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Date Posted: 23:27:25 07/31/10 Sat
Author: celtgirl
Subject: Thank ye kindly ladies, for the birthday wishes. Now, Nalana we can't have ye missin' me too much- so I'll make a brief appearance inside. :) Snippet inside>>>
In reply to: E 's message, "Happy birthday, Casey. Here's a little joke in your honor." on 22:27:48 07/30/10 Fri

copyright 2010 Cindy Brandner

David was being tossed on the deck of helicopter, the thunk of the rotor blades like the blow of a sledgehammer to his fragile skull. There was a terrible noise off in the distance too, like a sheep being murdered. He chanced opening an eye. The helicopter tilted precariously to the side, and the noise of the blades stopped. The sheep was still in the process of being slaughtered however.

The light was a soft, ashen blue. David blinked, not registering for a moment where he was. He turned his head toward where he thought the door of the helicopter ought to be and thought he might throw up. There was something prickly and rank under his face. It felt oddly like straw.

“For the love of Christ- wake up man!”

The helicopter landed with a thunk. David was certain it jarred his brain out his left ear. He opened his other eye- and found himself face to face with Casey Riordan, who looked particularly forbidding in the dim light and not at all like a helicopter pilot.

“Might I ask,” the man said in a deceptively amiable tone, “what the hell yer doin’ sleepin’ off a drinkin’ spree in my sheep shed?”

David cast a bleary eye about, and saw that, indeed, he was not in a helicopter, nor even the toolshed, where Pamela had left him a pallet rolled up under the tool bench, for emergencies. It was pleasant in the toolshed, amongst the homey scents of wood and oil, and well maintained tools. It wasn’t pleasant in the sheep shed, in a pile of straw that wasn’t entirely fresh.

He sat up and automatically clutched his head. Surely this amount of pain wasn’t humanly possible or indicated that his brain had, indeed, detached itself from the skull and was sloshing about willy nilly.

“You reek of drink,” Casey said, his face the very definition of disapproval, though his one dimple had a crease to it, that said he was finding something amusing in David’s current state. “And ye’ve put Paudeen in a frightful mood. Ye’d best come in and clean up, give him back his wee house.”

David followed Casey’s broad back across the yard, toward the house. Paudeen gave him a baleful eye and a short, sharp bleat before trundling into the shed.

The house was wonderfully warm. Casey cast a glance over his shoulder and sighed. "Strip off in the boot room, Pamela will have yer head if ye come in the kitchen with that stink.”

David stripped down and then wondered what exactly he was meant to cover himself with. The woolen hats and scarves that hung from pegs hardly seemed adequate, and he was certain Pamela wouldn’t appreciate him waltzing into the kitchen in her raincoat. Nor would his dignity be helped by engulfing himself in one of Casey’s large sweaters.

His dilemma was answered by a large towel being thrust in his direction. He looked up to find an arched set of sooty brows, with an amused face below them.

“I’ve seen naked men before, David, you won’t shock my delicate sensibilities. I believe you know where the bath is- I suggest you take a very hot one. I’ll find something for you to wear before you’re done.”

He wrapped the towel around him, and hips swathed in fluffy blue, stepped into the kitchen.

Pamela was moving about the kitchen with brisk efficiency, taking out eggs and bread and bowls and a fry pan and Casey was sitting putting on his workboots.

“We did wonder how the hell ye managed to sleep through Paudeen’s great bleats, Lord knows we couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling entirely stripped of his dignity, such as it was. He still had no recollection of how he had wound up in the Riordan sheep shed.

“It’s no matter. Now go bath before we have to fumigate the kitchen.”

He could hear them laughing as he fled the kitchen in his towel.

He returned to the kitchen a half hour later, to find a hot pot of tea on the table along with a gently steaming plate of eggs and a crisp pile of golden brown toast.

Pamela nodded her head toward the table. “Sit and eat if you can, if not there’s whiskey on the sideboard- hair of the dog and all that. Sorry about the clothes but you’re a bit smaller than Casey and Pat, and a wee bit bigger than Conor.”

David sat. The bloody woman seemed to be getting a good laugh from his predicament. He also had an undignified suspicion that the jeans and flannel shirt he wore, were her own. They were clean and worn, but held a soft scent within them, that was unmistakably feminine.

Two cups of tea, two slices of toast and two servings of eggs did much to restore his view of the world. With his nausea quelled and the pounding in his head slightly subdued, he felt ready to attempt an explanation of his presence on the Riordan property.

“Memory return yet?” Casey asked, pouring himself a second cup of tea and nodding at David’s cup in question. David pushed the cup toward him, it would take several gallons to alleviate the dehydration in his system, he was sure.

“No, not entirely.” David rubbed the back of his head, there was a large goose egg there that was extremely tender to the touch. He did remember drinking, but surely not so much as to actually cause temporary amnesia. What the hell had he done last night?

Casey merely gave him a skeptical look and returned to finishing his breakfast.

David sat back and found that despite his aching head, and blank mind, he was relaxed. He always had this sense in the Riordan house. It was a lovely place, well built, cared for. But more than that it was a home. He could feel the contentment and love that resided here, the happiness that gave a home its core and welcome.

Casey and Pamela chatted quietly, in the instinctive way of couples who had their routines and patterns, a slow dance of daily matters and bits of news they needed the other to know. They included him in their talk, but didn’t seem to require answers from him, which was, considering the state of his head, David thought, just as well.

“Well, I’m off then darlin’.” Casey nodded at David, and treated him to a somewhat stern look that said he better not find him in the shed again any time soon. David nodded back, feeling the usual frisson of queasy apprehension that he did when one of those dark and forbidding Riordan looks was directed at him. Pat was a dab hand at such looks too, but Casey had it down to a fine art.

Pamela followed her husband to the door for a more personal goodbye. David could not help but watch the two of them. The contrast they presented, despite their like colouring, was beautiful. Frozen there for a moment as Casey cupped his wife’s jaw in one big hand and murmured something to her that set a flush along her cheekbones. They were like a painting done in oils and fine brushes, with morning light a frame of soft crimson and gold. Casey all hues of dark- from hair to stubble to his aura of strength and protection. Pamela, a contrast in her delicacy, with shades of blue coming through her ivory lines, revealing the core of steel at her centre. With Casey though the core seemed to melt, for she was soft and yielding to her husband, though a man like Casey Riordan would know and cherish his wife’s strength.

The painting moved, became life again, as Casey tipped Pamela’s face up and kissed her in a way that made David flush and look away. There was a fire there between them, that he had rarely witnessed between two people, married or otherwise. He envied them.

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