Books by Nora Roberts

by Roberts, Nora

  "Five. There were six, but my mother lost another son when he was still nursing. My father died when I was twelve, and she didn't marry again until I was past twenty, so there were only five."

  "Only." She chuckled, shook her head, and would have raised her glass, but he stayed her hand.

  "May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door."

  "Sliante," she said and smiled at him as she drank. "I like your farm, Murphy."

  "I'm pleased you do, Shannon." He surprised her by leaning down and pressing his lips to her brow.

  Rain began to patter softly as he straightened again and turned to open the oven door. The scents that streamed out had her mouth watering.

  "Why is it I always thought Irish cooking was an oxymoron?"

  He hefted out the roaster, set it on the stove top. "Well, it's the truth that it's more often a bit bland than not. I never noticed myself as a lad. But when Brie started experimenting, and trying out dishes on me, I began to see that my own dear mother had a certain lack in the kitchen." He glanced over his shoulder. "Which I would deny unto death if you repeated such slander."

  "She'll never hear it from me." She rose, too intrigued not to take a closer look. The chicken was golden, beaded with moisture, flecked with spices, and surrounded by a browned circle of potatoes and carrots. "Now, that's wonderful."

  "It's Brie's doing. She started me an herb garden years back, hounded me till I took the time to tend it."

  Shannon leaned back on the counter, eyeing him. "Weren't you a little miffed when Gray came along and beat your time?"

  He was well and truly baffled for a minute, then grinned as he transferred chicken from pan to platter. "She was never for me, nor I for her. We've been family too long. Tom was a father to me when mine died. And Brie and Maggie were always my sisters." He carved off a small slice at the breast. "Not that it's a brotherly feeling I have toward you, Shannon. I've waited for you long enough."

  Alarmed, she shifted, but he'd moved smoothly to box her in, back to the counter. Still, all he did was lift the bite of chicken to her lips.

  And his thumb grazed lightly, seductively, over her bottom lip when she accepted his offer. "It's good. Really." But her chest felt thick, and alarm increased when he skimmed a hand over her hair. She made her tingling spine straighten until they were eye to eye.

  "What are you doing, Murphy?"

  "Well, Shannon." He touched his lips to hers lightly, almost breezily. "I'm courting you."

  Chapter Ten

  Courting? Flabbergasted, Shannon gaped at him. It was ridiculous, a foolish word that had nothing to do with her, or her lifestyle.

  Yet it had certainly tripped off his Irish tongue easily. She had to make him swallow it again, and fast.

  "That's crazy. It's absurd."

  His hands were on her face again, fingertips just skimming her jawline. "Why?"

  "Well... because." In defense she moved back, gestured with her glass. "In the first place, you hardly know me."

  "But I do know you." More amused than offended at

  her reaction, he turned back to carve the chicken. "I knew you the minute I saw you."

  "Don't start that Celtic mysticism with me, Murphy." She strode back to the table, topped off her wine, and gulped it. "I'm an American, damn it. People don't go around courting people in New York."

  "That might be part of what's wrong with it." He carried the platter to the table. "Sit down, Shannon. You'll want to eat while it's hot."

  "Eat." She rolled her eyes before closing them in frustration. "Now I'm supposed to eat."

  "You came to eat, didn't you?" Taking on the duties of host, he filled the plate by her chair, then his own before lighting candles. "Aren't you hungry?"

  "Yes, I'm hungry." She plopped down in her chair. After flicking her napkin onto her lap, she picked up her knife and fork.

  For the next few minutes she did eat, while her options circled around in her head. "I'm going to try to be reasonable with you, Murphy."

  "All right." He sliced into the chicken on his plate, sampled, and was pleased he'd done a good job. "Be reasonable then."

  "Number one, you've got to understand I'm only going to be here another week, two at the most."

  "You'll stay longer." He said it placidly as he ate. "You haven't begun to resolve the problems and feelings that brought you here. You haven't once asked about Tom Concannon."

  Her eyes went cold. "You know nothing about my feelings."

