A Woman's Heart (14 page)

She took a deep breath, then whirled back toward him.

“Why?” she asked on a fractured desperate sound. “My husband has been dead for five years. Why bring this up now?”

“Because I was a selfish bastard when you needed a father's protection. I should have kept you from marrying a man who was so wrong for you.”

“There wouldn't have been anything you could have done. After all, you've already told me that Grandda Noonan couldn't stop Mam from marrying you.”

“Aye. And he was wrong about what was truly good for his daughter. Because although I tested her temper more often than perhaps I should have, Eleanor was happy in our marriage. But he had no way of knowing I could make her happy at the time, so he did what he thought was best. He fought for her. To protect her.”

Brady pushed himself off the milk can with a weariness of body and spirit Nora hadn't witnessed since her mother's death. When he enveloped her in his arms, she remembered him holding her exactly the same way the first time she'd fallen off a horse. At the time, unable to draw a decent breath, she'd been certain she was dying. But it turned out that she'd only had the wind knocked out of her, and later he'd taken her into town for ice cream. Strangely, she felt exactly the same way now.

As she breathed in the familiar comforting scents of hair tonic and tobacco and felt the outline of the pipe he always carried in his breast pocket, Nora wished her current troubles could be solved with a vanilla ice-cream cone.

“If Conor was the sun, Quinn Gallagher is the cold dark side of the moon, Nora. And while I might be able to understand how you'd find yourself drawn to a man who's the exact opposite of your first husband, I'm fearful he's going to hurt you more than Conor Fitzpatrick ever could have.”

Nora opened her mouth, prepared to argue. But couldn't.

“You may be right.” There wasn't any reason to try to keep fooling herself. She'd already reached the point of no return, whatever happened between her and Quinn during the next three weeks, she'd foolishly let him into her heart. Deep enough that she knew he'd be taking a bit of it with him when he left Castlelough.

Which of course, she reminded herself firmly, he'd be doing. “And I don't mean to quibble, Da. But I seem to remember you throwing Quinn and me together that first Sunday morning.”

“Ah, but that was before I knew his true nature.” Brady frowned. “Now I suppose you'll be telling me that you can handle whatever the Yank dishes out?”

She met his worried look with a level one of her own. “I'm stronger than I look.”

“And don't I know that? But of all the eligible bachelors in Castlelough, why did you have to pick the American?”

“I didn't pick him. Kate believes Mam did. Because he'd be a challenge. As her own husband was.”

Brady gave Nora another long look. Then chuckled. “Aye, that sounds just like something your mother would do.”

They both began to laugh at the absurdity of it all, which was how Quinn found them, father and daughter, arms wrapped around each other, tears streaming down their faces.

“I'm sorry.” Uncomfortable with such an open display of emotion, he began to back out of the open doorway. “I didn't mean to interrupt.”

“Don't worry about it, my boy,” Brady said, swiping at his wet face with the back of his hands. “I was just about to be on my way into the village. You can take my place helping Nora with the milking.”

He left before Quinn could think up a good excuse to escape with him.

“Nice place.” He looked around the remarkably clean barn and decided open-heart surgery could be performed on the spotless concrete floor. “I guess I expected something a bit more primitive.”

“Ah, there you go again, Mr. Gallagher,” Nora said with an impertinent toss of her head that, if Brady had witnessed it, would have reminded him again of her mother. “Trying to fit everyone into tidy little boxes.” She poured the last of the grain into the final trough. “I'm disappointed. I would have expected a famous writer such as yourself to have more imagination.”

There was something different about her. It was as if she'd let down her guard and was giving him his first
glimpse of the woman who'd been brave enough to take on a ready-made family before she was even out of her teens.

“Sometimes it helps to be able to pigeonhole people.”

“Stereotype, you mean.” She went back down to the beginning of the row and began attaching the inflations to the cows' swollen udders. “Let me guess, if you'd given the matter of my milking any thought, which I doubt you have, you would have pictured me doing the work by hand, while sitting on a three-legged wooden stool, wearing a dirndl.”

“And a scooped-neck cotton peasant blouse to show off the tops of your milky white breasts,” he finished for her. The fantasy of unlacing that white blouse had tortured him during the more pastoral of his erotic dreams concerning this woman.

“I'm sorry to disappoint you.”

“That's the one thing you couldn't do, sweetheart.” Starting at the other end of the line, he began attaching the octopuslike hoses to the teats of the feeding cows. “You frustrate me, frighten me, turn me on, but—”

“Surely you're not serious? I frighten you?”

“You're right.
Frighten
isn't the right word.”

“I didn't think so.”

