Born in Fire (9 page)

“I will,” Maggie said grimly.

“I think you’ll enjoy her.” Rogan dipped into the clotted cream for his scone and smiled at his grandmother. “She’s an interesting woman.”

“Interesting.” Christine Rogan Sweeney lifted one sharp white brow. She knew her grandson well, could interpret every nuance of tone and expression. On the subject of Maggie Concannon, however, he was cryptic. “In what way?”

He wasn’t sure of that himself and stalled for time by stirring his tea. “She’s a brilliant artist; her vision is extraordinary. Yet she lives alone in a little cottage in Clare, and the decor is anything but aesthetically unique. She’s passionate about her work, but reluctant to show it. She’s by turns charming and rude—and both seem to be true to her nature.”

“A contradictory woman.”

“Very.” He settled back, a man completely content in the gracious parlor, Sèvres cup in his hand, and his head resting against the brocade cushion of a Queen Anne chair. A fire burned quietly in the grate. The flowers and the scones were fresh.

He enjoyed these occasional teas with his grandmother as much as she did. The peace and order of her home were soothing, as was she with her perpetual dignity and softly faded beauty.

He knew she was seventy-three and took personal pride in the fact that she looked ten years younger. Her skin was pale as alabaster. Lined, yes, but the marks of age only added to the serenity of her face. Her eyes were brilliantly blue, her hair as soft and white as a first snowfall.

She had a sharp mind, unquestionable taste, a generous heart and a dry, sometimes biting wit. She was, as Rogan had often told her, his ideal woman.

It was a sentiment that flattered Christine as much as it concerned her.

He had failed her in only one way. That was to find a personal contentment that equalled his professional one.

“How are preparations for the show going?” she asked.

“Very well. It would be easier if our artist of the moment answered her damn phone.” He brushed that irritation away. “The pieces that have been shipped in are wonderful. You’ll have to come by the gallery and see for yourself.”

“I may do that.” But she was more interested in the artist than in the art. “Did you say she was a young woman?”

“Hmmm?”

“Maggie Concannon. Did you mention she was young?”

“Oh, middle twenties, I’d expect. Young, certainly, for the scope of her work.”

Lord, it was like drawing teeth. “And flashy would you say? Like—what was her name—Miranda Whitfield-Fry, the one who did metal sculpture and wore all the heavy jewelry and colored scarves?”

“She’s nothing like Miranda.” Thank Christ. He remembered with a shudder how relentlessly, and embarrassingly, the woman had pursued him. “Maggie’s more the boots and cotton shirt type. Her hair looks like she had a whack at it with kitchen shears.”

“Unattractive then.”

“No, very attractive—but in an unusual sense.”

“Mannish?”

“No.” He recalled, uncomfortably, the vicious sexual tug, the sensual scent of her, the feel of that quick, involuntary tremble under his hand. “Far from it.”

Ah. Christine thought. She would definitely make time to meet the woman who put that scowl on Rogan’s face. “She intrigues you.”

“Certainly, I wouldn’t have signed her otherwise.” He caught Christine’s look and raised a brow in an identical manner. “It’s business, Grandmother. Just business.”

“Of course.” Smiling to herself, she poured him more tea. “Tell me what else you’ve been up to.”

Rogan arrived at the gallery at eight
A.M
. the next morning. He’d enjoyed an evening at the theater, and a late supper with a sometimes companion. As always, he’d found Patricia charming and delightful. The widow of an old friend, she was, to his mind, more of a distant cousin than a date. They’d discussed the Eugene O’Neill play over salmon and champagne and had parted with a platonic kiss at just after midnight.

And he hadn’t slept a wink.

It hadn’t been Patricia’s light laugh or her subtle perfume that had kept him tossing.

Maggie Concannon, he thought. Naturally the woman was in the forefront of his mind, since most of his time and effort was focused on her upcoming show. It was hardly any wonder that he was thinking of her—particularly since it was all but impossible to speak to her.

Her aversion to the phone had caused him to resort to telegrams, which he fired off to the west with blistering regularity.

Her one and only answer had been brief and to the point:
STOP NAGGING
.

Imagine, Rogan thought as he unlocked the elegant glass doors of the gallery. She’d accused him of nagging, like some spoiled, whiny child. He was a businessman, for God’s sake, one about to give her career an astronomical boost. And she wouldn’t even spare the time to pick up the damn phone and have a reasonable conversation.

