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“I’ll take no offense at a brother standing for a brother. If I did,” Carrick added with a thin sneer, “you’d be braying like a jackass. You’ve my word on that as well.”
“I appreciate your restraint,” Shawn began, then tensed up again. “Are you after thinking that I’ll be the second stage in the breaking of your spell? For if you are, you’re looking in the wrong direction.”
“I know where I’m looking well enough, young Gallagher. It’s you who doesn’t. But you will, soon enough. You will.” Carrick bowed gallantly. And vanished just as the skies opened and rain fell in a fury.
“Well, that’s perfect, isn’t it?” Shawn stood in the driving rain, angry and puzzled. And very late for work.
FOUR
HE WAS A man who liked to take his time with things. To mull and consider, to weigh and to measure. So that’s what he did, telling no one, for the moment, of his meeting with Carrick at the side of Old Maude’s grave. It concerned him a bit. Oh, not the meeting with a faerie prince so much. It was in his blood to accept the existence of magic, and in his heart to appreciate it. The manner of the discussion was what worried him, and the direction it had taken.
He’d be damned if he’d find himself picking out, or being picked out by, a woman, and stumbling into love just to fall in line with Carrick’s plans and wishes.
He just wasn’t the marrying and settling-in sort, as Aidan was. He liked women, that he did. The smell of them, the shape of them, the heat of them. And there were, well, so many of them out there. All fragrant and rounded and warm.
As much as he tended to write about love, in all its delightful and painful varieties, on the personal level he preferred to skirt around its edges.
Love, the sort that grabbed the heart with both hands and took it over, was such a bloody responsibility. And life was so pleasant just as it was. He had his music and the pub, his friends and his family, and now the little cottage on the hill that was all his.
Well, except for the ghost, who didn’t appear to want his company in any case.
So he took his time, thinking it all through and going about his business. He had fish to fry and potatoes to slice and a great whopping shepherd’s pie cooking in the oven. The sounds of Saturday night were beginning to heat up in the pub beyond his kitchen door. The musicians from Galway that Aidan had booked were slipping into a ballad, and the tenor was doing a fine job singing about Ballystrand.
Since Darcy had gotten in her shopping fix with Jude in Dublin, she was in a rare mood, all smiles and cooperation. Orders she called out to him like a song, then danced back out with them when he’d finished his part. Why, they hadn’t had a hard word between them for the whole of the day.
He thought it might be a record.
When he heard the kitchen door swing open, letting in a flood of music, he slid a long slice of golden fish onto a plate. “I’ve all but got this last order done here, darling. And the pie needs only five minutes more.”
“I’d love some of it when it’s done.”
He glanced over his shoulder and beamed. “Mary Kate! I thought you were Darcy. And how are you, then, sweetheart?”
“I’m fine and well.” She let the door swing shut behind her. “And you?”
“The same.” He drained chips and arranged the orders even as he studied her.
Brenna’s younger sister had blossomed during her university years. He thought she’d be about one and twenty now, and pretty as a picture. Her hair was a sunnier, more golden red than Brenna’s, and she wore it in soft waves that fell just past her chin. Her eyes had a touch of gray over the green, and she smudged them up prettily. She wasn’t much taller than her oldest sister, but fuller at the bust and hip, and she wore a dark green Saturday-night dress to show off a very attractive figure.
“You look more than fine and well to me.” He tucked the orders under the warmer, then leaned back on the counter so they could have a little chat. “When did you manage to grow up on me? You must be flaying the lads off with sticks on a daily basis.”
She laughed, struggling to make the sound mature and female rather than the giggle that wanted to bubble out of her throat. The crush she’d developed on Shawn Gallagher was very recent, and very strong. “Oh, I’ve been too busy to do much flaying, what with working at the hotel and all.”
“You like your work there.”
“Very much. You should come ’round.” She stepped closer, trying to keep her movements both casual and seductive. “Have yourself a busman’s holiday and let me treat you to a meal there.”
“That’s a thought, isn’t it?” He gave her a wink that set her pulse skipping, then turned to open the oven and check his pie.
She moved closer. “That smells wonderful. You’
ve such a hand with cooking. So many men are bumblers in the kitchen, it seems.”
“When a man, or a woman for that matter, bumbles about in the kitchen it’s usually because they know someone will come along and chase them out and deal with the matter to save the time and annoyance.”
“That’s wise.” She all but whispered it, with reverence. “But though you’re so good at it, I’ll bet you’d like to have someone fix you a meal now and then instead of always fussing with it yourself.”
“Sure and I can’t say as I’d mind it.”