  "I think I do, but we'll leave that for now since it makes you unhappy. But you'll stay, Shannon, because there are things for you to face. And to forgive. You're not a coward. There's strength in you, and heart."

  She hated that he was seeing in her things she'd refused to admit to herself. She broke open one of the biscuits he'd brought to the table, watched the heat steam out. "Whether I stay a week or a year, it doesn't apply to this."

  "It all applies to this," he said mildly. "Does the meal suit you?"

  "It's terrific."

  "Did you paint more today, after I left you?"

  "Yes, I-" She swallowed another bite, jabbed her fork at him. "You're changing the subject."

  "What subject?"

  "You know very well what subject, and we're going to clear the air here and now. I don't want to be courted- by anyone. I don't know how things are around here, but where I come from, women are independent, equal."

  "I've some thoughts on that myself." Idly he picked up his wine, considering his words as he drank. "It's true enough that in general your Irishman has a difficult time with seeing women as equals. Now, there's been some changes in the past generation, but it's a slow process." He set his wine aside and went back to his meal. "There are many I'd call mate who wouldn't agree with me in full, but it may be because I've done a lot of reading over the years and thought about what I've read. I feel a woman has rights same as a man, to what he has, what he does."

  "That's big of you," Shannon muttered.

  He only smiled. "It's a step of some proportion for someone raised as I was raised. Now in truth, I don't know just how I'd react to it if you wanted to court me."

  "I don't."

  "There you are." He lifted a hand, smiling still, as if she'd made his point for him. "And my courting you has nothing to do with rights or equality, doesn't make you less or me more. It's just that I've the initiative, so to speak. You're the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life. And I've been fortunate enough to see a great deal of beauty."

  Flummoxed by the quick spurt of pleasure, she looked down at her plate. There was a way to handle this, to handle him, she was certain. She just had to find it.

  "Murphy, I'm flattered. Anyone would be."

  "You're more than flattered when I kiss you, Shannon. We both know what happens then."

  She jabbed a piece of chicken. "All right, I'm attracted. You're an attractive man, with some charm. But if I'd been considering taking it any further, I wouldn't now."

  "Wouldn't you?" Christ, but she was a pleasure to converse with, he thought. "And why would that be, when you want me as much as I want you?"

  She had to rub her dampening palms on her napkin. "Because it's an obvious mistake. We're looking at this from two different angles, and they're never going to come together. I like you. You're an interesting man. But I'm simply not looking for a relationship. Damn it, I ended one only weeks ago. I was practically engaged." Inspiration struck. She leaned forward, her smile smug. "I was sleeping with him."

  Murphy's brows quirked. "Was seems to be the key. You must have cared for him."

  "Of course I cared for him. I don't jump into bed with strangers." Hearing herself, she hissed out a breath. How had he managed to turn that around on her?

  "It's past tense as I see it. I've cared enough about a woman or two to lie with her. But I never loved one before you."

  Panic had the color draining out of her face. "You're not in lov
e with me."

  "I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you." He said it so quietly, so simply, that she believed-for a moment completely believed. "Before that, somehow. I've waited for you, Shannon. And here you are."

  "This isn't happening," she said shakily and pushed away from the table. "Now, you listen to me, you put this whole insane business out of your mind. It's not going to work. You're romanticizing the situation. Hallucinating. All you're going to accomplish is to embarrass both of us."

  His eyes narrowed, but she was too busy fuming to notice the change, or the danger in it. "My loving you is an embarrassment to you."

  "Don't twist my words around," she said furiously. "And don't try to make me seem small and shallow because I'm not interested in being courted. Jesus, courted. Even the word's ridiculous."

  "There's another you'd prefer?"

  "No, there's not another I'd prefer. What I prefer, and expect, is for you to drop it."

  He sat quietly a moment, dealing with a slowly building anger. "Because you have no feelings for me?"

