Shannon smiled a little. "My father's name was
Colin."
"Was it? You lost him recently."
"Last year. Last summer."
"And your mother this spring." Instinctively Alice reached out to squeeze Shannon's hand. "It's a burden that nothing but living lightens."
She began to rock again, and so did Shannon, so that the silence was broken only by the creak of the chairs and the chatter of birds.
"You enjoyed the ceili?"
This time the question had a flush heating Shannon's cheeks. "Yes. I've never been to a party quite like it."
"I miss having them since we're in Cork. The city's no place for a ceili, a real one."
"Your husband's a doctor there." "He is, yes. A fine doctor. And I'll tell you true, when I moved there with him I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. No more rising at dawn to see to cows, no worrying if the crops would grow, or the tractor run." She smiled, looking over the garden to the valley in the distance. "But parts of me miss it still. Even miss the worrying."
"Maybe you'll move back when he retires." "No, he's a city man my Colin. You'd understand the lure of the city, living in New York."
"Yes." But she, too, was looking out over the valley, the shimmer of green hills, the living rise of them. "I like the crowds, and the rush. The noise. It took me days to get used to the quiet here, and the space."
"Murphy's a man for space, and for the feel of his own land under his feet."
Shannon glanced back to see Alice studying her. "I know. I don't think I've ever met anyone as ... rooted."
"And are you rooted, Shannon?" "I'm comfortable in New York," she said carefully. "We moved around a great deal when I was a child, so I don't have the same kind of roots you mean."
Alice nodded. "A mother worries about her children, no matter how tall they grow. I see Murphy's in love with you."
"Mrs. Brennan." Shannon lifted her hands, let them fall. What could she say? "You're thinking what does this woman want me to do? How does she expect me to answer what wasn't even a question?" A hint of a smile played around Alice's mouth. "You don't know me anymore than I know you, so I can't tell by looking into your eyes what your feelings are for my son, or what you'll do about them. Feelings there are, that's plain. But I know Murphy. You're not the woman I would have chosen for him, but a man chooses for himself."
She glanced at Shannon and laughed. "Now I've insulted you."
"No," Shannon said stiffly, insulted. "You have a perfect right to speak your mind."
"I do." Smiling still, Alice began to rock. "And would if I did or not. But my meaning wasn't clear. I thought for a time, a short time, it would be Maggie for him. As much as I love that girl, it worried me fierce. They'd have driven each other to murder within a year."
Despite all common sense, Shannon felt a niggling tug of jealousy. "Murphy and Maggie?"
"Oh, nothing more than a passing thought and a little wondering between them. Then I thought it would be Brianna. Ah, now that, I told myself, was the wife for him. She'd make him a strong home."
"Murphy and Brie," Shannon said between her teeth. "I guess he was making the rounds."
"Oh, I imagine he made a few, but not with Brie. He loved her, as he loved Maggie. As he loves his sisters. It was me, planning in my head and wishing for him to be happy. I worried, you see, because he was twenty-five, and still showing no partiality for another of the girls hereabouts. He was working the farm, reading his books, playing his music. It was a family he needed, I'd tell myself. A woman beside him and children at his feet." Shannon moved her shoulders, still irked by the images Alice had conjured in her head. "Twenty-five is young for a man to marry these days."
"It is," Alice agreed. "In Ireland men often wait years and years longer. As they know once the vows are said there's no unsaying them. Divorce isn't a choice for us, not by God, and not by law. But a mother wants her son fulfilled. I took him aside this one day in his twenty-fifth year, and I sat him down and talked to him from my heart. I told him how a man shouldn't live alone, shouldn't work himself so hard and have no one to come home to of an evening. I told him how the O'Malley girl had her eye on him, and didn't he think she was a pretty thing."
Alice's smile had faded when she looked back at Shannon again. "He agreed as she was. But when I began to press him about thinking more deeply, planning for the future, taking a wife to complete his present, he shook his head, and took my hands in his and looked at me that way he has.
