“We left your bride sighing and sniffling over the shelves we’ve just finished.” Even as she spoke, Brenna had one eye on the kitchen door. “And how are you, Jack?”
“I’m fine and well, Brenna, and you?”
“The same. You’re not falling in love with our Darcy here, now, are you?”
He blushed like a ripe beet. Jack had a face as big as the moon and shoulders wide as County Waterford, and he never failed to color like a schoolboy when teased about women.
“I’ve more sense than that. She’d squash my heart like a bug.”
“Ah, but you’d die a happy man,” Darcy told him.
“Don’t listen to her, Jack.” Aidan worked the taps as he spoke, expertly building the Guinness. “For she’s as fickle and flighty as they come.”
“All true,” Darcy agreed with a careless and beautiful laugh. “I’m holding out for a rich man, one who’ll set me on a pedestal and strew jewels at my feet. But in the meantime . . .” She played her fingertips over Jack’s flushed face. “I enjoy the attention of big and handsome men.”
“Ah, go on and take my father his pint, before our Jack here loses all power of speech.” Brenna cocked her boot on her knee and lifted the glass Aidan passed her. “You’re safe with me, Jack darling.”
“You’re as pretty as she is.”
“Don’t be saying such things loud enough for herself to hear you, or she’ll skin us both.” Touched and amused, she kissed his cheek. And Shawn came through the door.
It would have been comical, she decided, and was a pity that no one noticed but herself the way he stopped dead in his tracks, stared, then jolted when the door swung back and slapped him in the ass.
Secretly delighted, she merely lifted her eyebrows and left her hand cozily on Jack’s broad shoulder. “Good evening to you, Shawn.”
“Brenna.” So much was going on inside him he couldn’t separate one sensation from the other. He knew one was irritation, another was discomfort. And, damn it, another altogether was straight lust that had no business being there. But the rest of it was just a mess.
She sipped her beer, watched him over the foam. “I had some of your soup at lunch today with Jude. It had a fine flavor.”
“We’ve ciste on the menu tonight; Mrs. Laury butchered some pigs this week.”
“Well, that’ll stick to your ribs, won’t it, Jack?”
“That it will. Are you staying to eat, then, Brenna?”
“No, I’m for home after my Guinness.”
“If you change your mind, you can have a meal with me. I’ve a fondness for ciste , and Shawn makes it well.”
“He’s a hand in the kitchen, isn’t he?” She smiled when she said it, but the expression in her eyes was sharp and derisive. “Do you cook at all, Jack?”
“Sausage and eggs I can manage. And I can boil a potato.” Being Jack, he took her question seriously and furrowed his brow as he thought through his culinary repertoire. “I can make a sandwich well enough when I have the fixings about, though that’s not the same as cooking when it comes to it.”
“That’ll get you by.” She gave Jack’s shoulder a friendly pat. “You and me, we’ll leave the cooking for the likes of Shawn here. Aidan, will you be needing me at all this weekend for working the pub?”
“I could use your hands on Saturday night if you can fit it in. The band we’ve booked is a popular one, and your Mary Kate let us know there’s a tour group coming into the cliff hotel for Saturday as well. I’m thinking some of them will wander into Gallagher’s.”
“I’ll come at six, then.” She drained her glass, slid off the stool. “Will you be stopping in the pub here on Saturday, Jack?”
“I will, yes. I like the band.”
“I’ll see you then.” She glanced back, noted her father was deep into talk with his friends. An hour more, she calculated, then called to him, “I’m for home, Dad. I’ll tell Ma you’ll be along by and by. Darcy, you see that the man’s up and out within the hour now, won’t you?”
“I’ll show him the door.” Darcy carted a tray full of empties to the bar. “I’ve a date Tuesday next with a Dubliner who passed through here. He’s taking me into Waterford City for dinner. Why don’t you get yourself a man and come along?”
“I might do that.”
“Better, I’ll ask the Dubliner to bring a friend.”
“All right.” Brenna didn’t have any interest in having dinner in Waterford with strangers, but it was so satisfying to plan it with Shawn listening. “I’ll just stay with you after, as I expect we’ll get in late.”
“He’s picking me up at six, prompt,” Darcy called out as Brenna started to the door. “So be here on time and looking like a female.”
Jack sighed into his beer when Brenna strode out. “She smells of sawdust,” he said more to himself than otherwise. “It’s very pleasant.”
