Heart of the Sea

  given you a higher percentage. I had to have it.”

  “Well, then, there’s no harm in telling you we’d have taken less all around. But we very much enjoyed the horse trading and winding up your man Finkle.”

  This time he did laugh, and most of the tension drained. “My great-uncle would have come here, and my grandfather. To Gallagher’s.”

  “Oh, to be sure. Is it what they’d think of what you’re doing here that’s worrying you?”

  “I don’t worry what my grandfather would have thought. Not anymore.”

  There, she thought, that sore spot again. This time she probed, but gently. “Was he so hard a man?”

  He hesitated, but it seemed he was in the mood to speak of it. “What did you think of the house in London?”

  Puzzled, she shook her head. “It was very elegant.”

  “Fucking museum.”

  She blinked at that, there was such undiluted anger in his voice. “Well, I’ll say the museum part of that statement occurred to me, but it was lovely.”

  “After he died, my parents gave me clearance to change a few things in it. Things that hadn’t been changed in thirty years. Opened it up a bit, softened some edges, but it’s still his place underneath. Rigid and formal, as he was. That’s how my father was raised. Rigidly, and without affection.”

  “I’m sorry.” She stroked a hand in circles over his back. “It has to be sad, hard and sad, to have a father who doesn’t show he loves you.”

  “I never had that problem. Somehow, through some miracle, my father was—is—caring, open and full of humor. Though his father wasn’t. He still doesn’t speak of it much, the way he was raised, except to my mother.”

  “And she to you,” Darcy murmured, “because she knows you’d need to understand it.”

  “He wanted to make a family, a life, that was the opposite of the way he’d been raised. That’s what he did. They kept us in line, my sister and me, but we always knew they loved us.”

  “I think it shows the beauty of the gift they gave you that you don’t take it for granted.”

  “No, I don’t.” He turned back to her. Odd, he hadn’t really expected her to understand, nor had he expected to feel such relief that she did. “That’s why I don’t worry what my grandfather would think of what I’m doing here. But I do think of how my parents will feel when it’s done.”

  “Then I’ll say this. To my way of thinking, they’ll be proud. Ireland’s art is at its core, and you’re bringing more of it here. Along with it the practicality of jobs and revenue. It’s a good thing you’re doing, and a credit to your father, your mother, and your heritage.”

  A nagging little weight fell off his shoulder. “Thanks. It matters, more than I anticipated. It was one of the things that hit me when I was standing up on the hill. It matters. What I do here, and leave here. And while I was coming to that conclusion, I had a conversation with Carrick.”

  Her fingers jerked in his. When he looked down, he saw the surprise clearly on her face before she closed her mouth and made a quiet humming sound.

  “Do you think I’m hallucinating?”

  “No.” She paused, then shook her head. “I don’t, no. Others whose sanity I’m sure of claim to have done the same. We’ve broad minds around here.”

  But she knew the legend, and it unnerved her enough that she took a step back and sat on the arm of a chair. “And what did you converse about?”

  “A number of things. My grandfather. Old Maude and Johnnie Magee. Schedules, virtues, the theater. You.”

  “Myself.” Now she rubbed her suddenly damp hands on her trousers. “And what would that be about?”

  “You know the legend, probably better than I. It takes three couples, as I understand it, falling in love, accepting each other, taking vows.”

  “So it’s said.”

  “And in the past year or so, your two brothers have fallen in love, accepted it, and taken vows.”

  “I’m aware of that, as I was at their weddings.”

  “Then, given the quickness of your mind, I assume you’ve considered the fact that there are three Gallaghers.” He took a step closer. “You look a little pale.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d get to the point you’re dancing around.”

  “All right, direct. He’s pegged us as his third and final step.”

  Her chest seemed to fill all at once with heat and pressure, making her want to knock her fist against it to loosen it again. But she kept her hands still and her eyes level. “That wouldn’t sit well with you.”

  “Would it with you?”

  She was too flustered to catch the evasion. “I’m not the one having conversation with faerie princes, am I? And no, I don’t particularly care to have my fate and future dictated by another’s wants or needs.”

  “Neither do I. Neither,” he added, “will I.”

  She thought she understood now why he’d told her of his grandfather. To show her he had cold blood in him.

