A Woman's Heart

by JoAnn Ross

  “Evenin’, Nora darlin’,” Brady greeted his daughter. He laid a hand on her shoulder and bestowed a sloppy kiss on her cheek.

  Then he grinned at Fionna. “Evening, Mam.”

  “Don’t ‘Evening, Mam,’ me,” Fionna shot back, her hands on her hips. “Not when you come home from the pub weaving like a salley tree in the wind.”

  “Would you not have me properly welcome our guest to the land of his ancestors?” Still using Nora for ballast, Brady waved his free hand toward the much taller man who’d come up beside him. “This fine fellow is none other than the famous American writer, Quinn Gallagher. Quinn, may I present my sharp-tongued but endearing mother, and my darling lovely daughter, Nora.”

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Gallagher,” Nora said politely to her guest—her paying guest, she reminded herself.

  Only an alert listener would have been able to detect the note of irritation in her voice. To think that he hadn’t been lying near death in some hospital emergency ward, that after all her worrying he’d merely been getting drunk in The Irish Rose pub with her father!

  “We were concerned you may have driven off the cliff on the way here from Shannon.”

  “I’m sorry.” Quinn’s words were far more slurred than Brady’s. “I never meant to cause anyone any concern.” His gaze moved from daughter to grandmother. “And I have no excuse for my inconsiderate behavior. Other than the fact that I lost track of the time.”

  “That’s likely enough, once my son begins spinning his tales,” Fionna allowed. “At least you had the good sense not to get behind the wheel.”

  With those words of absolution, Fionna turned and went back into the house. If Nora’s nerves hadn’t been so frazzled, she might have enjoyed watching the two men follow as meekly as newborn lambs.

  When she joined the three in the sitting room, Nora studied Quinn Gallagher more closely. Despite his appropriately contrite words, she thought that he was a hard, tough man. His face—all sharp angles and lean hollows, narrowing down to a firm unyielding boxer’s jaw—could have been roughly chiseled from stone. Too harsh to be considered lived-in, it revealed an arrogance and a remoteness that were in decided contrast to his outwardly penitent tone. A faint white scar on his cheek added a menacing touch.

  His deeply set eyes were as dark and unrevealing as midnight. Despite his glower, the photograph on the back of the book covers in the window of Sheila Monohan’s store had made the novelist appear intelligent and sophisticated. However, there was nothing sophisticated about this man.

  He was rangy, like a long-distance runner, all sinew and lean muscle clad in black jeans, a black T-shirt and black leather jacket. She’d known larger men, but none so physically imposing. The sense of tightly coiled male energy emanating from Quinn Gallagher and the way, even as inebriated as he obviously was, he made a woman all too aware of being female, had Nora suddenly wanting to throw him out of her house.

  Kate’s earlier remark about Nora’s mother sending her a husband suddenly seemed more threat than promise.

  Tell me this isn’t your doing, Mam, Nora begged silently as nerves tangled themselves into a knot inside her stomach.

  If Eleanor Joyce had searched the entire world over, she couldn’t have found a more unsuitable husband and father candidate than this man clad all in devil’s black.

  For a fleeting moment Nora envisioned the writer as an old-time gunfighter, standing on some dusty Western street with six-shooters drawn, facing down a gang of train robbers at high noon. It was a scene she’d seen a hundred times in American movies—with one difference. This time, in her mind’s eye, it was Quinn Gallagher who was wearing the black hat.

  Dear Lord, she was getting every bit as fanciful as Fionna and Brady!

  “You’ll be wanting to go directly to bed, I imagine.” Nora was pleased when her calm voice revealed none of her inner turmoil.

  As if giving up his attempt to stand erect, Quinn leaned back against the white plaster wall. She forced herself to hold her ground as his dark eyes swept over her again.

  “Now there’s an idea,” he murmured for her ears only. His voice was like silk, wound through with a thread of sarcasm. Wicked intent gleamed in his gaze and played at the corners of his mouth.

  “As drunk as you are, I suspect even the idea would be more than you could handle, Mr. Gallagher,” she said under her breath, grateful that her father was currently distracting Fionna with the story of how he and the Yank had happened to meet up.

