A Woman's Heart

by JoAnn Ross

  She closed her eyes and held on tight for another long moment, accepting the strength he was offering. “Thank you.”

  Quinn watched her leave the room, then turned to Mary and John. “You’re both old enough to be consulted about this,” he said, knowing Nora might resent his taking over her duty as head of the household, but feeling that her brother and sister should have the opportunity to make their own decisions. “Do you want to come with us?”

  “I’d only be in the doctors’ way,” John replied. “I think it’s best I stay here and help with the younger children.”

  “And I couldn’t bear to see Gran hurt,” Mary said with a sniffle. “I’d just start weeping and make things worse for Nora.”

  True enough, Quinn thought. “I promise to keep you updated.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Gallagher,” John said with his usual serious manner. “We’d appreciate that.”

  Kate was as good as her word, making the arrangements and showing up at the farm in record time. Since Nora had not yet returned downstairs, Quinn went to see if she needed help.

  She was standing in the center of the small room he’d belatedly realized she’d been forced to move into in order to make room for him.

  “I can’t think.” She turned toward him and dragged a trembling hand through her hair. She was pale as a wraith, and her green eyes, circling the room like frightened birds seeking escape, were bright with moisture. “Heaven help me, I can’t think of what to do. What to pack.”

  Quinn felt a powerful need to comfort her and was both surprised at how right it felt and irritated that he was too inexperienced with such feelings to know how to act on it.

  Feeling as if he were crossing a tightrope blindfolded while juggling flaming torches, he began massaging her shoulders. “She’ll be all right.”

  “I didn’t want her to go.” Her mind was spinning in circles, chased by frantic emotions. “I was so worried, but I kept telling myself she’s an adult, after all. That I don’t have any right putting curfews and restrictions on her the way I do the children.”

  “She wouldn’t have listened if you’d tried.”

  “I know.” Nora leaned her forehead against his shoulder and sighed. “I’m beginning to hate this bloody Bernadette campaign.”

  “Everyone needs a mission. Your grandmother could probably have a lot worse ones than getting a brave woman declared a saint.”

  “Why can’t she just stay home and bake soda bread and say her rosary like other grandmothers?”

  Nora’s heart had been pounding in fear ever since she’d gotten the horrible telephone call from the Derry authorities. Now it crossed her mind that Quinn’s shoulder was broad enough to bear heavy burdens. He was a man of many strengths, a man who’d stand by a woman. And though she suspected he’d argue the point, a good and loyal man.

  For a woman who’d become accustomed to handling all sorts of problems by herself and felt pride in her ability to take care of her family, Nora might well have been annoyed by his take-charge attitude. But instead, she was discovering how lovely it was to have someone ease the burden for once.

  “Fionna’s one of a kind,” he murmured against her temple. “Like her eldest granddaughter.”

  His warm tone caused a little trip-hammer of emotion in her heart. Nora lifted her head and gazed up at him. “I’m going to say something. And please, I don’t want you to argue.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.” Not while she felt as fragile as a hummingbird in his arms.

  “You’re so good for me.” When he opened his mouth to respond, she pressed her fingers against his lips. “You said you wouldn’t argue.” She blinked, forcing back threatening tears. “It’s true, Quinn, whether you’re ready to believe it or not. And at this moment I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here with me.”

  She might feel like a delicate hummingbird, but Quinn knew Nora had the heart of an eagle. She could have weathered this, no matter what the outcome, as she’d managed all the other tragedies in her life. The idea that she valued his presence beside her, that he could bring her strength, made him feel more powerful than he’d ever felt before in his life. As if he could leap tall buildings in a single bound.

  It was also terrifying.

  “I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.” It was perhaps the most truthful statement Quinn had ever uttered. Somehow, when he’d let down his guard, when he hadn’t been looking, the widow Fitzpatrick had become important to him. Everything about her had become important. Which was something else he was going to have to think about later.

