The Irish Trilogy by Nora Roberts

by Nora Roberts

“That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve just told you.”

  She shook her head, still cautious. “You told me you need a bookkeeper. I imagine there’re plenty of them in America.”

  “Let’s just say I like your style.” Bending, he picked up the rake and replaced it. He wondered briefly if she would have used it. Yes, indeed, he thought, grinning to himself. Oh, yes, indeed.

  “For all you know, I can’t add two and two.”

  “Mrs. Malloy and O’Donnelly at the dry goods say differently.” He leaned back against a workbench. Studying her from there, he decided he’d spoken no less than the truth. Even wet and dripping, she was a pleasure to look at.

  “Mrs. Malloy. You’ve spoken to her? You went to Mr. O’Donnelly and asked questions about me?”

  “Just checking your references.”

  “No one told you to go poking about the town asking questions about me.”

  “Business, Irish. Strictly business. What I found out is that you’re neat as a pin and dependable. Your figures tally and your books are clean. That’s good enough for me.”

  “This is crazy.” Struggling against a surge of excitement, she dragged a hand through her still-dripping hair. “A body doesn’t hire someone they’ve known only a few days.”

  “Irish, people are hired after a ten-minute interview.”

  “That’s not what I mean. This isn’t a matter of me giving you a résumé, then catching a bus to take a new job across town. You’re talking about me coming to America and taking on a job that’s bigger than the inn, the farm and the dry goods put together.”

  He only moved his shoulders. “It’s just a matter of more figures, isn’t it? You’re talking about going north in a year, I’m giving you a chance to go to America now. Make the break.”

  “It’s not so simple.” Along with the excitement was a growing panic. Wasn’t this what she’d always wanted? Now that it was nearly as close as a handspan, she was terrified.

  “It’s a gamble.” He was watching her again in that quiet, intense way. “Most things worth winning are. I’ll pay for your ticket as a sign of good faith. You’ll start out at a weekly salary.” He considered a moment, then named a figure that had her mouth dropping open. “If it works out, there’ll be a ten percent raise in six months. For that you take care of all the details, all the figures, all the bills. I’ll want a weekly report. We’ll leave in two days.”

  “Two days?” She was numb now, so numb she could only stare at him. “But even if I agreed, I could never be ready to leave by then.”

  “All you have to do is pack and say your goodbyes. I’ll handle the rest.”

  “But I—”

  “You have to make up your mind, Erin. Stay or go.” He stepped toward her again. “If you stay, you’ll be safe, and you’ll always wonder what if.”

  He was right. The question was already nagging at her. “If I go, where will I live?”

  “I’ve got plenty of room.”

  “No.” On this she would have to be firm, right from the start. “I won’t agree to that. I may say I’ll work for you, but I won’t live with you.”

  “It’s your choice.” Again he moved his shoulders as if it didn’t matter. He’d already anticipated her balking there. “I don’t imagine Adelia would have any problem putting you up. In fact, I think you know she’d love to have you with her. It wouldn’t be charity,” he said, keeping one step ahead of her. “You’d be bringing in a wage. You could get your own place, for that matter, but I think you’d be more comfortable with your cousin at first. And our farms are close enough to make it convenient.”

  “I’ll talk to her.” Sometime during the last two minutes her mind had been made up. She was going. Her bridges might not be burning behind her, but they were certainly smoking. “I’ll have to speak to my family, as well, but I’d like to accept your offer.”

  She held out her hand. Burke took it just as casually, though he wondered about the wild surge of relief that coursed through him. “I expect a day’s work for a day’s pay. I don’t doubt you’ll give it to me.”

  “That I will. I’m grateful for the chance.”

  “I’ll remind you of that after you’ve spent a few days sorting through the mess my last bookkeeper left me with.”

  She stood very still for a moment, letting it all soak in, layer by layer. Then she spun in a quick circle and laughed. “I can’t believe it. America! It’s like some kind of a mad dream. I’ve hardly been more than fifty kilometers from Skibbereen, and now I’m going thousands in the blink of an eye.”

  He liked to see her this way, her face flushed with pleasure, her eyes lit with it. And the rain still drummed on the roof. “It takes a bit longer than that to cross the Atlantic.”

  “Don’t be so literal.” But she was too excited to take offense. “In a matter of days I’ll be in a new country, a new place, a new job. New money.”

  He started to reach for a cigar, then thought better of it. “The money puts a gleam in your eye.”

  “Anyone who’s ever been poor gleams a bit when they’ve got enough money.”

  He acknowledged this with a nod. He’d been poor, but he doubted Erin would understand that degree of poverty. He appreciated money, though if he lost it, as he had before, he would simply shake the dust off his shoes and make more. “You’ll earn it.”

  “I wouldn’t be having it any other way.” She stopped as reality began to seep through. “But I need a passport and the green card that allows you to work. There must be a pile of papers that have to be processed.”

  “I told you I’d see to it.” He drew a paper out of his pocket. “Fill this out and drop it off at the inn tonight. It’s an application,” he explained as she studied it. “I’ve already arranged to have it processed tomorrow. Your passport and whatever else you need will be in Cork when we get there.”

