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“What are they?”
Words leaped to her tongue but she bit them back. “Let’s have this open first.”
“I’ll do it.” He nudged her away from the champagne, then lifted his brows at the label. “The pricey stuff. Are we celebrating?”
“We are.” She caught the look in his eye, and the way his fingers suddenly stilled on the foil. “If you ask me if I’m breeding I’ll brain you. I am not.”
Her eyes were laughing as she spoke. He kept his on them as he twisted the wire. “You’re in a rare mood.”
“I am. There are some things that don’t happen every day of the week, and a rare mood’s what you get from them when they do.” She felt as bubbly as the wine he poured. Taking her glass, she lifted it. “This is to you, Shawn.”
“And what did I do?”
“We should sit down. No, I can’t. We’ll have to stand. Shawn, you’ve sold your first piece of music.”
TWENTY
THE PUZZLED SMILE slid away from his face. “I’ve done what?” “You’ve sold your song, and there’ll be others as well. But the first’s the biggest thrill, isn’t it?”
Very deliberately, he set his glass down again. “I haven’t put any music up for sale, Brenna.”
“I did. Well, in a way I did. The song you gave me, I sent it off to the Magee in New York City. He called me today, just this morning, and said how he wants to buy it. And that he wants to see your other work.” She spun in a circle, too excited to see how cool his eyes were as they watched her. “I didn’t think I’d get through the day without telling you.”
“What right did you have to do that?”
Still beaming, she sipped champagne. “To do what?”
“To send my music off that way, to take it on yourself to show a stranger what was mine?”
“Shawn.” She put a hand on his arm to give him a little shake. “He’s buying it.”
“I gave it to you because you asked me—because I thought you wanted it for yourself, and that you valued it for that. Is this what you planned all along, to send it off somewhere, have another put a price on it?”
Something was wrong, badly and dangerously wrong. The only way she knew how to deal with it was temper. “What if it was? It got results, didn’t it? What good is it to make songs without doing something with them? Now you can.”
He met heat with ice. “And it’s for you to decide, is it, what I can and should do, and how and when I should do it?”
“You weren’t doing anything about it.”
“How do you know what I’m doing or not, planning on doing or not?”
“Haven’t I heard you say a thousand times you weren’t ready to show it for sale?”
The minute the words were out of her mouth, she recognized her mistake. Even as she searched for a way around it, he was plowing on. “That’s right, you have. But that didn’t suit you, didn’t sit well with the way you want things done. What good is it, you’re thinking, if you can’t make a living from it. If you don’t have coin to show for it at end of day.”
“It’s not the coin—”
“My music is the most personal thing in my life,” he interrupted. “Whether I ever make a pound from it doesn’t change what it is to me. You don’t understand that, Brenna, or respect that. Or me.”
“That’s not true.” She was beginning to feel something other than anger. It was a clawing in the gut, in the throat, that had nothing to do with temper. “I only wanted you to have something out of it.”
“I had something out of it.”
She’d never seen anger so cold, so controlled. There was no mistaking it in that rigid face, those hard eyes. It made her feel like a bug not worthy of being squashed. “For Christ’s sake, Shawn, you should be dancing instead of hammering at me. The man wants to buy your song. He thinks it should be recorded.”
“What he thinks matters more than what I do?”
“Oh, you’re twisting this all around. You have an opportunity, and you’re too stubborn to take it.”
“Is that how it is between us? You make the decisions, you do the thinking, and I’m just to follow, to fall in line and be grateful you’re looking out for me as I’m too half-witted to look after myself?”
“Why are you turning this one thing into everything?” Her hand shook as she dragged it through her hair. “Didn’t you arrange for the man to look at my design?” It struck her suddenly that she’d forgotten about that, about everything Magee had said to her about her own work. She’d forgotten all that in the thrill of his offering for Shawn’s.
“I did,” Shawn countered. “And you can’t see any difference in that, Brenna, than this? I talked to you of showing your design, I didn’t go behind your back with it, or pull tricks.”
