Born in Fire (4 page)

“What’s this?” Maggie turned to her sister. “What about the house?”

“You heard what it said at the will reading,” Brianna began, but Maggie shook her head.

“I didn’t take any of it in. Lawyer’s talk. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“He left it to her.” Still trembling, Maeve lifted a finger and jabbed it out as an accusation. “He left the house to her. All the years I suffered and sacrificed, and he takes even that from me.”

“She’ll settle down right enough when she knows she has a sturdy roof over her head and no need to do anything to keep it,” Maggie said once her mother left the room.

It was true enough. And Brianna thought she could maintain the peace. She’d had a lifetime of practice. “I’ll keep the house, and she’ll stay here. I can tend them both.”

“Saint Brianna,” Maggie murmured, but there was no malice in it. “We’ll manage it between us.” The new furnace would have to wait, she decided. But as long as McGuinness kept buying, there would be enough to hold the two houses together.

“I’ve thought about…Da and I talked about it a little while ago, and I’ve been thinking….” Brianna hesitated.

Maggie pushed aside her own thoughts. “Just say it.”

“It needs some fixing up, I know, and I’ve only a bit left of what Gran left me—and there’s the lien.”

“I’ll be paying off the lien.”

“No, that’s not right.”

“It’s perfectly right.” Maggie got up to fetch the teapot. “He took it to send me to Venice, didn’t he? Mortgaged the house and weathered the gale Mother brought down on his head for doing it. I had three years of training thanks to him. And I’ll pay it back.”

“The house is mine.” Brianna’s voice firmed. “And so’s the lien.”

Her sister had a soft look about her, but Maggie knew Brianna could be mule stubborn when it suited her. “Well, we can argue that to death. We’ll both pay it off. If you won’t let me do it for you, Brie, let me do it for him. I’ve a need to.”

“We’ll work it out.” Brianna took the cup of tea Maggie poured her.

“Tell me what you’ve been thinking.”

“All right.” It felt foolish. She could only hope it didn’t sound so. “I want to turn the house into a B-and-B.”

“A hotel!” Stunned, Maggie could only stare. “You want to have paying guests nosing about the place? You’ll have no privacy at all, Brianna, and you’ll be working from morning till night.”

“I like having people around,” Brianna said coolly. “Not everyone wants to be a hermit like you. And I’ve a knack for it, I think, for making people comfortable. It’s in the blood.” She stuck out her chin. “Granda ran a hotel, didn’t he, and Gran ran it after he died. I could do it.”

“I never said you couldn’t, I just for the life of me can’t see why you’d want to. Strangers in and out every day.” Why, it gave her the shudders just to imagine it.

“I can only hope they’ll come. The bedrooms upstairs will need freshening, of course.” Brianna’s eyes blurred as she thought through the details. “Some paint, some paper. A new rug or two. And the plumbing needs work, God knows. The fact is, we’d need another bath altogether, but I think the closet down at the end of the hall upstairs would serve. I might have a little apartment added off the kitchen here, for Mother—so she won’t be disturbed. And I’d add a bit to the gardens, put up a little sign. Nothing on a grand scale, you see. Just small and tasteful and comfortable.”

“You want this,” Maggie murmured, seeing the light in her sister’s eyes. “You truly do.”

“I do, yes. I want it.”

“Then do it.” Maggie grabbed her hands. “Just do it, Brie. Freshen your rooms and fix your plumbing. Put up a fine sign. He wanted it for you.”

“I think he did. He laughed when I talked to him about it, in that big way he had.”

“Aye, he had a grand laugh.”

“And he kissed me and joked about me being an innkeeper’s granddaughter, and following tradition. If I started small enough, I could open for summer this year. The tourists, they come to the west counties in the summer especially, and they look for a nice, comfortable place to spend the night. I could—” Brianna shut her eyes. “Oh, listen to this talk, and we’re burying our father tomorrow.”

“It’s just what he’d want to hear.” Maggie was able to smile again. “A grand scheme like that, he’d have cheered you on!”

“We Concannons.” Brianna shook her head. “We’re great ones for scheming.”

“Brianna, that day on the cliff, he talked of you. He called you his rose. He’d want you to bloom.”

