A Woman's Heart

So much for her mother’s perceived matchmaking.

“Here’s my list.” Not wanting to discuss her love life—or lack of it—any longer, Nora handed the piece of paper to the storekeeper. “I hope you have some of those Spanish oranges. Rory loves them, and they’re so much better for his teeth than sweets or biscuits.”

“You’re a good mother, Nora Fitzpatrick,” Sheila said. “And no one can fault the job you’re doing with the children. But it’s easier on a woman to have a man around the house. Sons, especially, need a father’s firm guiding hand.”

As the older woman began plucking items from the wooden shelves, Nora almost laughed as she thought how much Sheila Monohan sounded like her mother. Which made sense, she decided, since the two women had been best friends.

“Brady brought in your eggs this morning, in case you’re wondering,” Sheila offered as she began adding up Nora’s purchases on her order pad. “I gave him a credit.”

Nora had worried her father might have forgotten to sell the eggs before heading off to the pub for a day of storytelling and gossiping. She was also grateful Sheila hadn’t paid cash for the eggs. Da could make coins disappear faster than the magician she’d seen at last year’s Puck Fair in County Kerry.

“Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary. They were good-size eggs, Nora. A lot bigger than Mrs. O’Donnel’s. We’ll get a good price for them.”

Nora smiled at that. “John says it’s the Nashville music he’s started playing in the henhouse. Perhaps I ought to write a letter to Garth Brooks and ask if he’d be interested in paying me for a commercial endorsement.”

Although Nora still refused to believe that the piped-in tunes had any effect at all on the hens, she couldn’t deny that since her seventeen-year-old brother’s latest science experiment, they’d begun laying more—and larger eggs.

“Brady said you were thinking of joining the cheese guild,” Sheila said after laughing at Nora’s suggestion. Her sentence tilted upward at the end, turning it into a question.

“I’m considering it. The man from the guild assures me I could increase my profits by twenty percent. He suggested Cashel blue.”

“That’s one of our most popular cheeses,” Sheila agreed. “And a twenty-percent profit increase is certainly nothing to scoff at.”

“I know. And it’s not as if we couldn’t use the money.”

Which was, of course, the only reason Brady had arranged to rent out her bedroom. Her father had informed Nora—after the fact—that the American novelist, Quinn Gallagher, would be staying in their house, and Nora had no option but to agree. Besides, the man was paying an amazingly generous price for a bedroom, shared bath, and morning and evening meals.

She’d almost resigned herself to moving the children to Galway and taking that job as a bookkeeper to a land developer, a former schoolmate who’d become wealthy refurbishing the bay waterfront for tourism. Now she could allow herself to think she might actually be able to turn down the offer.

“Money’s always something we could all use more of,” Sheila said with a sigh.

Yes, Nora thought, it wasn’t easy resisting the lure of the city with its high-paying jobs. And traffic congestion, and polluted air, and so many people a body couldn’t take a breath without invading the private space of her neighbor.

Nora knew that her brother John and her sister Mary longed for the bright city lights, but she supposed that was natural when you were seventeen and sixteen. Not that she herself ever had. Conor, who’d certainly enjoyed the fast life, had accused her of having the green fields and rich black peat of the family farm in her blood. Nora had never denied it. It was, after all, true.

Chapter Two

Forty Shades of Green

From the air, Ireland was a panorama of field and hedgerow, patchwork valleys set amidst abrupt mountains. Quinn Gallagher thought he’d never seen so many shades of green in his life—sage, olive, beryl, jade, emerald, malachite, moss, sea green, bottle green—the list seemed endless.

“Christ, it looks just like a postcard,” he murmured as he looked out the window of the Aer Lingus jet.

“It looks like a gigantic bore,” his seatmate in the first-class cabin countered. “We haven’t even touched down yet and I’m ready to go home.”

Home. The word had never had any real meaning for Quinn. Home was a place you wanted to go back to, a place where people would take you in. Welcome you. The roach-infested apartments and ramshackle trailers where he’d spent his hardscrabble early years certainly didn’t fit that description.

Neither did the succession of brutal foster homes until, weary of working on farms from sunup to sundown and being beaten for his efforts, he’d run away at sixteen, lied about his age and joined the navy. And while the navy had, admittedly, represented the most stability he’d experienced in his life, the ships on which he’d sailed around the world certainly hadn’t been home.