" 'Ma,' " he said, " 'Nell O'Malley isn't for me. I know who is. I've seen who is.' " Alice's eyes grew dark with an emotion Shannon couldn't understand. "I was pleased, and I asked him who she was. He told me he hadn't yet to meet her, not in the flesh. But he knew her just the same as he'd seen her in his dreams since he was a boy. He was only waiting for her to come."
Shannon swallowed on a dry throat and managed to keep her voice level. "Murphy has a tendency toward the romantic."
"He does. But I know when my boy is having a fancy and when he means just what he says. He was speaking no more than the truth to me. And he spoke nothing more than the truth when he called me a short time ago to tell me that she'd come."
"It's not like that. It can't be like that."
"It's hard to judge what can and can't be. In the heart. You're holding his, Shannon Bodine. The only thing I'll ask of you is to take care, great care with it. If you find you can't keep it, or don't want it after all, hand it back to him gently."'
"I don't want to hurt him."
"Oh, child, I know that. He'd never choose a woman with meanness in her. I'm sorry to have made you sad."
Shannon only shook her head. "You needed to say it. I'm sure I needed to hear it. I'll straighten things out."
"Darling." With something close to a chuckle, Alice leaned forward again to take Shannon's hand. "You may try, but he'll tangle them up again. You mustn't think I said all of this to put the burden on your shoulders alone. It's shared between you, equal. What happens between you, joy or sorrow, will be caused by both of you. If your mother was here, she'd be telling Murphy to take care with you."
"She might." The tension in Shannon's fingers relaxed a little. "Yes, she might. He's lucky to have you, Mrs. Brennan."
"And so I remind him, often. Come now, let's see if my daughters have finished cooking the lamb for dinner."
"I should get back."
Alice rose, drawing Shannon with her. "You'll have your Sunday meal with us, surely. Murphy'll want you. So do I."
She opened the front door, stepped back, and welcomed Shannon inside.
Chapter Eighteen
As much as Murphy enjoyed seeing Shannon with his family, dangling one of his nieces on her knee, laughing over something Kate said, listening intently to his nephew explain about carburetors, he wanted her alone.
It seemed the family he loved so well was conspiring to keep him from fulfilling that one simple and vital wish.
He mentioned very casually that it was a lovely night for a drive, and he thought Shannon would enjoy it. Whatever response she might have made was drowned out by his sisters' chattering to Shannon about fashions.
A patient man, he waited a time, then tried again, suggesting a trip to the pub-where he was sure he could slip Shannon out in a wink. But his stepfather pulled him aside and began to drill him on the workings of the new combine.
When the sun set and the moon began its rise, he found himself dragooned into a game of Uncle Wiggly with some of the children while Shannon was across the room having an intent discussion with his teenage niece about American music.
He saw his first clear shot when the children were being bundled up for bed. Moving fast, he grabbed Shannon's hand. "We'll go put the kettle on for tea." Without breaking stride, he pulled her toward the kitchen, through it, and out the back door. "The kettle-"
"The devil take the kettle," he muttered and whirled her into his arms. Beside the coop where the hens brooded, he kissed her as though his
life depended on it. "I never noticed how many people there are in my family."
"Twenty-three," she murmured, sliding into the next kiss. "Twenty-four with you. I counted."
"And one of them's bound to be poking out the kitchen window any second. Come on. We're making a break for it."
He pulled her past paddock and pen and up the first rise until she was breathless and laughing. "Murphy, slow down. They're not going to set the dogs on us."
"If we had dogs, they might." But he shortened his stride a little. "I want you alone. Do you mind?"
"No. As a matter of fact, I've been waiting for a chance to talk to you."
"We'll talk all you like," he promised. "After I show you what I've been thinking about doing to you all day and half the night."
Heat balled, a solid, steaming weight in her stomach.
"We should talk first. We haven't really set up the guidelines. It's important we both understand, well, where we stand, before we get any deeper into this."
"Guidelines." The word made him smile. "I think I can find my way without them."