“What are you doing sniffing at her?” Shawn demanded. Jack just blinked at him.
“What?”
“I’ll be back in a minute.” He shoved up the passthrough on the bar, let it fall with a bang that had Aidan cursing him, then rushed through the door after Brenna.
“Wait a minute. Mary Brenna? Just a damn minute.”
She paused by the door of her truck, and for one of the first times in her life felt the warm glow of pure female satisfaction stream through her. A fine feeling, she decided. A fine feeling altogether.
Schooling her face to show mild interest, she turned. “Is there a problem, then?”
“Yes, there’s a problem. What are you doing flirting with Jack Brennan that way?”
She let her eyebrows rise up under the bill of her cap. “And what business might that be of yours, I’d like to know?”
“A matter of days ago you’re asking me to make love with you, and I turn around and you’re cozying up to Jack and making plans to have dinner with some Dubliner.”
She waited one beat, then two. “And?”
“And?” Flustered and furious, he glared at her. “And it’s not right.”
She only lifted a shoulder in dismissal, then turned to open the truck door.
“It’s not right,” he repeated, grabbing her again and turning her to face him. “I’m not having it.”
“So you said, in clear terms.”
“I don’t mean that.”
“Oh, well, if you’ve decided you’d like to have sex with me after all, I’ve changed my mind.”
“I haven’t decided—” He broke off, staggered. “Changed your mind?”
“I have. Kissing you wasn’t altogether what I thought it would be. So you were right and I was wrong.” She gave him a deliberately insulting pat on the cheek. “And that’s the end of it.”
“The hell it is.” He trapped her against the truck, quickly and firmly enough to have both excitement and annoyance rising inside her. “If I want you, I’ll have you, and that’s the end of it. Meanwhile, I want you to behave yourself.”
She couldn’t speak. She was certain that if she tried she would strangle on the words. So she did the only thing she could think of. She plowed her bunched fist into his gut.
It cost him some breath, and the color that temper had brought to his face drained completely. But he held his ground. The fact that he did, that he could, when she knew she had a solid punch, sent another trickle of excitement sliding through her.
“We’ll talk about this, Brenna, in private.”
“That’s fine. I’ve plenty to say.”
Satisfied that he’d made his point, he stepped back. “You can come by the cottage in the morning.”
Seething, she climbed into the truck, slammed the door. “I could,” she told him as she started the engine, “but I won’t. I came to you once, and you spurned me. I won’t be back.”
He stepped back again, to save his toes from being run over. If she wouldn’t come to him, he thought as she drove away, he’d find another way to get her alone so they could . . . come to terms, he supposed it
was.
In private.
SEVEN
A BODY WOULD think the woman had never jumped into his arms and kissed him senseless. A man could start believing himself delusional and that she’d never sat across from him at his own kitchen table and suggested they have a romp in bed. But she had done both of those things. He knew it because every time he came within a foot of her the muscles in his belly knotted.
Shawn didn’t care for it, not a bit. No more than he cared for how easy and bloody normal she was acting as they fell into the Saturday night routine at the pub. Every time he came out of the kitchen for one reason or another, she’d shoot him that look of hers that was caught somewhere between a sneer and a smile.
It made him wonder why he’d ever enjoyed seeing that selfsame expression on her face in the past.
Brenna worked the set of taps at one end of the long chestnut bar while Aidan manned those at the other end. She talked with the customers, laughed with old Mr. Riley, who was in the habit of asking every pretty young thing to be his bride. If the musicians played a tune she was fond of, she joined in the chorus.
She did everything, Shawn noted, that she’d done on a hundred other Saturday nights when the pub was crowded and the music was fine.
It should have been a relief—he told himself it was— that the two of them appeared to be back on even and familiar ground again.
It irritated the living hell out of him.
She wore jeans and a baggy sweater. He’d probably seen that same sweater on her twenty times or more. So why was it that it had never made him think of the trim little body under it until now? The kind of body that was quick and agile and strong, with breasts small and firm as peaches just before they ripen.
Distracted, he burned his fingers on the hot oil as he scooped out chips, and cursed himself for thinking, even for a minute, of sliding his hands up and over that body, those breasts.
That had been her plan, he decided. The devious witch. She’d planted the seed in his brain, stirred up his loins, as he was only a man, after all, and now she could torment him just by being in the same vicinity.
Well, two could play this game.
