Читать книгу A Woman's Heart - JoAnn Ross - Страница 12

Chapter Four

Smoke and Strong Whiskey

As Quinn drove past the butcher shop, the rows of meat and dressed chickens displayed in the storefront window reminded him of how many hours it had been since he’d eaten. Spotting the hanging sign across the square advertising The Irish Rose pub, he decided to stop.

“Some food and a couple cups of coffee should stave off jet lag.” And ease the headache that had begun to throb while he’d been driving around in circles.

This would also give him an opportunity to ask directions to the Joyce farm. He’d been assured by the rental agent who handled the transaction that the farm was on the road directly out of Castlelough. However, having already discovered the vagaries of the Irish roadway system, Quinn feared the agent’s assurances would prove to be overly optimistic.

He allowed himself a smile when he read the words burned into the piece of wood nailed to the pub door: Here when we’re open. Gone when we’re closed.

The interior of The Irish Rose could have been lifted directly from the set of The Quiet Man. Quinn suspected it had looked much the same when the town of Castlelough had been founded more than five hundred years earlier.

The dark-paneled walls had shelves filled with bottles of whiskey gleaming like a pirate’s bounty in the light from the brass-hooded lamps. Behind the bar, a mirror advertised Guinness in fancy gold script.

A turf fire burned in the large open hearth at one end of the room, warding off the chill; a cloud of smoke hung in the air. Wooden tables had been crowded onto the hand-pegged floor and heavy benches resembling church pews had been placed along the wall. The only anachronism was the television, bolted above the bar and currently tuned to a hurling match.

When his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Quinn could see three men seated at the bar, more men scattered around at the tables smoking pipes and reading newspapers, and a pair of teenage boys playing darts. A man and woman were eating a late lunch of pub grub while a pair of carrot-haired toddlers Quinn took for twins happily munched on crunchy chips.

All eyes immediately turned toward him as he crossed the floor and sat down on a stool in front of the scarred wooden bar.

“Lovely day,” a small, spry leprechaun-like man remarked.

“A bit chilly,” Quinn replied. Only yesterday he’d been basking in the California sun.

“Aye.” The man nodded. “Though myself, I don’t care for it when it’s warm. Then you’ve got nothing to complain about, after all. It’s no good for the talk…” His words trailed off. Abruptly he said, “You’d be Quinn Gallagher.”

“That was either one helluva guess or you’re psychic.”

“Now, there have been some who’ve accused me of that over the years, but it’s not how I knew you.” A smile brightened the apple-cheeked face; still-young blue eyes twinkled merrily. “I recognized you from the photograph on the back of your books. Hasn’t my youngest son, John, read them all? He especially liked the one about the banshee.”

“That was one of my favorites, as well.” It was his first published novel, written during a blaze of inspiration the likes of which Quinn had never experienced since. His muse was a fickle mistress.

“Brady’s seen a banshee,” the second man, who appeared to be nearing the century mark, revealed. His bulbous red nose suggested he’d spent several of those many years indulging a fondness for the bottle.

“Brady?” It was undoubtedly a common enough name, Quinn told himself.

“Brady Joyce, at your service,” the first man said. “And isn’t this the divil’s own luck, you stopping by The Rose on your way out to the farm?”

“It’s quite a coincidence.”

“Not so much of one,” the second man alleged. “The Rose is the only pub this side of the river. It’s also the first one on the road into town, which made it likely it’d be the one you chose to stop at.

“And whenever The Irish Rose is open—” he took a long drink of the dark beer in front of him and wiped the creamy tracing of foam off his top lip with the back of his hand “—isn’t it sure you’ll find Brady Joyce sitting right on that very stool, spinning his tales. He’s the finest seanachie in the county.”

“Oh, I’m not nearly as fine a storyteller as Mr. Gallagher,” Brady said with what Quinn suspected was more than a little false modesty.

“That may be the case, indeed, but the banshee story is a grand fearful tale,” the old man countered. “It never fails to give me gooseflesh.” He cast Quinn an appraising look. “You’d be one of those movie people.”