"I'm not talking about the physical aspect." A thought intruded, and turned her voice cool and casual. "You didn't ever have a physical aspect with Maggie, did you?"
His first reaction was to roar with laughter, but a twist of mischief made him hum in consideration. "Well, now that you mention it..." He let the sentence trail off as he pulled Shannon into the stone circle.
She was abruptly far from cool and batted his hands away as he tugged off her jacket. "Now that I mention it?" she repeated with steel in her voice.
"We had a bit of an aspect," he said, ignoring her shoving hands as he worked at the buttons of her blouse. "I kissed her once, in a bit more than what you might be calling a brotherly fashion." He grinned into Shannon's eyes. "It was curious and it was sweet. I was fifteen if memory serves."
"Oh." The green-eyed monster was dwarfed by foolishness.
"I managed to sneak one in on Brie, too. But we ended up laughing at each other while our lips were still locked. It took the romance right out of it."
"Oh," she said again and pouted. "And that was it?"
"You needn't worry. I never... crossed any borders with either of your sisters. So ..."
His tongue dried up as he slid her blouse aside. She wore silk beneath tonight, dark, dangerous silk that dipped low and provocative at the curve of her breasts, then draped down to shimmer beneath the waistband of her skirt.
"I want to see the rest," he managed and tugged down the zipper.
A breeze teased her hair as she stood in the shifting moonlight. She'd worn it for him, had chosen it from her drawer that morning with the image in her mind of his face as he saw her in it. It was a short, deliberate seduction of silk and lace that clung to curves.
Dazzled by it, he skimmed a hand up her thigh and felt the tip of her stocking give way to warm flesh. And his mouth watered.
"It's God's grace I didn't know what you had on under that little suit." His voice was thick and ragged at the edges. "I'd never have made it through Mass."
She'd wanted to talk to him. Needed to. But common sense was no defense against the hot spurt of lust. She reached out, tugged the sweater over his head.
"I knew what was under here. You can't imagine what I was thinking of during the Offertory."
His laugh was weak. "We'll both do penance for it. Later." He nudged a strap from her shoulder, then the other so that the bodice shifted, tenuously clung. "The goddess that guards the holy ground," he murmured. "And the witch who came after."
His words made her shiver, with fear and excitement. "I'm a woman, Murphy. Just a woman standing here, wanting you." More than eager, she stepped forward into his arms. "Show me. Show me what you thought about doing to me." She crushed her mouth to his, unbearably hungry. "Then do more."
He could have eaten her alive, consumed her inch by inch, then howled at the moon like a rabid wolf. So he showed her savaging her mouth, letting his hands roam as urgently as they pleased. The sounds in her throat grew stronger, more feral. He felt her teeth
nip and tug at his lip, took his own to her throat to devour the curving length of satin skin.
She was already wet when he cupped her. If he drove her up ruthlessly, if her moan shivered into something closer to a scream, he was too far over the line to stop himself.
Her legs simply buckled. She felt herself falling, felt the cushion of his body under her own, then the weight of it as he rolled.
His mouth was everywhere, gloriously suckling through silk, then under it. His hands were uncannily quick, slicking here, gripping there. Hers were no less urgent, seeking flesh, finding, exploiting.
She tore and tugged at the button of his trousers, muttering promises and pleas while they wrestled over the blanket.
Gasping for breath, she straddled him, then in a move so lightning quick it staggered his senses, took him deep.
While the stunning, violent glory of it streamed through him, he watched her bow back. Her body was sinuous and sleek, her hair a rainfall of silk, her face a carving of sheer triumph and carnal pleasures.
Spellbound, he reached out, found her breasts, watched his hands close over them. He felt the weight, the hot press of her nipples, the wild thunder of her heart.
His, he thought dimly while his body shuddered with unbearable need. This time, for all times, his.
She began to rock, slowly at first, like a dance. Clouds shifted over and around and passed the moon so that her face was shuttered, then revealed, then shuttered again like a dream he couldn't quite capture.
