Tears of the Moon (25 page)

And when he imagined the woman on the receiving end, it was always a soft, feminine, gentle-natured sort. A
comfortable
woman, he thought as he trimmed his pastry. There was nothing comfortable about the O'Toole, for all she was a blessing in bed. After all, much as it appealed, a man couldn't spend his life in bed with a hot-blooded, naked woman.

Which made him think about the morning, and the way she'd ridden him to a blind, sweaty finish before his brain had even waked up. Which made him a great deal less comfortable altogether. So, being Shawn, he put that thought away. For the time being.

It hadn't been the sex he'd fallen in love with. That had simply been the key that opened him up so he'd see what had been waiting inside him for her. She'd never be an easy woman. God knew she'd poke and she'd prod at him until he was ready to throttle her. She would pick fights and would always find the way to put his own temper on the boil.

But Jesus, she could make him laugh. And she knew half of what was in his mind before he'd gotten the words out. There was treasure in that. She knew his every flaw, and didn't hold any of them against him overmuch.

She didn't think much of his music, and that stung more than a little. But he chose to think it just a lack of understanding. Just as he had no interest or knowledge of what mysteries were under the bonnet of his car.

Whatever the weight of the scale, for or against, didn't matter. His heart was already hers. All he had to do was make her realize she wanted to keep it.

He fancied up the pastries, adding bits of dough in little designs, the way he'd seen in a picture somewhere. After brushing the lot of them with egg wash, he popped them into the oven.

When Darcy came in he was whistling over the Gallagher's Irish stew he had simmering in his big pot.

“My larder's bare as the top of Rory O'Hara's head. I need a sandwich before shift starts.”

“I'll make it.” Shawn cut her off before she could grab from the refrigerator. “You'll just leave a mess for me to clean up otherwise.”

“I'll have some of that roast beef if there's any left.”

“There's enough.”

“Well, then, don't be stingy.” She sat, propping her legs on the chair beside her, as much to admire her new shoes as to rest her feet before the long shift ahead. When she noted the bowls he'd yet to wash, she sniffed the air. “Is that apple tarts you have in the oven?”

“It might be. And I might see there's one left for you, if you don't badger me.”

Experimentally, she ran a finger around the inside of the bowl that had held the filling and licked. “I seem to recall that Brenna favors apple tarts particularly.”

Shawn sliced the sandwich neatly in two, knowing Darcy would complain otherwise. “I recall that as well.” His expression bland, he slid the sandwich in front of her.

“Are you—” Darcy cut herself off, picked up the first half of her lunch. “No, I don't want to know. My best friend and my brother,” she said over the first bite. “I never thought to have to work to keep that image out of my head.”

“Well, keep working at it.” Curious, he sat across from her. “You're friends with Jude, and it never seemed to bother you that she and Aidan—”

“I was
new
friends with Jude.” Darcy stared at him over her sandwich with eyes that were blue and sulky. “It's a different matter entirely. It has to be your face,” she decided. “Because she knows you through and through, so it's certainly not your riveting personality. She's just dazzled by the look of you, as there's no denying you've a strong and handsome face.”

“You're only saying that because we look so much alike.”

Her teeth flashed before she bit in again. “That's true enough. But we can't help being beautiful, can we, darling?”

“We can only do our best to bear the terrible weight of it. Then offer it up.” He said it ponderously and made her snicker.

“Well, it's a burden I enjoy carrying. And if a man doesn't want to look any further than my face, I've nothing to complain over. It's enough that I know I've a mind behind it.”

“Is the Dubliner you've been seeing treating you like a pet, then?”

She moved a shoulder, annoyed with herself for being dissatisfied with a relationship that held so much potential. “He enjoys my company and takes me nice places in fine style.” And because it was Shawn, she could hiss out a breath. “Where he spends half the time bragging about himself and his work and expecting me to be impressed beyond speech. And the thing of it is, he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, and owes most of his accomplishments, such as they are, to family connections rather than his own hard work or skill.”

“You're tired of him.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again, then shrugged. “I am, yes. What's wrong with me?”

“If I tell you, you'll be after throwing that plate at me.”

“I won't.” As a sign of truce, she pushed it aside. “This time.”

“All right, then, I'll tell you what's the matter. You underestimate yourself, Darcy, then you get annoyed when others do the same. You don't have any respect for the men who fall at your feet, promising to give you the world on a platter. You've filled your own platter all your life and carried it with your own hands. And you know you can keep doing it.”

“I want more.” She said it fiercely, finding herself inexplicably on the verge of tears. “What's wrong with wanting more?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” He reached out to close his hand over hers.

“I want to go places, see things.
Have
things.” She shoved away from the table, prowling the kitchen as if it were a cage. “I can't help wanting it. Everything would be easier if I could be a little bit in love with him. Just a little would be enough. But I'm not, and I can't talk myself into it. So I woke up this morning knowing I'd be breaking it off, and tossing away a lovely trip to Paris.”

“That's the right thing to do.”

“I'm not doing it because it's the right thing to do.” Frustrated, she threw up her hands. “I'm doing it because I'm not having my first trip to Paris spoiled by sharing it with a man who'd bore my brains out. Shawn.” She came back to the table, sat again, and leaning forward, spoke seriously. “I'm not a nice person.”

He took her hand again, patted it. “I love you anyway.”

It took her a minute, then her eyes lit with appreciation. “I should have known better than to expect you to list my virtues. But I feel better in any case.” Because she did, she dipped her finger in the bowl again, scooped out another smear of filling. “I wish I could find someone to have a bit of fun and frolic with, like you and Brenna.”

She might not have caught it, the quick change in the eyes before he rose to clear the table. But she knew him as well as, often better than, she knew herself. “Damn it all. I was afraid of this. You've gone and fallen for her, haven't you?”

