A Woman's Heart

by JoAnn Ross

  He lowered her feet to the ground, but unwilling to release her just yet, skimmed his mouth up her cheek. “You taste like rain.”

  “So do you.” She sounded every bit as shell-shocked as Quinn felt.

  “Perhaps. But I’ll bet it tastes better on you.” When he touched his tongue to the slight hollow between her bottom lip and chin, she sighed with ragged pleasure, then closed her eyes and tilted her head back, offering her throat.

  Quinn willingly obliged, nipping lightly, seductively, at the pale flesh. “Another minute of that and we would have been the ones in need of a safe-sex lecture.”

  Her answer was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  She needn’t have said the words. As soon as she’d opened her eyes again, he’d read the confusion—along with a lingering unwilling desire—in those swirling sea green depths.

  “That makes two of us.” Because he still wanted her, dammit, still needed her, he took his hands off the body he’d dreamed of claiming and bent down to retrieve the brown paper bag that had fallen unnoticed to the ground at their feet.

  “There’ll be nothing left but crumbs,” she said.

  She was nearly right. He dipped into the bag, pulled out a decent-size piece and popped it into his mouth.

  “Best crumbs I’ve ever tasted.” Knowing he was playing with fire, but unable to resist, he traced her lips with a fingertip. “Almost as sweet as the taste of the cook.”

  His words earned the intended smile. “I do believe you’ve been kissing the Blarney Stone, Quinn.”

  “The only thing in Ireland I want to kiss is you, Nora. Again and again.” He skimmed a glance over her. “All over.”

  Her expressive eyes turned somber again. “You don’t sound very pleased about that.”

  “You’re right.” His finger glided down the slender throat he’d tasted earlier. Quinn felt the little leap in pulse beneath his touch, experienced a similar leap himself, then continued tracing her collarbone out to her shoulder. “Having always prided myself on my control, I’m not wild about the way something I’ve worked so hard to develop could disintegrate the way it does whenever you get within kissing distance.”

  “I feel the same way. Which, I have to confess, worries me. Since I have Rory to think of,” she reminded him. And herself.

  “There’s no reason he should enter into it. We’re two adults, Nora. If anything were to happen between us, it wouldn’t have any effect on your son.”

  “But don’t you see?” She dragged her hand through her hair. “If I get involved with you—”

  “Don’t look now, lady, but it’s too damn late. Because whether we like it or not, whether we planned it or not, we are involved.”

  “Aye. I’m afraid you’re right.” She sighed. “Which confuses me, because I’m not accustomed to responding so recklessly to a man.”

  She was so damn earnest. So sweet. God help him, he was beginning to actually like her. The idea of relating to a woman on some basis other than sex was something Quinn was going to have to think about. After he got away from here and his blood cooled and his head cleared.

  “That’s the idea,” he said, flashing her another of the rare grins that seemed to please her so. “I expect women to throw themselves at me. It’s this uncharacteristic urge I keep having to grovel whenever I’m alone with you that’s got me feeling on edge.”

  Nora laughed. “I can’t imagine you ever groveling.”

  “Join the club, darlin’. Because I couldn’t imagine it, either—until I came to Castlelough and met you.” Wondering when he’d become addicted to self-torture, he lightly touched his lips to hers again and watched her eyes go opaque.

  “I’ll see you this evening,” he said after he’d ended the brief kiss all too soon.

  “You’ll be home for supper, then?”

  Home. He was no longer that young boy for whom the four-letter word defined fear and pain. He was no longer the wild rebellious teenager who’d discovered that the happy homes depicted on television programs were nothing but a cruel Hollywood myth. It was only a damn word; there was no reason for him to suddenly feel as if he were suffocating.

  “It depends.” Because he needed space to breathe, to think, he jerked open the driver’s door. “What were you thinking of fixing?”

  “Leg of lamb.” There was no way Nora would admit she’d been thinking more along the lines of veal stew when she’d first gotten up this morning. It had been five years since she’d looked forward to cooking for any man other than her father and brothers. Which made this an occasion worth celebrating.

