A Woman's Heart (10 page)

He looked up at the darkened window he knew to be Nora's and told himself he was just imagining the way the lace curtains seemed to have moved ever so slightly. The damn woman had gotten beneath his skin and into his mind and he was beginning to suspect that the only way he was going to exorcize her was to take her to bed. Then, his sexual hunger satiated, he could get on with his life. As he always had in the past.

Even as he told himself that, Quinn suspected it would not be so easy. Wishing he still smoked, he was trying to decide which would be more satisfying, throttling Nora for messing with his mind this way or bedding her, when he heard the squeak of the kitchen door opening.

At first he thought it might be her. But the girl who slipped stealthily out of the house into the shadows was too tall and too slender to be Nora.

“Isn't it a bit late to be going out?” he asked.

Mary obviously hadn't noticed him. She jumped like a startled doe at the sound of his voice.

“Mr. Gallagher? Whatever are you doing out here?”

“I couldn't sleep. I guess you were having the same problem.”

“Aye.” He heard her sigh. A not entirely comfortable silence settled over them. “Have you been out here long?” Mary asked.

“A while.” He folded his arms and leaned back against the fender of the rented Mercedes. “It's a nice night. I believe I'll stay out a bit longer,” he said, answering the unspoken question he suspected she was dying to ask.

“Oh.” The disappointment in her tone told him he'd guessed right.

“You know, I remember a few times, when I was growing up, when I'd sneak out of the house to meet my girlfriend,” he offered casually. It was, of course, a lie. By the time he'd been Mary's age he'd been on his own, and no one had given a damn what he did or with whom.

Another sigh. “I was going to meet Jack,” she admitted.

“The guy who decided to take someone else to the dance?”

“Aye.” She looked away, pretending vast interest in the starry sky.

Quinn told himself he should just stay out of whatever problems Nora Fitzpatrick's sister was having with her unfaithful high-school Lothario.

“You know,” he heard himself saying, “it's none of my business, but if this Jack guy makes having sex a condition
to dating, I'd say he's not good enough for a bright pretty girl like you.”

“I'm not pretty.” She dragged her hand through her hair in a gesture that was a visual echo of her sister. Then again, Quinn thought, too damn much these past days reminded him of Nora Fitzpatrick. “I'm too tall. And too thin.”

“Most people consider that fashion-model material. And even if you weren't going to grow up to be a beauty like your sister—which I'm sure you will—you shouldn't feel you have to sleep with a guy to get him to like you.”

“Nora is beautiful,” Mary said, latching on to the wrong part of his statement. The part he'd never meant to admit out loud. “She was already the prettiest girl in the county when she married Conor. And she was barely two years older than I am now.”

Quinn wasn't pleased at how much he didn't want to think about Nora having been married to some hunk athlete who looked good on a horse.

“You've plenty of time to be thinking about marriage,” he said, trying to return this already uncomfortable conversation back to the topic of celibacy. Or, at the very least, safe sex.

“That's what Nora says.” This sigh was deeper than the earlier ones. “But Nora doesn't understand. She was a virgin when she married Conor.”

Quinn was not the least bit surprised by that little news flash. “There's nothing wrong with saving virginity for marriage.”

“Not in her time, perhaps,” Mary allowed, making her sister sound far more ancient than her mid-twenties. “But things are different these days.”

“Are they?” It was his turn to pretend to study the stars. Quinn stuck his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his boot heels. “I'm not so sure about that. I'd suspect boys
have probably been trying to talk girls into doing things they might not be ready to do since caveman days.”

It hadn't been that way in his case. He'd lost his virginity in the back of a pickup truck to the oversexed adulterous wife of one of the potato farmers he'd been sent to work for when he was fifteen.

At first he'd thought he was the luckiest kid in the entire state of Nevada. By the time his sixteenth birthday rolled around, he'd begun to feel dirty and used. He'd also been terrified of being discovered by the woman's beefy brutal redneck husband.

