"I was not snooping. I was dusting."
He sipped idly at the coffee he'd gone to the kitchen to brew. To his thinking, he'd never seen her quite so flummoxed. "You don't have a dust rag," he pointed out.
Feeling naked, Brianna wrapped dignity around her. "I was about to get one. Your desk is a pitiful mess, and I was just straightening up."
"You were reading my notes."
"I was putting the notebook aside. Perhaps I glanced at the writing on it. Superstitions is all it is, of evil and death."
"Evil and death's my living." Grinning, he crossed to her, picked up the pad. "I like this one. On Hallowtide-that's November first."
"I'm aware of when Hallowtide falls."
"Sure you are. Anyway, on Hallowtide, the air being filled with the presence of the dead, everything is a symbol of fate. If on that date, you call the name of a person from the outside, and repeat it three times, the result is fatal." He grinned to himself. "Wonder what the garda could charge you with."
"It's nonsense." And gave her the chills. "It's great nonsense. I used that one." He set the notebook down, studied her. Her high color hadn't quite faded. "You know the trouble with technology?" He lifted one of his computer disks, tapping it on his palm as he studied her with laughing eyes. "No balled up papers, discarded by the frustrated writer that the curious can smooth out and read."
"As if I'd do such a thing." She flounced away to pick up her linens. "I've beds to make." . "Want to read some of it?"
She paused halfway to the door, looking back over her shoulder suspiciously. "Of your book?"
"No, of the local weather report. Of course of my book. Actually, there's a section I could use a local's spin on. To see if I got the rhythm of the dialogue down, the atmosphere, interactions."
"Oh, well, if I could help you, I'd be glad." "Brie, you've been dying to get a look at the manuscript. You could have asked."
"I know better than that, living with Maggie." She set the linens down again. "It's worth your life to go in her shop to see a piece she's working on."
"I'm a more even-tempered sort." With a few deft moves he booted his computer, slipped in the appropriate disk. "It's a pub scene. Local color and some character intros. It's the first time McGee meets Tullia." "Tullia. It's Gaelic."
"Right. Means peaceful. Let's see if I can find it." He began flipping screens. "You don't speak Gaelic, do you?"
"I do, yes. Both Maggie and I learned from our Gran."
He looked up, stared at her. "Son of a bitch. It never even occured to me. Do you know how much time I've spent looking up words? I just wanted a few tossed in, here and there."
"You'd only to have asked."
He grunted. "Too late now. Yeah, here it is. McGee's a burned-out cop, with Irish roots. He's come to Ireland to look into some old family history, maybe find his balance, and some answers about himself. Mostly, he just wants to be left alone to regroup. He was involved in a bust that went bad and holds himself responsible for the bystander death of a six-year-old kid."
"How sad for him."
"Yeah, he's got his problems. Tullia has plenty of her own. She's a widow, lost her husband and child in an accident that only she survived. She's getting through it, but carrying around a lot of baggage. Her husband wasn't any prize, and there were times she wished him dead."
"So she's guilty that he is, and scarred because her child was taken from her, like a punishment for her thoughts."
"More or less. Anyway, this scene's in the local pub. Only runs a few pages. Sit down. Now pay attention." He leaned over her shoulder, took her hand. "See these two buttons?"
"Yes."
"This one will page up, this one will page down. When you finished what's on the screen and want to move on, push this one. If you want to go back and look at something again, push that one. And Brianna?"
"Yes?"
"If you touch any of the other buttons, I'll have to cut all your fingers off."
"Being an even-tempered sort."
"That's right. The disks are backed up, but we wouldn't want to develop any bad habits." He kissed the top of her head. "I'm going to go back downstairs, check on the progress on your greenhouse. If you find something that jars, or just doesn't ring quite true, you can make a note on the pad there."
"All right." Already reading, she waved him off. "Go away, then."
Gray wandered downstairs, and outside. The six courses of local stone that would be the base for her greenhouse were nearly finished. It didn't surprise him to see Murphy setting stones in place himself.
"I didn't know you were a mason as well as a farmer," Gray called out.
"Oh, I do a bit of this, a bit of that. Mind you don't make that mortar so loose this time," he ordered the skinny teenager nearby. "Here's my nephew, Tim MacBride, visiting from Cork. Tim can't get enough of your country music from the States."
"Randy Travis, Wynonna, Garth Brooks?"
"All of them." Tim flashed a smile much like his uncle's.
Gray bent down, lifted a new stone for Murphy, while he discussed the merits of country music with the boy. Before long he was helping to mix the mortar and making satisfying manly noises about the work with his companions.
"You've a good pair of hands for a writer," Murphy observed.
"I worked on a construction crew one summer. Mixing mortar and hauling it in wheelbarrows while the heat fried my brain."
"It's pleasant weather today." Satisfied with the progress, Murphy paused for a cigarette. "If it holds, we may have this up for Brie by another week."
Another week, Gray mused, was almost all he had. "It's nice of you to take time from your own work to help her with this."
"That's comhair," Murphy said easily. "Community. That's how we live here. No one has to get by alone if there's family and neighbors. They'll be three men or more here when it's time to put up the frame and the glass. And others'll come along if help's needed to build her benches and such. By the end of it, everyone will feel they have a piece of the place. And Brianna will be giving out cuttings and plants for everyone's garden." He blew out smoke. "It comes round, you see. That's comhair."