  "That's right." And because it was a lie, her voice sharpened. "Do you really have some deluded idea that I'd just fall in meekly with whatever absurd plans you're cooking up? Marry you, live here? A farmer's wife, for God's sake. Do I look like a farmer's wife? I've got a career, a life."

  He moved so quickly she only had time to suck in one shocked breath. His hands were on her arms, fingers dug in. His face was a study of the pale and dark of fury.

  "And my life's beneath you?" he demanded. "What I have, what I've worked for, even what I am is something less? Something to be scorned?"

  Her heart was beating like a rabbit's, in quick bumpy

  jerks. She could only shake her head. Who could have guessed he had such temper in him?

  "I'll accept that you don't know you love me, won't clear your eyes to see that we're meant. But I won't have you disparage what I am and spurn everything I and my family for generations has struggled for."

  "That's not what I meant-"

  "You think the land just sits, pretty as a picture, and waits to be reaped?" The candlelight threw shadows over his face, making it as fascinating as it was dangerous. "There's blood spilled for it, and more sweat than can be weighed. Keeping it's hard, and keeping it's not enough. If you're too proud to accept it as yours, then you shame yourself."

  Her breath was shuddering out. She had to force herself to draw it in slowly. "You're hurting me, Murphy."

  He dropped his hands as if her flesh had burned them. He stepped back, his movements jerky for the first time since she'd known him. "I beg your pardon."

  It was his turn for shame. He knew his hands were large, and knew their strength. It appalled him that he would have used them, even in blind fury, to put a mark on her.

  The selfdisgust on his face kept her from giving in to the urge to rub at the soreness on her arms. However huge her lack of understanding of him, she knew instinctively he was a gentle man who would consider hurting a woman the lowest form of sin.

  "I didn't mean to offend you," she said slowly. "I was angry and upset, and trying to make the point that we're different. Who we are, what we want."

  He slipped his hands into his pockets. "What do you want?"

  She opened her mouth, then shut it on the shock of finding the answer wasn't there. "I've had a number of

  major changes in my life over the past couple of months, so I still need to think about that. But a relationship isn't one of them."

  "Are you afraid of me?" His voice was carefully neutral. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

  "No, I'm not afraid of you." She couldn't help herself. She stepped forward, laid a hand on his cheek. "Temper understands temper, Murphy." Almost certain the crisis had passed, she smiled. "Let's forget all of this, and be friends."

  Instead he stopped her heart by taking her hand, sliding it around until his lips pressed tenderly into the palm. "'My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee the more I have, for both are infinite.' "

  Shakespeare, she thought as her body softened. He would quote Shakespeare in that gorgeous voice. "Don't say things like that to me, Murphy. It's not playing fair."

  "We're past games, Shannon. We're neither of us children, or fools. Here now, I won't hurt you." His voice was soothing, as it was when he gentled a horse. For she'd gone skittish when he'd slipped his arms around her. "Tell me what you felt when I kissed you the first time."

  It wasn't a difficult question to answer, as she was feeling it again. "Tempted."

  He smiled, pressed his curved lips to her temple. "That's not all of it. There was more, wasn't there? A kind of remembering."

  Her body was refusing her very sensible order to stay rigid and aloof. "I don't believe in those things."

  "I didn't ask what you believed." His lips cruised from temple to jaw, patient. "But what you felt." Through the thin barrier of silk her skin was wanning. He thought he might go mad holding himself from stripping that barrier away and finding all of her. "It wasn't just now." He indulged himself a few miserly degrees, sliding into the kiss, savoring the way her mouth yielded for his. "It was again."

  "That's nonsense." But her own voice seemed to come from a long way off. "And this is crazy." Even as she spoke, her hands were fisting in his hair to hold him close, closer, until the pleasure bounded past reason. "We can't do this." The purr of delight sounded in her throat, rippled wonderfully into his mouth. "It's just chemistry."

  "God bless science." Nearly as breathless as she, he dragged her to her toes and tortured himself. Only for a moment, he vowed. And plundered.

