'He might if you weren't warming his bed.'
That caused a hitch in her stomach, but she nodded. 'The fact is, I am in his bed. And I won't be rolling out of it to make room for you. Yesterday I might have, because I couldn't stand seeing you so hurt and knowing I was part of the cause. But I'm looking at you here, Mary Kate, in clear light with a clear head. And you're not hurting now. You're just mad.'
'How do you know what I feel for him?'
'I don't. Tell me.'
She threw up her head so her hair flew in the frisky wind. 'I love him.' It was a passionate and almost sweetly dramatic declaration. Brenna gave her full marks for it, knowing she herself could never have pulled it off so impressively.
'Why?'
'Because he's handsome and sensitive and kind.'
'Aye, he's all of those things-as is the Clooney dog. What of his flaws?'
'He doesn't have any.'
'Of course he does.' The fact of them smoothed out Brenna's nerves and made her feel oddly sentimental. 'He's stubborn and slow to move and absentminded.
There are times you'll be talking to him and you might as well be talking to yourself, as his brain's gone off somewhere else. He lacks ambition and needs to be prodded along every other step or he'd stay happy in the same place forever.'
'That's how you see him.'
'I see him as he is, not as a pretty picture out of a book. Mary Kate.' She stepped forward, knowing it was too soon to reach out. 'Let's be honest here, we two. There's something in the way he looks, in the air of him that makes a woman want. I understand how he makes you feel in that area. And I've wanted him myself since I was no older than Alice Mae.'
Something flickered in Mary Kate's eyes. 'I don't believe you. You don't wait for anything.'
'I thought I'd get over it. Then I thought I'd make a fool of myself.' Brenna pushed at her hair, wished she'd thought to tie it back before coming up the cliff. 'In the end it was more than a wanting. It was a needing.'
'You don't love him.'
'I think I might.' The minute the words were out, Brenna pressed a hand to her heart, as if someone had just delivered a blow to it. 'I think I might,' she said again, then just slid down to her knees. 'Oh, sweet God Almighty, what am I to do?'
Mary Kate could only gape. Her sister had gone dead white and was rocking on her knees and clutching her chest as if she was having a seizure. 'Stop that. You're playacting.'
'I'm not. I can't. I can't seem to breathe right.'
Suspicious, Mary Kate walked over and gave Brenna a hefty thump on the back. 'There.'
Her breath whooshed out, wheezed in. 'Thanks.' She sank weakly onto her heels. 'I can't deal with this now,
I can't. I shouldn't be expected to. It was bad enough the way things were, but this won't do. It won't do at all. This fixes nothing, but only shifts the weight. Damn it.'
Since Brenna made no move to get up, Mary Kate sat down. 'I think I could forgive you if you were in love with him. Are you just saying you are so I will?'
'No. And I didn't say I was, I said I might be.' Desperate, Brenna grabbed her sister's hand. 'You're to tell no one. I want your word you're to say nothing of this, or I'll strangle you in your sleep. Swear it to me.'
'Oh, for heaven's sake, why should I go around telling anyone? So I can look like a bigger horse's ass?'
'It'll probably go away.'
'Why should you want it to?'
'In love with Shawn Gallagher.' Brenna rubbed her hands over her face, ran them back into her hair. 'What a pretty mess that would be. We'd drive each other crazy inside a year-me always wanting to get things done, him dreaming the time away. The man can't remember to plug in a cord, much less fix one that's gone off.'
'What difference does that make? You can fix it. And dreaming's what he does. How else could he make up all that music?'
'And what's the point of making it up if you do nothing with it?' Brenna waved it away. 'Oh, it doesn't matter. It's not what either of us was after when we started. I'm just doing the bloody female thing, and it annoys me. Why do women have to turn attraction into love?'
'Maybe there was love hiding under the attraction all along.'
Brenna lifted her head. 'Why do you suddenly have to get wise?'
'Maybe because you're not treating me like a foolish girl anymore. And maybe because when I look at you right now, it occurs to me that it might not have been love I was feeling for him. It didn't make me go pale and tremble, that's for certain. And-' She sat back, a faint sneer on her face. 'Maybe because it's satisfying under the circumstances to see you look weak and terrified. You damn near pulled my hair out by the roots yesterday.'
'You got your licks in.'
'Well, it was you taught me to fight.' At the memory of it sentimental tears clouded Mary Kate's eyes. 'I'm sorry I called you a whore. I did it the first time out of anger, and the others out of spite.' She dabbed at her eyes. 'And I'm sorry for the things I wrote about you in my diary-well, sorry for some of them.'
'We won't let it matter.' Their fingers linked. 'I don't want him, or anyone, between us. I'm asking you not to make me push him away.'
'So you can feel righteous and me guilty? No, I'll have none of that.' A ghost of a smile flitted around her mouth. 'I can get me own man when I want one. But-' She angled her head. 'There's one thing I'd like to know.'
'What would it be?'
'Does he kiss as well as it seems he would from looking at him?'
'When he puts his mind to it, he can melt every bone in your body.'
Mary Kate sighed. 'I had a feeling.'
She walked to the cottage, but her mind wasn't much clearer when she arrived than it had been when she'd started out. There was rain coming, a soft one, Brenna thought, from the way the sun was shining under the clouds.
A good day to curl up by a fire, she thought. But of course there wasn't a puff of smoke rising from the chimney at Faerie Hill Cottage. Shawn forgot such things twice as often as he remembered them.
His car was gone, so she imagined he'd taken himself off to church. She'd wait. She passed through the garden gate, and glancing up, half expected to see the quiet green eyes of Lady Gwen watching. But nothing stirred, mortal or otherwise.
She stepped in, nearly tripped over his work boots that lay where he'd kicked them off the night before, with a good coating of dirt on the heels. She nudged them aside with the toe of her own, then crossed over into the little front parlor to build a fire.
His music sheets were scattered over the piano, and a cup that would have held his tea was sitting carelessly on a table. As was a squat green bottle that held a clutch of flowers from the front garden.
He would think of such things, she mused. He wouldn't remember to clean off his boots, and neither did she more often than not, but he'd take the time and have the thought to put flowers out.
Why didn't she think of things like that? She liked a house with flowers, and with candles sitting about. And the scents they created together that made the air delicate. She would think of cleaning the chimney out, and laying by turf or wood, but she would never think of the little touches that turned house to home.
Hanging curtains was one thing, she decided. Thinking of lace was another altogether.
After the fire was going, she rose to wander to the piano. Had he worked here last night? she wondered.
He'd been angry with her. Did he work off a mad here as well as dream?
His heart's in his song. She frowned as she sifted through the pages scribbled with notes and words. If that were true, why did he leave his music all tossed about this way? Why didn't he do something with it?
How could she care so much for a man who lacked basic drive? Surely it wasn't enough for a man to have such a light inside him if he didn't use it for something. 'These pearls I now lay at your feet,' she murmured, reading his work, 'are only moon-shed tears. For every time my heart does beat, it weeps for you across the years. Night by
