by Nora Roberts
“What on God’s green earth are you talking about?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about, you bloody lecher. She’s barely twenty, hardly more than a girl.”
“What?” He shoved her hand away before she could stab straight into his heart. “What?”
“If you think I’m going to stand by idle while you add her to your string of ladies, then you’d best keep thinking.”
“My . . . Mary Kate?” Sheer shock came first. Then he remembered how the young girl—no, no, young woman, he corrected—had looked when she’d smiled and fluttered her pretty lashes. “Mary Kate,” he said, more thoughtfully, and with just a hint of a smile.
A hot red haze filled Brenna’s head. “You get that gleam out of your eye, Shawn Gallagher, or I swear I’ll blacken both of them.”
Because her fists were raised, he took a cautious step back and lifted his hands palms out. They were well beyond the stage where he could, in all conscience, wrestle with her. “Brenna, calm yourself down. I never touched her, never thought to. Never thought of her in the way you’re meaning until you mentioned it yourself. For Christ’s sake, I’ve known her since she was in nappies.”
“Well, she’s not in nappies now.”
“No, indeed, she’s not,” he said with perhaps an unwise hint of approval. So he supposed the fist that landed in his gut was his own fault. “Jesus, Brenna, a man can’t be faulted for appreciating.”
“You do that appreciating from a distance. If you make a move in that direction, I promise you I’ll break both your legs.”
It was rare for him to lose his temper, so he recognized that he was coming dangerously close. To solve the matter, he simply cupped his hands under her elbows and lifted her off her feet until their eyes were level. Both shock and fury fired in hers.
“Don’t you threaten me. If I had thoughts of that nature regarding Mary Kate, then I’d act on them and that would be between the two of us, and not you. Do you understand that?”
“She’s my sister,” Brenna began, then subsided when he gave her one hard shake.
“And that gives you the right to embarrass her and take punches at me when we’ve done no more than stand in my kitchen and talk? Well, I’m standing here talking to you, too, and have countless times before. Have I ripped your clothes off and had my way with you?”
He dropped her down on her feet again and stung her beyond belief by merely turning his back. “You should be ashamed where you’ve let your mind run,” he said quietly.
“I—” The tears were going to come after all. She struggled with them, swallowed viciously, then could only stare through them as Darcy came in. “I have to go,” was the best she could manage. Then she fled through the back door.
“Shawn.” Darcy dumped empties in the sink and turned to glare at him. “What the devil did you do to make Brenna cry?”
Guilt, anger, and emotions he didn’t care to explore waged an ugly war inside him. “Oh, just bugger it,” he snapped. “I’ve had enough of females for one night.”
She was mortified and full of misery. She’d upset, insulted, and embarrassed two people she cared about deeply. She’d butted in where it wasn’t her business. No, she didn’t believe that. It was her business. Mary Kate had been flirting outrageously, and Shawn had been oblivious.
Typical.
But he wouldn’t have stayed oblivious. Her sister was beautiful, she was sweet, she was smart. And she was most definitely a young woman in full bloom.
Protecting her hadn’t been the mistake. But the method had been clumsy, and more than a little selfish. Because—and she had to face it—she’d also been a woman defending her territory.
Of which, Shawn was also oblivious.
All she could do now was mend her fences.
She’d taken a long walk on the beach. To cry it out, to think it through, to settle herself. And to ensure that when she did return home, her parents would most likely be tucked into their bed so that she could talk with Mary Kate alone.
There was a light on outside, shining over the porch, and another left burning in the front window. She left them both on, as she doubted her sister Patty would be back yet from her Saturday date.
Another wedding, she thought as she took off her jacket. More fussing and planning and cranky tears over flowers and fabric swatches.
She couldn’t for the life of her understand why a sensible person would want to go through all of that nonsense. Maureen had been a nervous wreck—and had set the entire family on its ear—before she’d finally walked down the aisle the previous autumn.
Not that she hadn’t looked lovely, Brenna thought as she hung her cap on the closet hook. All glowing and fresh in her billowy white dress and the lace veil their own mother had worn on her wedding day. Happiness had been like sunbeams, all but shining from her fingertips, and seeing that wash of love over her sister had made Brenna stop, for a short while, feeling like ten times a fool in her own fussy blue maid of honor gown.
Now if she herself ever took the plunge—and since she wanted children, what else could she do but marry eventually—simplicity would be the order of the day.
