"Rogan's gallery. Her husband."
"Handy." He went to the stove to top off his cup himself. The frying sausages smelled almost as good as his hostess. "It's an amazing piece. Icy white glass with this pulse of fire inside. I thought it looked like the Fortress of Solitude." At her blank look, he laughed. "You're not up on your American comic books, I take it. Superman's private sanctum, in the Arctic, I think."
"She'll like that, she will. Maggie's big on private sanctums." In an unconscious habit she tucked loose hair back into pins. Her nerves were humming a little. She supposed it was due to the way he stared at her, that frank and unapologetic appraisal that was uncomfortably intimate. It was the writer in him, she told herself and dropped potatoes into the spitting grease.
"They're building a gallery here in Clare," she continued. "It'll be open in the spring. Here's porridge to start you off while the rest is cooking."
Porridge. It was perfect. A rainy morning in an Irish cottage and porridge in a thick brown bowl. Grinning, he sat down and began to eat.
"Are you setting a book here, in Ireland?" She glanced over her shoulder. "Is it all right to ask?"
"Sure. That's the plan. Lonely countryside, rainy fields, towering cliffs." He shrugged. "Tidy little villages. Postcards. But what p
assions and ambitions lie beneath."
Now she laughed, turning bacon. "I don't know if you'll find our village passions and ambitions up to your scope, Mr. Thane."
"Gray."
"Yes, Gray." She took an egg, broke it one-handed into the sizzling skillet. "Now, mine ran pretty high when one of Murphy's cows broke through the fence and trampled my roses last summer. And as I recall, Tommy Duggin and Joe Ryan had a bloody fistfight outside O'Malley's pub not long back."
"Over a woman?"
"No, over a soccer game on the television. But then, they were a wee bit drunk at the time, I'm told, and made it up well enough once their heads stopped ringing."
"Well, fiction's nothing but a lie anyway."
"But it's not." Her eyes, softly green and serious, met his as she set a plate in front of him. "It's a different kind of truth. It would be your truth at the time of the writing, wouldn't it?"
Her perception surprised and almost embarrassed him. "Yes. Yes, it would."
Satisfied, she turned back to the stove to heap sausage, a rasher of bacon, eggs, potato pancakes onto a platter. "You'll be a sensation in the village. We Irish are wild for writers, you know."
"I'm no Yeats."
She smiled, pleased when he transferred healthy portions of food onto his plate. "But you don't want to be, do you?"
He looked up, crunching into his first slice of bacon. Had she pegged him so accurately so quickly? he wondered. He, who prided himself on his own aura of mystery-no past, no future.
Before he could think of a response, the kitchen door crashed open and a whirlwind of rain and woman came in. "Some knothead left his car smack in the middle of the road outside the house, Brie." Maggie stopped, dragged off a dripping cap, and eyed Gray.
"Guilty," he said, lifting a hand. "I forgot. I'll move it."
"No rush now." She waved him back into his seat and dragged off her coat. "Finish your breakfast, I've time. You'd be the Yank writer, would you?"
"Twice guilty. And you'd be M. M. Concannon."
"I would."
"My sister, Maggie," Brianna said as she poured tea. "Grayson Thane."
Maggie sat with a little sigh of relief. The baby was kicking up a storm of its own. "A bit early, are you?"
"Change of plans." She was a sharper version of Brianna, Gray thought. Redder hair, greener eyes-edgier eyes. "Your sister was kind enough not to make me sleep in the yard."
"Oh, she's a kind one, Brie is." Maggie helped herself to a piece of the bacon on the platter. "Apple cake?" Maggie asked, sniffing the air.
"For tea." Brianna took one pan out of the oven, slipped another in. "You and Rogan are welcome to some."
"Maybe we'll come by." She took a bun from the basket on the table and began to nibble. "Plan to stay awhile, do you?"
"Maggie, don't harass my guest. I've some extra buns if you want to take some home."
"I'm not leaving yet. Rogan's on the phone, will be as far as I can tell until doomsday's come and gone. I was heading to the village for some bread."
"I've plenty to spare."
Maggie smiled, bit into the bun again. "I thought you might." She turned those sharp green eyes on Gray. "She bakes enough for the whole village."
"Artistic talent runs in the family," Gray said easily. After heaping strawberry jam on a piece of bread, he passed the jar companionably to Maggie. "You with glass, Brianna with cooking." Without shame, he eyed the cake cooling on top of the stove. "How long until tea?"
Maggie grinned at him. "I may like you."
"I may like you back." He rose. "I'll move the car."
"If you'd just pull it into the street."
He gave Brianna a blank look. "What street?"
"Beside the house-the driveway you'd call it. Will you need help with your luggage?"
"No, I can handle it. Nice to have met you, Maggie."
"And you." Maggie licked her fingers, waited until she heard the door shut. "Better to look at than his picture in back of his books."