A Woman's Heart (25 page)

“As mice,” he whispered back as he pulled the emerald green sweater over her head in one smooth deft movement. Scooping her up with the same ease he had Rory earlier, he carried her the few feet to the bed.

That was the last thing either Quinn or Nora was to say for a very long time.

Tears on the Heather

N
ora awoke to the sound of larks singing in the meadows. She opened her eyes and found herself staring straight into Quinn's.

“Good morning,” he murmured. He brushed some sleep-tousled waves away from her face. “Have I told you that waking up with you in my bed could easily become my favorite thing to do?”

Enjoying the warmth of his gaze and the feel of his hard body pressed so close to hers, Nora smiled. “Mine, too,” she admitted.

“We're going to have to talk about this.” He cupped her cheek with his palm, the sensual desire she'd witnessed in his eyes turning as serious as she'd ever seen it. “About me.” His thumb traced a melting trail around the mouth he'd spent most of the night ravishing. “And you.” His free arm drew her even closer. “Us together.”

Hope was a snow-white dove, spreading its sun-gilded
wings to take flight in her romantic's heart. “Aye.” Her lips parted and her body began that now-familiar slow melt.

“Later.”

Quinn had given up wondering why it was that he couldn't get enough of this woman. He'd have expected, especially after last night, he'd be too exhausted, not to mention sexually satiated, to want to start things up again. And it wasn't just his body, he realized as he felt the familiar hardening in his loins. If it had been merely sex, he could have handled it. But his mind wanted her with an identical fever. Not to mention, Lord help him, a heart he'd never been aware of possessing.

Allowing himself one long deep kiss that left him aching, he pushed himself out of the warm bed. “I'm going to take a cold shower before Rory comes bursting in to make certain he didn't dream last night.” The way she was looking at him—at the part of him that inevitably hardened whenever she was anywhere around—made him groan.

“You realize, of course, if you keep looking at me that way, we're going to risk having what could be a very embarrassing moment.”

“I know.” She sighed. And then smiled. “I just can't seem to help myself.” She hitched herself up in bed, not bothering to catch the sheet as it slid down to reveal rosy-tipped breasts he could still taste.

“You're a truly beautiful man, Quinn Gallagher.” Her warm gaze drank him in, missing absolutely nothing. “I think Michelangelo must have had you in mind when he sculpted
David.
”

Make that a very long cold shower, Quinn decided. “Remember last night? When I suggested you weren't going to make sainthood?”

“I remember everything about last night.” Her satisfied smile reminded him of the one with which Vivien Leigh's
Scarlett had lit up silver screens all over the world after having been thoroughly ravished by her husband. “Absolutely everything.”

“I'm finding it more and more difficult to believe you were ever in the convent.”

“I'm finding it difficult to believe, as well.” If she'd had even a glimmer of the thoughts the sight of Quinn's magnificent naked body could invoke back in those days, she would have been forced to spend all her waking hours on her knees on the stone floor of the convent chapel.

“You're not only far from a saint. You're a witch.” His muffled laughter rumbled in his chest even as the ache deepened in his groin. “If you'd been alive during the Inquisition, sweetheart, the Church would have burned you at the stake.”

His control was nearing the breaking point, and before he gave in to the urge to drag Nora into the shower with him, Quinn left the room.

 

Nora was relieved when it seemed that Brady was going to sleep in. Relieved, but not surprised. After their argument he'd undoubtedly gone off to The Rose, where he could tell everyone what a hardheaded, heartless woman his eldest daughter had turned out to be.

No, she admitted as she went through the motions of preparing her family's breakfast, that wasn't fair. Brady had never been one to air their dirty laundry in public, and he was also not one to say negative things about anyone. Let alone his own family.

Didn't everyone in the county agree that Brady Joyce had a spirit generous enough for a dozen men? Which was why, she considered later, as she waved the children off to the crossroads to catch the bus, he'd dared to risk her wrath by standing up to her about Rory's need for a pony.

“I'm going to have to apologize to Da,” she said to Quinn as they sat at the kitchen table.