  “I wouldn’t bet the farm on that, sweetheart.”

  He was too brash. Too dangerous. Too male. How in the name of all the saints was she going to put up with this arrogant man in her house for four long weeks? Reminding herself she’d already spent the generous deposit the rental agent had forwarded to repair the smoking chimney, Nora gathered up her scattered composure and managed, with effort, to hold her tongue.

  Wanting to get the man out of sight and mind as quickly as possible, she glanced over at Brady, who’d collapsed in his easy chair. Since he was obviously too unsteady on his feet to escort their boarder up the steep set of stairs, it appeared Nora was stuck with him.

  “I’d best be showing you to your room.” Then, since the writer appeared nearly as unsteady as Brady, she had no choice but to put her arm around his waist to help him balance. “Before you pass out and end up spending the night on the floor.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Oh dear. She wondered what Brady had gotten them into, renting a room to a man accustomed to coming home drunk. Despite the much-needed funds he represented, Nora vowed on the spot that if he caused any problem in front of the children, she was going to send the American writer on his way.

  “Not the passing-out part,” he elaborated, as if reading her mind. “Despite appearances to the contrary, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, I am not a drunk.” He spoke slowly and deliberately. Exactly, Nora thought, like a drunk.

  “You’ve no idea how it pleases me to hear that, Mr. Gallagher.”

  As she began leading him across the room, he glanced back over his shoulder. “Good night, Joyce. Thanks for the welcome. I enjoyed myself immensely. Ma’am, it was indeed an honor.” This last to Fionna.

  “Good night to you, too, Gallagher,” Brady said.

  “It was indeed interesting, Mr. Gallagher,” Fionna responded. “Pleasant dreams.”

  “Nice lady,” Quinn said to Nora.

  He leaned against her and slid his arm around her shoulder in a surprisingly smooth gesture for a man who’d been drinking. The stairs were narrow, forcing them to climb thigh to thigh. Nora had the impression of steel—hard and unyielding.

  “Lord, you’re soft.” Quinn leaned down and nuzzled her neck. “And you smell damn good, too. Like wildflowers and rain.”

  Nora would bet her prize bull that he said that to all the women. “And you smell like whiskey.”

  “Unfortunately that’s probably true.” He frowned. “I don’t know what the hell got into me.”

  “I suspect too much Jameson.” She opened the door to the bedroom she’d grown up in and they stepped inside. “You’ll have the devil’s own head in the morning.”

  “Undoubtedly true, also. But it was worth it. Your father is one helluva storyteller.”

  “Aye, he is that. The best in the county. The finest in all Ireland, some say.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me. I suspect it doesn’t hurt to have Joyce blood flowing in his veins.”

  “No. I imagine not.” Nora, who’d been brought up to be proud of her literary heritage, had often thought that same thing herself. “Still, it’s easy for the hours to slip away when he begins spinning his tales.”

  “So I discovered. The hard way.”

  Their eyes met and in a suspended moment of shared amusement, there occurred a flash of physical awareness so strong that Nora had a sudden urge to hug herself. With her mind whirling the way it was, she couldn’t decide if the desire came from a need
for self-protection or an even stronger need to feel the touch of hands on her uncomfortably warm body.

  At the same time Quinn seemed to turn strangely angry. His smile vanished and his dark eyes went shuttered, like a pair of windows painted over with pitch.

  “You know what I said about going to bed?” He shrugged out of his leather jacket and tossed it onto a nearby chair.

  “I don’t think we should be talking about this.” Nora’s unruly heart fluttered like a wild bird as she pulled back the handmade quilt that had been a wedding gift from her sister-in-law. Then she reached up, took hold of Quinn’s broad shoulders and pushed him down onto the bed.

  “Tough. Because, you see, sweetheart, there’s one thing you should know about me. I’m the kind of guy who likes to put all his cards on the table right off the bat.”

  Nora was not accustomed to men she hardly knew calling her sweetheart. And she definitely wasn’t accustomed to having such an intimate conversation with a stranger. Wondering how it was that the man could still appear threatening while lying flat on his back, she nevertheless gave him a go-ahead gesture.