He was used to artists. Sweet Mary knew he had dealt with their eccentricities, their insecurities, their often childish demands. It was his job to do so, and he considered himself adept. But Maggie Concannon was trying both his skill and his patience.

He relocked the doors behind him and breathed in the quietly scented air of the gallery. Built by his grandfather, the building was lofty and grand, a striking testament to art with its Gothic stonework and carved balusters.

The interior consisted of dozens of rooms, some small, some large, all flowing into the next with wide archways. Stairs curved up fluidly to a second story that housed a ballroom-size space along with intimate parlors fitted with antique sofas.

It was there he would show Maggie’s work. In the ballroom he would have a small orchestra. While the guests enjoyed the music, the champagne, the canapes, they could browse among her strategically placed works. The larger, bolder pieces he would highlight, showcasing smaller pieces in more intimate settings.

Imagining it, refining the pictures in his mind, he walked through the lower gallery toward the office and storage rooms.

He found his gallery manager, Joseph Donahoe, pouring coffee in the kitchenette.

“You’re here early.” Joseph smiled, showing the flash of one gold tooth. “Coffee?”

“Yes. I wanted to check on the progress upstairs before heading into the office.”

“Coming right along,” Joseph assured him. Though the two men were of an age, Joseph’s hair was thinning on top. He compensated for the loss by growing it long enough to tie in a streaming ponytail. His nose had been broken once by a wayward polo mallet and so listed a bit to the left. The result was the look of a pirate in a Savile Row suit.

The women adored him.

“You look a bit washed-out.”

“Insomnia,” Rogan said, and took his coffee black. “Did yesterday’s shipment get unpacked?”

Joseph winced. “I was afraid you’d ask.” He lifted his cup and muttered into it. “Hasn’t come in.”

“What?”

Joseph rolled his eyes. He’d worked for Rogan for more than a decade and knew that tone. “It didn’t arrive yesterday. I’m sure it’ll be along this morning. That’s why I came in early myself.”

“What is that woman doing? Her instructions were very specific, very simple. She was to ship the last of the pieces overnight.”

“She’s an artist, Rogan. She probably got struck by inspiration and worked past the time to post it. We’ve got plenty of time.”

“I won’t have her dragging her feet.” Incensed, Rogan snapped up the kitchen phone. He didn’t have to look up Maggie’s number in his address book. He already knew it by heart. He stabbed buttons and listened to the phone ring. And ring. “Irresponsible twit.”

Joseph took out a cigarette as Rogan slammed down the receiver. “We have more than thirty pieces,” he said as he flicked an ornate enameled lighter. “Even without this last shipment, it’s enough. And the work, Rogan. Even a jaded old hand like me is dazzled.”

“That’s hardly the point, is it?”

Joseph blew out smoke, pursed his lips. “Actually, it is, yes.”

“We agreed on forty pieces, not thirty-five, not thirty-six. Forty. And by God, forty is what I’ll have.”

“Rogan—where are you going?” he called out when Rogan stormed from the kitchen.

“To goddamn Clare.”

Joseph took another drag on his cigarette and toasted the air with his coffee cup. “Bon voyage.”

The flight was a short one and didn’t give Rogan’s temper time to cool. The fact that the sky was gloriously blue, the air balmy, didn’t change a thing. When he slammed the door on his rental car and headed away from Shannon Airport, he was still cursing Maggie.

By the time he arrived at her cottage, he was at full boil.

The nerve of the woman, he thought as he stalked up to her front door. Pulling him away from his work, from his obligations. Did she think she was the only artist he represented?

He pounded on her door until his fist throbbed. Ignoring manners, he pushed the door open. “Maggie!” he called out, striding from the living room to the kitchen. “Damn you.” Without pausing, he stamped through the back door and headed for her workshop.

He should have known she’d be there.

She glanced up from a workbench and a mountain of shredded paper. “Good, I could use some help with this.”

“Why the hell don’t you answer the bloody phone? Why have the damn thing if you’re going to ignore it?”

“I often ask myself the same thing. Pass me that hammer, will you?”