A church wedding would be fine, as she imagined her mother’s heart, and her father’s as well, would be set on that for all their daughters. But she’d be damned if she would spend months looking at dresses and searching through catalogs and discussing the pros and cons of roses over tulips or some such.
She’d wear her mother’s dress and veil, and maybe carry yellow daisies, as she had a fondness for them. And she’d walk down the aisle on her father’s arm to the sound of pipes rather than a fusty old organ. And after, they’d have a party right here at the house. A big, noisy ceili where everyone could loosen their ties and relax.
And what, she thought, shaking her head outside the door of the room that her youngest sisters, Mary Kate and Alice Mae, shared, was she doing dreaming of such things now?
She slipped into the room, stood in the candy-coated, female scent of it while her eyes adjusted, then picked her way over to the lump on the bed nearest the back window.
“Mary Kate, are you awake?”
“She is.” Alice Mae’s silhouette of a head and shoulders surrounded by a mass of wild curls popped up. “And I’m to tell you that she hates you like poison, always will until the day she departs this earth, and she’s not speaking to you.”
“Go back to sleep.”
“How can I manage that, with herself there coming in and burning my ears off with abuse of you? Did you really shove her out the kitchen at Gallagher’s, then curse at her?”
“I did not.”
“She did,” Mary Kate corrected in a stiff and formal voice. “And you’ll kindly tell her, Alice Mae, to remove her skinny ass from my bedroom.”
“She says you’re to remove—”
“I heard her, for Christ’s sake. And I’m not going.”
“Well, then, if she’s not going, I am.” Mary Kate started to get up, but found herself pinned.
At the sound of muffled curses and struggle, Alice Mae eagerly switched on her bedside lamp to watch the show. “Ah, you’ll never best her, Katie, for you fight like a girl. Did you never listen to anything she taught us?”
“Just hold still, you goose brain. How the hell can I apologize when you’re trying to bite me hand off?”
“I don’t want your flaming apology.”
“Well, you’re getting it, if I have to ram it down your throat.” Annoyed and at her wits’ end, Brenna did the simple thing. She sat on her sister.
“Brenna’s been crying.” Alice Mae, with the softest heart in Ireland, climbed out of bed to pad over to her sister. “There now.” Gently, she kissed both Brenna’s cheeks. “It can’t be as bad as all that, darling.”
“Little mother,” Brenna murmured, and nearly started crying again. Her baby sister wasn’t a baby any longer, but a slim and pretty girl on the verge of womanhood. And that, Brenna thought with a sigh, was a worry fo
r another day. “Go back to bed, sweetheart. Your feet’ll get cold.”
“I’ll sit here.” She slid onto the bed, and plopped on Mary Kate’s legs. “And help you hold her down. If it was enough to make you cry, she should at least have the courtesy to listen to you.”
“Well, she made me cry,” Mary Kate protested.
“Yours were temper tears,” Alice Mae said primly, using one of their mother’s expressions.
“Part of mine were, too, I suppose.” With a sigh, Brenna snugged an arm around Alice Mae’s shoulders. “She had a right to be angry with me. I behaved badly. I’m so sorry, Katie, for the way I acted, and the things I said.”
“You are?”
“Truly.” Tears swam up again, into her throat, into her eyes. “I just love you.”
“I love you, too.” Mary Kate sobbed it out. “I’m sorry, too. I said awful things to you. I didn’t mean them.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She shifted so that Mary Kate could scramble up to be held. “I can’t help but worry about you,” she murmured against her sister’s hair. “I know you’re grown up, but it’s not easy to think of you that way. With Maureen and Patty it’s not so hard. Maureen’s barely ten months younger than me, and Patty came just a year after that. But with you two . . .” She opened her arms so Alice Mae could slip in as well. “I remember when each of you came along, so it’s different somehow.”
“But I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“I know.” Brenna closed her eyes. “You’re so pretty, Katie. And I suppose you have to test your skills. I just wish you’d test them on boys your own age.”
“I have.” With a watery laugh, Mary Kate lifted her head from Brenna’s shoulder and grinned. “I’m thinking I’m ready to move up a level.”
“Oh, Mother Mary.” Brenna closed her eyes. “Just answer me this. Do you fancy yourself in love with Shawn?”
“I don’t know.” She moved her shoulders restlessly. “I might be. It’s just that he’s so handsome, like a knight on a white charger. And he’s like a poet, so romantic and deep somehow. He looks at you, right in the eye. A lot of boys aim their eyes a bit lower, so you know they’re not thinking about you, but about the possibility of getting you out of your blouse. Have you ever noticed his hands, Brenna?”