  Slowly she got to her feet. “I see what put you in such a rare mood. The very idea of the remote possibility that I might be your fate and future set you right off, didn’t it? The very thought that a man of your education and consequence should tumble heart-first for a barmaid.”

  He was so genuinely baffled it took him a moment to answer. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “Who could blame you for being angry and frustrated when such a suggestion was made? It’s a fortunate thing for both of us that love has nothing to do with the matter.”

  He’d seen angry women before, but he wasn’t certain he’d ever faced one who looked so capable of inflicting real physical harm. To ward it off, he held up his hands palms out. “In the first place, what you do for a living has nothing to do with . . . anything. In the second, you’re hardly a barmaid, though it wouldn’t matter if you were.”

  “I serve drinks in a pub, so what’s that if not a barmaid?”

  “Aidan runs the bar, Shawn runs the kitchen, and you run the service,” Trevor said patiently. “And I imagine if you wanted, you could run the whole shot—or any other pub in your country or mine. But that’s hardly an issue.”

  “It happens to be of some particular issue with me.” But she yanked back her anger and let it vibrate on the end of its tether.

  “Darcy, I told you this because it concerns both of us, because we’re lovers and it’s only right we both know where we stand. Now we do, and we’re agreed we don’t intend to let ourselves get tangled up in some ancient legend.”

  He took her hand again, rubbing his thumb over the knuckles to soothe out the stiffness. “Separate from that—entirely separate from that—I like who you are, I enjoy being with you, and I want you in a way . . . I’ve never wanted anyone else in the same way,” he finished.

  She ordered herself to relax, to accept, even to be pleased. But there was a hole somewhere inside her that wouldn’t close up again. “All right. Separate from that, I feel the same. So there’s no problem at all.” Flashing a smile, she rose to her toes and kissed him warmly, then waved him toward the door.

  “Now go on with you, as I’ve got to be on my way.”

  “Will you come to the cottage tonight?”

  She shot him a look from under her lashes. “I’d be pleased to. You can look for me around midnight, and I wouldn’t mind if you had a glass of wine poured and waiting.”

  “Later, then.” He would have kissed her again, but she was already shutting the door in his face.

  On the other side of it she counted to ten three full times. Then exhaled. So, they were to be reasonable and sensible and do it all exactly the Magee way, were they? He was too removed to tumble into legend, or into love.

  Well, by God, she’d have him begging on his knees for her before she was done with him. He’d promise her the world and everything in it.

  And when he had, well, she might just take it. That would teach the man not to shrug off the notion of loving Darcy Gallagher.
r />   THIRTEEN

  ALL IN ALL, Trevor found himself very satisfied by the way things were going. The project was moving along on schedule. The townspeople were supportive and interested. Never a day went by without at least some of them wandering by to watch the work, make comments, give suggestions, or tell him some story or other about his relations.

  He’d met a few who were cousins. In fact, he had two of them employed as laborers.

  With Mick out of commission for the next few days, he’d have to spend more time at the site. But he didn’t mind. It would keep his mind focused on what it needed to be focused on. And give him less time to let it wander around Darcy.

  He felt he’d straightened things out in that area as well. Both of them were too sensible to be influenced by legends, or self-interested faeries. Or dreams of a blue heart that beat steady and strong deep in the sea.

  He had business to see to, he reminded himself as he carried coffee up to his office in the cottage. Calls to make, contracts to negotiate, supplies to order. He couldn’t waste time thinking about what he did or didn’t see, did or didn’t believe. Responsibilities wouldn’t wait while he pondered just how much of Irish myth was real and how much was imagined.

  He touched the disk under his shirt. Real, he thought. As real as it gets. But he was handling it.

  He glanced at his watch, and thought he might just catch his father at home in New York. And stepping into the bedroom, he jerked and spilled hot coffee over the back of his hand.

  “Goddamn it!”

  “Oh, there’s no need to profane.” With a quiet cluck of her tongue, Gwen continued to ply her needle. She sat in the chair in front of the tidy hearth, her hair neatly bound back, her face composed, her hands quick and clever as she embroidered a white cloth.

  “You’ll want salve on that burn,” she told him.

  “It’s nothing.” What was a little discomfort compared to seeing ghosts? Much less to conversing with one. “I’d nearly convinced myself not to believe in you.”

  “Sure and you need to do what makes you most comfortable. Would you rather I let you be?”