And she’d been his star, Maggie thought. She was going to do whatever she could to shine.

Chapter Three

S
HE
was alone—as she liked best. From the doorway of her cottage she watched the rain lashing Murphy Muldoon’s fields, slashing wildly over the grass and stone while the sun beamed hopefully, stubbornly, behind her. There was the possibility of a dozen different weathers in the layered sky, all brief and fickle.

That was Ireland.

But for Margaret Mary Concannon, the rain was a fine thing. She often preferred it to the warm slant of sun and the clear brilliance of cloudless blue skies. The rain was a soft gray curtain, tucking her away from the world. Or more important, cutting out the world, beyond her view of hill and field and sleek spotted cows.

For while the farm, the stone fences and green grasses beyond the tangle of fuchsia no longer belonged to Maggie or her family, this spot with its small wild garden and damp spring air was her own.

She was a farmer’s daughter, true enough. But no farmer was she. In the five years since her father’s death, she’d set about making her own place—and the mark he’d asked her to make. Perhaps it wasn’t so deep as yet, but she continued to sell what she made, in Galway now and Cork, as well as Ennis.

She needed nothing more than what she had. Wanted more, perhaps, but she knew that desires, no matter how deep and dragging, didn’t pay the bills. She also knew that some ambitions, when realized, carried a heavy price.

If from time to time she grew frustrated or restless, she had only to remind herself that she was where she needed to be, and doing what she chose to do.

But on mornings like this, with the rain and the sun at war, she thought of her father, and of the dreams he’d never seen come true.

He’d died without wealth, without success and without the farm that had been plowed and harvested by Concannon hands for generations.

She didn’t resent the fact that so much of her birthright had been sold off for taxes and debts and the high-blown fantasies of her father. Perhaps there was a tug of sentiment and regret for the hillocks and fields she had once raced over with all the arrogance and innocence of youth. But that was past. Indeed, she wanted no part of the working of it, the worrying over it. She had little of the love of growing things that stirred her sister, Brianna. True, she enjoyed her garden, the big defiant blooms and the scents that wafted from them. But the flowers grew despite her periods of neglect.

She had her place, and anything beyond it was out of her realm, and therefore, most usually, out of her mind. Maggie preferred needing no one, and certainly needing nothing she could not provide herself.

Dependence, she knew, and the longing for more than what you had, led to unhappiness and discontent. She had her parents’ example before her.

Pausing there, just past the open door into the chilling rain, she breathed in the air, the damp sweetness of it tinged with spring from the blackthorn blossoms that formed a hedgerow to the east and the early roses struggling into bloom to the west. She was a small woman, shapely beneath the baggy jeans and flannel shirt. Over her shoulder-length, fiery hair she wore a slouch hat, as gray as the rain. Beneath its bill her eyes were the moody, mystical green of the sea.

The rain dampened her face, the soft curve of cheek and chin, the wide, melancholy mouth. It dewed the creamy redhead’s complexion and joined the gold freckles scattered over the bridge of her nose.

She drank the strong sweet breakfast tea from a glass mug of her own design and ignored the phone that had begun to shrill from the kitchen. Ignoring the summons was as much policy as habit, particularly when her mind was drifting toward her work. There was a sculpture forming in her head, as clear as a raindrop, she thought. Pure and smooth, with glass flowing into glass in the heart of it.

The pull of the vision beckoned. Dismissing the ringing phone, she walked through the rain toward her workshop and the soothing roar of the glass furnace.

From his offices in Dublin, Rogan Sweeney listened to the ring of the phone through the receiver and swore. He was a busy man, too busy to waste his time on a rude and temperamental artist who refused to answer the sharp knock of opportunity.

He had businesses to see to, calls to answer, files to read, figures to tally. He should, while the day was young, go down to the gallery and oversee the latest shipment. The Native American pottery was, after all, his baby, and he’d spent months selecting the best of the best.

But that, of course, was a challenge already met. That particular show would once again ensure that Worldwide was a top international gallery. Meanwhile the woman, the damn, stubborn Clarewoman, was crowding his mind. Though he’d yet to meet her face-to-face, she and her genius occupied too much of his mind.