“Actually, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, you scare the living bejesus out of me.”

Surprised that he'd make such a startling admission in such an easy tone, Nora glanced up, then stared at the sight of Quinn doing what to her had become routine. “What are you doing?”

“Helping out like Brady suggested.”

“But you know what to do.”

“I told you I knew a bit about farms.”

“Well, knowing a bit about farms and knowing farmwork are two very different things.”

Quinn shrugged. “I worked on a few when I was a kid.
After my mom died. Mostly plowing, haying, milking. I didn't much like it.”

“Oh.” That wasn't the most encouraging news, Nora thought. It reminded her that Quinn was not the type of man to be happy living a country life. “If you don't like the work, you shouldn't have to do it. After all, you are a paying guest and—”

“Hey, having your guests do the work is the latest thing in the States. Believe it or not, out West, guys actually pay big bucks to get their butts beat up sitting on a horse all day playing cowboy.”

“I saw that movie.” She thought it important that he realize that Castlelough wasn't entirely the back of beyond. “I thought it was very sweet when the wee calf was born. But to tell you the truth, I don't think taking it back to the city was a very good idea.”

“That story was a fantasy written for city slickers who don't want to think about the fact that cows are nothing but Big Macs on the hoof. After the movie finished shooting, that big brown-eyed bovine Billy Crystal supposedly delivered undoubtedly ended up between two sesame-seed buns.”

She inclined her head, studied him to see if he was serious and realized he was. “Has anyone ever told you that you're a very jaded man, Mr. Gallagher?”

“All the time. And for the record, they're wrong. I'm merely a realist in a world populated with people who want their lives fuzzed up all pretty and soft-focused at the edges.

“Which is why,” he continued, returning to his original point, “you should consider making up a brochure touting the pleasures of good, honest work, and how it lowers blood pressure, increases heart capacity and boosts sex drive. You'd make a bundle from rich Americans.”

“I'll consider that,” Nora murmured as she returned to
work. There was no way she was going to touch that remark about boosting sex drive. “You wouldn't want to be giving me an endorsement, would you? For the brochure.”

“That depends. Are you going to smack me if I spill any milk?”

Even knowing it was foolish of her, she grasped this latest clue and held it close to her heart, wondering if he'd realized he'd just shared with her something else of his painful childhood.

“I hadn't planned on it,” she answered mildly, despite her stirring of sympathy for the boy who'd obviously been mistreated.

“Well, then, I suppose I could be persuaded.”

“Of course you won't be able to give a five-star review of my tasty meals. Since you missed the lamb,” she added pointedly.

They'd each reached the center of the barn and were now standing side by side.

Quinn cursed softly. “It seems I've spent a lot of time since coming here apologizing to you.”

“You don't owe me any apologies, Quinn. After all, you're certainly free to decide where you want to spend your evenings.” And your nights, she thought, but did not say.

“I spent the night in the village. With Laura Gideon.”

“I see.” She'd expected Quinn to hurt her. She just hadn't realized the pain would come so soon.

“No, dammit.” He cupped her chin, holding her distressed gaze to his when she would have turned away. “You don't see. I may have gone there for sex. But I didn't do anything but pass out on her couch.”

“You were drinking again?”

“Yeah.” He shook his head in self-disgust. “When I was
a kid, I used to try like hell to outrun my dad. I never could, of course. Looks like I still can't.”

“You're not the first man to have too much to drink from time to time. That doesn't mean you're an alcoholic.”

“I can count on one hand the number of times I've been drunk in my life. Two of them have been since I came here to Castlelough. That's got to mean something.”

“It certainly doesn't say all that much for the relaxing properties of farm life. Perhaps I'd better rethink printing up that fancy advertising brochure.”

“I'm serious, Nora.”

“That's your problem, Quinn. You take life too seriously. You expect too much.”

He laughed at that. A harsh bark of a sound that held not an iota of humor. “Sweetheart, if there's one lesson I've learned from life, it's not to expect a goddamn thing.”

“If that were true, you wouldn't have to work so hard to keep yourself from being hurt. You still have hope in your heart, Quinn Gallagher. Even if you won't admit it.”

“Perhaps you ought to hang out a shingle—Nora Fitzpatrick, country psychologist. Dammit, weren't you listening? I stood you up for dinner last night because I'd gone to the inn planning to go to bed with another woman. And not just any woman, but a gorgeous, sexy actress that men all over the world fantasize making love to.

“Laura and I always had a good time together. I was tense. Uptight. I wanted to get you out of my mind.”

“And did you?”

“Hell, no,” he said wearily.