“It wasn’t a trick, wasn’t meant as one.” But she was beginning to see the wrong turn, and the sinking sensation in her stomach layered sickness over understanding. “You never said you didn’t want to do something with your music. It was always you weren’t ready.”
“Because I wasn’t ready.”
“Well, if we’re stuck on that one point, I say you were.” Fear made her lash out. “And so does a man who appears to be something of the expert on such things. Damn you, you gave the song to me, and I did what I chose with it. I thought you’d be pleased, but it’s not a mistake I’ll make again.”
He stared her down, viciously pleased when she began to tremble. “And neither will I.” Without another word, he turned and walked out of the house.
“You son of a bitch.” She kicked the door behind him. “You shortsighted, ungrateful, simple bastard. This is the thanks I get for trying to do something for you. If you think I’m running after you, you’ll have a long wait.”
She snatched up her glass, downed the contents. Bubbles exploded in her throat, set her eyes to watering.
To think of all the time and trouble she’d gone to, only to have him act as if she were some sort of shrew or bully. Well, she wasn’t crying over it, o
r him for that matter.
She braced her hands on the counter, leaning forward and breathing slow to try to relieve the horrible pressure in her chest.
Oh, God, what had she done? She just couldn’t get her mind around where she’d gone so completely wrong. The method, yes, there she had surely mis-stepped. But the results . . . How could something she’d thought would be a joy to him whip out of her hands to lash at them both?
She turned, wanting to sit down until she felt steadier, and saw Lady Gwen. “A lot of help you’ve been. His song, you told me. His heart’s in his song and I was to listen. Isn’t that just what I did?”
“Not closely enough,” was the answer. Then Brenna was alone.
• • •
He knew how to walk off a mad. He’d done so before. He trooped over the fields, letting the moonlight guide him. Thinking wasn’t the order of business, movement was. He climbed the cliffs, let the wind and the water clear his head. But the anger wouldn’t pass. He’d given his heart to a woman who thought very little of him as a man.
Sent off his music, had she? And to a stranger, a man neither of them had met face-to-face or measured. And not a word to him about it, just following her own whim and expecting him to shuffle right along in her wake.
Well, he wasn’t having it.
Didn’t she think he could see her line of thinking? Just how simpleminded did she think he was? Oh, Shawn’s an affable sort, and clever enough in his way, but he’ll not get off his arse unless someone plants a boot on it.
So this was her boot this time around. If the man’s going to sit about and play with music half the time, we’d best see if we can do something practical with it.
It was his music, not hers, and she’d never troubled herself to so much as pretend to understand or appreciate it.
And what did this man Magee know about it anyway?
Celtic Records, Shawn’s mind murmured. Come now, you’ve looked into such matters enough to know just what Magee and his like know about it. Why pretend otherwise?
“Neither here nor there,” Shawn muttered and heaved a rock over the cliff. Hadn’t he already turned it over in his head that once he’d met Magee for himself, gotten a feeling on the man, he’d consider the possibility of showing him a piece of music?
A piece he chose. A piece he decided was right. Because by Christ it was his work and no one else’s.
And when was the last time he’d decided a piece was finished and ready and right?
Approximately never, he was forced to admit and heaved another rock for the hell of it.
Magee wanted to buy it.
“Well, fuck me.” Struggling to separate his anger from the rest, Shawn sat on the ledge.
How could he explain to anyone what he felt when he pulled notes and words out of himself? That there was a fine and quiet joy in that alone. And that the rest, the doing something with it, as Brenna put it, made him feel like he was standing way out on the edge of a cliff. He hadn’t been ready to take the leap.
Now he’d been pushed, and he resented it. No matter that the result was something he wanted, the pushing was uncalled for. And that’s what she’d never understand.
So where were they, then, if they had no better understanding of each other than this?
“Pride’s an important thing to a man,” Carrick commented from his perch on the rocks.
Shawn barely spared him a glance. “I’m having a personal crisis here, if you don’t mind.”
“She’s slashed a gash in yours, and I can’t blame you for taking the stand you have. A woman ought to know her place, and if she doesn’t, she needs to be shown it clear.”