“I am.”

“Brady was telling me about you staying at the farm. We were thinking you might want to make a movie outta one of his tales.”

“Oh, it was Fergus here who was thinking that,” Brady said quickly. A bit too quickly, Quinn thought. “I told him it was foolishness.”

“Getting a movie made is a real long shot,” Quinn said carefully, afraid of offending his host by suggesting he might not consider Brady Joyce’s stories worthy of consideration.

The rest of the cast and crew was already booked into every spare room in the village; if Joyce decided to welsh on the rental agreement, Quinn would have no choice but to take Laura up on her offer. A situation he was determined to avoid.

“And isn’t that just what I was telling Fergus?” Brady nodded. “A long shot.”

“And wouldn’t one consider getting a movie made about a lake creature in a small Irish town few have ever heard of a long shot?” the man named Fergus suggested slyly.

“Good point… So, you’ve actually seen a banshee?” Quinn asked Joyce. Although he’d enjoyed writing the story of the keening fairy woman, he considered such a thing on a par with the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

“Aye, that I have,” Brady agreed cheerfully. “I’ve also seen the lovely Lady who brings all you movie people to Castlelough. But those are tales for another time. First we need to get you something to drink.

“Publican, a pint for my guest,” he called out robustly to the man who was drying glasses not two feet away. “I’ll stand a round for the room, as well. And bottles of orange for the boys.

“And while Brendan pulls your pint, you can tell us all about yourself,” Brady invited, turning back to Quinn.

“There’s not that much to tell.” Never one to talk about his past, Quinn was definitely not eager to discuss it here, among strangers.

“Of course there is. As a storyteller yourself, you should know there’s no one else like you. No story like your own. And there’s always the fact that,” Brady tacked on impishly, “if you don’t tell us, we’ll have no choice but to make things up.”

Before Quinn could respond to that, a large man at the end of the bar abruptly stood and announced, “I’ll not be drinking to the likes of him.”

The room suddenly went deathly still. Glasses lowered to wooden tables.

“Now, Cadel,” Brady said cajolingly, “is that any way to be talking to a visitor?”

“Did I ask him to come here?” His hands were curled at his sides. The meaty fists and the murder in his dark eyes reminded Quinn of a heavyweight boxer. “I don’t recall inviting any focking Yanks to Castlelough,” the man growled. He shot a lethal glare Quinn’s way. “Why don’t you bloody Americans stay home where you belong?”

Quinn decided the question was a rhetorical one, designed to start a fight. And although he’d gotten into his share of bar brawls in his younger days, he had no intention of allowing himself to be baited now.

When Quinn didn’t answer, his red-faced challenger turned back to Brady. “And aren’t you’re just as bad, Brady Joyce, letting this focking rich tourist into your house for the price of a few pounds? The bloody foreigners are overrunning this country, flashing their Yank money, buying up our land, destroying tradition. Ireland’s a beautiful woman. And some people—” his hard-as-stone eyes raked both the old man and Quinn “—are focking pimps.”

That said, he tossed back the rest of his whiskey and strode from the pub, slamming the heavy oak door behind him. A thick silence lingered in his wake.

“Now don’t be paying any mind to the likes of Cadel O’Sullivan,” Brady advised Quinn with unfailing cheer. “He’s been in a sour mood for most of his thirty-three years.”

All the men in the room laughed on cue. The tension dissolved.

A tall glass was placed in front of Quinn. Brady raised his own. “Slainte! To your health!” he translated helpfully.

“Slainte,” Quinn returned the toast. As the hum of conversation resumed, he took a long swallow of the lacy-headed, velvety dark brew and felt the headache that had escalated during the brief confrontation with Cadel O’Sullivan begin to ease.

Brady next launched into a long introduction of his drinking mate, Fergus, that went back several generations and included an ancestor alleged to be a silkie—one of the seal women of Irish myth. Quinn listened, surrendering to the alchemy of the Guinness.