  For now, because he was, after all, only human, he dipped his head and touched his mouth to hers.

  It was a shimmering whisper of a kiss, soft and tender and as sweet as sunshine through a rainbow. His mouth brushed hers, retreated, then brushed again, like a butterfly sampling a meadow wildflower. Colors danced behind Nora’s closed lids as she allowed her lips to cling.

  She trembled as his palms slid over her shoulders and down her arms to her wrists before linking their fingers. She sighed as he traced the tender outline of her mouth with the tip of his tongue. Tension slowly began to dissolve, replaced by trust. And something he might have thought to be love—if Quinn had believed in such an impossible alien thing.

  A door slammed downstairs, followed by the sound of Brady’s voice. “Nora? Where are you, darling?”

  They immediately drew apart at the sound of boots clattering up the stairs. The anxiety Quinn had witnessed in Nora’s eyes earlier had been replaced by confusion.

  “How do you do that?” she whispered shakily.

  “Do what?”

  She lifted her hand as if to comb it through her hair, then dropped it helplessly to her side. “Kiss me and make my mind go as clean as polished glass.”

  “Oh, that.” Despite the circumstances, Quinn grinned. “Magic.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Broken Wings

  The drive to Galway was mostly silent. Brady, for once, seemed to have no stories to tell. But that didn’t mean they weren’t going on in his head. And from the bleak look in the man’s gaze every time Quinn glanced into the rearview mirror, he decided that he wasn’t the only one in the car familiar with horror tales.

  Nora, too, seemed to have lost the capacity for speech. She sat erect in the passenger seat, her gaze directed out the windshield. She was marble pale and would have reminded him of some statue carved from the smooth white stone had it not been for her hands. She seemed incapable of keeping them still, for they fluttered in her lap like wounded birds. Sometimes she twisted them together until the knuckles turned white or dragged them through her hair. Every so often she pressed her fingertips against her eyelids.

  Finally Quinn reached out and captured one of those hands in his. “It’s going to be all right.” He squeezed comfortingly before putting their joined hands on his thigh. “Fionna’s going to be all right.”

  For the first time since she’d gotten that horrid phone call from that Irish Times reporter five years ago telling her about Conor’s accident, she felt absolutely lost.

  She looked at Quinn. “You can’t know that for certain.”

  “True. But although I’ve never claimed to be the least bit psychic, I feel it in my bones. And besides, Kate said the same thing.”

  “I know.” Nora bit her lip and turned to stare unseeingly at the front window again. “That’s the only thing that’s keeping me from screaming.”

  By the time they reached the Galway airfield, Quinn had already called the hospital twice. Both times they’d learned nothing, although a news bulletin broadcast on Radio One over the Mercedes radio did relate that the bomb had damaged the parking garage and nearly the entire street-level floor of a Derry department store. The number of injured were stretching local hospitals to the limit.

  Since the single flight of her life had been aboard a prop plane from Shannon to Dublin with Conor, Nora was momentarily startled out of her fear and depression by th
e sight of the chartered private jet.

  “You’ve booked us our very own plane?”

  Quinn shrugged as the trio walked across the tarmac. “It seemed easier. And faster.”

  “It must have cost you a fortune.”

  Another shrug. “My accountant keeps telling me I’ve more money than I can spend in several lifetimes. Might as well make use of it.”

  Wondering what it must be like to have so much money it had lost its importance, Nora waited beside her still-silent father while Quinn introduced himself to the waiting pilot and the two men discussed the flight plan for the brief trip to the north. Kate had finally gotten through to someone who could give her some information, and called them on Quinn’s cellular phone with the welcome news that Fionna’s injuries were considered minor.

  More hopeful than she’d been since leaving the farm, Nora boarded the plane with Quinn, her father and the pilot.

  “Oh! It’s as luxurious as a fine city hotel,” Nora breathed as she stared around the roomy interior that reminded her of the Shelbourne. She and Conor had stayed there on their wedding night before going on to London where he had a race the next morning. At the time she’d been certain that a palace could not have been fancier.