  “I don’t know what I’d rather.” He set the coffee down on the table, turned his desk chair around to face her. And sitting, he sucked absently at the sting on his hand. “I had dreams about you. I told you that. I didn’t tell you I halfway believed I’d find you when I came here. Not you,” he corrected, fumbling just enough to annoy himself. “Someone . . .” the word “alive” seemed rude somehow. “Real. A woman.”

  Her gaze when it lifted to his was gentle and full of understanding. “You thought perhaps you’d find the woman you’d dreamed of, and that she would be for you?”

  “Maybe. Not that I’m looking particularly,” he added. “But maybe.”

  “A man can fall in love with a dream if he lets himself. It’s a simple matter with no effort, no work, no troubles. And no real joy, when it comes down to it. You prefer working for something, don’t you? It’s part of who you are.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “The woman you did meet is a great deal of effort and work and trouble. Tell me, Trevor, does she bring you joy as well?”

  “You mean Darcy?”

  “And who else have you been walking with?” Gwen questioned. “Of course I’m speaking of Darcy Gallagher. A beautiful and complicated woman that, with a voice like . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head and lightly laughing. “I was going to say like an angel, but there’s little of the angels about that one. No, she’s a voice like a woman, full and rich and tempting to a man. She’s tempted you.”

  “She could tempt the dead. No offense.”

  “None taken. I wonder, Trevor, don’t you think she’s what you’re looking for?”

  “I’m not looking for anything. Anyone.”

  “We all look. The lucky find.” Her hands, stilled, lay on the cloth with bright patterns of thread. “The wise accept. I was lucky, but not wise. Could you not learn something from my mistake?”

  “I don’t love her.”

  “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t.” Gwen picked up her needle again. “But you haven’t opened your heart to the risk of it. You guard that part of yourself so fierce, Trevor.”

  “It may be that part of myself doesn’t exist.” Chewed off at the knee in Ardmore, he thought, before I was even born. “That I’m just not capable of loving someone the way you mean.”

  “That’s foolishness.”

  “I hurt another woman because I couldn’t love her.”

  “And, I think, hurt yourself in the process. It puts doubts about yourself in your mind. Both of you, I can promise, will not only survive it, but be better off for the experience. Once you stop thinking of your heart as a weapon instead of a gift, you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  “My heart isn’t the priority here. The theater is.”

  She made a sound that might have been agreement. “ ’Tis a grand thing to be able to build, and build to last. This cottage, simple as it is, has lasted lifetime and lifetime. Oh, sure a few changes here, another room there, but the core of it remains. As does the faerie raft beneath it, with its silver towers and blue river.”

  “You chose the cottage over the castle,” he pointed out.

  “I did. Aye, I did. For the wrong reasons, but in spite of it, I won’t regret my children or the man who gave them to me. Perhaps Carrick will never understand that part of my heart. I’ve come to understand it would be wrong to ask him to do so. Hearts can merge and the people who hold them still stand as they are. Love accepts that. It accepts everything.”

  He saw now what pattern she worked into the cloth. It was the silver palace, its towers bright, its river blue as gemstones, its trees heavy with golden fruit. And on a bridge that spanned the water were two figures, not yet finished.

  Herself, Trevor realized, with her hands held out toward Carrick’s.

  “You’re lonely without him.”

  “I have . . .” She brushed a finger gently over the threads that formed a silver doublet. “An emptiness in me. A place that waits. As I wait.”

  “What happens to you if the spell isn’t broken?”

  She lifted her head again, her eyes dark and soft and quiet. “I’ll bide here, and see him only in my heart.”

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as there is. You have choices, Trevor Magee, as once I had. You have only to make them.”

  “It’s not the same,” he began, but she faded away, like mist. “It’s not the same,” he said again, to the empty room. Though he turned the chair around, it was some time before he picked up the phone and managed to get on with the business at hand.

  He called his father first, and that connection of voice to voice soothed his nerves. With his rhythm back, he fell into routine, contacted Nigel in London, and his counterpart in Los Angeles. He checked the time again, noted it was closing in on midnight. Seven in New York, he thought, and called the ever reliable Finkle at home.

  Notes were piled on his desk, his computer up and running, and the phone tucked on his shoulder with Finkle’s voice droning through when he heard the sound of a car pulling in. Trevor shifted, angled so he could see through the window.

  And watched Darcy walk toward the garden gate.

  He’d forgotten the wine.