When Brenna walked in the back door, the first and only thing she saw was Shawn Gallagher smiling into her sister’s dazzled eyes.
“Mary Kate.” Her voice was sharp as the tip of a whip, and at the sound of it her sister flushed and jerked back. “What are you doing?”
“I’m . . . just talking with Shawn.”
“You’ve no business being back here in the kitchen wearing your good dress and getting in Shawn’s way.”
“She’s not in the way.” Used to being scolded by his elders, Shawn gave Mary Kate a comforting pat on the cheek. And being a man, he didn’t see the dream clouds come into her eyes.
But Brenna saw them. Teeth gritted, she strode forward, took Mary Kate’s arm in an iron grip, and pulled her toward the door.
The humiliation of it whisked away the mature sophistication Mary Kate had worked so hard to display. “Let go of me, you gnat-assed bully.” Her voice spiked upward as she struggled. They very nearly plowed Darcy over when she came in while they were going out. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve no right hauling me about. I’m telling Ma.”
“Oh, fine, you go ahead.” Without breaking stride, or loosening her grip, Brenna yanked her sister into the snug at the end of the bar, then shut the door of the little private room. “You go right ahead, you lamebrain, and I’ll be sure to tell her how you were throwing yourself at Shawn Gallagher.”
“I was not.” Freed, Mary Kate sniffed, lifted her chin, and very meticulously smoothed down the sleeves of her best dress.
“You were all but biting his neck when I walked in. What’s got into you? The man’s nearly thirty, and you barely twenty. Do you know what you’re asking for when you rub your breasts up against a man that way?”
Mary Kate merely lowered her gaze to her sister’s baggy sweater. “At least I have breasts.”
It was a sore point, a very tender area, as Brenna had resented the fact that every one of her sisters, including young Alice Mae, had more bosom than she did. “That being the case, you ought to have more respect for them than to go shoving them into a man’s face.”
“I was not. And I’m not a child who needs to be lectured by the likes of you, Mary Brenna O’Toole.” She stiffened her spine, rolled back her shoulders. “I’m a grown woman now. I’ve been to university. I have a career.”
“Oh, that’s fine, then. I suppose it’s past time you jump the first man who catches your fancy and take a wild ride.”
“He’s not the first who’s caught it.” With a slow smile that made Brenna’s eyes go cold and narrow, Mary Kate tossed her hair. “But caught it he has, and there’s no reason not to let him know it. It’s my business, Brenna. And not yours.”
“Oh, you’re my business, all right. Are you still a virgin?”
The utter shock in Mary Kate’s eyes was enough to reassure Brenna that her sister hadn’t been throwing herself naked around the corridors of the university in Dublin. But before she could so much as sigh, Mary Kate’s temper lashed out. “Who the hell are you thinking you are? My romantic dealings are my business. You’re not my mother or my priest, so mind your own.”
“You are my own.”
“Just stay out of it, Brenna. I’ve a right to talk to Shawn or go out with him or anything else I choose. And if you think you’ll go running to Ma with tales on my behavior, well, we’ll just see what she thinks about how I came on you and Darcy playing poker with your holy cards.”
“That was years ago.” But Brenna felt a little panic at the thought. Her mother wouldn’t consider the years between. “Harmless girls’ foolishness. What I came in on in the kitchen isn’t harmless, Mary Kate, but it is foolish. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“I can take care of myself.” Mary Kate gave one last toss of her head. “If you want to be jealous because I know how to attract a man instead of going about trying to be one, that’s your problem. Not mine.”
The slice came so fast and true, Brenna stood frozen, hardly realizing that she bled until Mary Kate stormed out and slammed the door behind her. Tears stung at her eyes and made her want to slide into one of the old sugan chairs and just let them come.
She wasn’t trying to be a man, she was just trying to be herself.
And she’d only wanted to protect her sister. To stop her before she did something that would hurt or embarrass her. Or worse.
It was all Shawn’s fault, she decided. The little voice inside her head that whispered differently was ignored. It was Shawn’s fault for luring her young and innocent sister into infatuation, and she was just going to deal with that right this minute.
She strode out, shaking her head as Aidan shifted to lay a hand on her arm and ask her what was the matter. When she stalked into the kitchen now, her eyes were bright. But not with tears. It was something closer to murder.
“Now, why did you go dragging Mary Kate out like that for, Brenna? We were just—”
He broke off because she’d marched up to him, the toes of her boots ramming hard against the toes of his, and her finger was drilling a hole in his chest. “You just keep your hands off my sister.”