  He was, after all, a guest. Besides, it seemed prudent just to let him have his say. Maybe then he’d drop the bloody subject.

  “The point I want to make, sweetheart, is that I’ve decided I’m not going to sleep with you.”

  Nora’s temper flared like a match in the night. “And I suppose you’d be thinking it’s your decision to make in the first place?”

  Telling herself she didn’t care about his damn comfort, that it was only her sheets she was trying to save, she yanked his boots off. They were cowboy boots, which brought her earlier Western-movie fantasy tumbling back.

  “If I wanted you, it sure as hell would be my decision.”

  “Do you always get what you want?” It wasn’t exactly a challenge. Nora was genuinely curious.

  “When it comes to women? Always.” His eyes cleared. Nora looked down into those fathomless midnight depths and, feeling like a bog butterfly pinned to a cork, had the impression Quinn was giving her a warning. “But you don’t have to worry, sweetheart. You’re not my type.”

  Even as she told herself it was for the best, she felt a prick of feminine annoyance at being so easily dismissed.

  “And isn’t that a coincidence,” she said briskly, throwing the quilt over him. “Since you’re not my type, either.”

  She held her breath, almost expecting God to send a lightning bolt through the thatched roof to strike her dead for telling such an outrageous falsehood. Because unfortunately, from the way her body had grown warm in proximity to his, it appeared that Quinn Gallagher was very much her type.

  Quinn arched a sardonic brow, but didn’t challenge her lie, which relieved Nora greatly. “Then we shouldn’t have any problem, should we?”

  “None at all.” If only that was true. Nora had the sinking feeling this brash American was going to provide a very large problem indeed. She reached out and turned off the bedside lamp, throwing the room into darkness. “Good night, Mr. Gallagher.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.” His deep voice echoed the formality in hers. He’d already begun snoring by the time she reached the door.

  She moved down the hall to the small room that, thanks to her father, would serve as her bedroom for the next four weeks. She washed her face and brushed her teeth as quietly as possible in the adjoining bathroom she was forced to share with her boarder.

  Since it was chilly in the unheated room, she undressed quickly, changing into a long cream flannel nightgown and a pair of gray-and-white caterpillar-striped wool socks Fionna had knit for her last Christmas. Then, as she knelt beside the bed the way she had every night since childhood, Nora, who was not normally a petty person, derived some small mean satisfaction from the idea that come morning, Quinn Gallagher would be suffering one hell of a hangover.

  Chapter Five

  The Devil’s in the Whiskey

  Quinn awoke to the sound of birds chirping and sheep bleating. He was sprawled on his back on the bed, still in the clothes he’d worn on the plane—which reeked of cigarette and peat smoke—his head pounding like the bass drum in a marching band. Not yet wanting to risk opening his eyes, which felt sandpaper scratchy, he ran his tongue over teeth as fuzzy as moss-covered rocks.

  While he might have the mother of all hangovers, the prodigious amount of alcohol he’d drunk last night had not, unfortunately, impaired his memory. He recalled everything about the night before, including the fact that he’d made an ass of himself by hitting on Nora Fitzpatrick.

  In between fanciful stories of banshees, warriors and revolution, Brady Joyce had waxed eloquent about his widowed daughter, clearly a man prone to overembellishment. Quinn, upon first stumbling out of the patrol car last night, had discovered that perhaps for the first time in the man’s life, Brady had been guilty of understatement.

  Nora Fitzpatrick’s face, haloed by a wavy cloud of hair as bright as the cozy peat fire burning in the parlor hearth, had brought to mind a pre-Christian Celtic goddess. Her eyes were a soft mystical green that could have washed off the velvet hills of the countryside. And her mouth! At first sight of her lush unpainted lips, he’d felt an instant desire to taste them.

  Quinn had no intention of apologizing for experiencing a sexual attraction. His approach, however, had definitely lacked subtlety.

  She’d looked somehow familiar, but remembering the tug of recognition he’d experienced when he’d first seen the country from the plane, Quinn had discounted the sensation.

  One thing he hadn’t been able to discount was that momentary flash of shared sexual awareness, when he’d caught a glimpse of something in her eyes, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on. It couldn’t be inexperience, since she had, after all, been married. She’d even had a child, he recalled Brady telling him. A son.