“His hands?” Long, narrow, clever. Gorgeous.
“They’re an artist’s hands, and you just know, looking at them, how they might feel if he touched you.”
“Aye,” she said on a long breath, then caught herself. “What I mean to say is I can understand how he’d stir certain, well, juices, being as he’s pretty. I just want you to have a care, that’s all.”
“I will.”
“There, now, you’re all made up.” Alice Mae got up, kissed both of them. “Now will you go away, Brenna, so we can all get some sleep?”
Brenna didn’t sleep much, and when she did, there were dreams. Odd and jumbled dreams with moments of clarity that almost hurt the brain. A white-winged horse carrying a rider dressed in silver, with his long black hair flying away from a finely sculpted handsome face. He flew through the night, with stars burning around him, higher and higher, toward the glowing white ball of a full moon. A moon that dripped light like tears, tears he gathered like pearls in his bag of shining silver. Pearls that he poured onto the ground at the feet of Lady Gwen as they stood outside the cottage on the faerie hill.
“These are the tears of the moon. They are my longing for you. Take them, and me.”
But she shed her own tears as she turned away from him, denied him, refused him. And the pearls glowed in the grass and the glowing became moonflowers.
And it was Brenna who picked them, by night, when their delicate white petals were open. She laid them on the little stoop by the cottage door, leaving them there for Shawn because she lacked the courage to take them inside. And to offer.
The lack of sleep and surplus of dreams left her holloweyed and broody the next day. After Mass she piddled around, taking apart the engine of the old lawn mower, changing the points and plugs on her truck, tuning it though it didn’t need tuning. She was under her mother’s old car, changing the oil, when she saw her father’s boots.
“Your ma said I should come out here and see what’s weighing on your brain before you take it into your head to strip the engine out of this old tank.”
“I’m just seeing to some things need seeing to.”
“I see that.” He crouched down, then with a wheezy sigh, scooted under the car with her. “So you’ve nothing on your mind.”
“Maybe I do.” She worked a few moments in silence, knowing he would let her gather her thoughts. “Could I ask you something?”
“You know you can.”
“What is it a man wants?”
Mick pursed his lips, pleased to see how quick and competent his daughter’s hands were with a wrench. “Well, a good woman, steady work, a hot meal, and a pint at the end of day satisfies most.”
“It’s the first part I’m trying to figure here. What is it a man wants from a woman?”
“Oh. Well, now.” Flustered, and not a little panicked, he started to scoot out again. “I’ll get your mother.”
“You’re a man, she’s not.” Brenna caught his leg before he could escape. He was wiry, but she had a good grip. “I want, from a man’s own mind, what it is he’s looking for in a woman.”
“Ah . . . well . . . common sense,” he said a bit too cheerily. “That’s a fine trait. And patience. A man needs patience from a woman, truth be known. Time was, he wanted her to make him a nice comfortable home, but in today’s world—and as I have five daughters I have to live in today’s world—that’s more a give-and-take sort of arrangement. A helpmate.” He grabbed the word like a rope tossed over the edge of a very high cliff with a very narrow ledge that was rapidly crumbling under his feet. “A man wants a helpmate, a life’s companion.”
Brenna gave herself a little push so she could sit out beside the car. She kept her hand on his ankle, for she sensed he’d bolt if she gave him the chance. “I think we both know I’m not talking about common sense and patience and companionship.”
His face went pink, then white. “I’m not talking to you about sex, Mary Brenna, so get that idea right out of your head. I’m not having a conversation with my daughter about such a matter.”
“Why? I know you’ve had it, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
“Be that as it may,” he said and closed his lips.
“If I were a son instead of a daughter, we could discuss it?”
“You’re not, so we aren’t, and that’s the end of it.” Now he folded his arms as well.
Sitting as he was, he made Brenna think of an annoyed leprechaun, and she wondered if Jude had used him as a model for one of her sketches.
“And how am I to get my mind around something if it can’t be discussed?”
Since Mick didn’t give a hang about the logic of that at the moment, he simply scowled off into the distance. “If you must talk of such things, speak with your mother.”
“All right, all right, never mind, then.” She’d go at this from a different angle. Hadn’t he been the very one to teach her there was always more than one way to approach a job of work? “Tell me something else.”