Nora expelled a breath she'd been unaware of holding. “I suppose I should say I'm sorry. But I'm not.”

He dragged both hands down his face, then dropped them to his side. When he looked at her again—hard and deep— Nora saw the misery in his eyes and wondered what kind
of woman she'd become that she could actually find such pain encouraging.

“I want you, dammit!” He slammed his fist into his palm as the machines hummed and the cows chewed contentedly. “More than I could have imagined. I don't like the feeling. And I sure as hell don't like not being able to decide what to do about it.”

“Oh, Quinn.” She sighed out his name, wishing there was something she could do to brighten the murky shadows inside him. If she honestly believed that sex would help, she would have ripped off her clothes and given herself to him right here and now.

But she'd come to understand that sex came easily for this man. Too easily, it seemed. And although he'd never admit it, might not even realize it himself, Quinn was hungry for somebody to care about him. To love him.

She lifted a hand to his shoulder and felt the muscle tense beneath her touch. “You keep making it sound as if I don't have any say in the matter. I may not be as experienced as the American women you're used to,” she said quietly. “But I have been married and have given birth to a child. I'm not nearly as naive or helpless as you seem to believe I am. I do have a choice whether or not I go to bed with you.”

“That's what you say.” He grabbed hold of her upper arms and kissed her in a way designed to make her head spin. Which it did. When he released her mouth, his expression was as grim as she'd ever seen it. “The thing is, baby, I need to make sure
I
have a choice.”

His face set in a rigid inscrutable mask, he backed away. Physically and emotionally. Nora wanted to weep as she watched those hateful walls going up again, stone by impenetrable stone.

“I've got some work to do,” he said. “Since you seem to have everything under control here, I'd better get to it.”

With that curt dismissal, Quinn turned and walked out of the milking barn. He did not look back.

Take Her in Your Arms

F
rom the way he'd marched out of the milking shed, Nora had suspected Quinn was probably on his way back to Castlelough. To Laura Gideon, no doubt. Which was why it came as such a surprise to enter the house and find him in the kitchen, with Rory, Celia and Fionna.

And he wasn't just in it. He appeared to have taken it over!

“Quinn's cooking us supper,” Celia, who was setting the table, revealed before Nora could ask what he was doing working at the stove.

“He's making curry,” Rory said, looking up from chopping onions.

“Indians eat it.” This from Celia.

“People who live in India,” Rory said as he concentrated on making all the diced onion pieces the same size. “Not the ones from the American movies.”

“I know.” She'd eaten curry once at a restaurant in Dublin while living at the convent. She'd grown up on basic
country fare, and had found it the most exotic food she'd ever tasted. “I also know I didn't have any curry in the pantry.”

“I bought it this afternoon in the village,” Quinn said. “Mrs. Monohan keeps a well-stocked store.”

“Yes, she does.” Nora's mind was racing. “You bought it this afternoon?”

He shrugged. “I figured it was my fault you were stuck with leftovers from last night. The least I could do was help you use them up.” He glanced at her. “I came out to the milking barn to tell you, but we got…sidetracked talking about other things.”

“Oh.” She'd never, in her entire life, had a man cook for her! Indeed, she couldn't think of any woman she knew who had.

She took her apron from its hook. “Will we be having rice? Because I can start—”

“No.” Quinn plucked the white cotton apron from her hand and hung it back where it belonged. “You're not going to do anything but sit down and drink your wine.”

“Wine?”

“He bought it in the village, too.” Fionna, who was seated at the table watching the proceedings, lifted her glass. “It's French. And very good.”

And very expensive, Nora suspected. This entire scene: a man standing at her stove, looking as if he had every right to be there, her son helping him cook, her grandmother actually drinking something other than communion wine, was like something from one of Quinn's books. It was far more fictional than anything Nora had ever experienced in real life.

She sank onto one of the chairs she'd painted during a gloomy time last winter when she'd thought the bright yellow color might bring a little sunshine into the dark winter
days. Quinn poured some wine into a glass and held it out to her.

“Slainte,”
he said. Then, for her ears alone, he murmured. “To apologies. And possibilities.”

“Slainte,”
she answered softly. As she lifted the ruby red wine to her lips, Nora thought she didn't need spirits; she was already high.

The next two hours passed in a blur. As she sipped her wine—which not surprisingly was excellent—Nora watched in amazement the ease with which Quinn fit into her family, instructing her son on the importance of a man being able to feed himself, sharing foolish knock-knock jokes with Celia, complimenting Mary, who'd entered the kitchen a few minutes earlier, on a new, paler, more natural lipstick shade, and discussing DNA, of all things, with John, who had come in with Mary.