Rather than waiting for Darcy to pick up the orders, he carried them out himself. Just to show Brenna O’Toole that she didn’t trouble him in the least.
The perverse creature didn’t even glance his way as he swung into the pub and wound his way through the crowd to the tables. No, just to annoy him, he was sure, she pulled taps and continued a conversation with a couple of tourists as if they were all the best of mates and this was their Saturday night reunion.
She wore her hair down, tied back with a bit of black ribbon. In the muted light it burned like fire.
He wished he could keep his mind off her hair. He wished he had his hands in it.
“Hello, Shawn.” Mary Kate caught up with him just as he was serving the Clooney family their basket of chips. She angled as close as she dared, hoping he would like the new scent she was trying out. “Busy tonight.”
“The music’s lively. I think we’ve the whole of your tour group here.”
“They’re having a wonderful time of it.” She pitched her voice over the music, struggling to keep it sexy as the band kicked into a rousing rendition of “Maloney Wants a Drink.” “But I’d rather hear you play.”
He flashed her a grin as he tucked the empty tray under his arm. “You can hear that for free anytime you like. These Galway lads have a spark to them.” He glanced toward the front booth, admired the way the fiddler handled his bow. “Are you here with your family, then?”
Mary Kate’s ego took a nosedive. Why did he always think of her as one of the O’Toole girls? She was a grown woman now. “No, I’m not with anyone.” It wasn’t a lie, she assured herself. She may have come in with her parents and Alice Mae, but she wasn’t with them.
“That’s fine playing,” he murmured, forgetting her in his pleasure with the music. “Quick and clever and bright. It’s no wonder they’ve made a name for themselves. The tenor’s the strongest voice, but he knows how to blend in without overpowering his bandmates.”
He wondered what they would do with one of his own ballads and was brought back to the moment only when Mary Kate touched his arm. “You could make a name for yourself, too.” Her eyes were full of dreams when they met his. “A bigger one. A brighter one.”
He avoided answering, or thinking too deeply on the possibilities by giving her a light kiss on the cheek. “You’re a darling girl, Mary Kate. I’d best be back to the kitchen.”
He’d no more than let the door swing shut behind him when it burst open again and Brenna charged through. “I told you to stay away from my sister.”
“What?”
She planted herself in the stance he knew very well signaled a fight. “Didn’t I stand here a week ago and tell you what the situation was as regards my Mary Kate?”
She had, of course. And, Shawn admitted as he shoved a hand through his hair, he hadn’t given it another thought. “I just had a conversation with her, Brenna, nothing more than that. It was as harmless as tickling a baby.”
“She’s not a baby, and you kissed her.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ on the Cross, I’d kiss my own mother in the same fashion.”
“The Germans are hungry,” Darcy said brightly as she carted in a tray loaded with empty plates and bowls.“They’re after three servings of your stew and two of the fish. You’d think the lot of them hadn’t eaten since they left their homeland.”
Dumping the dishes, she measured the weight in the pocket of her apron with a drum of her fingers. “But, bless them, they tip often and they tip well, and only once did one of them give my bum a pat.”
When she started to deal with the dishes, Brenna took a steadying breath. “Darcy, would you mind seeing to those later? I need a word with Shawn, in private.”
Darcy glanced around, lifted an eyebrow. She could see it now, the tension running in waves from one to the other. As far as she was concerned, the two of them weren’t happy unless they were spatting. But this seemed . . . different. “Is something the matter?”
“The O’Toole thinks I’ve designs on Mary Kate and is warning me off.” He wrenched open the refrigerator to take out the fish he needed. But not before he saw Brenna flinch.
“I don’t.” Because she spoke without heat, without her usual bite, Shawn looked back at her. “But she’s designs on you.”
“Well, she’s a crush on him, to be sure,” Darcy confirmed. “Not that he’d ever notice.”
“All I did was talk to her.” Uncomfortable with two pairs of female eyes staring at him with both pity and disgust, Shawn turned on the fire to heat the oil. “Next time I’ll just give her a shove out of my way and keep going. Will that do for you?”
Darcy sighed. “You’re such a knucklehead, aren’t you, Shawn?” She gave Brenna’s arm a quick, supportive squeeze, then left them alone.
“I’m sorry I came barreling in and snapped at you.” Apologies came rarely off Brenna’s tongue, and had that much more impact because of it. “Everything’s so new for Mary Kate just now, with university behind her and her just getting her feet wet in her career. She looks at Maureen, all flushed with being newly married, and our Patty so excited about her own wedding coming this spring. And she . . .”