  “It’ll do,” Quinn said. He glanced at her. She was still too pale. So was Brady. Quinn wondered what his chances were of getting either of them to take a brief nap. The jet had two bedrooms. “Perhaps you should lie down—”

  “No.” She shook her head, her tone firm. “I’m fine.” She turned toward her father. “But, Da, I think a rest might do you good.”

  When her father lifted his head, Quinn realized where Nora had gotten her habit of jutting out her chin. “What kind of man would you think I’d be? Sleeping while my mam may be lying in some hospital bed dying?”

  “Gran’s not dying. The doctor told Kate her only injuries are a broken wrist and possible concussion.”

  “She’s not a young woman,” Brady argued. “A concussion could be serious. And then there’s her heart…” He pressed a weathered hand against his own chest. “Oh, Jaysus.”

  Quinn caught the older man as he sank to his knees.

  “Da!” Nora knelt beside the biscuit-colored suede chair Quinn had lowered her father into. “What’s wrong? Should we be having the pilot call the doctor?”

  “I’m fine.” He patted the back of her hand. “I just got a little light-headed, darling. I think it’s the airsickness.”

  “We haven’t taken off yet.”

  “Anticipation is a fearsome thing,” he countered. “And besides, that long drive made me a wee bit dizzy.”

  Nora gave him a long probing look, damning the storytelling ability that made her father such a gifted liar. The color was coming back into a complexion that had momentarily been the hue of putty.

  Horribly torn between a need to be at her grandmother’s hospital bed, to see for herself that the doctor had told Kate the truth about Fionna’s lack of life-threatening injuries, and concern for her father, Nora glanced up at Quinn.

  “Your call,” he murmured.

  She worried an unlacquered thumbnail with her teeth as she tried to make the critical decision.

  “I’m the father of the family,” Brady stated firmly. “Which means I’ll be the one to make the decision. And I say we’re wasting time arguing when we could be in the air on the way to Derry.”

  Nora couldn’t remember the last time her father had stood his ground about anything. Although there’d never been a day in her life that she hadn’t loved him, there had been times when the thought had crossed her mind that Brady Joyce was a bit weak. Since the idea seemed disloyal, she’d always put it away. But now, for the second time in two days, she was witnessing a spark of the man Eleanor Joyce had fallen in love with.

  Still troubled, Nora looked up at Quinn. “We’ll be going to Derry.”

  His brief nod told her he would have made the same decision. “I’ll tell the pilot.”

  Before he left the lounge, Quinn reached down, caught her chin in his hand and smoothed his thumb over her down-turned lips. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  And although it didn’t make any sense at all, because it was Quinn telling her this, Nora chose to believe him.

  After all the fuss about Brady not wanting to rest for fretting about his mother, Nora was stunned when he refused to enter the hospital.

  “You can’t be serious!” She stared at her father in disbelief. “Surely you can’t be telling me you’ve come all the way to the North with me only to sit outside the hospital where your own mother may be dying?”

  “Nora.” Quinn was standing beside her next to the hired long black car that had been waiting for them at the Derry airfield. The car her father was still inside. He reached out a calming hand. “That’s not what Kate said.”

  She whirled on him. “Don’t you be telling me what my own sister-in-law told me,” she flared. Fear and anxiety conspired to fuel the temper she usually managed to keep well banked. “This is family business.”

  And you’re not family. Quinn read her unstated message loud and clear.

  “You’re right.” He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender, but didn’t budge. “I may not be family, but I can tell this is hard enough on your father. Don’t make it worse.”

  “Of course it’s hard on him, having Fionna in hospital.” For the first time since he’d met her, her eyes were as hard as stones. She leaned into the long black limousine. “Well, let me tell you something, Da,” she said. “It’s a lot harder having your mam die on you without so much as having an opportunity to say goodbye. Or being able to tell her how much you love her…”

  Her voice cracked and she turned away for a moment, drawing in a ragged breath that told Quinn she was not thinking of Fionna right now but of her own mother.

