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“It’s not a matter of place, you arrogant jackass.”
“Don’t take it out on me, boy-o,” Carrick said cheerfully. “I’m with you on this one. She overstepped, no question of it. Why, what was the woman thinking, taking something of yours and going off with it that way? No matter that you’d given it to her, a kind of gift, one might say. That’s nothing but a technicality.”
“Well, it is.”
“And so I’m saying. Then as if that wasn’t nerve enough, what does she do? Fixes it up so you’ve the evening free—”
“She fixed it up?” For lack of something more satisfying, Shawn heaved another rock. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Damn it all.”
“Playing with your mind, that’s what she’s about.” Carrick waved a hand, then tossed the little star that clung to his fingertips out over the water, where it trailed silver light. “Cooking you a meal, making everything, herself included, pretty for you. A more devious female I’ve never known. You’re well shed of her. Maybe you should take another look at her sister, after all. She’s young, but she’d be malleable, don’t you think?”
“Ah, shut up.” Shawn got to his feet and strode off, scowling at the merry sound of Carrick’s laughter.
“You’re sunk, young Gallagher.” Carrick sent another star over the water. “You’ve not quite resigned yourself to having your head under, but there you are. Mortals, why is it that half the time they’d rather suffer than dance?”
This time when he flicked his wrist he held a crystal, smooth and clear as a pool of water. Passing his hand over it, he watched the image swimming inside. Fair of face, she was, with eyes soft and green as freshly dewed grass and hair pale as winter sunlight.
“I miss you, Gwen.” Holding the glass to his heart, he called for the white horse to ride the sky, as he did night by night. Alone.
• • •
The house was empty when he got back, and that’s what he’d expected. It was, he told himself, what he wanted. The solitude. She’d put the food away, and that surprised him. Knowing her temper, he’d expected to find she’d hurled pot and pan or whatever else around the room. But the kitchen was tidy as a church, with only the faint scent of candle wax clinging to the air. Since it made him feel churlish to find it so, he got himself a beer and took it into the parlor.
He hadn’t intended to play, but to sit by the cold fire and brood. But by God if he was going to have an evening off shoved down his throat, he’d spend it doing something that pleased him.
He sat, laid his fingers on the keys, and played for his own pleasure.
It was the song he’d given her that Brenna heard when she walked back toward the garden gate. Her first reaction was relief that she’d found him. The second was misery, as the song was salt in a fresh wound.
But it was a misery that had to be faced. She put her hand on the gate. And it held fast against her. She shoved it, yanked at the latch, then stepped back in shocked panic when it refused to open.
“Oh.” A sob rose in her throat. “Oh, Shawn. Have you closed me out then?”
The music stopped. In the silence she fought back the tears. She wouldn’t face him with them. But when the door opened, she hugged her arms hard, digging her fingers in to keep those tears at bay.
He thought he’d heard her call, a teary whisper in his mind. He’d known she was out there, whether it was sense or magic, didn’t matter. She was there, standing under the spill of moonlight. Her eyes were wet, her chin was up.
“Are you coming in, then?”
“I can’t . . .” The weeping tried to get the better of her, and she ruthlessly battled it back. “I can’t open the gate.”
Baffled, he started down the path, but she leaped forward, gripped the top of the gate in her hands. “No, I’ll stay on this side. It’s probably best. I went looking for you, then I figured, well, you’d come back here sooner or later. I, ah, I had to think it through awhile, and maybe I don’t do that often enough. I . . .”
Was he ever going to speak? she thought desperately. Or would he just stand there looking at her with eyes shielded so she couldn’t see into him?
“I’m sorry, I’m so truly sorry, Shawn, for doing something that upset you. I didn’t do it with that in mind, you have to know. But some of what you said before is true. And I’m sorry for that as well. Oh, I don’t know how to do this.” Frustration rang in her voice as she turned her back on him.
“What is it you’re doing, Brenna?”
She stared straight ahead, into the dark. “I’m asking you not to cast me off for making a mistake, even a big one like this. To give me another chance. And if there can’t be anything else between us now, that you won’t stop being my friend.”
He would have opened the gate to her then, but thought better of it. “I gave you my word on the friendship, as you gave me yours. I’ll not break it.”
She pressed a hand to her lips, held it there until she thought she could speak again. “You mean so much to me. I have to clear this between us.” Steadying herself, she turned around. “Some of what you said was true, but some was wrong. Some of the most important parts were wrong.”
“And you’ll tell me which was which?”
She flinched at the icy sarcasm, but couldn’t find enough of her temper to scrape together for a retort. “You know how to aim and shoot as well as any,” she said quietly. “And it’s all the more effective as you do it so rarely.”
“All right, I’m sorry for that.” He had to be, as he’d never seen her look quite so wounded. “I’m angry still.”
