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‘I actually do have somewhere to go.’ She pulled the brush through her hair again.
‘I thought you’d have learnt your lesson by now…’ Iris muttered before disappearing into her own room and slamming the door behind her. Honestly, sometimes Nola wondered what went on in her sister’s head.
An hour later, she was still waiting for Aiden to arrive. There was no sign of him, not even a phone call and she wondered if she’d been stood up. She paced the sitting room, stopping every now and then to stand at the window and peer expectantly down the drive. She had the huge desire to bite her fingernails, but it had taken too long to break that habit to allow something so small to send her back there again. Well, she had two options: she could either sit up here in her ivory tower waiting for a man to come and rescue her, or she could make her way down to the village without him.
She had hardly turned out of the yard when she saw his oversized Land Rover bumping along the narrow lane.
‘Sorry,’ he said, reaching across and opening the door for her. ‘Cow calving – nothing I could do about it,’ he added and then once she was in the passenger seat he did a nifty three-point turn and had them headed towards the village.
‘Never mind,’ she said easily, because really it didn’t matter either way. All right, so, she’d wasted an hour of her time waiting for him, but if she let him see it annoyed her, he might think that this arrangement meant more to her than just a casual lift to the pub.
‘I suppose, like all women, you were only ready to go now anyway,’ he said.
‘Actually, no.’ She kept her voice even. ‘I was ready to go exactly on time, but I decided to do a little work and head out when it suited me. From what I can remember, the pubs of Ballycove only really begin to fill up an hour before closing time anyway.’ It was true she had a tonne of work to get through this weekend, plays don’t just happen and she wanted this to be perfect.
They spent the rest of the short journey in an uncomfortable silence, or at least that’s what Nola thought, but perhaps it just washed over Aiden, who seemed to be lost in thought and hardly aware she was there at all.
The local pub had changed very little from outside, though once inside, she was surprised to see it had been opened up into a much larger space which obviously did a brisk pub grub trade as well as a brilliant traditional music session tonight. The bar counters filled one end, with a couple of groups interspersed along it, cliques that probably went back to when people were at school. It sent a shiver of isolation through Nola, because apart from loving her new teaching job and being happy to live in Soldier Hill House most of the time when her sisters weren’t at war with her and each other, she could almost convince herself that there might be more for her here than in London.
But even Nola knew that a future here meant more than working and living. She would need friends, a social circle to call her own, and a group of people she could meet for coffee or go shopping with or maybe just shoot the breeze with on a Friday night in the local pub. All of those things had slipped through her fingers in London; it was something she needed to change, wherever she ended up.
‘Come on.’ Aiden headed for a high table on the far end of the bar where a couple of musicians were tuning instruments between sets in the music session. He fired out a round of introductions and even if she couldn’t quite keep up, she got the feeling that this group were his close circle. There was an attractive blonde, holding a fiddle, a couple of redheads who might be sisters, both with tin whistles and an older grizzly-looking guy who had a long shaggy beard and a wide smile that stretched right up to his eyes.
‘My round.’ Aiden looked at Nola, who ordered a white wine and then he nodded to her. ‘Well, come on, the drinks aren’t going to carry themselves down.’
Against all the odds, actually, it was a great night. She managed to get names on the three girls; yes, they were two sisters and a first cousin. In between belting out traditional Irish tunes they had time to talk and it seemed to Nola, they loved to talk and laugh and generally have the craic. Between them, there was a nurse – Eve, a teacher from the secondary school in the next town over – Madeline, and a postwoman – the attractive blonde who everyone for some reason called Red. Old Benny on the accordion had been playing for years; Nola hardly remembered him ever having been any different or any younger to what he looked tonight. After a glass of wine, Nola began to really enjoy herself and as she chatted to the people at the table even Aiden seemed to be a little nicer than she had first imagined. At some point, he disappeared leaving her there with the other four, but it didn’t matter, because at that stage the ice was broken and a number of others had joined them too. Nola knew that if she wanted to she could turn up here any Friday night and she’d be more than welcome.
‘We have it all here,’ Red said when they broke up a set to catch their breath. She was talking about the village; she’d never considered living anywhere else. ‘Well, almost everything – the only thing we’re missing is available men.’ She shook her head and laughed.
‘What about?’ Nola waved her hand around the bar, there seemed to be a fairly even distribution.
‘Eww.’ Red wrinkled her nose. ‘Sure that’d be like dating your brother. We’ve known almost everyone here for years. No, that’s the only problem with Ballycove, apart from the summer season, it’s the same old same old. We’ve all known each other too long to find anyone here even vaguely attractive at this stage.’
‘What about Aiden?’ Nola asked. He seemed to spend most of the night standing at the bar chatting to the barmaid, a statuesque blonde, who looked like she belonged in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue rather than behind a counter. At a guess, Nola reckoned, she hardly looked twenty years old.
‘Oh, Aiden has had his share of girls, but he’s not the settling-down type. Much too busy rescuing damsels in distress and building up his empire.’
‘But he’s a farmer?’ Nola laughed and then stopped, because she knew that most of the people here had come from farming backgrounds, including her, and very few of them probably had left to try their luck at the bright lights.
‘Yes, he’s a farmer, but he’s a serious businessman too. He’s bought up a lot of land, probably the wealthiest man here tonight, but that doesn’t seem to matter to him.’
‘So, what?’
‘He’s had his heart broken, as bad as it can be. There’s no getting over some things, you know,’ Red said, and she sipped her drink before running her bow across the bridge of her fiddle and starting into a lively reel.
‘So you enjoyed it?’ Aiden asked when he dropped her home later, turning to her when he’d parked in the backyard.
‘Yes. Thank you for making me come along.’
‘Sure there was no making on it. Weren’t you already walking along the road when I picked you up?’ He shook his head.
‘You know what I mean.’ She opened the door, still feeling that there was something else to be said.
‘Yeah,’ he said softly and when she looked at him now, she could see what the statuesque blonde had fallen for – he was ruggedly attractive. Nola felt something like an electrical volt shoot through her. For a crazy moment she thought he might lean across and kiss her. She might even kiss him back. But then, abruptly, he turned over the engine. ‘So, you’ll be all right from here,’ he said, checking the rear-view mirror to gauge his space before turning in the dark. And once more, she felt that familiar irritation that she’d felt from the first moment she’d met him.
‘I think I can definitely manage from here,’ she said, slamming the door behind her before she ran up the steps to the back door and disappeared inside for the night. He really was the limit. Aiden Barry got under her skin – and not in a good way, either.