“I've been telling Quinn about Bernadette,” Fionna revealed as they finished up a meal that was even better than the one Nora had paid so many hard-earned pounds for in Dublin. “He's thinking of putting her into his new book.”

“Really?” Nora's eyes narrowed suspiciously. Her grandmother took her canonization campaign very seriously. “I thought your next book was going to be about a witch, Quinn.”

“It is. In fact, Kate and I are meeting tomorrow to discuss her impression of my heroine. She promised to take me to a circle of stones nearby.”

“I know it.” The ancient pre-Christian stone circle staggered the boundary line between Joyce and O'Sullivan land. “But how does Bernadette fit into a story about a witch?”

“Fionna has me intrigued. Sister Bernadette Mary is an interesting vital character. If I move the story back a few years, put it at the time of the revolution, fictionalize her enough to make her, perhaps, my heroine's sister…”

“You're serious.”

“Of course. I'm always serious, Nora. You should have realized that by now.”

His tone held a private meaning that had her looking down into her wineglass.

“A movie based on Bernadette's life might just help the cause,” Fionna pointed out. “Even if it's a fictionalized account. And then, if it turns out to be a hit at Cannes, perhaps even the Holy Father himself will take notice.”

Nora stared dumbstruck at her grandmother. She was certain Fionna hadn't even known about the famed European film festival before the movie people's arrival in Castlelough. Obviously her grandmother and Quinn had been having quite the conversation while she'd been finishing the milking.

“This sounds very different from your other books.”

“Not really. Bernadette and the heroine of
The Lady of the Lake
have a great deal in common.” He leaned forward to top off her glass before refilling Fionna's, then his own.

“One's a widowed mother. The other is a nun,” Nora said. And nuns could not be mothers. Hadn't the inability to have children been one of the main reasons she'd questioned her vocation even before her mother had died?

“That's not such a difference. As you can probably attest to,” he said mildly, revealing that someone had told him about her early convent days. “They're both brave women. Willing to give their lives to something they believe in. And I like the duality of the two sisters—one who's embraced a two-thousand-year-old religion and the other who practices a less acceptable one harkening back to ancient pagan gods.”

Nora couldn't help noticing that by making the two characters in his new book sisters, Quinn was once again writing about a family. She wondered if he realized that.

And speaking of families…

“I liked the way you ended
The Lady of the Lake.
Having Shannon McGuire hide the baby beneath the tarp as she took the boat to Innisfree.” Nora smiled at the uplifting memory of the widowed young mother and her son headed out to the island, determined to save the small green creature its mother had died protecting. “After all that sadness and evil, it made me feel hopeful.”

“Shannon decided that all on her own,” Quinn revealed, surprising Nora. She thought he'd have felt the need to reign absolute over his fictional worlds. “I had an entirely different—and darker—conclusion in mind when I began writing the book.

“But once Shannon took off on her own, joining forces with the creature, I purposely left the ending ambivalent. Most people seem to focus on the fact that the scientists won't give up.” It did not surprise Quinn that Nora would choose the more optimistic—and unlikely—possibility.

“If that's the case, most people underestimate Shannon McGuire.”

He lifted his glass to her. “You may have a point, Mrs. Fitzpatrick. She was, indeed, a formidable woman.”

As he drank in the sight of her lovely earnest face, Quinn realized why Nora had seemed strangely familiar that first night. She was, of course, the brave unrelentingly optimistic Shannon McGuire come to life. The irony of coming across the sea to meet the only character—the only woman—who'd ever possessed the power to fascinate him did not escape Quinn.

“It's going to be light for another hour,” he said. At this latitude the late-spring sun lingered lovingly over the land. “Didn't you say something about an excursion to the coast?”

“Oh, what a grand idea!” Fionna actually clapped her
hands. “The poor man's been working far too hard since he came to Castlelough, Nora. I think he deserves a sunset walk at the edge of the tide. Relaxing, don't you think?”

That suggestion had Quinn nearly spitting out the drink of wine he'd just taken. Of all the words he might have used to describe his turbulent feelings for Nora Fitzpatrick,
relaxing
would not have even made the top fifty.

“There's still the dishes to do,” Nora protested.

“Oh, we can do them,” Fionna assured her. “Show the man the seashore, darling. The fresh air will do you both a world of good.”

Nora knew there was no point in arguing. Not that she really wanted to. For the prospect of being alone with this man she just might be falling in love with was far too appealing to turn down.

