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“Well, it won’t hurt to sit a minute.” She’d always been easy in the Gallagher kitchen. Little had changed in it since she’d been a girl, though Jude was adding her mark here and there.
The walls were cream-colored, and looked almost delicate against the dark wood that trimmed them. The windowsills were thick and wide, and Jude had set little pots of herbs along them to catch the sun. The old cabinet with its glass front and many drawers that ran along the side wall had always been white and comfortably shabby. Now Jude had painted it a pale, pale green so it looked fresh and pretty and somehow female.
The good dishes were displayed behind the glass— dishes the Gallaghers had used for holidays and special occasions. They were white with little violets edging the plates and cups.
The small hearth was of cobbled stone, and the carved fairy that Brenna had given Jude for her thirtieth birthday guarded the fire that simmered there.
It had always been a home, Brenna thought, and a fine, warm one. Now it was Jude’s.
“This room suits you,” Brenna said as Jude carefully wrapped an ice-filled cloth around Brenna’s injured thumb.
“It does, yes.” Jude beamed, not noticing that she was already picking up the rhythm of Irish speech. “I only wish I could cook.”
“You do fine.”
“It’s never going to be one of my strengths. Thank God for Shawn.” She walked to the refrigerator, hoping to keep it casual. “He sent some soup home with Aidan last night. Potato and lovage. Since you didn’t go to the pub for lunch with your father, I’ll heat some up for both of us.”
She started to refuse, but her stomach was threatening to rumble, so she gave in. “Thanks for that.”
“I made the bread.” Jude poured soup into a pan and set it on to warm. “So I won’t guarantee it.”
Brenna eyed the loaf with approval when Jude took it out of the bread drawer. “Brown soda bread, is it? I favor that. It looks lovely.”
“I think I’m getting the hang of it.”
“Why do you bother, when you’ve only to have Shawn send some over for you?”
“I like it. The process of it. Mixing and kneading and rising.” Jude set the slices she’d cut on a plate. “It’s good thinking time, too.”
“My mother always says so. But for me, I’d rather take a nice lie-me-down to do my thinking. You go to all that trouble to cook something, and . . .” Brenna snatched a slice from the plate, bit in. “Gone,” she said with a grin.
“Watching it go is one of the cook’s pleasures.” Jude went to the stove, gave her heating soup a stir. “You’ve had a fight with Shawn, and not one of your usual squabbles.”
“I don’t know that it was really a fight, but I can’t say it was usual. It’ll pass, Jude. Don’t worry yourself over it.”
“I love you. Both of you.”
“I know you do. It’s a bit of nothing, I promise.”
Saying no more, Jude got out bowls and spoons. How much, she wondered, did one friend interfere in the business of another? Where was the line? Then sighing, she decided there simply wasn’t one. “You have feelings for him.”
Brenna’s nerves jittered at the quiet tone. “Well, sure, and I have feelings for the man. We’ve been in and out of each other’s pockets all our lives. Which is only one of the many reasons he irritates me so I want to bash him with a hammer more often than not.”
She smiled when she said it, but Jude’s face remained sober. “You have feelings for him,” Jude repeated, “that have nothing to do with childhood or friendship and everything to do with being a woman attracted to a man.”
“I . . .” Brenna felt the color rush hot to her cheeks— the curse of a redhead. “Well, that’s not . . .” Lies trembled on her tongue and simply refused to fall. “Oh, hell.” She rubbed her uninjured hand over her face, then stopped abruptly, fingers spread around eyes that went suddenly wide and appalled. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it shows?”
Before Jude could answer, Brenna was up, pacing, knocking the heels of her hands against the sides of her head, moaning out curses. “I’ll have to move away, leave my family. I can go to the west counties. I have some people, on my mother’s side, in Galway. No, no, that’s not far enough. I’ll have to leave the country entirely. I’ll go to Chicago and stay with your granny until I get on me feet. She’ll take me in, won’t she?”
She spun back, teeth gritted once again as Jude ladled soup into bowls and chuckled. “Oh, well, now, maybe you find this a laughing matter, Jude Frances, but to me it’s dire business. I’m humiliated in front of everyone who knows me, and al
l because I’ve an itch for some pretty-faced, soft-brained man.”