* * *

Although she was not a worrier by nature, Nora grew concerned when the evening passed with no sign of Quinn Gallagher or Brady. She wasn’t all that surprised about her father; after all, the pub didn’t close for another hour. But most of the Americans she’d met over the years appeared wed to the clock. It seemed unlikely that the writer would be so late without at least trying to notify her.

Rory and Celia had gone to bed some time ago. Mary, who’d finally stopped her weeping, seemed to have fallen asleep, as well, and the faint sound of music drifting from John’s room suggested that her brother was studying, as he did late into every night.

She’d finally taken the stew off the stove and put it in the refrigerator, and now she was pacing the floor of the small front parlor, stopping every so often to peer through the rain-streaked window at the well of darkness surrounding the farmhouse.

“His plane landed hours ago,” she told Fionna after she rang the airport. “And Ellen down at Flannery House said that several of the Americans who arrived at Shannon on the same flight checked in this afternoon.”

Fionna glanced up from her knitting. “Perhaps he went sight-seeing.”

“Perhaps.” Nora frowned and wondered if she should put more peat on the fire or just go upstairs to bed. “But you’d think that he would notify us if he’d changed his plans.”

The click of needles didn’t stop as the older woman continued working on the thick sweater destined to go to university in the fall with John. The sound provided an accompaniment to Waylon Jennings’s deep voice coming from the radio upstairs, the steady tick-tick-tick of the mantel clock as it counted off the minutes and hours, and the rat-a-tat-tat of wind-driven rain against the windowpanes.

“The man is certainly starting off on the wrong foot,” Fionna allowed. Her expression turned thoughtful. “Do you think he could have had an accident on the roadway? After all, Americans aren’t accustomed to driving on the left-hand side of the road, and what with all this rain…”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” A tiny shiver of icy fear skimmed up Nora’s spine. “I wonder if I should ring the hospital?”

“Or the Garda, perhaps,” Fionna suggested.

Although Nora was not at all eager to involve the police, she was headed for the phone again when she saw a flash of headlights through the leaded front window.

“Finally!” She ran to open the front door. The porch light cast a yellow, rain-shimmered glow on the white car with black markings parked in the driveway. “It’s Sergeant O’Neill.”

Fionna tossed her knitting aside and hurried to stand beside her. “I’m certain it’s nothing, darling. The sergeant probably found the American broken down alongside the roadway and—”

“It’s Da.” Nora watched Brady stagger from the back seat of the police car.

“Oh dear. It’s been a while since he drank too much to drive,” Fionna said with a sigh.

“I hope he didn’t crash the car.” It would take more eggs than even her musically stimulated hens could lay to buy a new one.

“Good evening to you, Fionna.” The sergeant touched his fingers to the brim of his dark hat. “Nora. My cousin Brendan was working the bar at The Rose and rang me up to say that Brady and his friend needed a ride home.”

“His friend?”

“The writer. As I told Brendan, I was happy to oblige. We wouldn’t want a famous Yank crashing his car his first day in the country, now, would we?”

Nora watched as a second man climbed out of the back seat. Straightening his back, he began walking toward the house with the exaggerated care of someone who was drunk to the gills.

“No,” she agreed faintly, “we certainly wouldn’t want that.” How in the name of heaven had the American and Brady met up? “Thank you, Gerry, for bringing them home.”

“No problem, Nora.” Gerry O’Neill put the bags he’d fetched from the American’s car inside the open door. “I was just doing my job. Good night, all.” Touching his hat again, the policeman folded his tall lean body into the car, backed up and drove away into the night.

“Evenin’, Nora darlin’,” Brady greeted his daughter. He laid a hand on her shoulder and bestowed a sloppy kiss on her cheek.

Then he grinned at Fionna. “Evening, Mam.”

“Don’t ‘Evening, Mam,’ me,” Fionna shot back, her hands on her hips. “Not when you come home from the pub weaving like a salley tree in the wind.”