The blood began to rage, in his loins, in his head so that he was sure it would explode and leave nothing but shattered bones.
He saw her arms lift, rise witchlike toward the sky. Her movements quickened, and he began to murmur to her, the words desperate and Gaelic. It seemed she answered him, with the same urgency, in the same tongue. Then his mind hazed, and his body erupted, emptying him into her.
On a long, shuddering moan, she slid down to him. Visions danced in her head, faded.
She must have slept, for she awakened with her heart beating slow and thick, and her skin shivering warm. Even as he cupped her breast, her lips curved and welcomed his.
His touch was gentle now, almost worshipful. So she sighed, and enjoyed and let her body be stroked tenderly back to arousal.
She opened for him, felt him fill her. Delighting in the two sides of him, she matched his leisurely pace until the last ember of need quieted.
Later, she lay beside him, cozy in the blanket he'd drawn over them.
"Darling." He stroked her hair. "We can't sleep here tonight."
She felt his muscles jerk when she ran her hand low over his belly. "We don't have to sleep."
"I mean we can't stay out here." He turned his head for the simple pleasure of burying his nose in her hair. "It's going to rain."
"It is?" She opened one eye and looked up at the sky. "Where did the stars go?"
"Behind the clouds, and there's rain coming soon."
"Hmm. What time is it?"
"I've lost track."
"Where's my watch?"
"You weren't wearing one."
"I wasn't?" In reflex she felt her wrist. Odd, she never took a step without her watch. Never used to.
"We don't need a watch to know it's time I got you under roof." With regret, he tossed the blanket aside. "Maybe you'd ask me in for tea so I could spend a little more time looking at you."
She pulled the chemise over her head. "We could have tea in my room."
"I'd feel as uncomfortable about that as I would taking you to mine while my family's in the house." He watched her smooth on her stockings. "Will you be after wearing something like that again?"
She tossed back her hair as she buttoned her blouse. "I assume you're not talking about the suit." "No, darling, the under it."
"I don't have much along these lines, but I'll see what I can do." She rose to tug on h
er skirt. "Maybe I can pick up a couple of things in Dublin." "Dublin? Are you going to Dublin?" "Tuesday." She shrugged into her jacket, then took his outstretched hand. "Somehow, and I'm not entirely sure how it happened, I'm going with Rogan." "Ah, you've settled the contact then." "I haven't even read the contract. But apparently I have an appointment on Wednesday to have publicity photos taken. Plus I'm supposed to give him a list of my inventory, as he calls my paintings back in New York. He seems to think I'm having a show in the fall."
"That's grand." Delighted for her, he swung her off her feet to kiss her. "Why didn't you tell me before? We'd have celebrated."
"If we'd celebrated any more, I don't think we'd be alive to talk about it." When he laughed, she tucked her arm through his. His unhesitating pleasure, for her, even though she was unsure of her own reactions, touched deep. "In any case, I don't know if celebrating is called for. I haven't signed-though the way Rogan talks it's a done deal."
"You can trust him, if that's what's worrying at you."
"No, not at all. Worldwide's reputation is top notch. And beyond that, I'd trust Rogan absolutely. It's a big decision for me, and I like to make even small decisions after careful thought."
"But you're going to Dublin," he pointed out.
"That one got away from me. One minute we were talking about Maggie and Liam, and the next I had contracts in my hand and talk about shows and publicity ringing in my ears."
"He's the cleverest of fellows, is Rogan," Murphy said admiringly. "I'll miss you, Shannon. Will you be gone long?"
"I should be back Thursday or Friday, from what he said." They were nearly back at the inn when the first drops of rain fell. "I really wanted to talk to you, Murphy."
"So you said. Guidelines, was it?"
"Yes."
"They'll keep." He nodded toward the window. "Brie's in the kitchen. I'd like to come in, but we won't be alone, and I can't stay long." "They'll keep," she agreed.
Books by Nora Roberts Page 137