  Innocence, perhaps?

  Whatever it was, even tanked as he’d been, every instinct Quinn possessed had told him that Nora Fitzpatrick was trouble. With a capital T.

  “No point in borrowing trouble,” he muttered, quoting his mother, who’d always possessed a natural knack for doing exactly that. “The widow Fitzpatrick is off-limits.”

  He’d no sooner stated the vow when he heard a whimper he first thought might have come from him. Gingerly opening one eye, he came face-to-face with a huge furry gray, white and black muzzle and a pair of limpid brown eyes.

  “Either Brady has taken to parking a Buick in the bedroom, or you’re the biggest damn dog in Ireland.”

  The beast whimpered again, a thin sound more suited to some toy breed a tenth its size, then self-consciously looked away.

  “You can’t be shy.”

  One ear cocked. But the dog still refused to meet Quinn’s gaze.

  He reached out, caught hold of the muzzle and turned the fuzzy face back toward him. “Hell, don’t tell me I hurt your feelings.”

  He’d never had a dog. The closest he’d ever come to having a pet was the field mouse he’d captured when he was seven and his family had been living in a trailer outside Apache Junction, Arizona. Using money earned running errands for a local bookie, he’d bought a hamster cage from Kmart, which he hid in a kitchen cupboard. Since his mother had never been one to cook, it had seemed the safest place.

  He’d kept the mouse for nearly a week, feeding it limp lettuce from a nearby Safeway Dumpster. Unfortunately his father had discovered it while searching for a carton of cigarettes, cussed him out royally, then whipped him with a belt that had left welts for two weeks. Years later he still had the scars from the buckle to remind him of that day.

  The mouse had fared even worse. His father had suffocated it in a plastic bag, then tossed it outside for the feral desert cats to tear apart.

  “You realize, of course,” Quinn said to the dog now, “you’re too big to be such a candy-ass.”

  The dog rolled brown eyes beneath furry beetled brows.

  “I’m not going to hur
t you, dammit.”

  Another whimper. And if a dog could look dubious, this one was definitely pulling it off. Quinn shook his head in disgust, then wished he hadn’t when boulders started tumbling around inside.

  “Lord, we’re a pitiful pair,” he muttered, crawling out of the double bed.

  Although his legs felt as if he were walking on the deck of a rolling ship, Quinn managed to make his way into the adjoining bathroom, which smelled vaguely of flowers, followed by the wolfhound who trailed a safe three feet behind. One look at the haggard face in the mirror assured him he looked every bit as bad as he felt.

  He opened the medicine cabinet, found a bottle of aspirin, poured three of them into his palm and swallowed them dry. He found a new toothbrush and a bar of soap still in its wrapper, realized that Nora Fitzpatrick must have left them for him, and decided the woman, while still Trouble, was a saint.

  He brushed his fuzzy teeth, splashed cold water onto his face, then took a long hot shower that filled the small room with steam and smoothed out some of the kinks in his hungover and jet-lagged body. The towel he wrapped around his hips was a far cry from the thick Egyptian-cotton ones he was accustomed to, but it was pleasantly soft and smelled like sunshine.

  By the time he’d shaved with the razor he found in the cabinet, he was beginning to feel as if he just might live.

  “So what do you think?” he asked the dog, who was sitting on its haunches watching his every move. “Feel up to some breakfast?”

  When the oversize tail began thumping on the floor and the huge pink tongue lolled, Quinn decided he’d just found the dog’s weakness.

  “Guess that’s the magic word.” Ignoring the lightning bolts behind his eyes, he bent and rubbed the massive multi-hued streaked head. “The room’s supposed to come with two meals a day. Let’s go see what’s on the menu.”

  Fearing he’d have to wear yesterday’s clothes, which could definitely use an airing, Quinn was gratified to see his luggage lined up just inside the bedroom door. Apparently the friendly police officer who’d arrived to take Brady and him to the farm had rescued the suitcases from his rental car. As he pulled on a pair of clean briefs, Quinn decided a donation to the local police benevolent fund was definitely in order.