling effortlessly over his forehead; a firm, chiseled jaw with just a hint of five o’clock shadow; piercing blue eyes locked on the photographer in front of him, a look of unabashed challenge in them; and lips that Olivia was sure could ravish a woman. He also looked much younger than Olivia would have thought given that he had spent the past fifteen years building his fortune. She knew that he was in his early forties but looking at him, she couldn’t be certain where his age actually fell in that margin. While his face and body looked even younger than forty, his eyes looked wary and tired.

  Staring at the photo on the screen in front of her, Olivia had the vague notion that she had seen him somewhere before. Wracking her brain however produced no specific ideas. She couldn’t have met him before as the only handsome Irish man she’d been privy to thus far in Ireland – or elsewhere, for that matter – had been Paul. And, she thought, she definitely would have remembered meeting someone as striking as William Macauley.

  And yet his face held a certain familiarity that she couldn’t shake. Maybe, she thought, he just looked like someone else she’d known at some other point in her life? Perhaps he had features that she’d seen in other faces? Or, most likely, during the course of her research she’d seen so many other pictures of him that she’d started thinking of him as someone that she knew? For all her staring at his pictures, there was no doubt that Olivia could now quickly and easily identify him out of a lineup. And she’d bet even money that she’d be able to recognize those eyes in a crowded room at just one glance. Olivia wasn’t sure of anything about him, but she was sure that they were going to meet and he was going to be the one remembering her. She would make sure of it.

  Giving in to extreme jet lag, Olivia finally climbed into bed for the night. She had a packed itinerary for the next day and she didn’t want to waste any time in trying to get an audience with William. By now she was thinking less about where she could possibly have seen him before and instead how she would be seeing him soon. Mostly though, Olivia thought she wouldn’t mind seeing him in her bed. While she didn’t posses the model good looks of the women he was used to squiring about town, she was secure enough in her looks that she knew she could at least turn his head. From there, he wouldn’t know what hit him.

  As she began to drift off to sleep Olivia found herself fantasizing about what would happen if they did meet and she managed to seduce him. While Olivia would be the first to admit that she was no saint, she could be somewhat inhibited when left to her own devices and imagination. Yet tonight, as she lay in bed naked, the thought of meeting and bedding William was a powerful aphrodisiac. She wanted him powerfully, and the idea of being able to bend him to her will was incredibly erotic. She closed her eyes and let her mind wander.

  She’d be sitting at a table at the pub in his village, drinking a pint of Guinness, when he’d walk in. She’d watch him from across the room as he sat down for dinner and his own pint. He’d look up every few minutes, aware that someone was watching him, but not seeing her through the haze of smoke and bodies. After watching him for some time she’d step outside for some air, making sure to walk past his table – brushing his arm – as she exited. He’d look up, meet her eyes, and he’d know it had been Olivia that had been watching him so intently. Wordlessly, he’d follow her outside, stepping close to her before reaching out to tuck an unruly red curl behind her ear. Silently, still having spoken not a single word to one another, he’d put his hands on her face and kiss her, deep and hungry and with a longing that echoed her own.

  Olivia could feel her body responding to the imagined scene – her breathing deepened, her pulse quickened, and she felt a desperate aching between her thighs that reminded her just how alone she was. She wanted him, passionately, but she couldn’t even say why.

  Olivia continued to let her imagination run wild, inviting her hands to do the same. As she trailed her fingers ever so lightly over her left breast, lazily tracing circles around her nipple, she pictured him gently kneading and stroking the same area, her chest rising and falling with her increasingly rapid breathing.

  Olivia felt goose bumps appear on her arms and torso while in her mind William had removed her sweater and had begun softly suckling her raised nipple through the lace of her bra. In reality, she twisted the erect peak between her fingers, sending waves of ecstasy coursing down her body. She closed her eyes tighter, willing the vision to remain. And then the William of her imagination had Olivia naked, up against the brick wall of the pub, his dark, brooding looks a stark contrast to her creamy alabaster skin and fiery red hair.

  In her mind, William moved his hand down to caress Olivia’s stomach and she did the same, parting the folds of her wet, swollen self as he entered her hard and fast, his throbbing cock burning a hole to her core. Olivia could feel her desire reaching a crescendo and as she brought herself to orgasm, she imagined it wasn’t her own fingers doing the work but was instead William plundering her, urging her to completion. As Olivia felt the final waves of an earth-shattering orgasm wash over her, she moaned his name.

  William.

  CHAPTER 5

  Olivia slept for nearly nine hours straight that night. After her fantasy involving the enigmatic William Macauley, she couldn’t remember dreaming, a welcome relief from the ever-present melancholy that normally invaded her slumber.

  A wry smile broke out on her face as she recalled the images she had conjured the night before, and then she blushed, realizing that she’d fantasized about and brought herself to orgasm over a man she’d only ever read about in magazines. She laughed to herself – men the world over had been doing the same thing with Playboy and the like for decades, but to her this experience felt decidedly different.

