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Impatient with herself, she scrubbed her hands over her face to dry it. “I know they’ve come back for the weddings, and they’ll come to see your baby when it’s born, but it’s not the same.”
“It’s not. I miss them, too.”
She nodded. Hearing him say it helped. “I know they’re happy, and that’s a comfort. Every time they ring or write, they’re full of news and excitement about the Gallagher’s Pub they’ve built way over in Boston.”
“We’re an international franchise now,” Aidan said, and made her laugh a little.
“Next we’ll be planting one in Turkey or God knows.” She let out a little sigh. “They’re happy there, and I know I’ll go over and see them one day. But it makes me think that if I went away, I might not come back either. As much as I want to go, to see places and do things, Aidan, I don’t want to lose what’s here.”
“It’s not a matter of losing, but of changing. You won’t know what changes till you go. You’ve been needing to go since you could stand on your own feet. I was the same. It’s Shawn who’s planted here and never had a question about it.”
“Sometimes I wish I were like him.” She looked up sharply. “And if you ever tell him I said such a thing, I’ll swear you’re a liar.”
He laughed, tugged her hair. “There. That’s better.” “
“There’s more.” Sliding a hand into her pocket, she fingered the stone she carried there. “I have to decide if Trevor has it right and I should sign his contract and have him make me a singer.”
“You are a singer.”
“It’s different. You know it.”
“It is. Are you asking my opinion?”
“I’d like to weigh it in.”
“You’d be brilliant. I don’t say that because I’m your brother. I have traveled and in traveling had the opportunity to hear a lot of voices. Yours shines, Darcy, and always has.”
“I could do it,” she said quietly. “I believe I could, and not make a mess of it. More, and better, I think I’d like it. Attention,” she said with a glint in her eye, “is food and drink to me.”
“You’d have a banquet this way, wouldn’t you?”
“I would. Trevor had me go up and talk to his man this morning. Nigel, from London. He didn’t paint a picture that was all rose and gilt, and I appreciated that. It would be hard work.”
“You know how to work hard. And how to dance around the task when you’ve had enough, which is almost as important.”
Another brick of worry tumbled off her shoulder. “I wouldn’t have to dance if you weren’t such a slave driver. And I have a feeling Trevor’s cut from the same cloth. He’ll push me, and I won’t always like it.”
“It sounds as if you’ve decided.”
“I suppose I have.” She waited a moment, and discovered she felt relief instead of excitement. The excitement, she thought, would come. “I haven’t quite put it all in its place as yet, and I’m not ready to tell Trevor. I prefer letting him dangle a bit longer, and perhaps nudging him toward sweetening the pot.”
“There’s my girl.”
“Wheeling a deal’s the Gallagher way. There’s more still.” Holding her breath, she took the stone from her pocket, held it out.
It wasn’t surprise she saw in his eyes so much as acknowledgment, then a kind of resignation. “I knew you’d be the third. I didn’t want to think about it.”
“Why?”
He looked at her then, eye to eye. “My girl,” he murmured.
The force of love was so fierce it nearly dropped her. “Oh, Aidan, you’ll make me cry again.”
“We can’t have that.” To give them both time to compose, he got two bottles of water from under the bar. “So, you went up to Old Maude’s grave?”
“No. Tower Hill.” She took the water, drank deeply when she realized her throat was dust-dry. “There are flowers blooming over John Magee now. I was hardly surprised to see him. Carrick, I mean. Still, my heart shook.”
She pressed her fist to it, and in the fist she held the stone. “It’s a wonder, isn’t it? He looks sharp, Carrick does, and bold. But behind his eyes is sorrow. Love is such a tangle.”
“Do you love Trevor?”
Because it seemed hot against her heart, she lowered the stone. “Yes. It’s not what I thought it would be. It’s not soft and easy, and it sure as hell doesn’t make me feel like a queen. There’s been a change in me since the minute I looked out my window and saw him. There might not have been anyone else there for a space of time, and so I should have known it was already too late to stop it.”
He knew that feeling very well, and the stuttering nerves that went with it. “And would you, if you could?”
“I think I would. Stop it or slow it or something until I could get my breath steady. Or the man could catch up with me. He keeps himself one step back. It’s a cold step and a deliberate one. I understand it, as I’ve taken it often enough myself. He wants me.”
