She felt an unsettling combination of sexual awareness and fatigue. “We’ve both had a long day. Those five extra hours between here and Ireland are catching up with us.”
He winked at her. “I don’t get jet lag.”
“Of course not. What was I thinking? Then sitting still for a seven-hour flight is catching up with you. I’ll take a wild guess that you’re not a man who likes to sit still.” Emma grinned at him. “Helps that you’re a man of supreme willpower.”
“How’s your willpower?”
Weaker and weaker, she thought. “You don’t happen to have a bottle of Bracken whiskey tucked in a cupboard, do you?”
“I’m guessing the last thing you need right now is whiskey.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I need a bed. Are there sheets in here?”
Colin’s eyes narrowed on her with an intensity that buckled her knees. She had to grab the doorknob to steady herself. He straightened and slipped a thick, muscular arm around her waist. “I’m revising the plan. Up you go.”
Before Emma could figure out what he meant, he lifted her off her feet and scooped his other arm under her thighs. She was so startled, she grabbed his shoulder with such force she thought she’d draw blood. He didn’t seem to notice and just carried her to the stairs. She loosened her grip and sank into his arms, his fleece warm against her face.
He mounted the steps as if she weighed nothing, and she didn’t weigh nothing. He walked down a short hall and toed open a door, a surge of cool air sweeping over her as he carried her into a dark bedroom.
Still holding her in his arms, he leaned over a queen-size bed and whipped back the covers. “Sheets’ll be cold,” he said, then laid her on the bed, staying close, half on top of her. “You’re dead on your feet.”
She opened her fingers that were still clenched on his shoulder. “You’re warm. I didn’t expect it to be so cold up here.”
“I cracked the window. I’ll shut it before I leave.”
His words penetrated. He was leaving?
Her hand dropped from his shoulder just as he lifted her right foot by the heel and tugged off her boot. He cast it onto the floor and tugged off the other one.
He leaned back down to her, dark shadows playing on his face. “I’ll leave the rest to you. Once I get started…”
As far as she was concerned he’d gotten started the moment he’d lifted her off her feet. She smiled. “I can get my socks off myself.”
“Funny.” But he was serious, and he brushed the knuckle of one finger over her forehead, then followed with a soft kiss. “Get some sleep. It’ll help you process what’s happened.”
A mix of sensations boiled through her. “Have you processed it?”
“It wasn’t my friend and it wasn’t my attic.”
“So…. what? You’ll just go think about something else?”
He smiled, tapping her chin. “Emma. Stop thinking.”
She shuddered. “Damn. I’m freezing.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and rubbed them down her arms and back up again. “Your body heat will warm up the bed in no time.”
“Colin…” She held back a yawn, wondering if she was past the point of making any sense at all. “I don’t want to take your bed.”
“You can’t keep your eyes open.”
“If you’re thinking of me as Sister Brigid—”
He laughed softly. “Sweetheart, right now I’m not thinking of you as anything but naked.” He kissed her, her lips parting, even as he took in a breath. He drew back. “Sleep well.”
“Will you be all right?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m going downstairs and practicing my supreme willpower.”
She caught his hand in hers and felt the calluses and nicks of the life he led, then sank back to the mattress. She could feel herself already drifting off.
He tucked the blankets around her, shut the window and, in another moment, was gone.
Emma let out a breath and managed to wake up enough to sit up and peel off her clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor. Then she crawled back under the covers, tucking them around her the way he had.
She liked his bed. The sheets were both soft and a little rough. Just like their owner, she thought, smiling to herself.
Colin was right. As soon as she got under the blankets, she was asleep.
CHAPTER 29
FINIAN DIDN’T SLEEP AND FINALLY GOT UP IN THE dark before dawn. Declan, his twin, was awake early, too, making coffee in the kitchen of his contemporary house in the hills above Kenmare Bay. His wife, Fidelma, and their three small children were still asleep upstairs. They’d all spent yesterday together, enjoying one another’s company and catching up after three months apart.
Declan poured coffee. “Why don’t you give up on this Maine adventure and come home, Fin?”
“I will.”
“But not today.” He handed Finian a mug. “What have you learned?”
“I spoke to friends in Dublin. Old friends, from before I entered the priesthood. They had information. A house near Wexford owned by friends of theirs was broken into earlier this summer, and the security guard—an old man, is all he was—was hit on the back of the head. He was only knocked out, not killed.”
“Thank God,” Declan said.
“The thief got away with cash and a small, obscure but potentially quite valuable Albrecht Dürer etching the wife inherited from her family.”
“Who in blazes is Albrecht Dürer?”
“I had to look him up, too. He was a prominent fifteenth-century German painter and engraver. Here’s what’s interesting. The etching isn’t authenticated and its provenance is uncertain. My friends believe it came from America.”
His brother frowned over his coffee. “By way of this dead woman?”
“Perhaps,” Finian said, “or her family.”
“The FBI must have information on this theft, Fin, especially given the violence.”
“They might. The owners hadn’t yet gone to the trouble of authenticating the Dürer. In some ways, it could have created more hassles for them.”
“Did the thief break in to get it, do you think?” Declan
