I had the worst timing in the history of the world.

Then again, he could have thrown a shirt on. Who answered the door practically naked? I could have been room service. He could have scarred someone.

Then again, he hadn’t seemed surprised to see me, and my door had a peek-hole. So maybe he’d chosen not to put a shirt on.

Okay. I had to stop overthinking everything.

Over five minutes had passed, so I picked up the goods and went back to his door. This time, Mike wore jeans and a Leopard’s T-shirt when he opened the door.

“Sorry,” I said automatically. “About—earlier.”

“No worries. What’s up?”

I lifted the Reeses. “I brought peace offerings.”

He stepped back and I moved inside his room. It had the same set up as mine, but there were already marks of his presence, sneakers and shirts tossed carelessly about. A set of weights lay in one corner, a football beside them. I wondered if he had anyone to practice with here.

The door clicked shut behind me and I turned back to Mike. He cocked his head at the half-eaten bag of candy. “That’s a pretty paltry olive branch.”

“I know. I was munchy earlier.” When he sat on his bed, I took it as my cue to curl up in an overstuffed mint-green armchair several feet away. He didn’t look away from me as he leaned against the headboard, his long legs sprawled out before him.

I took a deep breath. “Look, I know it’s a little awkward, me being here. Especially when I’m sort of a work problem and this is your personal life, and your family’s here... If it bothers you, I can get a room in Cork.” The bus ride would take an hour to get to the village, but that would be preferable to dealing with Mike if he didn’t want me here. “So, I don’t know, I just of thought if you had any issues you wanted aired, we could air them. Now. Until we’re cool.”

He stared at me.

I sank my head into my hands. “I’m sorry. I’m not a very eloquent speaker. Which sort of sucks, because I have a speech to give in September and I’m already freaking out about it.” I sighed and looked up. “How are you so together?”

He popped a Reeses in his mouth. “I’m not together.”

I scoffed.

“Didn’t you see my family down there?”

His warm, entertaining family that was so comfortable with one another that they could pick and snap at each other without fear of damaging their relationships? “Yeah. They’re wonderful.”

“Wonderful in moderation.”

“I mean it. They’re great.”

He cocked his head at my tone. “What’s that mean?”

All right, maybe I’d been a little too emphatic. I lifted my shoulders in slight embarrassment. “They were great.”

His eyes widened. “Are you kidding? Didn’t you notice my little sister storming out?”

I dismissed that with a wave of my hand. “She’s seventeen.”

“Yeah, old enough to know better. Were you like that at seventeen?”

I’d been president of National Honors Society, president of the French club, vice-president of the Sobriety Council, junior member of the Rotary Club and a choir member. For my seventeenth birthday party, my parents’ friends’ children and several members of my class had come over for a catered dinner by a local celebrity chef.

That year, like the sixteen before it, I had spent almost every day wanting to gouge my eyes out in the few moments I didn’t feel numb.

“At least she has a personality,” I said firmly.

“What, and you didn’t?”

I shrugged. “I had personas.” The perfect daughter, the perfect student. “Pretty boring. I’d take cursing goth kids any day.”

He groaned. “She’s dating some baby biker dude. Instead of going to college she wants to work in his sister’s tattoo parlor.”

“Well. I guess she won’t have to worry about student loans?”

“She won’t have loans. I’m paying.”

“Maybe she wants to be fiscally responsible.”

He shot me a look. “Yeah, that sounds like Anna.”

“It’s not exactly easy, having perfect older brothers.”

He raised a brow. “Which you know about?”

I shrugged. “Maybe not perfect. But I always felt second-best.”

“Why?”

“Oh.” Now I felt silly, because I hadn’t meant the conversation to come around to me, and I actively avoided talking about my family to anyone besides Cam. “My brothers are from my dad’s first marriage, and I think he kind of preferred them. Not a big deal or anything, he just didn’t know how to relate to me.”

He tilted his head. His hair, still straightened from his shower, was beginning to dry and curl. “Sounds like a big deal.”

Suddenly edgy, I jumped up and walked to the window. He had a view out the back of the inn, toward several cottages and the endless rolling hills and hedgerows. Lavender clouds rolled across the deepening blue night. “It really wasn’t. What about you? Where’s your dad?” A second after the words left my mouth, I remembered that his dad had to be gone for him to inherit Kilkarten. I turned to see him, my eyes widening. “I’m so sorry—”

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

We were both silent, but neither of us looked away. I could feel the space of the room constraining, or his presence growing, until it was as though I could only see him. My head felt light. I broke contact first and headed back to the armchair, busying myself with settling back in. “Anna must have been little.”

“Seven.”

Wow.

“What’s that look for?”

I raised my eyes, startled at the question. “I wasn’t giving you a look.”

His smile contained a hint of skepticism. “Yeah, you were.”

Fine. “Sounds like you’ve been father-figuring your youngest sister and supporting your whole family for a long time.”

He let out a wry breath. “Lauren said about the same. She wants to ‘fix’ things while we’re here.”

“‘Things’?”

“Us. Our family.”

“How?”

He met my eyes again, with that same powerful intensity, and gave me a crooked smile different from the regular one he used to charm people. “I wish I knew the answer.”

I acknowledged the difficulty of that with my own wry smile. “How do you usually deal with problems?”

He watched me with a very odd, very aware expression. “Usually I smile a lot and people end up agreeing with me. Or liking me, so they alter things to go my way.”

I blinked but couldn’t look away. He looked back, his gaze bright and focused, like he saw something unusual and worth studying. I swallowed. “And of course, you’ve already figured out that I do the same thing.”

“You were shocked when I said no to the dig. I bet people don’t say no to you very often.”

“I don’t put myself in positions where people can say no to me that often.”

He tilted his head. “What does that mean?”

I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d meant, myself, so it was difficult to parse into words. Maybe I just didn’t ask or go after things when there was a chance I’d be turned down. I shrugged helplessly.

“What are you going to do while you’re here? I mean—you don’t know anyone here, do you?”

I shrugged. “My advisor’s in Dublin, but he’ll probably come down in two or three weeks. He was planning to, originally... And tomorrow I’m going to talk to your aunt, actually, and she might introduce me to some people who know about the land.”

He straightened. “You are?”

I nodded “I’d been corresponding with her husband for months. It seemed appropriate.” I paused. “What’s she like?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I haven’t actually met her. We’re having lunch day after tomorrow.” His eyes lit up. “I’ll go with you tomorrow.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

He raised his brows. “I’ve been with my family a solid week. I think I deserve the company of someone I’m not related to.”

I raised mine right back at him. “So you deserve my company?”

His voice was little more than a murmur. “Don’t I?”

I sucked in a quick breath. I was suddenly aware of how late it was, how much I’d enjoyed talking to him this evening, how whenever I was in his presence I was always so, so aware of him... And that he had unflinchingly refused to let me excavate Kilkarten, and just several hours ago I’d had the thought of enlisting his sisters for a coup d’etat. “I should go.”