Other women had followed. More than he could count. But none of them had ever been virgins. Nor had any of them been as innocent as Nora.

“Jack says boys are different,” Mary argued. “They have certain needs.”

“Not every need has to be acted on.” Hell, Quinn was living proof of that. If he'd acted on his own personal hungers, he'd be upstairs in bed with Mary's older sister right now.

“I read one of your books,” she revealed. “The one about the banshee. John's right. It was very good.”

“Thank you.”

“And didn't the man and woman in your story make love? And they weren't married.”

He heard the challenge in the question and tried to answer it honestly. “They were a lot older than you. And besides, it was just a story. Not real life.”

“In real life would you still be interested in a girl if she wasn't ready to have sex with you?”

The frankness of the teenager's question surprised Quinn. But not as much as his own answer. “Absolutely.” It was, he realized, thinking of Nora again, the truth.

Another silence settled over them, this one a bit more
companionable. In the star-spangled stillness of the night, Quinn could practically hear the wheels turning in the teenager's head.

“I have a literature test tomorrow,” Mary said finally. “It's an essay exam on
The Children of Lir,
in Gaelic, and the sisters like us to use plenty of quotations. I suppose I should be getting my sleep if I want to score well.”

“That's probably an excellent idea. You'll want to keep your grades up if you plan to go to college.”

“I was thinking of becoming a teacher. Like Nora was going to be before she had to leave the convent.”

“Your sister was in a convent?” Somehow, when he'd been listing his daughter's numerous charms, Brady had neglected to mention that salient little fact. Quinn reminded himself that it might not be how it sounded. After all, convent schools were common in this country.

“She was going to become a nun,” Mary revealed.

Hell.

“But then our mam died and Nora had to leave the order and come home to take care of us. Then she married Conor and had Rory, and she said she was happy she hadn't taken her vows. But then Conor was killed in that riding accident.”

Quinn wondered what type of bastard he could be to be jealous of a dead man. “Sounds as if she hasn't had an easy time of it,” he said with a great deal more casualness than he was feeling.

“She hasn't. But it's not in Nora's nature to complain. Doesn't Gran say she's a natural-born caretaker?”

From what he'd seen, Quinn figured Fionna Joyce was right. He also reminded himself that he wasn't in the market to have anyone take care of him. He'd been doing just fine all by himself for most of his thirty-five years.

“Well, good night, Mr. Gallagher,” Mary said. “And thank you.”

“The name's Quinn,” he reminded her. “And you don't owe me any thanks, Mary. I enjoyed our conversation.”

He watched her cross the yard and slip back into the house. First Rory. And now Mary. If he wasn't careful, Quinn warned himself grimly, the damn emotional quicksand he'd stumbled into was going to close in over his head and suffocate him.

 

Unable to sleep a wink with thoughts of Quinn tumbling through her head like abandoned seashells in a stormy surf, Nora heard Mary slip out of her bedroom and make her way down the stairs with all the stealth of a thief in the night.

Remembering all too well how she'd stolen away to meet Devlin when she'd been Mary's age and fearful that Jack wouldn't be nearly as protective of her sister as Devlin Monohan had been of her, Nora went to the window and pulled the curtain aside, expecting to see the teenage boy who'd been causing Mary such distress.

But instead, she saw Quinn standing in the shadows. When, as if somehow sensing her presence, he glanced up at the window, Nora jumped back, realizing a moment later that with the bedroom light off, he wouldn't be able to see her.

Knowing that, and feeling free to observe him undetected, she watched as his presence obviously startled Mary. They talked for a while—about what, Nora couldn't imagine—but from time to time each seemed fascinated by the starry night sky.

Then Mary returned to the house. As she heard her sister coming back upstairs, Nora guessed that somehow Quinn had succeeded in deterring the teenager from her original romantic tryst.

And when later she looked back on this night, Nora would realize that this was the exact moment she'd fallen in love with Quinn Gallagher.