And that was how they found themselves strolling along the hard-packed sand at the edge of the surf, drinking in the tangy scent of the sea. Overhead, gulls wheeled, their cries echoing off the windswept cliffs as the sun sank lower and lower in the cloud-scudded sky. Sandpipers skittered about in the foamy surf on long thin stilt legs while puffins nested on rock formations green with vegetation.

The slanting light cast a trail of fire on the white-crested ocean waves. Quinn thought of his great-great-great-grandfather, Quinlan Conroy Gallagher, of County Donegal, who had sailed on the infamous “coffin ship” from Cork to America during the potato famine.

The sea on this warm spring day was calm, nearly glassy. Quinn imagined that in the winter the waves would beat against the rocks like invading warriors. A harsh contrast to the tidy green fields and placid sapphire lakes of summer.

In fact, the entire country was one of contrasts. One minute icy rain would be falling from low-hanging pewter clouds, the next the sun would shine from a cornflower blue
sky, gilding the rolling landscape, and literally take your breath away.

The land of his forefathers was a place of sad songs, merry wars, the tragedy of the Troubles, the lilt of laughter mingling with the melancholy of a fiddle, both twining through the murmur of a blue-smoked pub. A place where the entire town might turn out to help one of their own cut peat for the winter, yet stubbornly harbor a decades-old grudge about a neighbor's errant cow getting into the corn.

Quinn had always thought of himself as a man who knew his own mind. Who carefully, after much consideration, charted a course and stuck to it. He'd prided himself on his single-mindedness. Until he'd arrived in Castlelough.

“You must think I'm crazy,” he muttered.

It was the first words he'd said to her since leaving the house. Nora, enjoying his company and the sun's dazzling farewell to the day, had not felt the need to press for conversation.

“I have a grandmother who drives all over Ireland in a miracle-mobile, harasses bishops and writes impassioned weekly letters to the pope, a father who's survived an encounter with a banshee and lived to tell everyone about it, a sister who looks as if she's an apprentice vampire, a sister-in-law who dances in fairy rings and prays to pagan gods, and a son whose best friend is a mythical creature who lives in the lake.”

Humor lit up her eyes, silvered her voice, as she went on, “And I myself have lengthy conversations with my long-dead mother and Stone Age ancestors. How could you think I'd be calling anyone else crazy?”

Quinn looked into the fathomless depths of those green eyes overbrimming with life and wondered how it was that she could make him laugh so easily.

“Point taken.”

She returned his faintly abashed grin with a warm open smile of her own. “It's the magic of course.”

“And you'd be one to believe in magic.” Quinn never had, despite the fact that he wrote books about otherworldly events.

“Aye. While I may not burn candles and cast old Celtic spells as Kate does, I've felt it myself too many times not to know it exists. Obviously you've been feeling it, too, Quinn, which isn't surprising, since the blood of the ancient ones flows in your veins.”

Quinn damn well didn't want to ruin a perfectly good sunset by discussing his Gallagher blood.

“I've always been irritated by women who give men mixed signals,” he said, in an effort to change the subject. “But it occurs to me that's exactly what I've been doing to you.” This was not an appealing realization.

“It's the magic,” she said again. “It's obvious it has you feeling uneasy. And a wee bit testy.”

“More than a wee bit.” Her creamy complexion was framed by a windblown tangle of flame silk. Feeling an overpowering urge to touch, Quinn brushed away some strands that were blowing across her eyes. “I've been a bastard.”

“Aye,” Nora agreed.

He laughed again at her unfailing honesty and felt a release of tension. “You could argue with me.”

She lifted a teasing brow. “And why would I be arguing with the truth, Mr. Gallagher?”

Quinn narrowed his eyes at the exaggerated lilt in her tone.

“Saints preserve us,” he drawled on a mock brogue laced with amusement. “And would you actually be flirting with me, Mrs. Fitzpatrick?”

“I believe I just might be, Mr. Gallagher.”

Tenderness. As the water carved new curves into ancient cliffs, Quinn felt it and fought against it. “I'm not a man for pretty words and promises, Nora.”

“You're underestimating yourself.” She lifted a hand to his cheek and felt the ridge of the white scar beneath her fingertips. “It would seem to me that a famous writer such as yourself would have more than enough words at his disposal.”

His fingers curled around her wrist as if to pull her hand away. But he didn't. Not yet. “Are you saying you want me to lie?”

“No.” Nora thought it sad that a man who was the epitome of self-confidence would seem so unsure of himself when it came to being loved. Although it cost her, she didn't press. “Pretty words can be lovely, Quinn. I know of no woman who doesn't enjoy hearing them.” She saw the Aha! look flash in his eyes. “But I wouldn't be needing them.”