The sun reflecting off the water below was blinding. Quinn shaded his eyes with his hand as he took in the sight of the farmhouses looking like tiny white boats floating on a deep green sea.

“Boring’s relative. I think it looks like God’s country.” As soon as he heard himself say the words, Quinn wondered where the hell they’d come from. He also immediately regretted having said them.

Laura Gideon’s trademark sexy laugh revealed she was every bit as surprised by his statement as he was. “Strange words from a card-carrying atheist, darling.”

Quinn forced a reluctant laugh as something indefinable stirred inside him, something that resisted his writer’s need to analyze and label.

“Okay, so I overstated. But you have to admit, it does look beautiful.”

“Of course it does,” the actress agreed. “You said it yourself. The quaint little scene looks like every postcard of Ireland you’ve ever seen. Heaven help us, I have a horrible feeling that the entire country might turn out to be a living cliché.”

Shuddering dramatically, she linked her fingers with his, a familiarity that came from being a former lover.

“Perhaps it’s something else.” She turned toward him, her eyes gleaming with the wicked humor Quinn had always enjoyed. “Perhaps it’s your ‘auld sod’ roots calling to you.”

“I strongly doubt that.” He might be one of the hottest horror writers in the business, but even Quinn couldn’t think up a more terrifying idea.

“Roots tie you down, Quinn, baby,” he remembered his mother saying. “They wrap around your ankles so bad you can’t never get free.”

It was the only thing Angie Gallagher had ever told him that Quinn had taken to heart. Twenty-four hours after making that boozy proclamation, Angie was dead. Quinn had gone to her funeral in the company of the Elko County sheriff and his tearfully sympathetic wife, watched the rough-hewn pine coffin being lowered into the unmarked grave and wondered if his rambler of a mother had known she was fated to spend the rest of her life in Jackpot, Nevada, population five-hundred and seventy, not counting the cows.

The memory, which he usually avoided revisiting, was not a pleasant one. Quinn fell silent as he watched the verdant landscape rush closer. Laura, busy repairing her makeup before facing the press at Shannon Airport, didn’t seem to require further conversation.

The wheels touched down with a thud. As the jet taxied toward the terminal, Quinn felt his entire body clench—neck, shoulders, chest, legs.

Enter, stranger, at your own risk, an all-too-familiar voice hissed in some dark lonely corner of his mind. Anxiety coiled through Quinn like a mass of poisonous snakes, twining around phobic pressure points, reminding him of that awful endless summer of his ninth year when he’d slammed the secret doors on his psyche—and his heart—and nailed them shut to keep out the monsters.

He forced a vague unfocused public smile, heard himself exchanging farewells with the first-class flight crew, even watched himself sign an autograph for the captain’s seventeen-year-old son who was, the silver-haired pilot assured him heartily, his “number-one fan.”

It would be all right, Quinn told himself firmly. He would be all right.

But as he walked toward the light at the end of a jetway that had suddenly turned claustrophobic, the raspy little voice belonging to Quinn’s personal bogeyman whispered another warning: Here there be dragons.

“I still can’t believe that real-estate agent’s screwup,” Laura complained while they waited for their bags in the terminal. “How on earth could she have forgotten to book you a room in town?”

“She explained that. My name somehow got left off the list of crew members.”

“You’re not just any crew member. You’re the screenwriter, for Christ’s sake.”

“With the emphasis on writer. The only reason I agreed to write this screenplay in the first place is because I’m tired of the way Hollywood screws up my books.”

“If you feel that way, perhaps you ought to stop selling them to Hollywood.”

“I may be a control freak, sweetheart, but I’m not crazy enough to turn down the big bucks.”

His accountant had assured him he’d passed the millionaire mark three books ago. But Quinn couldn’t quite make himself stop running from his old demons that continued to pursue him. There were still times when he’d awaken in the middle of a hushed dark night, drenched in sweat, deafening screams ringing in his ears.

“Besides,” he said, “things probably worked out for the best. I’m playing with an idea for a new story, and it’ll be easier to think about it if I go home to the Joyce farm at the end of the day, instead of partying every night with all of you.”

“I can remember when you liked partying with me,” Laura pouted prettily.

Her blatant flirting succeeded in banishing the lingering chill. “Those were fun times.”

“And could be again.” She laughed when he didn’t immediately answer. “Good Lord, darling, you remind me of a wolf sensing a trap. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to rope you into any long-term affair. I just thought, since we’re both going to be stuck in this Irish backwater for four long weeks, we may as well try to make the best of it.”