  He climbed into the car and put the bag of oatmeal-raisin cookie crumbs on the passenger seat beside him. “You damn well don’t fight fair, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”

  She laughed again, feeling unreasonably young and lighthearted. She felt, Nora realized, almost as giddy as dear reckless Mary behaved whenever that troublesome handsome-as-sin Jack came calling.

  “Neither do you, Mr. Gallagher.” She touched a finger to her lips and imagined she could still taste his stunning kiss.

  She watched his eyes darken as his gaze settled on her thoroughly ravished mouth and knew he truly hadn’t been lying when he’d admitted he was as drawn to her as she was to him.

  It was, Nora considered, a start. Of what, she didn’t know. But having grown up on a farm, where so much depended on the whims of Mother Nature, and having learned the hard way the futility of controlling her life, she was far more willing than Quinn to go along with the flow.

  She stood in the driveway, oblivious to the light rain as she watched the silver car drive away. She thought about dinner as she finally returned to the house. A cobbler would be nice. Perhaps topped with ice cream. She remembered Sheila Monohan mentioning last summer that the visiting American tourists did so like their ice cream.

  She’d have to make a trip into town. As she went upstairs to change into dry clothes, Nora uncharacteristically decided to splurge on one of those pretty bottles of cologne she’d seen in the front window of Monohan’s Mercantile.

  Later that afternoon, her trip to the village and shopping completed, a bottle of ridiculously expensive French perfume safely wrapped in white tissue paper and tucked away in a pink-and-green-flowered shopping bag, she drove to Kate’s. Now she was leaning against the open half door of Emerald Dancer’s box, watching her sister-in-law groom the mare.

  “So which of the two of you don’t you understand?” Kate asked, after listening to Nora’s halting admission that she was confused about her budding relationship with Quinn. She was giving the horse a sponge bath from a bucket of water. “Your Yank novelist? Or yourself?”

  “Both,” Nora decided after a moment’s thought. “I’ve never felt this way before.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “Confused. Conflicted. Anxious.”

  The mare, who’d supposedly been responsible for Kate’s broken collarbone last year, stretched her head out, blew gently and bussed Nora’s cheek, as if offering sympathy. Despite her distress, Nora smiled and rubbed the horse’s seal brown muzzle.

  “Sounds like love to me,” Kate diagnosed as she wrung out the sponge then took out a pick and began cleaning the horse’s hooves.

  “Oh, it can’t be! Surely I’d recognize love.”

  “You’ve only been in love twice in your life,” Kate reminded her. “That doesn’t exactly make you an expert on the subject.”

  “I know I loved Devlin with all my heart. As much as a young girl can love,” Nora qualified. It had also been an easy love. Growing as naturally as the wildflowers in springtime.

  “And Conor?”

  “Swept me away,” Nora answered promptly. When she scratched Emerald Dancer behind the ear, the mare rolled her liquid brown eyes with pleasure. “I literally adored him.”

  “My brother was certainly dashing enough,” Kate allowed. “But I think it was more a case of the way he took your mind off your troubles than true love.
”

  A lot had indeed happened then, what with poor little Celia being born, her mam dying, Nora having to leave the security of the convent. And just when she’d been at the lowest point of her young life, Conor had come riding his big white horse across the fields, looking for all the world like one of those storybook knights in shining armor. Nora couldn’t have resisted him if she’d tried. Which she hadn’t.

  “I’m not certain I was capable of coherent thought during that time.”

  “And isn’t that exactly my point?” Kate swore as she scratched her finger on a nail. “Conor treated you like some fancy porcelain doll to be put on the shelf.”

  “That’s not true!” Uneasy talking about her husband while thoughts of Quinn were making her feel vaguely unfaithful, Nora began to pace in front of the stall door. “If anything, Conor complained I wasn’t fancy enough for his fast city friends.”

  “So perhaps I used the wrong description. My point is, though, that you and my brother fell in love at a time when you were in a vulnerable needy state. He never treated you like an adult woman.”

