given you a higher percentage. I had to have it.”
“Well, then, there’s no harm in telling you we’d have taken less all around. But we very much enjoyed the horse trading and winding up your man Finkle.”
This time he did laugh, and most of the tension drained. “My great-uncle would have come here, and my grandfather. To Gallagher’s.”
“Oh, to be sure. Is it what they’d think of what you’re doing here that’s worrying you?”
“I don’t worry what my grandfather would have thought. Not anymore.”
There, she thought, that sore spot again. This time she probed, but gently. “Was he so hard a man?”
He hesitated, but it seemed he was in the mood to speak of it. “What did you think of the house in London?”
Puzzled, she shook her head. “It was very elegant.”
“Fucking museum.”
She blinked at that, there was such undiluted anger in his voice. “Well, I’ll say the museum part of that statement occurred to me, but it was lovely.”
“After he died, my parents gave me clearance to change a few things in it. Things that hadn’t been changed in thirty years. Opened it up a bit, softened some edges, but it’s still his place underneath. Rigid and formal, as he was. That’s how my father was raised. Rigidly, and without affection.”
“I’m sorry.” She stroked a hand in circles over his back. “It has to be sad, hard and sad, to have a father who doesn’t show he loves you.”
“I never had that problem. Somehow, through some miracle, my father was—is—caring, open and full of humor. Though his father wasn’t. He still doesn’t speak of it much, the way he was raised, except to my mother.”
“And she to you,” Darcy murmured, “because she knows you’d need to understand it.”
“He wanted to make a family, a life, that was the opposite of the way he’d been raised. That’s what he did. They kept us in line, my sister and me, but we always knew they loved us.”
“I think it shows the beauty of the gift they gave you that you don’t take it for granted.”
“No, I don’t.” He turned back to her. Odd, he hadn’t really expected her to understand, nor had he expected to feel such relief that she did. “That’s why I don’t worry what my grandfather would think of what I’m doing here. But I do think of how my parents will feel when it’s done.”
“Then I’ll say this. To my way of thinking, they’ll be proud. Ireland’s art is at its core, and you’re bringing more of it here. Along with it the practicality of jobs and revenue. It’s a good thing you’re doing, and a credit to your father, your mother, and your heritage.”
A nagging little weight fell off his shoulder. “Thanks. It matters, more than I anticipated. It was one of the things that hit me when I was standing up on the hill. It matters. What I do here, and leave here. And while I was coming to that conclusion, I had a conversation with Carrick.”
Her fingers jerked in his. When he looked down, he saw the surprise clearly on her face before she closed her mouth and made a quiet humming sound.
“Do you think I’m hallucinating?”
“No.” She paused, then shook her head. “I don’t, no. Others whose sanity I’m sure of claim to have done the same. We’ve broad minds around here.”
But she knew the legend, and it unnerved her enough that she took a step back and sat on the arm of a chair. “And what did you converse about?”
“A number of things. My grandfather. Old Maude and Johnnie Magee. Schedules, virtues, the theater. You.”
“Myself.” Now she rubbed her suddenly damp hands on her trousers. “And what would that be about?”
“You know the legend, probably better than I. It takes three couples, as I understand it, falling in love, accepting each other, taking vows.”
“So it’s said.”
“And in the past year or so, your two brothers have fallen in love, accepted it, and taken vows.”
“I’m aware of that, as I was at their weddings.”
“Then, given the quickness of your mind, I assume you’ve considered the fact that there are three Gallaghers.” He took a step closer. “You look a little pale.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d get to the point you’re dancing around.”
“All right, direct. He’s pegged us as his third and final step.”
Her chest seemed to fill all at once with heat and pressure, making her want to knock her fist against it to loosen it again. But she kept her hands still and her eyes level. “That wouldn’t sit well with you.”
“Would it with you?”
She was too flustered to catch the evasion. “I’m not the one having conversation with faerie princes, am I? And no, I don’t particularly care to have my fate and future dictated by another’s wants or needs.”
“Neither do I. Neither,” he added, “will I.”
She thought she understood now why he’d told her of his grandfather. To show her he had cold blood in him.
Slowly she got to her feet. “I see what put you in such a rare mood. The very idea of the remote possibility that I might be your fate and future set you right off, didn’t it? The very thought that a man of your education and consequence should tumble heart-first for a barmaid.”
He was so genuinely baffled it took him a moment to answer. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“Who could blame you for being angry and frustrated when such a suggestion was made? It’s a fortunate thing for both of us that love has nothing to do with the matter.”