She said it musingly, then caught Aidan’s wince. “Oh, don’t go male and brotherly on me now when you’ve been doing so well.”
“I am male and your brother.” He shifted, and now he drank deep as well. “But go on.”
“There’s passion, and love would be bland without it.
“There’s a caring that stops it from being nothing but heat. But that step, the chill in it, stops it all just short of . . . trust,” she decided. “And acceptance.”
“One of you has to take the step forward instead of back.”
“I want it to be him.”
There was a trace of her old arrogance in her tone. It worried Aidan as much as it amused him. She opened her fingers, letting the stone rest on her palm where, like a heart, it pulsed its blue light.
“Carrick showed me things, amazing things. I could have them, he said. I’ve only to wish for it. Riches and excitement, fame and glory, love and beauty. To wish for it, but only one wish, one choice.”
“What do you want?”
“All of it.” She laughed, but there was something brittle in the sound that broke his heart. “I’m selfish and greedy and want all. I want everything I can snatch up and hold, then I want to go back and get more. Why can’t I want the simple and the ordinary and the quiet
, Aidan? Why can’t I be content with easy dreams?”
“You’re so hard on yourself, mavourneen . Harder than anyone else can be. Some people want the simple and the ordinary and the quiet. It doesn’t make those who want the complicated and extraordinary and the
exciting greedy or selfish. Wanting’s wanting, whatever the dream.”
Struck, she stared at him. “What a thought,” she managed at last. “I never looked at it that way.”
“Study on it a while.” He brushed a fingertip over the stone, then closed her hand around it. “And don’t rush your wish.”
“That I’d already concluded for myself.” She slipped it back into her pocket where it couldn’t tempt her. “Carrick may be in a fired hurry, but I’m inclined to take my time.”
She pressed a kiss to each of Aidan’s cheeks. “You were just what I needed, just when I needed you.”
She did give it time. Her talk with Aidan had settled her and made her able to enjoy the time. As the days passed into a week, she even found herself amused that neither she nor Trevor brought up the potential business end of their relationship.
He was, she thought, as canny a negotiator as she was. One of them would break first. She didn’t intend for it to be her.
Work on the theater progressed in a kind of stage by stage that she found more interesting than she would ever have believed. A change was happening right outside her window. A monumental change that had its seeds in a dream and was so much more than bricks and mortar.
She wanted it for him. That, she supposed, was the nature of love. That you could want so intensely your lover’s dream to come true.
Now that most of the roof was on, she missed seeing Trevor out her window. He was inside the shell of the building as often as not. As the noise was as terrible as ever, she rarely kept her windows open on the off chance of hearing his voice.
With summer, the beaches drew people to Ardmore, and so the pub. Work kept her mind occupied, and for the first time she began to see just what the theater would mean to home.
It wasn’t only the villagers and the neighbors talking of it now, but those who visited.
She could stop for a moment in the crush of a lunch shift, look around at the packed tables and bar, hear the voices, and imagine what it would be like the following summer. And she could wonder where she would be.
As both she and Trevor appreciated the distance from work, most nights she went to the cottage. It became her habit to walk whenever weather allowed, though he never failed to offer his car. She liked the quiet that slid over the air after midnight, and the balm of the breeze, and rush of starlight.
Odd, but she wasn’t sure she’d really appreciated it before she’d understood she wouldn’t be there forever. The softness that came from the sea, and the waves that were a constant hum and lap in the night.
When the moon was bright, she liked it best, that alone time where she could see the cliffs throw shadows.
Whenever she reached Tower Hill, she stopped. If the wind was pushing the clouds, the spear of the tower seemed to sway, and the stones, old and new, beneath it stood silent and still.
Flowers bloomed yet on the grave of Johnnie Magee. But Carrick, if he was there, chose not to show himself.
She walked on. The road narrowed, and the scatter of lights in Ardmore were lost behind her. There was the scent now of fields and grass and growing things, then the glow out of the shadowed dark that was the lights in the cottage on the faerie hill.
He was waiting for her. And that, she thought with a delicious thrill, was just how she liked it.
As always, her heart grew lighter and she had to force herself not to rush to