  That stung. Partly, Nora admitted secretly, because it was so close to the truth. She’d always felt inferior to the dashing experienced Conor Fitzpatrick. For the first time in her life, she was forced to seriously consider that her husband might have manipulated her insecurities to his own advantage.

  “And would you be saying that my husband shared every intimate aspect of our private lives with you?”

  Nora hated the idea of Kate knowing about their arguments. And the making up afterward. Something that had occurred less and less after Rory’s birth.

  “Of course not.” Kate moved on to another hoof. Watching the mare obediently lift her front leg for grooming, Nora knew there was no way this sweet-tempered animal had ever thrown its rider. Especially one as experienced as Kate. In a land known for Thoroughbred breeding, she’d never seen anyone with such a talent for understanding horses as her sister-in-law.

  “But I have eyes, Nora,” Kate continued. “I could see that Conor always thought of you as the child that had surprised him by growing up while he was away riding his bloody horse all over the continent. But he didn’t want you to be too grown-up. Because then he’d risk losing his power over you.”

  “Why are we talking about my deceased husband?” Nora asked. Having told herself for the past five years that her volatile marriage would have worked—she would have made it work—she wasn’t comfortable examining it under a microscope now. Especially since such examination would prove fruitless. “The problem is Quinn Gallagher,” she reminded her sister-in-law.

  “And how he makes you feel.”

  “Aye.” Nora sighed. “It’s bad enough that I don’t understand what I’m feeling. The man is an expert at hiding his emotions, Kate.” Unlike Conor, who’d always been remarkably vocal about his likes and dislikes. “I can’t get behind that wall he’s built around himself.” Nor read his thoughts in those coffee-dark eyes.

  “That’s simple. If you want to understand Quinn Gallagher, all you have to do is read his books.”

  “I read the banshee story.”

  “And?” Emerald Dancer’s hooves polished, Kate began smoothing tangles out of the glossy black tail.

  “And it scared me half out of my wits.” Enough so that she honestly hadn’t wanted to subject herself to another of his novels.

  “You obviously just skimmed the surface. You need to reread the book, Nora, and realize what it’s really about.”

  “What’s to realize? It’s a tale about a young boy who ignores the advice passed down from his elders and looks into the face of a banshee, who, just as the legend predicts, attacks him and leaves him permanently scarred.”

  It was a popular folk story. Didn’t Brady tell it himself? But somehow Quinn had managed to strike a dark dread deep into Nora’s very core, leaving her feeling unsettled.

  “Exactly.” Kate nodded her satisfaction as she switched ends and began pulling the comb through the animal’s long silky mane. “The scar’s the key, of course.”

  “Surely you’re not suggesting that the scar on Quinn’s cheek comes from a midnight meeting with a banshee?”

  “Of course I’m not. Jaysus, you can be so literal, Nora. If you’d paid more attention during literature lectures, instead of memorizing all those prayers and quotations that won you honors and holy cards in religious class, you’d understand that the scar on the boy’s face in the story is obviously a metaphor for the damage done to his heart. And perhaps his psyche.”

  Nora thought about that for a moment and decided that as improbable as it had first sounded, Kate was maybe on to something. “The article in the Independent said his mother had died tragically when he was young. Do you think it’s possible—”

  “That he witnessed her death?” Kate broke in. “I’d say, given the tone of his later books, which all deal in some edgy way with the subject of parents and children, that it’s highly likely.

  “A young boy saw something he shouldn’t. Something beyond the pale. And it left him scarred for life.”

  Kate nodded, apparently satisfied by her thumbnail psychological profile. “If you want to understand your inscrutable American, Nora, all you have to do is read his books,” she repeated.

  “If you’re right about Quinn’s past,” Nora mused, “then perhaps I’d be wise to keep my distance. Perhaps whatever happened to him is too terrible to allow him to ever be able to open up to a woman.” To open up to her, Nora thought. To trust her.