“It's not for you to worry about.”

“It is, of course it is, when I love both of you. You great blockhead. Couldn't you just enjoy yourself, like any other man?”

He thought of that morning, and licked a bit of apple filling himself. “I am enjoying myself.”

“And how long will that last now that you've fallen in love with her?”

Interested, he glanced back at her as he began to work. “Does the fun go out of such matters when love walks in?”

“It does when it only walks through one of the doors and the other stays shut.”

“You don't have much confidence in me, for finding a way of opening a closed door if I put my mind to it.”

“Shawn, I don't want to hurt you, and neither would Brenna, but she told me straight out that she only wanted to sleep with you.”

“She was clear enough about what she wanted.” This time he smiled. “I want more. What's wrong with wanting more?”

“This isn't the time to throw my own words back at my head. I'm worried for you.”

“Don't be.” He washed the largest of the bowls by hand rather than crowd the dishwasher. “I know what I'm about. I can't help my feelings. And before you say it,” he continued, “I know she can't help hers either. But what's wrong with doing what I can to change her feelings?”

“The minute she thinks you're courting her—”

But I won't be. She'll be courting me.”

Darcy's first response was a snort, but then she stopped, considered. “Aren't you the clever one?” she murmured.

“Clever enough to know Brenna will prefer to do the persuading rather than be the persuaded.” He checked his tarts, adjusted the heat. “I expect what we've said here to stay here, between the two of us.”

“As if I'd go running off to tell Brenna what falls out of your mouth.” Insulted, she grabbed a tray. His stare from under raised brows made her relent. “All right, in the general way of things that's what I do, but this is a different matter. You can trust me.”

He knew he could. She might try to fracture his skull with a flying plate, but Darcy would bite off her tongue before betraying a confidence. “I suppose that means you won't be carrying back to me whatever she might have to say, about . . . certain things.”

“It does, indeed. Look for your spies elsewhere, my lad.” Nose in the air, she started to flounce out. Then there came a hiss of breath from her and she stopped. “She doesn't think she's built in a particularly attractive way.”

Since it was the last thing he'd expected to hear, Shawn merely stared until Darcy cursed under her breath.

“I'm only telling you because she never said it outright to me in just those words. But she thinks of her body as a practical thing, and not as female as it could be. She doesn't think men find her particularly attractive—female-like. And that's why the sex is just sex in her thinking. She doesn't believe a man might look at her in a romantic or tender sort of way.”

She paused a moment, tried not to wonder if Brenna would forgive her if her friend knew she'd said such things. “A woman likes to be told . . . well, if you've any brain in your head, you should know what a woman likes to be told. And it's not a matter of just grabbing hold of what's different from yours, but
telling
. Now, close your mouth because you look half-witted.”

She let the door swing shut behind her.

 

Kathy Duffy sat cozily in the O'Tooles' kitchen, sipping tea and nibbling on iced cakes—though if truth be known the batter could have used just a splash more vanilla—while she shared news and gossip.

As she was used to having ten words to say for anyone else's one, she didn't notice her friend's distraction, but kept chattering away with the hottest bulletin in Old Parish.

“Always a clever one, was Dennis. So everyone who knew him said. And he married Deborah Casey, who was a cousin of my mother's and was reputed to have a good head on her shoulders as well. Off they went, across the foam with their firstborn still in short pants. They did well for themselves in America, built up a fine business. You know Old Maude was betrothed to the John Magee who was lost in the war, and he was brother to Dennis. In all these years,” Kathy went on as she licked a bit of icing from her finger, “it seems Dennis never did look back to Ireland, or the place where he was born. But he had himself a son, and the son a son. And that one, he's looking right enough.”

She waited a beat, and Mollie roused herself to raise her eyebrows. “Is he?”

“He is, yes. And he's got his sights set on Ardmore. Planning to build a theater here.”

“Oh, yes.” Mollie stirred the tea she'd yet to taste. “I heard Brenna talking about it.” Distracted she was, but not so deeply that she didn't notice Kathy's crestfallen expression. “I don't have the details of it,” she said, to smooth her friend's feathers.

“Well, then.” Delighted, Kathy edged forward. “There's a deal being done between the Magees in New York City and the Gallaghers. The word 'round is they'll be building the theater onto the pub. A kind of music hall if I'm hearing correctly. Imagine that, Mollie, a music hall right in Ardmore, and with the Gallaghers having their fingers in it.”

“If it's to be, I'd be happier knowing one of our own had some say in the matter. Do you know if Dennis Magee, the younger, will be coming back to Ardmore?”

“I don't see how the matter can be done otherwise.” Kathy sat back, patted her hair. Her niece had given her a home perm the week before, and she was well pleased with it. Each curl was like a soldier tucked up in his bedroll.

“Dennis and I had a bit of a flirt when we were both young and foolish and he came to visit one summer back some years.” Kathy's eyes went dreamy as she looked back. “On his grand tour, was he, and wanted to see the place where his parents had been born and reared and where he himself spent the first years of his life. He was a fine-looking man, Dennis Magee, as I recall him.”

“The way I remember things, you had a bit of a flirt with every fine-looking man before you plucked the one you were after.”

Kathy's eyes went bright with humor. “What's the point of being young and foolish if you do otherwise?”

Because it was one of the things worrying her, Mollie managed a wan smile and let her old friend settle back into chattering.

Mollie was certain that her oldest daughter was having a great deal more than a flirtation with Shawn Gallagher. That wasn't such a shock, not really, but the fact that Brenna wasn't talking of it with her was both a shock and a concern. She'd raised her girls to know there was nothing they couldn't share with their mother.