Half Moon Harbor

by Donna Kauffman

  “Your family wasn’t happy with your move here?”

  He suddenly looked as uncomfortable as she had felt when he’d asked about her family. That flash of vulnerability was surprising. Her heart immediately softened, even as she knew his reaction should have made her more wary. She didn’t want to feel more connected to him, more drawn to him.

  “Let’s just say they felt my talents could have been better put to use back in County Donegal,” he said when the conversational pause once again grew to an uncomfortable length.

  “Is your family in shipbuilding back in Ireland, then? Did they expect you to stay there?”

  He didn’t pause, but spoke immediately. “The Donegal Monaghans moved away from that industry several generations ago. Over the past century or so, economic times, war, any number of other things, shifted my family toward a new path, and new traditions were formed long before I came along.”

  “And yet you embraced the heritage of your more distant ancestors. Your family didn’t think that was still honorable in some way?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t about their not respecting our past so much as feeling that my energies should be spent supporting the current focus of the clan.”

  “Which is?”

  The grin that split his face was as unexpected as the quick punch it sent straight to her libido. “Restaurants. Pubs and taverns mostly.”

  “Oh,” she said, surprised, not understanding the broad grin.

  “Hand in hand with that”—his eyes fairly glittered—“we’ve also spawned a long line of boardinghouse owners and innkeepers. We’re quite good at it, in fact. Of course, the fact that we’re champs at procreation doesn’t hurt. Put enough Monaghan feet on the ground and hands to working and I’m fairly certain we could do anything we’ve a mind to.”

  Grace’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut, a flush heating up her cheeks. What an idiot he must think her, waxing rhapsodic about her little dream inn, admitting she knew nothing about innkeeping. Hell, she felt like an idiot. She was an idiot. “You want to build boats. So you came all the way to America to get away from the pubs and the innkeeping to relaunch that part of your family’s heritage and traditions, only to have someone step in and turn part of it into . . .” She shook her head. “Wow.”

  “Indeed,” he said dryly.

  She tried a laugh. “Maybe it’s a sign of some kind?” she asked faintly, trying to match his humor. “Fate trying to tell you something?”

  “The thought did cross my mind.”

  She shook off her shock, trying to assimilate what his revelation meant in the grand scheme of things. “You said that shipbuilding hasn’t been a family industry in Ireland for several generations. So . . . how did you come to be a boatbuilder then? Who taught you?”

  “The family on this side of the pond were pretty removed from those back home, and that has been the case for some time. No one had crossed over from Ireland to join the stateside Monaghans for several generations, though a handful had come back our way over time, having either given up on the venture here, or wanting to explore their Irish roots, then staying on once they had. All of that was before my time. Growing up, I didn’t even know about this part of our family tree.”

  “Not at all? Really? And yet—”

  “Here I am,” he finished for her. “I know. I was raised in kitchens, busing and waiting tables, cooking, eventually working behind the pub bar when I was old enough. I knew our Irish heritage, every last limb and twig of it, like I lived and breathed. I worked with descendants from every part of it. We were a big, close, loud, noisy lot. There was no escaping the clan, and for a long time, I didn’t want to. I still don’t, truth be told. Not the family part. Just the family business.” An affectionate, somewhat wistful smile crossed his face and there was humor in the twinkle in his eyes. “I don’t miss the noise and general chaos much, either, I’ll admit. Privacy was a rare commodity in my world.”

  She could see that he was being bare-bones honest with her. He couldn’t know it, but that openness, that honesty—she’d seen quite clearly moments ago that his work wasn’t something he appeared to naturally talk about—really struck a chord inside her. Rather than make her uncomfortable or feel guilty about the situation between them, the more he shared, the more she felt . . . well, trustful of him. That had to be an even more dangerous thing than attraction.

  Didn’t it?

  “What changed?” she asked, compelled to hear the rest, as if knowing was imperative. Maybe it was. Maybe it would help her gain objectivity about the situation, about him and his effect on her so she could focus on the work at hand. Except it didn’t feel like it was about smart business. It felt . . . personal. Very personal.

  “My grandfather was a wee lad when the shipbuilding part of our ancestry was coming to its final end, but he had an uncle—my great-great—who kept his hand in. I never knew him. He passed before I was born. He’d picked the craft up from his own father, and so on. He taught my grandfather the love of being on the water, of boats, of fishing—which is how the transition came about for the Monaghans way back when. We went from building ships to building fishing boats to working on them in the lean times. That led to cooking the catch and . . . well, we seemed to find our niche there and flourished in a new direction.”

  “But for you . . . it was being on the water?” Grace had seen the light come into his eyes as he spoke of it, so it wasn’t really a question so much as she wanted to hear him talk about it more. To see more of that light.

  “Aye, indeed. We’d fish, and my grandfather would tell me tales of my greats and my great-greats. He talked of the tall ships, the schooners, the clippers our ancestors built, and how his own uncle built great sailing boats and had passed those skills to him.” Brodie grinned at what was obviously a fond memory. “I was begging him to teach me how to build a boat before I could even ride a bike.”