“Would you not have me properly welcome our guest to the land of his ancestors?” Still using Nora for ballast, Brady waved his free hand toward the much taller man who’d come up beside him. “This fine fellow is none other than the famous American writer, Quinn Gallagher. Quinn, may I present my sharp-tongued but endearing mother, and my darling lovely daughter, Nora.”

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Gallagher,” Nora said politely to her guest—her paying guest, she reminded herself.

Only an alert listener would have been able to detect the note of irritation in her voice. To think that he hadn’t been lying near death in some hospital emergency ward, that after all her worrying he’d merely been getting drunk in The Irish Rose pub with her father!

“We were concerned you may have driven off the cliff on the way here from Shannon.”

“I’m sorry.” Quinn’s words were far more slurred than Brady’s. “I never meant to cause anyone any concern.” His gaze moved from daughter to grandmother. “And I have no excuse for my inconsiderate behavior. Other than the fact that I lost track of the time.”

“That’s likely enough, once my son begins spinning his tales,” Fionna allowed. “At least you had the good sense not to get behind the wheel.”

With those words of absolution, Fionna turned and went back into the house. If Nora’s nerves hadn’t been so frazzled, she might have enjoyed watching the two men follow as meekly as newborn lambs.

When she joined the three in the sitting room, Nora studied Quinn Gallagher more closely. Despite his appropriately contrite words, she thought that he was a hard, tough man. His face—all sharp angles and lean hollows, narrowing down to a firm unyielding boxer’s jaw—could have been roughly chiseled from stone. Too harsh to be considered lived-in, it revealed an arrogance and a remoteness that were in decided contrast to his outwardly penitent tone. A faint white scar on his cheek added a menacing touch.

His deeply set eyes were as dark and unrevealing as midnight. Despite his glower, the photograph on the back of the book covers in the window of Sheila Monohan’s store had made the novelist appear intelligent and sophisticated. However, there was nothing sophisticated about this man.

He was rangy, like a long-distance runner, all sinew and lean muscle clad in black jeans, a black T-shirt and black leather jacket. She’d known larger men, but none so physically imposing. The sense of tightly coiled male energy emanating from Quinn Gallagher and the way, even as inebriated as he obviously was, he made a woman all too aware of being female, had Nora suddenly wanting to throw him out of her house.

Kate’s earlier remark about Nora’s mother sending her a husband suddenly seemed more threat than promise.

Tell me this isn’t your doing, Mam, Nora begged silently as nerves tangled themselves into a knot inside her stomach.

If Eleanor Joyce had searched the entire world over, she couldn’t have found a more unsuitable husband and father candidate than this man clad all in devil’s black.

For a fleeting moment Nora envisioned the writer as an old-time gunfighter, standing on some dusty Western street with six-shooters drawn, facing down a gang of train robbers at high noon. It was a scene she’d seen a hundred times in American movies—with one difference. This time, in her mind’s eye, it was Quinn Gallagher who was wearing the black hat.

Dear Lord, she was getting every bit as fanciful as Fionna and Brady!

“You’ll be wanting to go directly to bed, I imagine.” Nora was pleased when her calm voice revealed none of her inner turmoil.

As if giving up his attempt to stand erect, Quinn leaned back against the white plaster wall. She forced herself to hold her ground as his dark eyes swept over her again.

“Now there’s an idea,” he murmured for her ears only. His voice was like silk, wound through with a thread of sarcasm. Wicked intent gleamed in his gaze and played at the corners of his mouth.

“As drunk as you are, I suspect even the idea would be more than you could handle, Mr. Gallagher,” she said under her breath, grateful that her father was currently distracting Fionna with the story of how he and the Yank had happened to meet up.

“I wouldn’t bet the farm on that, sweetheart.”

He was too brash. Too dangerous. Too male. How in the name of all the saints was she going to put up with this arrogant man in her house for four long weeks? Reminding herself she’d already spent the generous deposit the rental agent had forwarded to repair the smoking chimney, Nora gathered up her scattered composure and managed, with effort, to hold her tongue.

