Legends Lake

by JoAnn Ross

  While she’d never regret that night because of her son, Kate was discovering that love with Alec was so very different from that blinding passion she’d shared for that single night with Jamie’s natural father. Instead of exploding outward, it narrowed, as if she were viewing this glorious new world through the wrong end of a telescope. She found herself fascinated by every little thing about him: the way he made eye contact with her children when they were talking to him; the way he’d never shave until after they breezed Legends Lake, as if harboring some subconscious superstition; those little lines that crinkled outward from his eyes when he smiled, which was more and more often, even while they made love, which was another revelation, since she never would have imagined it was possible to laugh in bed.

  She loved the feel of him, hard male angles to her soft curves. She loved the taste of him as she kissed her way down the rigid muscles of his chest that reminded her of her grandmother Fitzpatrick’s old wooden washboard. She loved the scent of him, leather and saddle soap blended with natural male. She loved that part of him that made him so different, as smooth and hard as marble, but so much hotter. Hotter than the rest of him, as hot as she’d feel beneath her own skin.

  “You realize, don’t you,” Alec murmured as he buttoned his shirt, “that if you keep looking at me like that, I’m never going to get out of here before the kids wake up.” They’d agreed, early on, that he’d not be seen spending the night in her room.

  “I like looking at you.”

  He laughed at that. A soft sound, in deference to his daughter sleeping across the hall, but it still slipped beneath her flesh and warmed her all over again. “Wench.”

  “Aye.” She stretched like a sleek, smug, satisfied cat. “Which is coming as a great surprise. But I’m enjoying it quite a bit.”

  Her pulse spiked when he unbuttoned his jeans again in order to tuck in the shirt he’d finally found lying on the floor beneath the wing chair in the far corner of the room.

  “Well, that makes two of us.” The mattress sighed as he sat down on the edge of it and ran a hand down her flushed, sated body, from shoulder to thigh. “It’ll be dawn soon. I didn’t let you get much rest.”

  “Nor I you.”

  “Perhaps you ought to sleep in.”

  “That sounds lovely. But there’s breakfast waiting to be cooked. Children to get off to school.” His light, caressing touch made her want to sigh. “And Legends Lake to breeze.”

  “We could always put that off until later. Maybe after lunch.” His tone was casual. Too casual.

  “It’s not like you to be changing his schedule. Especially since we didn’t work with him yesterday because of Jamie’s birthday party.”

  “It’s no big deal.” He shrugged. “Changing the time isn’t going to make any difference.”

  “And what will you be doing while I’m supposed to be catching up on my beauty sleep?”

  “Not much.” He framed her face and gave her a light kiss. “This and that.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “I’ve been known to do a bit of that myself, from time to time. Tell me, Alec, would you possibly be doing any of either this or that in Galway?”

  He’d been skimming his thumb along her lips, but at her words, he dropped his hands. “Read my mind, did you?”

  The attempt at levity fell as flat as a stone off the top of the cliff. “No. I watched you yesterday, talking with Quinn. As well as Michael and Brendan. It was obvious from your expressions that you were not discussing such casual male things as horses or football.”

  “They love you. And they understand why I have to do what I have to do.”

  “And don’t you sound just like one of your American western movies,” she countered. “How interesting that they’d be understanding. While I’m not.”

  “The bastard hurt you, Kate.”

  “And I hurt him back. With the shovel. Which is why he’s in hospital.”

  “But he won’t be for long.”

  “Then he’ll be behind bars, where he won’t be able to bother me or mine.”

  “I only wish it were that simple. Quinn warned him once. And he came back.”

  “Aye. But I refused to listen to Quinn when he wanted me to call the Garda last time. This time I did.”

  “The police have to work within the law. They can only do so much.”

  “And you’d be working outside the law? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “If it comes to that, sure.”

  “Are you mad?” She hitched herself up in bed and stared at him. “Can’t you see he’s not worth putting yourself at risk in such a reckless way?”

  “You’re my woman, Kate. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

  “Your woman?”