He lifted it from the bench, hefted the weight a moment as the very pleasant image of bopping her on the head with it flitted into his brain. “Where the devil’s my shipment?”

“It’s right here.” She dragged a hand through her untidy hair before taking the hammer from him. “I’m just packing it up.”

“It was supposed to be in Dublin yesterday.”

“Well, it couldn’t be because I hadn’t sent it yet.” With quick, expert moves, she began to hammer nails into the crate on the floor. “And if you’ve come all this way to check on it, I have to say you don’t have enough to do with your time.”

He lifted her off the floor and plunked her down on the workbench. The hammer clanked on concrete, barely missing his foot. Before she’d drawn the breath to spit at him, he caught her chin in his hand.

“I have more than enough to do with my time,” he said evenly. “And baby-sitting for an irresponsible, scatterbrained woman interferes with my schedule. I have a staff at the gallery, one whose timetable is carefully, even meticulously thought out. All you had to do was follow instructions and ship the damn merchandise.”

She slapped his hand away. “I don’t give a tinker’s damn about your schedules and timetables. You signed on an artist, Sweeney, not a bleeding clerk.”

“And what artistic endeavor prevented you from following a simple direction?”

She bared her teeth, considered punching him, then simply pointed. “That.”

He glanced over, froze. Only the blindness of temper could have prevented him from seeing it, being struck dumb by it on entering the building.

The sculpture stood on the far side of the room, fully three feet high, all bleeding colors and twisting, sinuous shapes. A tangle of limbs, surely, he thought, unashamedly sexual, beautifully human. He crossed to it to study it from a different angle.

He could almost, almost make out faces. They seemed to melt into imagination, leaving only the sensation of absolute fulfillment. It was impossible to see where one form began and the other left off, so completely, so perfectly were they merged.

It was, he thought, a celebration of the human spirit and the sexuality of the beast.

“What do you call it?”

“Surrender.”
She smiled. “It seems you inspired me, Rogan.” Whipped by fresh energy, she pushed off the bench. She was light-headed, giddy, and felt glorious. “It took forever to get the colors right. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve remelted and discarded. But I could see it, perfectly, and it had to be exact.” She laughed and picked up her hammer to drive another nail. “I don’t know when I’ve slept last. Two days, three.” She laughed again, dragging her hands through her tousled hair. “I’m not tired. I feel incredible. Full of desperate energy. I can’t seem to stop.”

“It’s magnificent, Maggie.”

“It’s the best work I’ve ever done.” She turned to study it again, tapping the hammer against her palm. “Probably the best I’ll ever do.”

“I’ll arrange for a crate.” He tossed her a look over his shoulder. She was pale as wax, he noted, with the fatigue her bustling brain had yet to transmit to her body. “And handle the shipping personally.”

“I was going to build one. It wouldn’t take long.”

“You can’t be trusted.”

“Of course I can.” Her mood was so festive, she didn’t even take offense. “And it’d be quicker for me to build one than for you to have one built. I already have the dimensions.”

“How long?”

“An hour.”

He nodded. “I’ll use your phone and arrange for a truck. Your phone does work, I assume.”

“Sarcasm”—chuckling, she crossed to him—“becomes you. So does that impeccably proper tie.”

Before either of them had a chance to think, she grabbed his tie and hauled him toward her. Her warm mouth fixed on his, stunning him into immobility. Her free hand slid into his hair, gripped as her body pressed close. The kiss sizzled, sparked, smoldered. Then as quickly as she had initiated it, she broke away.

“Just a whim,” she said, and smiled up at him. Her heart might have been jolting like a rabbit in her chest, but she would think about that later. “Blame it on sleep deprivation and excess energy. Now—”

He snagged her arm before she could turn away. She wouldn’t get away so easily, he thought. Wouldn’t paralyze him one moment and shrug it off the next.

“I have a whim of my own,” he murmured. As he slid a hand around to cup the back of her neck, he watched her eyes register wary surprise. She didn’t resist. He thought he saw a hint of amusement on her face before he lowered his mouth to hers.

The amusement faded quickly. This kiss was soft, sweet, sumptuous. As unexpected as rose petals in the blaze of a furnace, it cooled and soothed and aroused all at once. She thought she heard a sound, something between a whimper and a sigh. The fact that it had slipped from her own burning throat amazed her.