An Irish Rogue (Contemporary Romance)

Excerpt

Declan Walsh pounded a fist into his palm. “Bollix, Tim. I can nail a couple of boards together, but I’m a stonemason, not a carpenter—and hardly that, if truth be known. You’ve told these people I’m a bloody expert.” He fixed his cousin with a stare. “An idiot would find me out. Then what am I to do?”

“I don’t see you’ve a choice, Dekko. But no matter. Just pay attention to what I tell ya, and you’ll catch on. Finish carpentry’s easy enough to learn.”

Tim, older by ten years, heavier by thirty pounds, focused on the road and clamped one booted foot down on the aging pickup’s accelerator. With a bone-rattling thump, the green Ford paused before lurching ahead.

“These are women, boyo.” His cousin rolled his eyes. “Pulchritudinous females. They don’t know jack squat about carpentry.” He zipped onto an exit lane and braked for a traffic light. “As long as you look like you know what you’re doing, they’ll go about their business and you can go about yours.”

Declan uttered an expletive. “It won’t work, Tim. Not in five lifetimes. What in the name of the saints were you thinking?” He stared at his cousin’s ruddy cheeks, then at the road ahead. How the bloody hell he’d let Tim talk him into this addle pated scheme, he didn’t know. His cousin hadn’t changed a whit since he immigrated to California. He still had a rare way with words.

One thing was certain. Declan knew he’d never pass for the creative-genius master carpenter Tim had claimed him to be. His business was finishing his novel and staying away from Immigration Enforcement Agent Henderson and the rest of those ICE buggers before they had him back to Ireland.

“A man without a green card has to watch his step, all right. But leave it to old Tim. I told ya I’d fix it fer ya, and I will.” The light turned green, and Tim shifted gears. The truck roared ahead. “Trust me. This is the best way. The Feds will never find you here.” Neither would his publisher. Declan closed his fingers around the handgrip and hung on as the truck snaked around ruts in the aging blacktop. The road twisted and turned as it skirted the base of the mountain. Redwoods and tanbark oaks clustered on knolls high above the narrow blacktop, their roots partially exposed from seasonal rains. Off to his right, he gazed at the six-hundred-foot drop to grey-spotted boulders and the river swirling below and felt a glimmer of hope. In these hills a man might simply disappear.

Tim jerked the pickup onto a winding, wheel-rutted road that threaded itself between log cabins and a couple of flat, ranch-style homes surrounded by a dense redwood growth. A half mile farther the road abruptly ended at a cattle guard. Tim swerved to the right, and steered the pickup between twin stone pillars, their mortar crumbling. They jounced along a dirt lane flanked by apple trees, the lichen-covered trunks grey-green in the afternoon sun. An old orchard, by at least fifty years, Declan guessed. Fallen trees lay scattered among the spring grass, decayed and neglected. Ah, well. That, at least, he could rectify. He’d worked his uncle’s apple orchard near Dungarvan often enough. He could rebuild the gateposts, too. But as for the finish carpentry, he had neither the skill nor the experience.

“The ladies’ll be real happy to see ya,” Tim said, his Waterford brogue more pronounced when he was in a jovial mood. His tone suggested to Declan it might be the other way around. His cousin had always had an eye for women.

Tim scratched his forehead with one chunky hand. “I told Laverne you’d probably want to stay nearby. Get close to your work, like.”

Declan frowned. As if he had a choice. Why the hell hadn’t he got his work visa sorted out before ICE was tipped off? His jerk of a boss on his last job knew when the extension had to be filed. He’d probably accidentally tossed it in the ash can. Now Declan had to hide out like some damned fugitive until the papers Tim filed could be processed and the duplicate mailed back, or risk deportation.

He cocked his head toward Tim. “What’s the house needin’?”

Tim let out a gust of air. “It’s a bleedin’ monstrosity, it is. Needs everything.”

It figures. Declan rested his chin between thumb and forefinger. “What are they like, these women?”

The older man whistled. “The aunt’s name is Laverne Farris. She’s a bit over the top. Eccentric like, but a real looker, if I do say so. Her two nieces live with her. One’s a new-age sort. Always brewin’ up herb potions ‘n dabblin’ with crystals. T’other one owns a bookshop in Riverton. She’s the sensible one. Oh, and there’s the boyfriend.” Tim grinned. “You’ll meet him soon enough. Soon to be a permanent fixture around the place, I’ve heard. A talker but ‘bout as useless as they come.”

Declan groaned. That’s all he needed. A trio of eccentric females, a gab-happy male, and an albatross of a house needing work he wasn’t sure he could do.

They topped a rise and descended into a meadow. The most unusual house Declan had ever seen dominated the landscape.

Jaysus, what a mix-up! The structure jutted off in several directions with dozens of narrow windows, tiny cupolas, and an honest-to-goodness slate roof. Weathered shingles covered the sides, and a verandah wrapped around the structure. Not Victorian or a turn-of-the century bungalow, but rather a hodgepodge of the two.

At the edge of a sloping lawn, a whimsical sculpted monk stood watch over an herb bed, and in the center of a ragged patch of grass sat a round fountain. Water spurted from a gargoyle’s mouth and dribbled into a pond covered with lily pads.

Tim braked in front of the verandah and they climbed out. With one hand on the car door, Declan made another quick appraisal of the exterior. Hundreds of intricate gingerbread bits of trim marched around the eaves. Curved shingles, shaped pilasters at each corner, a parapet, and second story sloping dormers. It was a house caught in a time warp. He had the sinking feeling he was about to embark on an impossibility.

But you don’t have a choice. Deportation officers checked all the regular job sites. They’d have him on the next plane to Dublin if he so much as set foot within five miles of San Francisco, which is why Tim had shuttled him down to the Central Coast.

Well, boyo, you’re up against it now.