  “You said it,” he reminded her. “When I took you against the door.”

  She tilted her head and studied him. “Would you be considering me your property, then? Like a lorry or a horse you’ve bought at auction?”

  “No. I’d be considering you the woman I love and I’m damned if that son of a bitch will ever—so long as I’m alive—lay a hand on you or Jamie. Is that clear?”

  “Not entirely. Would you be referring to a love such as that of your kiss that day on the strand? A familial type? As you’d have for your cousin?”

  “Sugar, what you and I have going for us is undoubtedly illegal for cousins, even in Kentucky.” He blew out a long, frustrated breath. Flexed his fingers and looked about as uncomfortable as she’d ever seen him. “Okay, here’s the deal: I love you, Kate. To distraction. I sure didn’t come here looking for this and I don’t have any idea if it’s destiny, magic, or just plain good luck. But it doesn’t matter, because whatever the reason, it doesn’t change the fact that somehow, when I wasn’t looking, I fell for you. Hard.”

  “You don’t sound very pleased about that.”

  “I’m not pleased because I just realized it last night and wanted to tell you in my own way. And my own time.”

  “What a surprise you’d be wanting to control the situation.”

  Either her dry tone flew over his head or he didn’t want to get sidetracked. “As I said, I haven’t had time to think it through. But even before it sunk in, I’d decided to go to Galway. To make sure that O’Sullivan never hurts you again.”

  “I love you, too,” she said. It should have been simple. But, of course, it wasn’t.

  “Well, isn’t that convenient.” He ducked his head again and kissed her. Harder this time. Longer. Until her breath was clogging up in her lungs and she’d almost forgotten what she’d wanted to say.

  “I’ve nothing to offer you.” She had a husband. A husband who would undoubtedly try to make her pay if he were to learn that she’d taken up with another man.

  “Shut up.” His gentle tone and the light touch of his mouth against her frowning one took the sting out of his words. “The woman I love is too intelligent to even think such a thing. You’ve already given me more than I dared ask for. If it’s all I can ever have, you won’t find me complaining.”

  He touched a finger to her lips when she began to open her mouth to argue. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But you belong to me, Kate. The same way I belong to you. So we can work things out, somehow. Okay?”

  Unable to get the words past the lump in her throat, she could only nod. And sink into the long leisurely final kiss he gave her before slipping out of the bedroom and down the stairs. She stood in the window, watching as he left the house. She was still standing there, arms wrapped tightly around herself, as she watched him drive away from the stud, headed on the northern road to Galway.

  Galway City was set like a jewel in a stunning and wild expanse of wide bay, stony hills and dark bog. It was a seaport town, where the past still lingered in its narrow alleys, cobblestone lanes, medieval arches and gates, which had once signified the “fourteen tribes of Galway,” those Norman market families who’d ruled the strategic location on the salmon-silvered River Corrib l
ike a private fiefdom deep in hostile Irish territory.

  Following the directions Brendan had given him, Alec took the bridge over the river, driving past the cathedral that dominated the skyline. He supposed that had the day not been such a gray and soft one, the sun on those stained windows could be dazzling.

  The hospital where Cadel O’Sullivan had been taken was a typical institutional building, though Alec did, on some absent level, admire the way the architect had incorporated replicas of the Gothic carved stone windows seen throughout the city. The varied languages he heard as he walked by the people sitting in the chairs lined up in rows in the waiting room were more diverse than was the norm in western Ireland.

  The woman at the reception desk was occupied with a family of five, whose very vocal youngest child had fallen off his bicycle in Eyre Square and possibly broken his arm. Thanking Kate’s Fates, he strolled past the sign asking all visitors to please stop and check in as if he belonged there, made his way to the bank of elevators and took one to the fourth floor.