Fionna had just taken off, this time to nearby Casla, where she was scheduled to be interviewed on Raidio na Gaeltachta, the Irish-language radio station, regarding her frightening experience in Derry. Claiming no desire for personal fame, she'd explained to the others that she'd only agreed to the interview because it provided a perfect opportunity to spread the message of Bernadette.

Quinn covered Nora's hand with his. “He understands you were upset.”

“Just the same, I owe him the words.”

Reminding himself how important words were to the Irish, Quinn knew that he owed Nora more than a few words himself. Words he'd never spoken aloud to any other person. Words he'd never thought he'd be wanting to say to a woman. Words he still wasn't certain he had the right to say to her. As much as he wanted to believe in a future, having spent an entire lifetime expecting the worst, he couldn't quite allow himself to look forward to a happily-ever-after future.

Feeling his nerve waver, Quinn decided that, since he'd already waited this long, a few more minutes wouldn't matter. The one thing he didn't want was to have Brady come downstairs just when he was trying to tell Nora he'd fallen in love with her.

He got up from the table and refilled his coffee cup. “How late do you think he'll sleep?”

“I don't know.” She glanced up at the clock and frowned. “He's usually up and about by now. Perhaps I should go check on him.” Before she could stand, the phone rang. Since Quinn was already on his feet, he said, “I'll get it,” and went into the parlor.

When Quinn didn't return right away, Nora guessed it
was Kate calling about the mare. Indulging herself a bit longer, she poured more tea and added cleaning out the stall to her mental list of today's chores.

“I suppose Rory will be expecting his pony waiting when he returns from school today,” she said when Quinn returned to the kitchen. “I'd best be getting things prepared for her—” She stopped. “Quinn?” His face was as grim as she'd ever seen it.

“It's Brady.”

“Da?” She glanced past him toward the parlor. “On the telephone?”

“No.” He raked his hand through his dark hair, looking as if he'd rather be anywhere on earth right now but in Nora Fitzpatrick's cozy kitchen. “It was about your father.”

“Oh.” She still couldn't understand the problem. Weren't people calling all the time hoping to book Brady and his tales for their event? “Well, I suppose this settles it.” She stood up. “I'll just go upstairs and—”

“He's not upstairs.” Quinn crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her, holding her so tightly she could barely breathe.

She tilted her head. “What do you mean? Of course he is. Haven't we been waiting for him to come down so we could have our talk?” She'd been as nervous as a barn cat in a roomful of rocking chairs waiting to hear what Quinn had to say.

“Sweetheart.” His tone was as rough as a gravel road. He cupped her face between his large strong hands and, looking up at him, Nora saw the love she'd been hoping and praying for. But something else, too. Sympathy? Pity, perhaps? “Your father's dead.” When she flinched, his fingers stroked her cheeks in a way meant to soothe, rather than arouse.

“Dead?” Surely that couldn't be her voice? Nora thought, hearing the unfamiliar high fractured sound.

“He was found on the road just this side of the bridge by a farmer who was taking his cows to his field this morning. The doctor says he'd probably been there since sometime last night.” Quinn took a deep breath. “It was his heart. Dr. Flannery says he would have gone quickly.”

Nora felt the blood literally drain from her face. “I don't believe that!” She tore away from him and raced blindly out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

She ran down the hallway, past Rory's door, past her own, past Mary's and John's and Fionna's, finally flinging open the door of the small room tucked away beneath the eaves. The bedroom her father had moved into after Nora had wed Conor, claiming that they should have the couple's room, after all.

The narrow iron bed had not been slept in. Nora stared disbelievingly at the lace spread that had been a wedding present to her parents from an elderly Joyce aunt. It was as smooth and unwrinkled as it had been when she'd put it on the bed after changing the sheets yesterday morning.

White spots, like snow crystals, began to swirl in front of her eyes. On some distant level she was dimly aware of Quinn coming up behind her. Of him putting his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close, murmuring inarticulate words that could have been Greek for all the meaning they held for her.

The blizzard increased, blinding her while turning her blood to ice. Then Nora Joyce Fitzpatrick, who'd never fainted—not even when she'd gotten word that her husband's stallion had failed to clear that stone wall somewhere on the far distant rocky coast of Breton—surrendered to the darkness.