  “Well, if I can’t have a real live man, at least I have a damn fine representation of one,” she said aloud to the empty room as she walked into the bathroom and into the scalding hot shower.

  Since Olivia had been so distracted the night before, today she vowed to leave the hotel room. She also told herself, repeatedly, that she wouldn’t think about William Macauley for the rest of the day. Unfortunately her mind seemed to have a mind of its own and she found herself thinking about him at least every 20 minutes, maybe even closer to every ten minutes. Clearly she needed to get out of her room and away from the fantasy she was now shamelessly, and wantonly, obsessing over.

  Olivia stared at herself in the mirror a long time before leaving. She’s wasn’t what most would call classically beautiful – not like the woman on William’s arm in the photos she’d seen the night before – but she knew that she was an attractive woman, in a quirky and sometimes sexy sort of way. With her unruly red curls, pale skin, and smattering of freckles, she certainly wasn’t the girl next store or the All-American beauty, but Olivia had had enough men interested in her throughout the years to know that she had a look that could get a woman noticed.

  When on display, the tattoo running down her right arm from shoulder to elbow led a certain variety of man to picture her more wild and carefree than she really was, and it was always this sort of man who fancied himse
lf the one who would be able to tame her. Meanwhile it was always artists and musicians who Olivia gravitated toward; she figured it was because her general look was the norm for them and therefore they didn’t view her as some sort of exotic Amazon warrior princess. No, it was the straight-laced businessmen who tended to look her way because they liked to imagine that she’d be wild in bed. Olivia found it ironic then that she’d spent the previous night fantasizing about an Armani-clad businessman when usually she was the one the suits were lusting over.

  When Olivia did cover up her tattoo – as she did now with a long, cream turtleneck sweater over jeans tucked into brown leather riding boots – and pulled her wayward curls into a low bun, she transformed from the supposed wild she-banshee into something much more respectable. Something, she smiled to realize, more closely resembling what Americans thought of as a typical Irish lass, with her wide smile, smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and deep, heavily lashed green eyes.

  With one final look of approval in the mirror, Olivia grabbed her camera and closed the door to her hotel room. For the next several hours she took in all the sites, her first stop being Trinity College to visit the massive library that housed the Book of Kells, an otherworldly illustrated manuscript of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with some of John’s story included as well. As an atheist, the words meant little to her, but as an artist she was captivated by the craftsmanship and intricacy of patterns repeated over and over across the thin vellum pages.

  From Trinity, she wandered the streets going in and out of shops selling Irish pottery, crystal, and hand-knitted sweaters. Olivia had only been in Ireland for a day but already she had fallen in love with the Aran sweaters, especially now that she was somewhere cold enough to warrant wearing them. After buying a few things to send back to Heather, she grabbed a bite to eat at Queen of Tarts and then stopped in to a nearby pub to drink her first Guinness of the trip. Sure enough, it did taste better on draught in Dublin.

  Olivia continued her afternoon, taking a number of detours from the suggested route proposed by her guidebook, immersing herself in the sights and sounds of the city while stopping to take pictures of everything from colorful doors to old brick buildings and nannies out walking their wards.

  She spent an hour in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, listening to the organist practice in preparation for an upcoming evening concert, the sounds emitted by the four thousand pipes mournful and joyous at the same time, a bellowing that echoed the conflicting emotions playing out in Olivia’s head and heart as she sat quietly, absorbed in her thoughts. Leaving the Cathedral, she felt relaxed – good even – about having decided to spend time away from all reminders of how wrong her life had been for so very long. In Dublin no one but Paul could identify her on sight, and none of her parents’ friends would call to check in on her, suggesting she meet the son of a friend – a doctor, or lawyer, it was always one or the other. “A real catch,” they’d say. Olivia knew they meant well, but to her it was nothing more than a constant reminder that she could no longer meet up with her own mother for coffee or to discuss who she was, or wasn’t, seeing. It was a cold a reminder that Marie Donnelly wouldn’t be around to see Olivia fall in love someday.

  There, in a city thousands of years old and an ocean away from what had been her home, Olivia was free to come and go as she pleased and the only person’s happiness she had to think about was her own.

  Olivia arrived back at the hotel as the sun was setting, having spent an enjoyable day learning about the city and its history. Worn out – in a good way, she reminded herself – from walking up and down each street and along the River Liffey, she decided to order room service and watch a movie on pay-per-view instead of venturing back out for dinner.

  As she undressed for the night, Olivia noticed her cell phone sitting on the table next to the bed. She had been so caught up in sightseeing that she hadn’t even noticed that she had left her phone behind, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone minutes – let alone hours – without checking the device. Not that it would have mattered much, she thought, as the only person Olivia expected to hear from at any point in the next several weeks was Heather. Still, old habits died hard so she picked it up, surprised to see that she had three voicemails waiting for her.