He’d seen angry women before, but he wasn’t certain he’d ever faced one who looked so capable of inflicting real physical harm. To ward it off, he held up his hands palms out. “In the first place, what you do for a living has nothing to do with . . . anything. In the second, you’re hardly a barmaid, though it wouldn’t matter if you were.”
“I serve drinks in a pub, so what’s that if not a barmaid?”
“Aidan runs the bar, Shawn runs the kitchen, and you run the service,” Trevor said patiently. “And I imagine if you wanted, you could run the whole shot—or any other pub in your country or mine. But that’s hardly an issue.”
“It happens to be of some particular issue with me.” But she yanked back her anger and let it vibrate on the end of its tether.
“Darcy, I told you this because it concerns both of us, because we’re lovers and it’s only right we both know where we stand. Now we do, and we’re agreed we don’t intend to let ourselves get tangled up in some ancient legend.”
He took her hand again, rubbing his thumb over the knuckles to soothe out the stiffness. “Separate from that—entirely separate from that—I like who you are, I enjoy being with you, and I want you in a way . . . I’ve never wanted anyone else in the same way,” he finished.
She ordered herself to relax, to accept, even to be pleased. But there was a hole somewhere inside her that wouldn’t close up again. “All right. Separate from that, I feel the same. So there’s no problem at all.” Flashing a smile, she rose to her toes and kissed him warmly, then waved him toward the door.
“Now go on with you, as I’ve got to be on my way.”
“Will you come to the cottage tonight?”
She shot him a look from under her lashes. “I’d be pleased to. You can look for me around midnight, and I wouldn’t mind if you had a glass of wine poured and waiting.”
“Later, then.” He would have kissed her again, but she was already shutting the door in his face.
On the other side of it she counted to ten three full times. Then exhaled. So, they were to be reasonable and sensible and do it all exactly the Magee way, were they? He was too removed to tumble into legend, or into love.
Well, by God, she’d have him begging on his knees for her before she was done with him. He’d promise her the world and everything in it.
And when he had, well, she might just take it. That would teach the man not to shrug off the notion of loving Darcy Gallagher.
r /> THIRTEEN
ALL IN ALL, Trevor found himself very satisfied by the way things were going. The project was moving along on schedule. The townspeople were supportive and interested. Never a day went by without at least some of them wandering by to watch the work, make comments, give suggestions, or tell him some story or other about his relations.
He’d met a few who were cousins. In fact, he had two of them employed as laborers.
With Mick out of commission for the next few days, he’d have to spend more time at the site. But he didn’t mind. It would keep his mind focused on what it needed to be focused on. And give him less time to let it wander around Darcy.
He felt he’d straightened things out in that area as well. Both of them were too sensible to be influenced by legends, or self-interested faeries. Or dreams of a blue heart that beat steady and strong deep in the sea.
He had business to see to, he reminded himself as he carried coffee up to his office in the cottage. Calls to make, contracts to negotiate, supplies to order. He couldn’t waste time thinking about what he did or didn’t see, did or didn’t believe. Responsibilities wouldn’t wait while he pondered just how much of Irish myth was real and how much was imagined.
He touched the disk under his shirt. Real, he thought. As real as it gets. But he was handling it.
He glanced at his watch, and thought he might just catch his father at home in New York. And stepping into the bedroom, he jerked and spilled hot coffee over the back of his hand.
“Goddamn it!”
“Oh, there’s no need to profane.” With a quiet cluck of her tongue, Gwen continued to ply her needle. She sat in the chair in front of the tidy hearth, her hair neatly bound back, her face composed, her hands quick and clever as she embroidered a white cloth.
“You’ll want salve on that burn,” she told him.
“It’s nothing.” What was a little discomfort compared to seeing ghosts? Much less to conversing with one. “I’d nearly convinced myself not to believe in you.”
“Sure and you need to do what makes you most comfortable. Would you rather I let you be?”
“I don’t know what I’d rather.” He set the coffee down on the table, turned his desk chair around to face her. And sitting, he sucked absently at the sting on his hand. “I had dreams about you. I told you that. I didn’t tell you I halfway believed I’d find you when I came here. Not you,” he corrected, fumbling just enough to annoy himself. “Someone . . .” the word “alive” seemed rude somehow. “Real. A woman.”
Her gaze when it lifted to his was gentle and full of understanding. “You thought perhaps you’d find the woman you’d dreamed of, and that she would be for you?”