 

Brady had always been a man to honor tradition. That being the case, his death set into motion a ritualized series of events, beginning with a home wake, never mind that such things had passed out of fashion, killed by the influence of modern Catholicism.

Since he was a popular person, known to one and all as kind and generous, the small house became packed with friends from all over the county. Even with some who'd not known him personally but felt moved to join all those gathered at the farm not to mourn Brady Joyce's passing, but to celebrate his remarkable life.

Guinness and Jameson flowed like water, stories were traded, each one more outrageous than the previous, but none, everyone agreed, told with quite the flair Brady would have shown.

Nora moved through the gathering as she had since first regaining consciousness in Quinn's arms: on autopilot. Although she managed to smile at all the right times and remembered to thank the women for their gifts of food and the men for sharing those joyous memories, she could not stop thinking about her father dying all alone out on that lonely dark road with her angry threat to move to Galway—which she hadn't really meant—ringing in his ears.

“It wasn't your fault,” Quinn told her yet again after he'd gone upstairs and found her sitting vigil beside Brady's bed. Although she'd agreed to the wake, she'd put her foot down at the idea of her father's body lying in the center of her parlor all night surrounded by merrymakers.

Although a part of Quinn found the core belief of the wake—that it guarded the deceased's soul from the devil until internment—a bit ghoulish, he could understand the concept. And there was no denying that, with the exception of Nora—who was proving inconsolable—the wake seemed to bring the family comfort.

Indeed, there was something strangely reassuring in the idea that death was simply one more part of the life cycle. “A necessary phase everyone must pass through before achieving immortality,” said Nora's brother Finn, who'd come from Australia.

“My words killed him.” Her voice tolled like a funeral knell in the quiet bedroom. It was nearly dawn. A pink pearlescent glow offered the promise of a new day.

“His heart killed him,” Quinn repeated what everyone had already told her. Again and again. Unfortunately it appeared that no amount of arguing or well-meaning words of consolation could ease the guilt that had taken hold of her gentle heart. “Dr. Flannery said he'd recommended a bypass months ago.”

“Dr. Flannery should have said something to me.”

“Brady told him not to. And even out here in the back-of-beyond west, doctor-patient privilege has to be respected.”

Her eyes were bleak and uncharacteristically empty, the purple smudges beneath them evidence of a lack of sleep. “If I'd only known, I could have done something.”

Mindful of the way father and daughter had parted, Quinn, like everyone else in the family, had been treating Nora with kid gloves. Now he began to wonder if perhaps that had been a mistake.

“What could you have done?” he challenged mildly, pulling up a wooden chair to sit beside her. “Hit him over the head with a shovel and drag him into the hospital for the operation?”

“No, but—”

“Perhaps you believe you could have changed his mind? Made him see the light of his folly, so to speak?”

She sighed at that idea. “Da was, in his fashion, a hardheaded man.”

“And nearly as stubborn as his lovely daughter,” Quinn said, taking her hand and lifting it to his lips. When she tried to tug it free, he tightened his hold. “Face it, sweetheart. Although he might not have always acted like an adult, your father was a grown man. Capable of making his own choices.”

“I can't believe it was truly his choice to die alone out on that road.” Words clogged in her throat, and emotions burned at the back of her eyelids in the form of unshed tears. “Without his family around him.”

Giving up on retrieving her hand, she turned her gaze back to the bed. How strange it was, she considered, to see such a vibrant man lying so still and quiet. Brady Joyce's presence had always energized a room, bringing with it a golden sparkle that made the air around him as heady as French champagne. Now he reminded her of a porcelain statue hidden away in a church niche.

“At least he had a family.” Concern for Nora, as well as frustration at his inability to get through to her, had Quinn trying again. “People who loved him unconditionally. Without hesitation.”

As he had come to love her. Unfortunately, before he'd had the chance to share that astounding little news flash with Nora, they'd gotten that telephone call and all Quinn's plans had flown right out the window. There'd be time later to tell her how he felt about her—about the entire Joyce/Fitzpatrick clan—he'd kept reassuring himself over the past two days.