  She tapped the paper slowly against her palm. “You were damn sure of yourself, weren’t you?”

  “It pays to be. You’ll need a picture they can use, too. A recent one.”

  “What if I’d said no?”

  He simply smiled. “Then you’d have been a fool and I’d have thrown the application away.”

  “I can’t figure you.” She tucked the application in the pocket of her baggy pants, but shook her head at him. “You’ve made me a very generous offer, and you’re giving me the opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. But even as you’re doing it, it doesn’t seem to matter to you one way or the other.”

  He remembered the surge of relief, but chose to ignore it. “Things matter too much to people. That’s how they get hurt.”

  “Are you saying that things don’t matter to you? Nothing at all? What about your farm?”

  He shifted a bit, surprised that the question, when she asked it, made him uncomfortable. “It’s a place. A comfortable and fairly profitable one at the moment. But that’s all it is. I don’t have the ties to it that you have to the land here, Erin. That’s why if I leave it, I will leave without a second glance. When you leave Ireland, no matter how much you want to go, you’re going to hurt.”

  “There’s nothing wrong in that,” she murmured. “It’s my home. It’s only right to miss your home.”

  “Some people don’t make homes. They just live somewhere and leave it at that.”

  She saw more clearly now, though the light was still dim. She saw, though she’d told herself she didn’t care, that there were places inside him no one, no woman, would ever touch. “That’s a cold and sorry way to live.”

  “It’s a choice,” he corrected. Then he pushed the subject aside. “Make sure you get me the application tonight. I’m leaving for Cork first thing in the morning.”

  “But you said we weren’t going f
or a couple of days.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “All right, then. I should be getting along. There’s a lot to be done.”

  “There’s something else I think we should get out of the way.” He rocked back on his heels a moment, then stunned her by grabbing both her arms and dragging her against him. “This has nothing to do with business.”

  Infuriated, she brought her hands to his chest and gave him one hard shove. It didn’t budge him an inch. Then he clamped his mouth down on hers, rough and ready and with no patience at all.

  She would have ripped and clawed at him. She would have struggled and bit and cursed. That was what she told herself she would have done if she hadn’t been so stunned by the heat. His lips were firm. That she already knew. But she hadn’t known they could be so hot, so passionate, so tempting.

  Her head filled with sounds—louder, deeper sounds than the rain that drove furiously on the roof above. Her hands were trapped between their bodies so that she could feel the pounding of a heart without knowing which of them it came from.

  This is what the apple must have tasted like when Eve took the first forbidden bite, she thought giddily. Succulent, tart, unbearably delicious. Nothing else ever tasted would be as satisfying. Lost in the flavor, she parted her lips and let him take more.

  He’d known what he’d wanted but hadn’t been sure what to expect. If she’d hissed at him, he would have ignored her and taken his fill. If she’d struck out at him in anger, he would have taken her struggles in stride and enjoyed the fury. He’d fought or gambled for everything he’d wanted all of his life. For days he’d been trying to convince himself that Erin McKinnon was no different. But she was.

  She gave. After the first stunned instant she gave passionately, with the kind of desperation that left him shaken and edgy for more. Her mouth was avid and mobile, her body taut and trembling. He could feel the raw, jagged need raging through her, rising, speeding up to meet and match his own.

  He wanted to take her there, on the damp floor with the smell of rain and earth everywhere. He wanted her to touch him, to feel those capable hands on his flesh. To hear her say his name. To watch her eyes go dark as midnight as he covered her body with his. It could be now. He could feel it in the press of her body against his, in the give of her mouth.

  It could be now. There had been times, and there had been women with whom he wouldn’t have hesitated. Why he did so now he couldn’t be sure. But he drew her away, though his hands stayed on her shoulders and his eyes stayed on hers as they slowly fluttered open.

  She couldn’t speak, not for a moment. The feeling was so immense it left no room for words. She’d never known that a body could be filled so quickly with sensations or that a mind could be emptied of them just as swiftly. She knew now. If anyone had told her that the world could change in the single beat of a heart, she would have laughed. Now she understood.

  He didn’t speak. Erin struggled to find her footing as he kept his silence. She couldn’t allow herself that kind of madness, not again. If she were to travel an ocean with him, work for him, understand him just a little, she couldn’t let this happen again. Not with a man like him. Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself. No, never with him. If the past few moments had taught her anything, it was that he was a man who knew women and who understood their weaknesses very well.

  “You had no right to do that.” She didn’t unleash her temper, knowing she hadn’t the energy left for it.

  He was shaken, down to the bone, down to the heart, but it wasn’t the time to dwell on it. “It wasn’t a matter of right but of want. That was a proper kiss, Irish, and we needed to get it out of our systems whether you were coming with me or not.”

  She nodded, hoping she sounded as casual as he. She’d rather have died on the spot than have admitted her own inexperience. “Now that our systems are clear, there’ll be no need for it to happen again.”

  “Don’t ask me for promises. You’ll be disappointed.” He strolled to the door, pushing it open so that the wind and rain lashed their way in. It helped cool his head and steady his heart rate. “You can talk to Dee and Travis when you bring the papers in. Give your family my best.”

