Kelly Jamieson - Irish Sex Fairy

She twisted her trembling fingers tightly. “Now this happens. And I did it again. Let my nerves get to me. I probably thought that SUV was closer than it was, and I panicked and overreacted and…I could have killed myself. I’m just glad nobody else was with me.”

“Oh, muirnín.” Maeve’s face softened and she stood up and held out her arms. “Come here and give me a hug.”

Keara stood, muscles aching, and stepped into Maeve’s embrace. She held onto her aunt, let her hold her, soothe her.

“It will be okay,” Maeve murmured.

Keara gathered up everything she had and stepped out of Maeve’s arms. She had no right to dump this on her poor old great-aunt, no right to worry Maeve, when she was just being silly.

“Yes, I’ll be okay,” she agreed with a tight smile. “Actually this week I was feeling pretty good. I had fun last night at Dunstans’. And then flirting with Shane kind of took my mind off things.”

Maeve drew back and smiled at her. “See? I was right. Sex is what you need. A good round of hot, shake-the-bed sex.”

The sound that emerged from Keara’s throat was half laugh, half sob. “Maybe you are right,” she said, dragging her fingers across wet eyes. “But now it’s going to have to wait until all these bruises are gone.”

“Perhaps.” Maeve returned to her chair and picked up her spoon again. “Eat your soup. And tell me about the robbery. Maybe it will help to talk about it.”

“I talked about it to the psychologist.” Keara obediently lifted her spoon. “I don’t need to talk about it anymore.”

“Well, I’m not a psychologist, but people tell me I’m a good listener. And keeping stuff inside you isn’t healthy.”

So Keara talked as she ate her soup, telling Maeve about the robbery and the hostage-taking. She didn’t tell her everything. Because some things were just too awful to even think, never mind tell someone else. Because she didn’t want Maeve to be disgusted with her, to know the whole thing had been her fault. She kept that part of the incident closed away in a partitioned-off part of her brain, where she didn’t have to examine it or deal with it.

And to a certain extent, telling Maeve and hearing her sympathetic comments did make her feel better.

They’d just finished their dinner when Shane arrived, buzzing at the back door, now locked.

Shane walked into Maeve’s apartment, still in his uniform. He hadn’t even gone home to eat yet. He sought out Keara and found her seated on the couch, cross-legged, a cushion clutched on her lap.

“Should you be out of bed?” he asked with a frown.

“I’m fine,” she replied, with a roll of her eyes. “Sore, but fine. I want to keep moving around so I don’t stiffen up too much. What are you doing here?”

“Just checking to see how you’re doing.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

He ignored her. “Will you be up to coming in to the station to make your report tomorrow?”

“I think so. I just have no way to get there.”

“You can use my car,” Maeve offered.

“I’ll pick you up,” Shane said at the same time.

“Do you offer that service to every crash victim?” she asked, frowning.

“No. Not everyone. It’s no trouble. I’ll come around lunchtime and we’ll get it done.”

She gave him a look—chin tilted down, up through her eyelashes—and his chest tightened. She looked so damn vulnerable and lost. What was it about her?

“Fine,” she finally said with a sigh.

“I called your insurance company,” he said, taking a seat on the other end of the couch from her. “An adjuster will have a look at the car to see if it can be repaired. But first thing tomorrow Joe and I will go have a look at it also. See if there’s any evidence of another car hitting you.”

“There won’t be.” She looked down at the cushion on her lap then back up to him. “I think I imagined that.”

He stared at her. “You think you imagined it. Why do you say that?”

Her lips pressed together. “I just do. I think I probably overreacted to the guy tailing me close. So I’m sure the accident was all my fault.”

He said nothing. It was possible. And yet, she’d seemed so certain earlier. “Is that what you’re going to say in your statement?”

“I…I don’t know. I just want to tell the truth.”

He nodded. “Well, you figure it out, honey, and we’ll go from there. I’m willing to investigate if you think someone deliberately tried to force you off the road.”

“There’s probably no point in it.” She sighed. “I don’t want to put you to a lot of work for nothing.”