“I’m pushy.” She drew a breath in, let it out, but the ache was still there. “And single-minded, and I can be careless with people even when they matter to me. Maybe more when they matter. I did think, well, the man’s doing nothing with this music of his, so I’ll have to do it for him. That was wrong of me—wrong to put the way I’d do things or think about them onto what was yours. I should have told you, as you told me.”
“On that we agree.”
“But it wasn’t wholly selfish. I wanted to give you something, something important, something that would make you happy and matter to you. It wasn’t about the money, I swear it. It was for the glory.”
“I’m not looking for glory.”
“I wanted it for you.”
“What does it matter to you, Brenna? You don’t even care for my music.”
“That’s not true.” Temper spiked a bit now, at the sheer unfairness of it. “What am I, deaf and stupid now as well as a bully? I love your music. It’s beautiful. It never mattered to you what I thought, anyway. Christ knows, poking at you about it over the years never riled you enough to prove me wrong. You’ve been wasting a gift, a kind of miracle, and it makes me furious with you.”
Glaring at him, she swiped tears from her cheeks. “I can’t help that I feel that way, and it doesn’t mean I think less of you, you blockhead. It’s because I think so much of you. And then you go and write a song that reaches right into my heart, that touches me the way nothing ever has before. Even before it was finished, weeks and weeks ago, when I saw what there was of it there on the piano, just tossed there like you couldn’t recognize a diamond if it jabbed your eye out, I loved it. I had to do something with it, and I don’t care if it was wrong. I was so proud of what you can do I couldn’t see past it. Damn you to hell and back again.”
She’d rocked him onto his heels, staggered him. He whistled out a breath. “That’s quite the apology, that is.”
“Oh, fuck you. I take back every bit of any apology I was foolish enough to make.”
There, he thought, was his woman. This time he laid his hands on the gate and gave her a look of wicked satisfaction. “It’s too late, I already have it, and I’m keeping it. And here’s something back at you. It always mattered what you thought of my music, and of me. It mattered more what you thought than anyone else in the world. What do you say to that?”
“You’re just trying to get ’round me now because I
’m angry again.”
“I’ve always been able to get ’round you, darling, angry or not.” He nudged, and the gate opened smooth and silent. “Come in through the gate.”
She sniffled, wished for a tissue. “I don’t want to.”
“You’ll come in regardless,” he said, snatching her hand and yanking her through. “Now I’ve some things to say.”
“I’m not interested.” She shoved at the gate again, cursed violently when it didn’t budge.
“You’ll listen.” He turned her, trapped her, caught her hands before she could think of making fists out of them. “I don’t like what you did, or how you went about it. But your reasons for it soften that considerably.”
“I don’t care.”
“Stop being a twit.” When her mouth fell open, he lifted her a couple of inches off the ground. “I’ll get tough with you if I must. You know you like it when I do.”
“Why, you . . .”
When she fumbled for words, he nodded. “Ah, speechless, are you? It’s a refreshing change. I don’t need someone directing my life, but I don’t mind someone being part of the direction. I won’t be pushed or tricked or manipulated, and if you try, you’ll be sorry.”
“You’ll make me sorry?” she all but sputtered. “I’m already sorry I did the first thing to try—”
“Brenna.” He gave her a casual little shake that had her mouth dropping open again. “There are times you’re better off to just shut your mouth and listen. This is one of them. Now, as I was saying,” he went on while she blinked at him. “Being tricked is one thing, but surprised is another matter. And I’m thinking that, under it all, you wanted to surprise me with something, like a gift, and I threw it back at you. For that, Brenna, I’m sorry.”
The fear and sorrow were sliding away, but it was hard to resist grabbing onto the tail of them. “I don’t think a great deal of your apology, either.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“You’re awfully damn pushy yourself all of a sudden.”
“I’ve my limits, and you should know them well enough by this time. So . . . how much is Magee willing to pay me for the tune?”
“I didn’t ask,” she said stiffly.
“Ah, so you can keep your fingers out of some pies. It’s good to know.”
“You’re a hateful man. I told you it wasn’t about the money.” She pushed at him, and rather than humiliate herself with the bloody gate again, stomped down the path. “I don’t know how I could have been blind to that part of your nature all these years. How I could have thought myself in love with you, I’ll never know. The very idea of spending my life with the likes of you gives me a cold chill.”
He couldn’t stop the grin. It was so lovely to have all the parts of his life nicely in order again. “We’ll get to that in just a minute. It matters that it wasn’t about money, Brenna, matters that you weren’t thinking, ‘Well, if I’m going to be with this man he’d damn well better prove he’s man enough to make a living off his talents. And since he won’t, I will.’ ”
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn how you make your living.”