Quinn liked Laura. A lot. She was smart, witty, easy to look at and a tigress in bed. But he’d always subscribed to the theory that when something was over, you moved on. And didn’t look back.

“I don’t think that’d be a very good idea, sweetheart.” His eyes, rife with a practiced masculine look of appreciation, swept over her. “Not that I’m not tempted.”

She laughed again, a rich throaty sound designed to strum sexual chords. “That is undoubtedly the nicest rejection I’ve ever had. I’ve known a lot of men, Quinn, but none of them have perfected the art of hit-and-run relationships better than you,” she said without rancor.

“This from a woman who’s been engaged four times.” And broken it off every time.

“So I’m a slow learner.” She grinned up at him, seemingly unapologetic about behavior that had provided the tabloid press with more than a few headlines. “That’s why we’re so good together. Neither of us has any wide-eyed expectations about the other, and we don’t harbor any dreams of a rosy until-death-do-us-part romantic future. You and I are two of a kind, Quinn.”

There was no arguing with the accusation. Besides, it was a helluva lot better than the one he’d heard too many times to count—that his heart was little more than a dark pit of ice water covered with a crust of snow. Quinn merely muttered something that could have been agreement as the baggage carousel rumbled to a start.

After retrieving his bags and clearing customs, he found his way blocked by a phalanx of reporters. Laura, damn her, had ducked into a rest room, leaving him to face the horde alone.

“Mr. Gallagher, do you believe the Castlelough lake creature exists?” a red-haired man wearing a rumpled wool sport coat and holding up a small tape recorder called out.

“I’ve always believed in the existence of monsters. I know you call her the Lady, but technically she’s still a monster.”

A murmur of interest from the reporters.

“Do you expect to see the Lady while you’re in Castlelough?” a bald man wearing thick-framed black glasses asked.

“That would be a plus since it would undoubtedly save a fortune in special-effects costs if we could get her to perform for us,” he answered, drawing the expected laugh.

“Do you plan to research your Gallagher-family roots while you’re in the country?”

“No.” His tone was curt. His eyes turned to frost. “If there are no more questions—”

“I have one.” This from a winsome young woman. Her hair was jet, her thickly lashed eyes the color of the Irish sea, and her skin as pale as new snow. The invitation in her bold-as-brass eyes was unmistakable.

“Ask away.”

“Is the female protagonist in your story based on a real woman? Perhaps someone you met on a previous trip to Ireland?”

“Actually this is my first visit to your country. And Shannon McGuire was an entirely fictional character.”

The heroine of his most recent novel was unlike any real woman Quinn had ever met. Unrelentingly optimistic, softhearted, ridiculously virtuous and brave as hell. And even knowing her to be a product of his imagination, Quinn had been fascinated by her.

Usually, by the time he finished writing one book, his mind was already well on to the next, and so he was more than glad to get rid of the characters he’d begun to grow bored with. But the widowed single mother had been strangely different. He’d found her difficult to let go.

“And speaking of Shannon,” he said, turning toward Laura, who’d finally decided to make an appearance, accompanied by Jeremy Converse, the film’s producer/director who’d taken the same transatlantic flight from New York, “of course you all recognize the lovely Laura Gideon. She’ll be playing Shannon McGuire in the film.”

Quinn practically pushed her forward. “It’s show time, sweetheart,” he murmured. As the reporters all began shouting out questions to the sexy blond actress, he made his escape.

Since he wouldn’t be staying in town with the crew, Quinn had arranged to rent his own car. He found his way to the Hertz booth where he rented a four-door sedan from a tartan-clad beauty who was a dead ringer for Maureen O’Hara. Quinn decided he must be suffering from jet lag when he found her directions difficult to follow, but she willingly took the time to draw the route to Castlelough on his map. How difficult could it be? he asked himself as he headed out of the airport.

How difficult, indeed. At first Quinn was entranced by the scenery—the stone fences, the meadows splashed with purple, white and yellow wildflowers, and the mountains—the rare times the sun broke through the rain—streaked with molten gold. Here and there stood whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs. Little grottoes featuring statues of the Virgin Mary—many adorned with seashells—seemed to have been built at nearly every crossroad, and every so often he’d pass a small statue of the Madonna standing in the center of a white-painted tire, perky plastic flowers surrounding her bare feet.

The road seemed to go in endless circles. And the myriad signs, many written only in Irish, hindered more than helped.