  Then he was gone, into the storm. Though Erin dashed to the door, he was only a quickly fading shadow in the gloom.

  A shadow, she thought, whom she knew nothing about. And she would be going with him to America.

  Chapter Four

  America. Erin wasn’t naive enough to believe the streets were paved with gold, but she was determined to make it the land of opportunity. Her opportunity.

  It was the speed of things that struck her first, the hurry every living soul seemed to be in. Well, she was in a bit of a hurry herself, she decided as she sat in the back of her cousin’s station wagon and tried not to gawk.

  The cold had surprised her, too, a numbing, bone-chilling cold she’d never experienced in the mild Irish climate. But the snow was novelty enough to make it a small inconvenience. Piles of it, more than she’d ever seen, rolling over the gentle hills and heaped on the sides of the road. It was a different sky above, different air around her. So what if she gawked, Erin thought to herself, and she smiled as she tried to see everything at once.

  Burke had been true to his word. The paperwork had gone so smoothly that in a matter of days after he’d offered her the job she’d been across the Atlantic. He’d left her with her cousin’s family at the airport in Virginia, with a casual comment that he’d see her in a couple of days, after she’d settled in. Just like that. Erin was still trying to catch her breath.

  She’d hoped he’d say more. She’d hoped—perhaps foolishly—that he would seem more pleased that she was there. She’d even waited to see that half smile, that dark amusement in his eyes, or to feel the flick of his finger down her cheek. But he’d only dismissed her as an employer dismisses an employee. Erin reminded herself that was precisely what they were now. There would be no more waltzes or wild embraces.

  Did she wish there would be? The devil of it was she’d done just as much thinking about Burke Logan as she had about coming to America. Something had told her that they were both chances—the man and the country. Sometime, somehow, she’d begun to mix them together and had discovered she wanted both. She knew she was being foolish again and resolved to settle for the land.

  It was beautiful. The mountains dark in the distance reminded her just enough of home to make her comfortable, while the whiz of the cars beside them in three lanes were foreign enough to add excitement. Erin found it a palatable combination and was already hoping for more.

  Adelia shifted in her seat so that she could smile back at her cousin. “I remember my first day here, when Uncle Paddy picked me up at that same airport. I felt like I’d been plopped down in the middle of a circus.”

  “I’ll get used to it.” Erin smiled and took another long look out the window. “I’ll get used to it very quickly, as soon as I believe I’m really here.”

  “I for one am grateful to Burke.” Distracted a moment, Dee murmured to Brady, who was fretting in his car seat, then soothed him with a stuffed dog. “It was never in my mind when we went to Ireland that we’d be bringing family back with us.”

  The guilt tingled a little, shadowing the pleasure. “I know it was all very sudden, and I’m beholden to you, Dee.”

  “Oh, what a pack of nonsense. I feel like a girl again, having my best friend come to stay. We’ll have a party.” The minute the thought struck, Adelia rolled with it. “A proper one, too, don’t you think, Travis?”

  “I think we could handle it.”

  “I don’t want you to go to any trouble,” Erin put in.

  “If you don’t let Dee go to any trouble, you’ll break her heart,” Travis said without embellishment. They crossed over the line into Maryland. “Nearly home now, love.”

&n
bsp; “I’m as excited to be back as I was to leave. Brendon, if you don’t stop teasing your sister you’ll be seeing nothing but the four walls of your room until morning.” Dee sighed a bit and shifted.

  “All right?” Travis sent her a quick, concerned glance.

  “They’re just active.” She patted his hand to make light of the discomfort. “Probably squabbling between themselves already.”

  “I’d like to help with the children.” The closer they came, the more Erin’s nerves began to jump. “Or however else I can to pay you back for taking me in this way.”

  “You’re family,” Adelia said simply. Then she sat up straighter as they drove between the stone pillars that led to home. “Welcome to Royal Meadows, cousin. Be happy.”

  Erin didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Something grand, surely. She wasn’t disappointed. The sun shone hard on the February snow, causing the thin crust to glitter and shine. Acres of it, Erin thought. This world was white and gleaming. Even the trees were coated with it, their bare black branches mantled with snow and dripping with cold, clear ice. Like a fairyland, she mused, then called herself foolish.

  When the house came into view, she could only stare. She’d never seen anything so big or so lovely. The stone rose up as sturdy as it was majestic from the white base of snow. Charm was added by the wrought-iron-trimmed balconies that graced the windows.

  “It’s beautiful,” Erin murmured. “It’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’ve always thought so, too.” Dee reached over to unhook Brady as Travis brought the car to a halt. “And it’s so good to see it again. Come now, my lad, we’re home.”

  “Uncle Paddy!” From the backseat, both Brendon and Keeley began to shout. Then they were out and kicking through the snow. A short, stocky man with wiry gray hair and a face like an elf spread his arms wide for them.

  “Give me the baby, missy,” Hannah told Dee. “You’re already carrying two. And we’ll let the men handle the bags while you come in for a nice cup of tea and put your feet up.”