  “And he did? Your grandfather taught you? That sounds pretty wonderful, actually, for both of you.”

  “It was, truly. I never knew my father really. He was gone for good before I’d turned six, so my grandfather was the man of the family. My best memories are of time spent with him in the shed behind his house. He’d turned it into his own workshop. He built wee boats then, little dinghies, a dory or small, single-mast sailboat. He had even taken to doing miniatures as a pastime. All of it fascinated me. I was happy to learn any of it. Started the fire in me, he did. As I got older, the passion grew and took real shape from reading the journals my ancestors had kept, going over the chests full of plans and charts that my grandfather had saved. They’d all come down to him from his uncle and from his uncle’s father before him.”

  “Did you—were you able to bring any of them with you? I mean, I assume all of that passed on to you then? Or is your grandfather still alive?”

  Brodie shook his head. “No, he passed on when I was but twelve. It was more a hobby to me then, something we shared on the side of regular day-to-day life. My real life was in the kitchen, not in his work shed. My family didn’t even own anyplace where a real boat could be built. My grandfather’s place was sold off when he became infirm and moved to a full-time-care facility. I was far too young then for them to be holding on to it for me. Though I know those were his wishes.”

  Brodie broke eye contact briefly and a gruff note entered his voice. “Senility is a cruel thing, robbed him of so much at the end. Felt like it robbed me, too. But he passed to a better place and my memories now are of the good moments. Of those, we had many.” He looked directly at her once more. “And aye, I did come into possession of a fair number of his things and have held on to them all, though only a small portion came with me. I put the rest in storage along with most of my other worldlies back in Donegal.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  A brief twinkle lit his eyes again, an edge of. . . something else there, as well. Something deeper. Given how it made those tingly parts respond, she thought it might be better not to figure ou
t exactly what those deeper things might be.

  “’Twas a year to the day, that morning we first met.”

  “Oh. Well.” The corners of her mouth twisted downward. “Happy anniversary, only not so much. I’m sorry for that.”

  “As you say, fate takes us in hand, and we’ve but to figure out what best to do with wherever it guides us.”

  She gave a short laugh. “It all sounds ever so much more doable when you say it with that lilting accent.”

  “That and a merry twinkle in yer eye will get ye far in this world, lass, indeed it will,” he said, his brogue deepening with every word. “And don’t you be forgettin’ it.”

  She shook her head, still smiling, and felt a bit of warmth creep into her cheeks as his gaze lingered along with that very twinkle he spoke of aimed directly her way. “So, you came here to bring back the family business,” she said, wondering if there was anything that would help her feel more bulletproof to his charms. Good luck with that. The more she knew about him, the more vulnerable to them she became. “I guess it must have been pretty exciting to discover the Monaghan shipbuilding legacy hadn’t died out on this side of the pond, as you called it. Well, not as far back as it had on your side, at any rate. How did you find out? From your grandfather before he passed?”

  Brodie shook his head. “No, his stories were all from our side. I don’t know that he knew, as it would have been up to his uncle to tell him. Who knows what the politics of the family were back then in that regard.”

  “So, how did you find out? How old were you?”

  “Just going on eighteen. When I say my grandfather left trunks of old documents and such, I wasn’t kidding. When he passed, I was still in school, and when I wasn’t, I was working in the kitchens, so free time was a rare commodity. It took me some time to even make a dent in them.”

  “Were you building anything then? Oh, right, you said your family didn’t have any kind of outbuilding and had sold off your grandfather’s place. That must have been hard. Reading about boats, and not being able to get your hands on them.”

  A quick grin flashed and the dimples winked out. “Oh, I kept my hand in. Not that my family knew, but aye. In a school chum’s shed, we’d begun building our own sailboat, following some plans of my great-great-uncle that I’d modified. Of course, even modified, it was a big two-master. Once we’d gotten the hull built, I don’t know how we planned on actually finishing the thing. I lived right on the water, but Trevor lived a good kilometer or so inland. We weren’t even old enough to drive and neither of us had a boat trailer.” He laughed. “But it was a good lesson, a good challenge.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing we could do. It was kind of like that old wreck you buy as a lad, thinking to fix it up and get it running, only you never do, so it sits on blocks in the garage for a lifetime or two.”

  “Surely your friend’s family noticed they had a half-built sailboat in their shed.”

  “Trev’s family had a good bit more money than we did. We were doing well enough, but we also had several times over the number of mouths to feed as Trevor’s parents did—only child that he was. So the shed we used, which was more a garage, really, was but one of a number of outbuildings on his family property. I think they were just thankful he had something to do to keep him busy and out of the hair of the household staff.” Brodie laughed. “Of course, I wanted to spend any free second I could over at his place, and all he wanted to do was spend every breathing second in our tavern. He’d do anything, any job, didn’t even want to be paid. He was just starved for the noise and chaos and the people, while I craved the peace and solitude of that stifling shed.”

  Grace shook her head and smiled with him. “I can’t really imagine the kind of life you led. The family, all of it.”

  “You were cut more from Trevor’s cloth then?”

  “Hardly. We had no money, no outbuildings, no property at all that we actually owned.” Her laugh was dry. “And the only household staff we had was me.”