  Kate paused while gathering up the grooming equipment and slanted her a knowing look. “You know the old saying—Love heals all wounds.”

  “How can I begin to know if I love him? When I don’t know who he is?”

  “I told you—”

  “I know.” Nora blew out a frustrated breath, ruffling her tawny bangs. “Read his books.”

  “I’d not be knowing how a writer’s mind works,” Kate admitted. “But if it’s true that a novelist writes about what he knows, then Quinn Gallagher has obviously experienced more than his share of monsters.”

  “Then the man who wrote The Night of the Banshee definitely isn’t one to settle down with a wife and ready-made family,” Nora said, conveniently overlooking the fact that her relationship with Quinn Gallagher, such as it was, hadn’t even neared the point of either of them making a commitment.

  “True enough. But mind you, that was his first published book,” Kate pointed out. “And although he might not have realized it himself yet, the man who wrote The Lady of the Lake, a story about the ultimately fatal sacrifice a mother—even an inhuman one covered with green scales who lurks at the bottom of a rural Irish lake—is willing to make to save her child, is literally starving for the love of family.”

  And here, from John’s description, Nora had thought it merely another gory monster tale to be read with the lights on. “Perhaps I should read it.”

  Kate grinned. “And isn’t that just what I’ve been saying?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Vacant Chair

  The Irish Rose was packed to the rafters. Some of the drinkers—like Brady and his friend Fergus—were regulars, some were members of the film crew, looking for a congenial place to pass the evening after a long day of work, and still others appeared to be locals drawn to the pub in hopes of mingling with the rich and famous.

  Although Quinn had already observed the Irish to be less likely to fawn over fame, he’d nevertheless signed several paper napkins and even a few books, which the owners, upon finding him in The Rose, had returned home to fetch.

  It was getting late and Quinn knew that Nora would be putting dinner on the table soon. Just the thought of what the woman could undoubtedly do with a tender leg of Irish lamb was enough to make his mouth water. Although he’d taught himself to cook, Quinn was more accustomed to nuking a frozen dinner in the microwave every night. Which made Nora’s culinary inducement nearly impossible to resist.

  Bu
t he continued to sit in this noisy bar with the ceiling lowered nearly a foot by the cloud of blue-gray smoke, listening to Brady spin tale after entertaining tale, because it wasn’t merely the promised meal that was proving to be such a siren’s call.

  What he wanted, Quinn realized, as he picked at a basket of chips with scant interest, was to sit down at the old pine table with Nora and tell her about the hellish day he’d had. A day when neither Laura or her costar, Dylan Harrison, had been able to make their way through a single scene without at least a dozen retakes. A day when the on-and-off again drizzle disrupted shooting, causing an already testy Jeremy Converse to turn downright dictatorial. Which, needless to say, only made the actors more tense and the camera crew screw up the few scenes Laura and Dylan didn’t blow.

  And then there’d been the problem with the mechanical creature. Some malfunction was causing the Lady to emit a deep humming noise, which might have worked if she’d been a llama. But the tuneless drone tended to take away from her ferociousness when the time came for her to fight back, to protect her infant from the treacherous scientists.

  Quinn wanted to tell Nora all this. And then, after she’d displayed the proper sympathy—which he knew he could expect from such a warmhearted woman—he wanted to hear all about her day.

  Although he realized that he had no idea how she actually spent the hours he was away from the farm, the images that came to mind were seductively domestic. He pictured her kneading bread dough, imagined her feeding the red chickens their cracked corn and tending to the cows, like some rosy-cheeked milkmaid from an old painting. He wanted to bathe in the soothing warmth of her smile as she returned from gathering wildflowers in the meadow, wanted to kiss her inviting lips and feel the cares of his day melt away.

  If it were only that simple, Quinn figured he could still deal with it. He didn’t need a novelist’s gift for characterization to know that Nora was the quintessential earth mother, so different from his own mother that the two women could have been born on different planets. So it was only natural for him to be drawn to her, he kept telling himself.