Ninety minutes later, when he realized that the cemetery with the high stone Celtic crosses he was driving by was the same one he’d passed about an hour after leaving the airport, Quinn was forced to admit he was hopelessly lost.

“I’ll make you a deal, Lord,” he muttered, conveniently forgetting he’d given up believing in God a long time ago. “If you just give me a sign, I promise to stop at the first church I see and stuff the poor box with hundred-dollar bills.”

He cast a look up at a sky the color of tarnished silver, not surprised when the clouds didn’t part to reveal Charlton Heston holding a stone tablet helpfully etched with a proper map to Castlelough. So much for miracles.

Then again… When he suddenly saw an elderly woman wearing a green-and-black-plaid scarf and blue Wellingtons weeding the grave nearest the gates, Quinn told himself she must have been there all along.

He pulled over to the side of the road and parked, then climbed out of the car and walked over to her. The rain had become a soft mist.

“Good afternoon.”

She stopped raking and looked up at him. “Good afternoon to you. You’d be lost of course.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“You passed by earlier. Now here you are again. Isn’t that certainly a sign you’ve lost your way?”

“I’m trying to get to Castlelough.”

“Well, you’ll not be getting there driving circles around the Holy Name Cemetery, will you now?”

The merry laughter in her dark eyes allowed Quinn to keep a curb on his temper. Although he wasn’t accustomed to being laughed at, especially by a woman, he couldn’t deny that it was probably one of those situations he’d look back on and laugh at himself. A very long time from now.

“I thought I had the directions clear—” he held out the wrinkled map with the fluorescent green marker outlining what the rental clerk had assured him were the proper roads “—but they turned out to be more confusing than expected.”

“Americans always get lost,” she said. “But then again, haven’t I known native Irishmen to have the same problem from time to time? Especially out here in the west.” She shot a look at the car—the only Mercedes in the Hertz inventory when he’d arrived—and then another, longer look up at him. “You’d be one of those movie folk,” she guessed.

Quinn decided there was no point in denying it. “Yes.” He prepared himself for the usual barrage of questions about the so-called fast life in Hollywood.

“I thought so.” That settled, and seeming less than impressed by his exalted status, she took the map from his hand, making a clucking sound with her tongue as she studied it.

“Ah, here’s your problem. You should have taken the second left at the roundabout right before you got to Mullaghmore.”

Quinn had suspected all along that one of the many roundabouts—the Irish answer to eliminating four-way stops—had been his downfall. “Could you tell me how to get back there?”

“That’s not difficult at all. The first thing you need to do is turn around and go back in the direction you just came from. Then keep driving until you see a sign pointing off to the right that says Ballybrennan.”

“Ballybrennan?” The name sounded like several he’d already passed by.

“Aye, Ballybrennan,” she repeated with a nod of her scarf-covered head. “Now, mind you don’t take that road—”

“I don’t?”

“Oh, no. You’ll be wanting to take the one that comes a wee bit after it. To Mary’s Well. You’ll not miss it. There’s a lovely statue of the Virgin standing right beside the sign. Follow that road straight through and you’ll be finding yourself in Castlelough in no time.”

Considering how many virgins he’d spotted, Quinn wasn’t certain the landmark was going to be a very big help, but didn’t quibble. “Thanks. You’ve been a great help.”

“’Twas no trouble at all,” she assured him with a nearly toothless grin. He was almost to the car again when she called out, “Of course, the sign might not say Mary’s Well, mind you.”

Biting back a flash of irritation, he slowly turned back toward her. Having always been a direct-speaking kind of guy, Quinn was beginning to realize that the land of his ancestors may prove more of a culture shock that he’d suspected.

“What might it say?” he asked mildly.

“It might be in Irish—Dabhac a Mhaire.”

He was having enough trouble untangling the woman’s thick west-country brogue. There was no way he was going to attempt to translate this incomprehensible language.

Quinn had known that Castlelough was located in a Gaeltact area of the county, where, despite the penal laws enforced by the British government, the Irish language had never been allowed to die out. At the time, he’d thought it might add quaint color to his story. He’d never, until now, worried he might be unable to communicate with the natives.

Thanking her again, he climbed back in the car and headed off in the direction he’d come. Quinn considered it another near miracle when he found the turnoff. Although the rest of the directions weren’t quite as simple as the woman had promised—the road split into different directions a couple of times and he had to choose—he felt of flush of victory when he finally viewed the sign welcoming him to Castlelough.

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