  Explosions burst inside of her, one after another until her system was battered by color and light. On a wild spurt of greed, she all but clawed at him in a fight for more.

  Touch me, damn you. The order erupted in her head. But his hands did no more than hold while her body ached to be possessed. She knew how his hand would feel. She knew, and could have wept from the power of the knowledge. Hard palm, gentle strokes that would build and build into brands.

  With a feral instinct she hadn't known lurked inside her, she dug her teeth into his lip, baiting him, daring him. At his violent oath, she flung her head back, her face glowing with triumph.

  Then she paled, degree by degree. For his eyes were warrior's eyes, dark, deadly, and terrifyingly familiar.

  "God." The word burst out of her as she struggled away. Fighting for air, for balance, she pressed her hands to her breast. "Stop. God, this has to stop."

  Teetering on the thin edge of control, Murphy fisted his hands at his sides. "I want you more than I want to take the next breath. It's killing me, Shannon, this wanting."

  "I made a mistake." She dragged her trembling hands through her hair. "I made a mistake here. I'm sorry. I'm not going to let this go any further." She could feel herself being pulled toward him-negative to positive. Power to power. "Stay away from me, Murphy."

  "I can't. You know I can't."

  "We have a problem." Determined to calm down, she walked unsteadily to the table and picked up her wineglass. "We can solve it," she said to herself and sipped. "There's always a way to solve a problem. Don't talk to me," she ordered, holding up a hand like a traffic cop. "Let me think."

  The oddest thing was she never considered herself a very sexual creature. There had been a few pleasant moments now and again with men she cared for, had respect for. "Pleasant" was a ridiculously pale description of what had erupted in her with Murphy.

  That was sex, she thought, nodding. That was allowed, that was all right. They were both adults, both unencumbered. She certainly cared for him, and respected him, even admired him on a great many levels. What was wrong with one wild fling before she settled down and decided what to do with the rest of her life?

  Nothing, she decided, except that foolish courting business. So, she sipped her wine again, set it down. They'd just have to get rid of the obstacle.

  "We want to sleep toge
ther," she began.

  "Well, I'd find sleeping with you a pleasant thing, but I'd prefer making love with you a few dozen times first."

  "Don't play semantic games, Murphy." But she smiled, relieved that the humor was back in his eyes. "I think we can resolve this in a reasonable and mutually satisfying manner."

  "You've a wonderful way of speaking sometimes." His voice was full of admiration and delight. "Even when what you say is senseless. It's so dignified, you know. And classy."

  "Shut up, Murphy. Now if you'll just agree that the idea of a long-term commitment isn't feasible." When he only continued to smile at her, she huffed out a breath. "Okay, I'll put it simply. No courting."

  "I knew what you meant, darling. I just like listening to you. I've no problem with the feasibility of living the rest of my life with you. And I've hardly begun courting you. I haven't even danced with you yet."

  At her wit's end she rubbed her hands over her face. "Are you really that thick-headed?"

  "So my mother always said. 'Murphy,' she'd say, 'once you get an idea in that brain of yours, nothing knocks it loose.' " He grinned at her. "You'll like my mother."

  "I'm never going to meet your mother."

  "Oh, you will. I'm working that out. But as you were saying?"

  "As I was saying," she repeated, baffled. "How can I remember what I was saying when you keep throwing these curves? You do it on purpose, just to cloud things up when they should be perfectly simple."

  "I love you, Shannon," he said and stopped her dead. "That's simple. I want to marry you and raise a family with you. But that's getting ahead of things."

  "I'll say. I'm going to be as clear and concise about this as I can. I don't love you, Murphy, and I don't want to marry you." Her eyes went to slits. "And if you keep grinning at me, I'm going to belt you."

  "You can take a swing at me, and we can wrestle a bit, but then we're likely to resolve the first part of this right here on the kitchen floor." He stepped closer, delighted when she jerked up her chin. "Because, darling, once I get me hands on you again, I can't promise to take them off till I'm finished."

  "I'm through trying to be reasonable. Thanks for dinner. It was interesting."