  He watched with admiration as she straightened her shoulders. And her resolve. Then turned back to her father. “You need to get out of the bloody car and come in with me. Now.”

  Brady’s eyes were suspiciously shiny, but his jaw remained firm. “You’ve no right using such a tone with your father, Nora.” He looked past her up to Quinn. “Would you be doing me a favor, lad?”

  “Of course,” Quinn said, earning another daggerlike glare from Nora.

  “Take my daughter in to see her grandmother. And tell Fionna that I love her.”

  “Da—” Nora started in again.

  “Consider it done.” Quinn cupped her elbow, pulling her away from the limo. “Come on, sweetheart. We’d better get in there before Fionna starts roaming the halls interviewing patients in search of Bernadette miracles.”

  “I don’t believe this.” She shook her head, her face a study of frustration and sorrow. “You’ve disappointed me before, Da,” she said quietly. Painfully. “But never so much as you have this day.”

  With that indictment ringing in the air, she shook off Quinn’s touch, turned and walked past him, headed toward the glass doors.

  Quinn paused. “I’m sorry,” he told Brady.

  The older man only waved a weary hand. “Nora has a right to her feelings. And later, after you come out and tell me that my mother is her typical hale-and-hearty self, I’ll be enjoying the fact that for the first time in years, my daughter has someone to lean on. Believe me, Quinn, witnessing her surrender the reins of total control of the family, even for an afternoon, is worth being the target of a few hasty words spoken out of fear.”

  Quinn gave Brady another, longer look, realizing he may have underestimated the man. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Brady leaned back against the rich black leather seat and closed his eyes. “Of course you will.”

  Nora was arguing with a gray-smocked reception clerk when Quinn caught up with her.

  “Let me,” he murmured, stroking her arm. “Hello.” He flashed his best smile at the pink-faced twenty-something woman seated behind the computer screen. “I’m Quinn Gallagher. And this is Nora Joyce.”


  He told himself the only reason he’d omitted her married name was that it complicated the matter unnecessarily. It had nothing to do with the reality that, all logic aside, he was still jealous as hell at the idea of her having belonged to any other man.

  “We’d like the room number of Fionna Joyce. She was brought in shortly after the bombing.”

  “Are you from the authorities?”

  “No. We’re family.”

  “Visiting hours aren’t until this evening.”

  “I understand.” Another smile, warmer than the first. A hundred-proof grin designed to entice. “And I realize that if you allow everyone to broach the rules—” Quinn’s friendly gaze settled momentarily on her name tag “—Ms. Barry, the wards would be chaos, rather than the well-ordered places I’ve no doubt they are in a hospital with such an exemplary staff.

  “However,” he said, tightening his fingers ever so slightly on Nora’s arm when he sensed her opening her mouth to resume arguing, “we’ve come a very long way. From Castlelough, and—”

  “From Castlelough?” The woman, whose expression had remained one of bureaucratic boredom, despite Quinn’s attempt at charm, suddenly perked up. “Did you say your name was Gallagher?”

  “Quinn Gallagher,” he agreed.

  “You’re the American novelist.”

  His answering smile suggested she was, indeed, the brightest woman in all of Northern Ireland. “Guilty.”

  “I saw all about the movie they’re making out of your book in Castlelough on the television news.” Her eyes narrowed as they slid back to Nora. “Are you one of the movie people, as well?”

  “No, and I don’t see what any of this has to do with—”

  “You’ll have to excuse Ms. Joyce’s impatience,” Quinn cut in smoothly. “She’s been frantic about her grandmother. Mrs. Fionna Joyce,” he reminded the clerk as he inclined his head toward her computer screen, which was currently flashing brand names of prescription drugs as a screen saver.