  Good fortune continued to be with him, as the nurses at the desk on this floor were distracted by a class of harried medical students following a physician around on his morning rounds. Thinking that Jamie would be proud of his spy abilities, Alec strolled the floor until he viewed an orderly rolling a cart filled with bed linens down the hallway to the supply closet. He followed him, then passed him by on a brisk, determined stride that suggested he had somewhere important to go. After making another circle of the floor, he returned to the closet.

  Wearing a white lab coat he hoped would give him authority, he went straight to O’Sullivan’s room. Kate’s husband was lying on his back, his rattling snores making him sound like a bear in deep hibernation. He was a large man, with a florid face and a mean mouth that looked threatening, even in sleep. His head was bound in a white bandage; an IV drip ran from a bottle hanging from a metal stand beside the bed. He had huge arms the size of smoked hams and thickets of hair on the backs of his brawny hands, one of which was handcuffed to the raised rail of the hospital bed.

  When Alec thought of those meaty hands striking Kate and her son, he was hit with a flood of dark and deadly emotions like those he’d experienced when Lady Justice had gone down, multiplied a thousand fold. The idea that he’d not been able to keep Kate safe from this monster was eating away at him like battery acid in the gut. For the first time in his life he fully understood the savage impulse to commit murder.

  He considered the logistics of dragging O’Sullivan over to the rain-streaked window—which had a view of the cathedral’s rose window—and shoving him out onto the tidy courtyard below. Was four stories even a far enough fall to kill a man?

  O’Sullivan stirred. Then glared up at Alec. “You’d best be the doctor come to sign the fucking order for pain-killer.”

  “What’s the matter, O’Sullivan? Got yourself a headache?”

  His mean eyes narrowed a bit at the American accent, but he didn’t dwell on it. “I’ve been telling those nurses since I got here that I need something for the pain. And I’m still fucking waiting for the fucking injection.”

  “You’re not the only patient on the floor. I imagine the nurses have more important things to do than ease any aches and pains of a wife beater.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “You know, you really need to add some variety to your language,” Alec replied mildly. “You’re not doing your part to live up to the long tradition of the Irish as word artists.” His voice was viciously pleasant. “As for who I am”—he curled his fingers around the thick neck and pressed his thumb against O’Sullivan’s windpipe—“I’m the guy who’s going to cut off your balls with a rusty knife and stuff them down your throat if you so much as think about Kate or those kids again. Understand?”

  The bully’s eyes bulged in his poppy-red face.

  “I can’t hear you,” Alex said.

  The natural meanness in O’Sullivan’s eyes turned to fear. Then, as he began to gasp, choking for lifesaving air, to panic.

  “Want to try that one more time?” Alec watched him carefully as he sunk his thumb deeper. “You realize, of course, that I could probably kill you right here, right now, and I doubt if anyone would care.” Deeper still, past cords and muscle. “Because most people—decent people—don’t give a shit about men who get off on hitting women and children. You’d serve a more useful purpose fertilizing flowers in the graveyard.”

  Those frightened eyes slowly rolled back in O’Sullivan’s head, revealing the whites. Alec fought back his temper and reluctantly reminded himself that if he did what he wanted to do, he’d only succeed in bringing Kate more pain.

  He removed his hands and as Kate’s husband began choking and wheezing, leaned down over the railing. “The name’s MacKenna. Alec MacKenna. Remember it, O’Sullivan. And remember this, as well.” He pulled out a pocketknife, flipped it open, and skimmed the tip of the blade down the center of the sheet, over the other man’s most vulnerable body parts. “If you ever show your face again in Castlelough, you’re a dead man.”

  Alec heard a gasp from behind him and glanced back over his shoulder. A young brunette nurse was standing in the doorway, her hand to her throat. He shot Kate’s husband, who was still struggling to breathe, one last warning glare. Then pocketed the knife and walked past the nurse out of the room.

  She caught up with him at the elevator. “Excuse me, sir.”

  He sighed. Then turned, half expecting to see that she’d rounded up some security guards to put him away. But she was all alone.

  “Yes?” he asked with a mildness that was exceedingly hard to come by, since fury still had him in its grip.