“On another topic entirely?”
“You could say that.” She smiled at him, patting his leg. “I’m wondering, if there was something you wanted, had wanted for some time, what would you do about it?”
“If I’ve wanted it, why don’t I have it?”
“Because you haven’t made any real effort to get it as yet.”
“And why haven’t I?” He arched his sandy brows. “Am I slow or just stupid?”
Brenna thought it over, decided he couldn’t know he’d just insulted his firstborn. Then she nodded slowly. “Maybe a bit of both in this particular case.”
Relieved to have the conversation turn to a safe area, he gave her a fierce grin. “Then I’d stop bein
g slow and I’d stop being stupid and I’d take good aim at what I wanted and not dawdle about. Because when an O’Toole takes aim, by Jesus, he hits his mark.”
That, she knew, was true enough. And was certainly expected. “But maybe you’re a bit nervous and not quite sure of your skill in this area.”
“Girl, if you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer’s always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.”
“You’re right.” She took his shoulders, transferring a little grease from her hands to his shirt as she kissed him soundly. “You’re always right, Dad, and that’s just what I needed to hear.”
“Well, that’s what a father’s for, after all.”
“Would you mind finishing up this business here?” She jerked a thumb under the car. “I don’t like to leave it half done, but there’s something I have to see to.”
“That’s not a problem.” He wiggled under the car and, delighted he’d put his daughter’s mind at ease, whistled while he worked.
FIVE
SHAWN STEEPED HIS tea until he could have danced the hornpipe on its surface, then unearthed the day-old scones left over from the pub. He had an hour before he had to be at work, and he intended to enjoy his little breakfast and read the paper that he’d picked up in the village after Mass. The radio on the counter was playing traditional Gaelic tunes, and the kitchen hearth was crackling with fine turf fire. For him, it was a small slice of heaven.
Before long he’d be cooking for the Sunday crowds, and Darcy would be in and out of the kitchen at Gallagher’s, needling him about something or other. And this one or that would have something to say to him. He imagined Jude would slip in for an hour or two, and he’d make sure she had a good, healthy supper.
He didn’t mind any of that, not a bit. But if he didn’t grab a handful of alone time now and again, it felt as if his brain would explode. He could imagine himself living in the cottage for the rest of his life, with the badtempered black cat stretched out by the fire, wallowing in quiet morning after quiet morning.
His mind drifted along with the pipes and flutes flowing from the radio. His foot began to tap. And then the loud thud at his back door sent his heart shooting straight to his throat.
The big yellow hound grinned at him, her tongue hanging out and her massive paws pressed against the glass. Shawn shook his head, but he got up to go to the door. He never minded the O’Tooles’ Betty. She was fine company, and after a bit of a scratch and stroke she would curl up and settle into her own dreams.
Bub arched his back and hissed, but that was routine rather than true annoyance. When the patient Betty didn’t react, the cat merely turned his tail up and began to wash.
“Out and about, are you, now?” Shawn said as he let Betty in out of a brisk wind that hinted of rain. “Well, you’re welcome to share a scone and the fire, no matter what that devil there says about it.” But as he started to close the door again, he spotted Brenna.
His first reaction was a vague irritation, for here was someone who wouldn’t settle for a scratch and a stroke but would demand conversation. He kept the door open and stood between the wind and the warmth as he watched her.
A few coils of hair had come loose from her cap and were flying around, red as rubies. Her mouth was set, making him wonder if he, or someone, had done something to annoy her. Which, now that he thought of it, was such a simple matter. Still, it was a fine mouth if you took the time to look at it.
For such a small woman, she had a long stride, he noted. And a purposeful one. She was moving as if she had something to do and wanted it over and dealt with quickly. Knowing the O’Toole as he did, he had no doubt she’d let him know just what that was in the shortest of orders.
She skirted around the little patch of herbs he was thinking of expanding into a full kitchen garden. The wind had whipped color into her face, so when she lifted her head and caught his eye, her cheeks were rosy.
“Good day to you, Mary Brenna. If you’re out for a walk with your dog, it seems she’s had enough of it. She’s already sitting under my table here, and Bub’s ignoring her as if she isn’t worth his time.”
“She’s the one who wanted to walk with me.”
“Sure, and if you walked now and then instead of marching as you do, she might stay along with you longer. Come in out of the wind.” He started to move back as she stepped on the back stoop, then paused, sniffed. Smiled. “You smell