  The first message was from a sweet woman who, along with her husband, ran a manor turned bed and breakfast in the Wicklow mountains that overlooked a running stream and the hills beyond. Her message said there’d been a room cancellation and that if Olivia wanted to, she could stay at a reduced rate this coming weekend. While Olivia appreciated the offer, she was nowhere ready to leave Dublin for the countryside so she jotted down a reminder to herself to call the woman back tomorrow to thank her but politely decline.

  The next message was from Heather, inquiring about Olivia’s flight, the hotel, and how she liked Dublin so far. While Heather’s call was in the guise of her role as Olivia’s editor, they’d been friends since the first day of college so Olivia knew that the call was less about checking up on the book, and more about finding out how she was doing. Olivia opened her laptop to send Heather an email – images from the day’s outing attached – letting her know that all was well.

  The diversion distracted Olivia, and she forgot all about the third message waiting in her voicemail. With nothing else to occupy her time, she opened a blank document on her computer, not really knowing what she intended to do with it. For minutes she sat looking at the blinking cursor on the page before her, and then decided to skip the movie she’d planned to watch to begin working on the book’s first few chapters.

  Given the parallels in the heroine’s life to Olivia’s own, within minutes of plotting out her drama, she became absorbed in her own. She couldn’t help but to think about the loss of love and affection she’d experienced as her father’s only child, then later her acting out to gain his attention, and then ultimately, the loss of both he and her mother and the pain and agony that accompanied that loss. The hole left in both her heart and psyche was still wide open; she’d never gotten the closure she deserved.

  Three thousand words later, Olivia abruptly recalled that there had been three messages waiting on her phone and that she had skipped the final one. She picked it up and listened – the voice on the other end of the line was so surprising to Olivia that she gasped out loud like a shy, intimidated little girl when a handsome boy deigns to verbally acknowledge her presence. The reaction was so unlike her, and yet, there it was.

  “Hello Miss Donnelly, this is William Macauley returning your emails,” said the deep, husky voice ringing in her ears.

  Olivia felt the heat rising to her face as she suddenly became very embarrassed by her behavior the night before, and yet she was also very turned on just hearing the intense, rich timbre of his voice. It matched him exactly how she imagined it might: confident, strong, and in control. Now she knew for sure the voice that would join her in tonight’s dreams, for as much as Olivia was embarrassed by her lusting over him the night before, she had no intention of letting up on the fantasies anytime soon.

  “I’m sorry to have not gotten back to you sooner but I’ve been unavailable for some time and have just now learned of your request. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to accommodate it,” he said in very clipped, cold tones. “I’m a very private person and I cannot allow my home to be dissected and regurgitated for your entertainment.” He paused for just a heartbeat. “Goodbye.” There was a faint click, the sure sign that he had dismissed her.

  And just like that, all of Olivia’s desire for the gorgeous, virile Irish man left her as quickly as it had come on. In general, Olivia was not someone who was easily flustered by a cold word or condescending attitude. She’d been running in well-to-do crowds her entire life and had seen people put down and degraded by others who considered it their God-given right to treat people shabbily. Olivia wasn’t proud of it, but at times even she had been one of those people – cold, heartless, unconcerned about
the feelings her words could create. At home, among the San Francisco elite, this was her norm. It was a game. But she’d been told that the people of Ireland were different: they were warm, and they’d try to help you in any way that they could. Clearly Lord Macauley had missed the memo.

  The more Olivia thought about William’s message the angrier she became. To no effect, she tried in vain to remind herself that the beautiful, seductive, mysterious man did not actually say anything rude to her; he had simply turned down a request she’d made. No harm, no foul.

  That line of reasoning, unfortunately, didn’t take the sting out of his tone or the fact that she’d built him up in her mind without actually knowing him. Now she could see that she’d been dead wrong about him. It was clear to her now that he wasn’t the type of man that could be charmed by the mere likes of her, sending her fantasy up in smoke. Instead of words like sexy, powerful, and beautiful, Olivia found herself coming up with new adjectives to describe Mr. Macauley.

  Of course, he had no reason to be kind to her or offer any courtesy beyond returning her phone call, but hearing the brusque dismissal in his voice was both a cold dose of reality and a cold shower combined.

  So William Macauley was rude and he was an asshole. Should she be surprised? Nothing Olivia had read about him had given her an indication either way of what type of man he actually was. She knew when she had made her request that he must be a very private person, not prone to public scrutiny or inquiry. And yet she’d made the request anyway because his castle and its idyllic location amongst rolling green hills would be perfect for the story she wanted to write. Everything about the request would benefit her, with nothing in it for him. Olivia possessed enough self-awareness to admit that she had thought, perhaps, that if he would just meet her she could have made it worth his time.