  She considered knocking, but she’d seen the light in his office window. Working, are you? With a sly glint in her eye she let herself in the front door. She thought they’d soon put a stop to that, and walked straight up the stairs.

  She paused at the door to his office, finding herself both irritated and pleased when he continued with his phone call and waved her in with a little finger crook.

  Irritated that he didn’t appear to have been anxiously awaiting her. And pleased because she imagined she would shortly have him panting like an eager pup.

  “I’ll need that report before New York closes tomorrow.” Trevor scribbled something down, nodded. “Yeah, well, they’ve
got till end of day to accept the offer or it’s off the table. Yes, that’s exactly how I want you to put it. Next item. I’m not satisfied with the bids on the Dressler project. Make it clear that if our usual lumber supplier can’t do better, we’ll look to alternate sources.”

  He glanced over absently, took a sip of his coffee as Darcy unbuttoned her coat. Then inhaled caffeine like air—and choked on it.

  The coat dropped to the floor, and he saw she wore nothing beneath it but his bracelet, high heels, and a very feline smile.

  “Perfect,” he managed. “Jesus, you’re perfect.” As Finkle’s voice buzzed in his ear, he simply hung up, got to his feet.

  “I take it business hours are over.”

  “They are.”

  She looked around the room, angled her head. “I don’t see my glass of wine.”

  He discovered it was just possible to speak when a man’s heart was in his throat. “I forgot it.” His breath already ragged, he crossed to her. “I’ll get it later.”

  She tipped her head back to keep her eyes on his, and saw what she’d wanted to see. Desire, raw as a fresh wound. “I’ve a powerful thirst.”

  “Later” was all he could say before his mouth came down on hers.

  He possessed. With quick, hard hands, restless lips, he took what she’d offered. Gave her what she’d wanted. Desperation was what she’d wanted from him, that jagged edge of need as dangerous as it was primitive. She’d come to him naked and shameless to lure the animal.

  He was rough, and his recklessness added a slick layer of excitement. No control now, nor the need for it. So she lost herself in the wicked spell of her own brewing.

  He shoved her against the wall, feasting on her throat, drugged on that sharply sexual taste of perfumed female flesh. And his hands streaked over her, bruised over her, greedy for the curves, the swells, the secrets of woman.

  Hot, wet, vibrant.

  His fingers slid over her, into her, driving her up. Even as he felt her body shudder, felt the violence of the orgasm rip through her, he looked into her eyes.the dark and clouded blue, he thought he saw the flash of triumph.

  He might have been able to pull back then, to clear his head enough to find his finesse, but she moved against him, one lazy, stretching arch, and her arms twined around him like chains wrapped in velvet.

  “More.” She purred it. “Give me more, and take more as well. Right here.” She nipped her teeth into his lip. “Right now.”

  If she’d been a witch murmuring the darkest of incantations, he’d have been no less spellbound. He’d have sworn he caught the scent of hellfire as her mouth once again captured his.

  Then there was madness, fevered and glorious. In her own triumph she found it, that wild pleasure, the terrorlaced delight of having a man turn savage. And allowing it. Craving it.

  Her blood beat as frantically as his, her hands raced, as urgent and as rough as those that raced over her.

  She tore his shirt, and reveled in the harsh sound of cotton rending at the seam. And her teeth dug into his shoulder when he pushed her over the edge again.

  A haze filled his vision, thick and red. Her nails bit into his back, glorious little points of pain. His blood was a drumbeat, a primitive tattoo in his head, heart, loins. He plunged into her where they stood, greedily swallowing her ragged cry.

  Each thrust was like another step on a thin wire stretched over both heaven and hell. Whichever way they fell, it couldn’t be stopped. Knowing it, he dragged her head back, kept his hand fisted in her hair, his eyes on her face.

  “I want to see you.” He panted it out. “I want to see you feel me.”

  “I can’t feel anything but you, Trevor.”

  She tumbled off the wire, clasping him against her on the fall. And flying out with her, he didn’t give a damn where they landed.

  He stayed where he was, fighting for air, for his sanity. The press of his body kept her upright as he braced a hand on the wall for balance.

  She’d gone limp, as he knew now she did after loving. He told himself he’d find the energy, in just a minute, to get them both into bed.

  “I can’t stay like this,” she murmured against his shoulder.

  “I know. Just a second.”