  Her face was sober. Her eyes appraising. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you?” he repeated, surprised by the emotion in those two little words.

  “None of us like taking care of the horrid man,” she divulged, sweeping a hand back toward the nurses’ station. “We have to give him the IVs, since to not do so would be to endanger his life, which we couldn’t, in good conscience, do. But he won’t be receiving any pain medication while he’s here in hospital. And he’ll be finding that the more those fluids start running through him, his light won’t be answered quite as quickly as he might wish.”

  “Well, that’s some good news.” He managed a half smile. “Thank you. And the others, as well.”

  “No problem.” She turned, as if to leave, then blurted out, “Me father beat me mother.”

  He saw the shadows in her eyes. Recognized them from the ones that had darkened his heart for so many years. “Mine too.”

  This time they both smiled. A secret had been shared, and in the sharing a bit of the stigma neither should have felt, but sometimes still did, was removed.

  The elevator door opened. “Good day, nurse”—he glanced at the name tag pinned to her uniform—“Duggan.”

  “God Bless,” she responded as he stepped into the elevator, his mind already on Kate.

  30

  A FULL , MILK-WHITE MOON rode high in the midnight sky like a ghost galleon, casting a silver light over the ancient forest, illuminating Kate as she slipped away from the house, headed toward a grove of oak trees that had managed to survive the axe when Richard II had plundered Irish woodlands for the timber to build the roof of London’s Westminster Hall. Her hooded white cape glistened in the swirling mists of fog draped like gossamer silken veils over the moon, dimming its light.

  It was Beltane, the Time of Brightness in the Celtic eightfold year, when the earth was reborn out of winter’s icy death. The night was silent save for the soft sighs of the sea, the occasional sweet, lonely cry of an owl hidden somewhere in the treetops calling for his mate, and the stirring of about-to-be-born wildflowers beneath the earth. The familiar night sounds were primal music to Kate’s ears, reaching into her soul, stirring the wildness that lurked deep in her heart.

  It was music from an ancient time, a time when primitive man trembled with fea
r against the unseen denizens of the dark night. A time when the druids ruled with wisdom and power.

  A time of magic.

  The trees appeared black in the night. In the center of the grove stood the sacred circle of stones. She entered the circle and turned her face skyward, lifting her arms, palms turned upward, toward the spinning stars, and received a warm infusion of energy from Mother Moon.

  Her greeting completed, Kate cast her circle with the ancient, singing words she’d learned in her mother’s womb, who’d learned them from her mother, who in turn had learned them from hers, going back through the centuries to the Celts. Once the circle was completed, she began scattering the fragrant flower petals she’d carried to the grove in a sally basket. The powers of feminine clairvoyance of the sally would be strengthened beneath the mystical nature of the full moon. Especially tonight, on this first of the Celtic fire festivals.

  She’d told the MacKenna that she wasn’t one to be dancing nude in circles of stone. But since Beltane required her to be skyclad, Kate slipped off the hooded cape and let it fall off her shoulders onto the ground. The only thing she wore now was a silver amulet in the shape of a wheel, the three spokes depicting the trinity of Earth, Man, and the Otherworld. She opened the amulet, took out a small vial of scented oil, then sprinkled the oil over the wood she’d stacked in the circle that morning.

  With the powers of midnight and Beltane vibrating through her, she held her hands over the wood, instantly igniting them in a whoosh of wind and flame. The wind picked up, catching her long hair, whipping it into a wild froth around her face.

  Then, closing her eyes, still singing, Kate lifted her face and her arms to the moon once more and began to dance the ancient pattern.

  * * *

  Alec had followed her to the grove. Sensing, with his newly discovered intuition, that she needed some time alone, he stayed in the shadows of the trees, keeping her in view, but not invading her privacy. He’d seen other circles on earlier trips to Ireland. But none like this: sixteen man-size standing stones surrounding a huge recumbent stone on which lines and swirls had been chiseled. Alec could feel the powerful force protecting the circle; a low, humming sound vibrated from the very heart of the stones.