“You’re not humiliated, and I’m sorry to laugh. But your face . . . well.” Choking back another chuckle, Jude set the soup bowls on the table, then patted Brenna’s shoulder. “Sit down, take a deep breath. You don’t have to leave the country.”
When Brenna stood her ground, Jude took the deep breath herself. “I don’t think it shows, not obviously. But I’m used to watching people, analyzing, and on top of it I think, really, that when you’re in love you’re more tuned to emotions. Something . . . I don’t know, ripples in the air when the two of you are in the same room. After a while I realized it wasn’t the usual affectionate animosity that friends and family sometimes have, but something more, well, elemental.”
Brenna waved a hand in dismissal. She’d hooked on to only one point. “It doesn’t show?”
“No, not unless you look really close. Now sit down.”
“All right, then.” She blew out a breath now as she sat, but she didn’t feel completely relieved. “If Darcy’d noticed, she’d have said something. She wouldn’t be able to resist needling at me about it. So if it’s just you and Shawn that know, I can manage that.”
“You’ve told him?”
“It seemed time I did.” Without much interest, Brenna spooned up soup. “I’ve been having these urges, so to speak, for a long time where he’s concerned. Thinking on it just recently, it seemed to me that if we just went to bed together a time or two I’d get it out of my system.”
Jude set down her own spoon with a clatter. “You asked him to go to bed with you?”
“I did, and you’d think I’d smashed him in the balls with my wrench. So that’s the end of that.”
Jude folded her hands, leaned forward. “I’m going to pry.”
Brenna’s lips twitched. “Oh, you haven’t started that yet?”
“Not nearly. What exactly did you say to him?”
“I said, plain enough, that I thought we should have sex. And what’s wrong with that?” she demanded, gesturing with her spoon. “You’d think a man would appreciate clear, honest speaking.”
“Hmmm” was all Jude could think of. “I take it Shawn didn’t appreciate it.”
“Hah. I’m like a sister to him, he says. And how I should be ashamed. Ashamed,” she repeated, firing up. “Then he tells me right out he doesn’t want me in that way. So I jumped him.”
“You . . .” Jude coughed and picked up her spoon again. She needed something to soothe the tickle in her throat. “You jumped him.”
“Aye. Planted a kiss on him that he won’t forget anytime soon. And the man didn’t exactly fight me off like his life depended on it.” She tore a slice of bread in two, shoved half in her mouth. “After I was done with that, I left him standing there, looking shell-shocked.”
“I imagine. He kissed you back?”
“Sure he kissed me back.” She tossed that off with a shrug. “Men are predictable that way. Even if a woman isn’t to their taste, they’re likely to take a sample, aren’t they?”
“Um, yes, I suppose.” Unsure of her ground, Jude went back to hmmm.
“Now I’m steering clear of him for a while,” Brenna continued, “as I can’t decide if I’m more angry or embarrassed about the matter.”
“He’s been very distracted the last few days.”
“Has he now?”
“And short-tempered.”
Brenna found her appetite coming back. “I’m delighted to hear it. I hope he suffers, the donkey’s ass.”
“If I wanted a man to suffer, I think I’d want to watch him while he did it.” Jude swallowed more soup. “But that’s just me.”
“I suppose there’s no harm in stopping by the pub after work today.” Brenna sent Jude a quick and wicked grin. “Thanks.”
“Oh, anytime.”
Brenna went through the rest of her workday whistling, her mood bright and her hands nimble. She supposed it wasn’t very charitable of her to take such pleasure in the idea of another’s unhappiness. But she was human, after all. When she walked into Gallagher’s, she was more cheerful than she’d been in days. It was early enough to be quiet, with only a scattering of the tables occupied. Far from being worked off her feet, Darcy was standing at the bar talking to big Jack Brennan.
“You go on and sit with your friends,” she told Mick when she spotted a couple of his cronies already planted by the fire with pints. “I’ll just sit at the bar and catch up with Darcy.”
“I’ll do that, and you’ll have her bring me a pint, won’t you, darling?”
“I will.” Brenna angled left and slid onto a stool beside Jack.
“Well, now, here’s a stranger.” Aidan automatically put a pint and a glass under the taps, as he knew the preferences of his regulars. “Where is it you’ve been hiding yourself, Mary Brenna?”
“In your own home. You have a look at your baby’s room when you get there, and let me know what you think.”
“That I’ll do.”