He nodded, not sure how to respond to her. Keara wasn’t the type of person to try to blame someone else for something that was her fault. He was pretty sure of that. Some drivers would make up a story like that to take the blame off themselves, maybe thinking they’d be charged with something. But he didn’t believe she would.

So what had really happened up on San Marcos Pass? He found himself hoping unreasonably that he’d find something on her car the next day, even though he knew it unlikely, and even though he knew if he did, he had a helluva bigger problem on his hands. But…Keara’s new admission that she might have overreacted and the sadness on her face as she said it tugged at something inside him. He wanted to pull her onto his lap and wrap his arms around her.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” he finally said, not sure if she was going to take that as reassuring or an indictment. She just nodded, her morose lethargy heart-tugging.

“You look tired,” he said, standing. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

As Maeve walked him to the door, he asked her in a low voice, “Is she okay?”

Maeve nodded, her mouth tightened into a thin scarlet line, eyes narrowed. “Shane. I’m worried about her.”

He stopped, glanced over Maeve’s shoulder at Keara, staring into space.

“You think she’s hurt? Did they miss something at the hospital?”

“No.” Maeve shook her head. “She’s just going through a difficult time right now. She just needs a friend, I think.”

He met her eyes. What was she saying? “We…I…”

“You two were friends. A long time ago.”

“Yeah.”

“Just be a friend to her again, then,” Maeve said gently.

He nodded and left, about a hundred questions bouncing around in his brain. What the hell was going on? And why should he even care?

But he did.

* * *

As he’d said he would, Shane picked her up and drove her, again in the police cruiser, to the station to fill out the report. She repeated everything that had happened, including the fact that she’d thought the vehicle forced her to the side,

She could tell from the look on the officer’s face who took her report that people probably told him stories about mysterious vanishing vehicles forcing them off the road, into telephone poles, and over curbs all the time. They thought she was just making it up so she wouldn’t have to take the blame for the accident. She could tell.

It annoyed her because she wouldn’t make something up. Sure, she’d probably overreacted to the vehicle being there, but she wasn’t inventing the whole thing. There had been someone following her too close, for whatever reason, and even if it wasn’t totally his fault she’d driven over the side of the mountain, he had been a jerk. She could still be angry about that.

Shane kept his expression carefully neutral as she made the report, unlike the other officer who didn’t much hide his disbelief, and she wondered what Shane was really thinking. About her. She didn’t want him to think she was avoiding blame.

Shane told her it wasn’t likely her car would be able to be repaired. Great. She’d have to see what the insurance company offered her, but now she was stuck in Kilkenny with no car until then, and until she could buy a new one. Just effing great.

When they stepped outside the small police office into bright sunshine and cool mountain air, she glanced at him.

“What?” he asked, looking at her.

She hesitated then said, “I want to have sex.”

Shane stopped walking. Glanced at his watch. “We’ll have to be fast. I’ve only twenty minutes left in my lunch break.”

She gave a strangled laugh. “I didn’t mean right this minute.”

“I’ll call Jim,” he said, taking her hand and leading her down the sidewalk at a near-run. “He’ll cover for me for an hour.”

“Shane!”

He slanted a glance at her. “I guess we’ll go to my place.”

“Shane!”

He felt like he was dragging her along and he paused, reminded of her recent injuries. “You feel up to this?” He had to ask. But if she said no…

“Well…I am still pretty sore…”

“We’ll be careful.”

They arrived at his car and he handed her in, then leaped into the driver’s seat. He debated putting lights and siren on. Nah, he’d get in trouble if anyone found out he was racing home for sex. He hardened painfully.

“I don’t even know where you live,” Keara said.

“Over on Shillelagh Road.”

“A house?”

“Yup.” He drove with determined, focused speed the short distance to his house, glancing sideways at Keara. Her fingers twisted around each other in her lap, but she hadn’t told him to take her home. Yet.

He pulled into the driveway in front of the double-car garage.

“Nice place.”

He leaped out of the car and dashed around to help Keara.

“Yeah. Thanks. My dad built it a few years back.”

Holding one of her hands in his left, he unlocked the front door with his right hand, then stepped into the foyer and punched the code into the alarm system while kicking the door shut behind him.