  “Cinderella, were you?” Brodie grinned at that.

  But it was compassion she saw in his eyes. It shouldn’t have stung—it wasn’t pity, after all—but it did, more than she wanted to admit.

  She shook her head. “No. No evil stepsisters.” She found a smile from somewhere, not really wanting to think about her situation growing up and kicking herself for opening that door. He’d been so open and honest about his, though, it was only fair.

  “Well, I’ve got six I would have gladly lent you for the asking,” he joked.

  “You have six stepsisters?”

  “Oh no. They’re full-blood siblings.” He grinned. “Though, you ask me, I’d say they could lay claim to the evil part often enough.”

  Grace laughed at that, though it was envy she felt, more than sympathy. “Six sisters. I can’t—I can’t even fathom what that would be like. Any brothers?”

  “If only I’d been so fortunate,” he said on a heartfelt sigh. “I might’ve had a fightin’ chance. As it was, I’m often surprised I made it to puberty.”

  “Were you the youngest?” Grace grinned broadly. Brodie being the baby of the apparently sprawling Monaghan clan explained a great deal about his natural-born charisma.

  “Right in the middle.” The most disarming bit of flush came to his cheeks, proving that he could, indeed, be even more attractive and adorable. “Three younger, three older. My mother had four sisters and my father three more. Most of whom worked in the business or close enough to it, all of whom made it their business to make my life a miserable matriarchal hell.”

  Grace snickered at that. “That explains even more.”

  “Even more of what?”

  “Oh, we’ve already discussed how you’re pretty darn charming, especially with members of the opposite sex. The ladies who have stopped in to see what was going on with the boathouse all but swoon at the mere mention of your name.”

  His grin flashed again. “You’ve been mentioning me, have you?”

  “See?” she said, eyes widening. “You can’t help yourself. All I meant was that if you were drowning in the estrogen ocean for all of your formative years, that’s probably a large part of why you understand women so well. Or understand how to get to them, anyway.”

  He cocked his head, his smile so slow and devilish it made her throat go dry. And other parts of her go quite decidedly in the other direction. “Who said I understand how to get to women?”

  “No one. I mean, I did.” Why was she so flustered? “I mean . . . it’s pretty obvious you aren’t shy about using your genetic gifts. You know your strengths and don’t mind playing to them. It’s smart, really. I definitely don’t blame you for it.”

  “Good to know.” His gaze zeroed right back in on hers, bringing all those primal parts sinuously back to life.

  He shocked her by taking a step closer, and suddenly the huge empty boathouse felt a whole lot smaller. Stifling even. In a really earthy, steamy, hothouse kind of way.

  He held her gaze, then dropped his to her mouth, before finding his way back up to her eyes. “What would you say your strengths are then, Grace? What cards do you play when you want to get your way?”

  Chapter 8

  What in bloody hell am I doing? Listening to the poor deprived head in his trousers, rather than the bobbling idiot perched on his shoulders. Yet, despite that bit of knowledge, Brodie remained right where he stood, deep in her personal space. Deeper still in the danger zone.

  “Why did you come to the boathouse today?” she asked, the words a bit strained with a breathless quality that may have been mostly wishful thinking on his part.

  His body was perfectly happy to respond to the promise of it, nonetheless.

  “Is that your answer then?” He smiled. “Blunt speech, direct confrontation if necessary?” He noted that her throat worked and the finest of tensions tightened that lovely jawline of hers.

  “I’ve found being direct cuts down on t
ime lost to needless discussion.” Her gaze was riveted to his. “And avoids potential misunderstandings.”

  “Well, there are discussions and then there are conversations. They aren’t always the same thing, you know. Dialogue doesn’t always have to have a bigger purpose. Sometimes it can simply be enjoyable in its own right. The give-and-take . . . ebb and flow. A harmless bit of banter now and again.” His smile spread. “Surely you’ve heard of it.”

  Not an hour earlier, Brodie had been in close proximity to another woman, one far more classically beautiful than this one. He’d watched her eyes grow dark with desire and felt nothing. Grace Maddox, on the other hand—who, truth be told, was likely a far greater threat to his achieving his goals than Cami Weathersby could ever hope to be—drew one breathy note and his body went instantly rigid at the idea of what other little sounds he might elicit from her.

  Why had he come to the boathouse? To see if that morning a fortnight ago had just been an odd blip on his physical radar? Given the state he’d been in just before finding her sprawled on his docks, it was quite probable that his rather primal reaction to her had been more about timing than any real response. At least he’d wanted to believe that.

  So how was he going to explain away what she was doing to him now?

  He lifted a hand and ran a fingertip along a wave of her hair down below her chin, stopping just above where it rested on the faded camp shirt she wore. “It suits you down, you know.”

  The most delightful spots of pink bloomed in her fair cheeks, which in turn delighted him. So, he thought, not used to wearin’ it down, are ye, then? He could think of only one reason why she would have made the change, and the fit of his jeans grew a mite more uncomfortable as the image of her descending his wrought-iron stairs, hair all damp and in wild disarray, played through his mind.