Helpless, she fluttered her hands. She was so bad at words when they mattered most. “She thinks she’s all grown up, you see, and ready for everything in her life to begin. Inside, her heart’s still a girl’s and romantic with it. And it’s tender, Shawn. You could bruise it.”
“I won’t.”
“You’d never mean to.” She smiled now, but it didn’t reach up into her eyes as it usually did. “You don’t have it in you.”
“I’d rather you were mad at me than sad. I don’t like seeing you unhappy. Brenna . . .” But when he reached out to touch her hair, she shook her head and backed away.
“No, now you’ll say something kind and
sweet, and I’m too much in the mood for it. We’ve both work to do.”
“I think about you in a way I didn’t,” he said, his voice soft and quiet as she turned to go. “And I think about you often.”
She felt her heart shiver, and took a breath to steady herself. “Well, it’s a fine time you pick to bring up the subject. But then, you’ve never had the gift of timing except for your music.”
“I think about you often,” he repeated. He walked toward her, pleased when her eyes went wary.
“What are you about?” She was flustered, and she was never flustered by a man. Certainly not by Shawn. She could handle him, of course. She always had, always would. But she couldn’t seem to make her legs move.
Now wasn’t this interesting? he mused as he closed in. She looked nervous, and color was rising in her cheeks. “I never used to think about doing this.” He slid a long-fingered hand around to cup the back of her neck, eased her a step closer, all the while watching her eyes. “Now I’m thinking about it all the time.”
He played his mouth over hers. A teasing, whispering, devastating slide of lips.
She should have known he would kiss like this if he set his mind to it. Slow, soft, sexy, so a woman could barely keep a thought in her head. The hand at her neck squeezed and released, squeezed and released, and sent pulses dancing. Warmth washed into her, filling her throat, her breasts, her belly, loosening her knees until she felt herself begin to sway into him, into the seductive rhythm of her own pulse that he set with no more than his mouth.
She trembled. He absorbed the first glorious sensation of having Brenna O’Toole tremble against him. Then immediately wanted to feel it again.
But he gave way when she braced a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“You took me by surprise when you kissed me last week,” he told her while her eyes gradually cleared. “I seem to have done the same to you now.”
Pull yourself together, girl, she ordered herself. This wasn’t the way to handle the man. “Then we’re in the way of being even.”
His eyes narrowed in speculation. “So is it a contest then, Brenna?”
More at ease with the faint irritation in his voice than she’d been with the smooth, seductive tone, she nodded. “I’ve always thought of it so. But, in the fortunate way of sexual matters, we can both win. I’ve customers to serve.”
Her lips still tingled from his as she walked out of the kitchen.
“Maybe we’ll both win,” he murmured, “but I don’t think I’ll be playing this your way, Brenna, my darling.”
Pleased with himself, he went back to his stove to make the German tourists happy.
The sun decided to shine on Sunday, and the sky was clear and blue. The smudge of gray far away to the east told him the storm hovering over England would likely put in an appearance by nightfall. But for now it was a fine, fresh day for walking the hills. He thought if he happened to wander over to the O’Tooles’ he’d get himself invited in for some tea and biscuits. And he’d enjoy seeing how Brenna would react to having him sitting in her kitchen after what had passed between them the night before.
He thought he understood what was in her head. She was a woman who liked to get things done—her way. Step by step and at a smart pace. For some reason she’d set her sights on him, and he was starting to like the idea. Quite a little bit, if it came to that.
But he had his own way of getting things done. One step might not follow the other in such a straight line, and he preferred a meandering pace. After all, marching head-on you missed the little things that happened all around you.
He was one for treasuring the little things. Like the clear call of the magpie, or the shine of the sun on a particular blade of grass. And there, the way the cliffs stood strong against the incessant beat of the sea.
He could wander for hours, and did when he forgot himself. He was well aware that most people thought he got nothing done during his dreaming time, and they smiled indulgently. But in truth he got everything done. The thinking, the restoring, the watching.
And because he was watching, he didn’t see Mary Kate until she hailed him and ran in his direction.
“It’s a fine day for walking.” To be on the safe side, he tucked his hands into his pockets.
“Warmer than it’s been in days.” She smoothed her hair in case her little