The new shipment would, of course, receive as much of his skill, energy and time as it required. But a new artist, particularly one whose work had so completely captured his imagination, excited on a different level. The thrill of discovery was as vital to Rogan as the careful development, marketing and sale of an artist’s works.

He wanted Concannon, exclusively, for Worldwide Galleries. As with most of his desires, all of which Rogan deemed quite reasonable, he wouldn’t rest until it was accomplished.

He’d been raised to succeed—the third generation of prosperous merchants who found clever ways to turn pence into pounds. The business his grandfather had founded sixty years before flourished under his leadership—because Rogan Sweeney refused to take no for an answer. He would achieve his goals by sweat, by charm, by tenacity or any other means he deemed suitable.

Margaret Mary Concannon and her unbridled talent was his newest and most frustrating goal.

He wasn’t an unreasonable man in his own mind, and would have been shocked and insulted to discover that he was described as just that by many of his acquaintances. If he expected long hours and hard work from his employees, he expected no less of himself. Drive and dedication weren’t merely virtues to Rogan, they were necessities that had been bred in his bones.

He could have handed the reins of Worldwide over to a manager and lived quite comfortably on the proceeds. Then he could travel, not for business but for pleasure, enjoying the fruits of his inheritance without sweating over the harvesting.

He could have, but his responsibility and thirsty ambition were his birthrights.

And M. M. Concannon, glass artist, hermit and eccentric was his obsession.

He was going to make changes in Worldwide Galleries, changes that would reflect his own vision, that would celebrate his own country. M. M. Concannon was his first step, and he’d be damned if her stubbornness would make him stumble.

She was unaware—because she refused to listen, Rogan thought grimly—that he intended to make her Worldwide’s first native Irish star. In the past, with his father and grandfather at the helm, the galleries had specialized in international art. Rogan didn’t intend to narrow the scope, but he did intend to shift the focus and give the world the best of the land of his birth.

He would risk both his money and his reputation to do it.

If his first artist was a success, as he fully intended her to be, his investment would have paid off, his instincts would have been justified and his dream, a new gallery that showcased works exclusively by Irish artists, would become reality.

To begin, he wanted Margaret Mary Concannon.

Annoyed with himself, he rose from his antique oak desk to stand by the window. The city stretched out before him, its broad streets and green squares, the silver glint that was the river and the bridges that spanned it.

Below, traffic moved in a steady stream, laborers and tourists merging on the street in a colorful stream in the sunlight. They seemed very distant to him now as they strolled in packs or twosomes. He watched a young couple embrace, a casual linking of arms, meeting of lips. Both wore backpacks and expressions of giddy delight.

He turned away, stung by an odd little arrow of envy.

He was unused to feeling restless, as he was now. There was work on his desk, appointments in his book, yet he turned to neither. Since childhood he’d moved with purpose from education to profession, from success to success. As had been expected of him. As he had expected of himself.

He’d lost both of his parents seven years before when his father had suffered a heart attack behind the wheel of his car and had smashed into a utility pole. He could still remember the grim panic, and the almost dreamy disbelief, that had cloaked him during the flight from Dublin to London, where his mother and father had traveled for business and the horrible, sterile scent of hospital.

His father had died on impact. His mother had lived barely an hour longer. So they had both been gone before he’d arrived, long before he’d been able to accept it. But they’d taught him a great deal before he’d lost them—about family and pride of heritage, the love of art, the love of business and how to combine them.

At twenty-six he’d found himself the head of Worldwide and its subsidiaries, responsible for staff, for decisions, for the art placed in his hands. For seven years he’d worked not only to make the business grow, but to make it shine. It had been more than enough for him.

This unsettled sensation, the dilemma of it, he knew had its roots in the breezy winter afternoon when he had first seen Maggie Concannon’s work.

That first piece, spied during an obligatory tea with his grandmother, had started him on this odyssey to possess—no, he thought, uncomfortable with the word. To control, he corrected, he wanted to control the fate of the artistry, and the career of the artist. Since that afternoon, he’d been able to buy only two pieces of her work. One was as delicate as a daydream, a slim almost weightless column riddled with shimmering rainbows and hardly larger than the span of his hand from wrist to fingertip.