Her first instinct was to wait until tomorrow morning to confront her sister. But the usual rush to school allowed scant time for conversation of any kind, let alone the intimate kind Nora knew she and Mary should have.

Coward, she thought as she paced the floor, listening to the footfalls outside her bedroom door. A moment later she heard Mary's door close.

It would be so easy just to go to bed, pull the covers over her head and ignore the problem, but that was like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. Nora knew that problems ignored had a way of escalating, and she hated to think that her own cowardice might put her sister at risk.

Sighing, she pulled on her quilted flannel wrapper and left the room. The few feet down the hall to Mary's door seemed like a hundred kilometers.

Mary opened the door at Nora's first light rap. Guilt rose hotly in the girl's cheeks like a sunset before a storm. “Nora?” she asked with an innocent air that was in direct contrast to the guilt in her eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“Not really,” Nora said, hoping it was true. “I was just having trouble sleeping and thought I heard you up, as well. So I wondered if you might want to join me in a cup of tea.”

“It's not like you to be up so late.”

“True enough. Which is why I'd like some company in the kitchen. If you don't mind?” It was more order than request, and both sisters knew it.

Mary gave her another long look, then shrugged. “I suppose a cup of tea might be nice,” she said with a decided lack of enthusiasm.

Neither spoke until Nora was pouring the tea into two of the everyday cups.

“So,” Nora asked as she placed a basket of dark bread on the table, as well, “how are things going with the May Day celebrations?”

“All right, I suppose.” Mary busied herself by adding sugar and milk to her tea. “Sister Mary Augustine says I'm under consideration to be May queen.”

“Why, that's wonderful!” Nora didn't have to feign her enthusiasm at this news. She hadn't been expecting to be able to begin the conversation on such a positive note.

“It's not wonderful at all.” Mary's eyes glistened with moisture. “Because if I am selected, I'll probably be the only May queen in the history of Castlelough who didn't have a date for the dance.”

“I doubt that,” Nora murmured, dearly hoping her sister wouldn't burst into tears before they could get to the meat of the subject.

“That's easy enough for you to say. Since you were going out with Devlin when the sisters chose you to be queen.”

“Aye.” Nora had to fight against the smile that threatened at the memory of dancing in Devlin's strong arms. And the kisses they'd shared after the dance. “But it's better to be without a man than to be with the
wrong
man.”

Mary frowned. “Now you're speaking of Jack.”

“I suppose I am.” Nora dragged her hand through her hair. “I don't want to interfere in your life, Mary darlin'—”

“Then don't.”

If only it were that easy, Nora thought with an inner sigh. She paused again, selecting her words with care. “I know you feel as if you're all grown-up, but—”

“I'm nearly as old as you were when you married Conor.”

“I didn't realize Jack was talking marriage.”

“He's not.” Mary's shoulders slumped. She looked absolutely wretched. Nora would have given anything to save her sister the heartache she knew she must be suffering. “At least, he hasn't yet. But I know that if only…” Her words drifted off.

“You're thinking if you go to bed with him, he might become more marriage-minded.”

Mary didn't answer, but her silence spoke volumes. Feeling a rush of affection for the miserable girl who was trying to feel her way over that rocky ground between the world of a child and adulthood, Nora reached out and covered her sister's hand with her own.

“I'm going to be frank. I think going to bed with Jack would be a horrible mistake. But I also realize that there's little I can do to stop you, if it's what you truly want to do. But there is one thing I'd like you to keep in mind while you're making your decision.

“When a man sincerely loves a woman, the forever-after kind of love we all hope for, the kind I wish for you, Mary, he puts her feelings before his own. He wants to protect her. And he'd never ask her to do anything she wasn't ready to do.”

Another silence settled over them. Mary finished off the rest of her tea, then stared down at the bottom of her now-empty cup as if trying to read her future in the dark leaves that had settled there.

“John's offered to take me to the dance,” she said at length.

Knowing how shy her studious brother was in social situations, Nora made a mental note to thank him first thing in the morning. “There're worse things than being seen in public with your older brother.”