Wanting to get the man out of sight and mind as quickly as possible, she glanced over at Brady, who’d collapsed in his easy chair. Since he was obviously too unsteady on his feet to escort their boarder up the steep set of stairs, it appeared Nora was stuck with him.

“I’d best be showing you to your room.” Then, since the writer appeared nearly as unsteady as Brady, she had no choice but to put her arm around his waist to help him balance. “Before you pass out and end up spending the night on the floor.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Oh dear. She wondered what Brady had gotten them into, renting a room to a man accustomed to coming home drunk. Despite the much-needed funds he represented, Nora vowed on the spot that if he caused any problem in front of the children, she was going to send the American writer on his way.

“Not the passing-out part,” he elaborated, as if reading her mind. “Despite appearances to the contrary, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, I am not a drunk.” He spoke slowly and deliberately. Exactly, Nora thought, like a drunk.

“You’ve no idea how it pleases me to hear that, Mr. Gallagher.”

As she began leading him across the room, he glanced back over his shoulder. “Good night, Joyce. Thanks for the welcome. I enjoyed myself immensely. Ma’am, it was indeed an honor.” This last to Fionna.

“Good night to you, too, Gallagher,” Brady said.

“It was indeed interesting, Mr. Gallagher,” Fionna responded. “Pleasant dreams.”

“Nice lady,” Quinn said to Nora.

He leaned against her and slid his arm around her shoulder in a surprisingly smooth gesture for a man who’d been drinking. The stairs were narrow, forcing them to climb thigh to thigh. Nora had the impression of steel—hard and unyielding.

“Lord, you’re soft.” Quinn leaned down and nuzzled her neck. “And you smell damn good, too. Like wildflowers and rain.”

Nora would bet her prize bull that he said that to all the women. “And you smell like whiskey.”

“Unfortunately that’s probably true.” He frowned. “I don’t know what the hell got into me.”

“I suspect too much Jameson.” She opened the door to the bedroom she’d grown up in and they stepped inside. “You’ll have the devil’s own head in the morning.”

“Undoubtedly true, also. But it was worth it. Your father is one helluva storyteller.”

“Aye, he is that. The best in the county. The finest in all Ireland, some say.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me. I suspect it doesn’t hurt to have Joyce blood flowing in his veins.”

“No. I imagine not.” Nora, who’d been brought up to be proud of her literary heritage, had often thought that same thing herself. “Still, it’s easy for the hours to slip away when he begins spinning his tales.”

“So I discovered. The hard way.”

Their eyes met and in a suspended moment of shared amusement, there occurred a flash of physical awareness so strong that Nora had a sudden urge to hug herself. With her mind whirling the way it was, she couldn’t decide if the desire came from a need for self-protection or an even stronger need to feel the touch of hands on her uncomfortably warm body.

At the same time Quinn seemed to turn strangely angry. His smile vanished and his dark eyes went shuttered, like a pair of windows painted over with pitch.

“You know what I said about going to bed?” He shrugged out of his leather jacket and tossed it onto a nearby chair.

“I don’t think we should be talking about this.” Nora’s unruly heart fluttered like a wild bird as she pulled back the handmade quilt that had been a wedding gift from her sister-in-law. Then she reached up, took hold of Quinn’s broad shoulders and pushed him down onto the bed.

“Tough. Because, you see, sweetheart, there’s one thing you should know about me. I’m the kind of guy who likes to put all his cards on the table right off the bat.”

Nora was not accustomed to men she hardly knew calling her sweetheart. And she definitely wasn’t accustomed to having such an intimate conversation with a stranger. Wondering how it was that the man could still appear threatening while lying flat on his back, she nevertheless gave him a go-ahead gesture.

He was, after all, a guest. Besides, it seemed prudent just to let him have his say. Maybe then he’d drop the bloody subject.

“The point I want to make, sweetheart, is that I’ve decided I’m not going to sleep with you.”

Nora’s temper flared like a match in the night. “And I suppose you’d be thinking it’s your decision to make in the first place?”

Telling herself she didn’t care about his damn comfort, that it was only her sheets she was trying to save, she yanked his boots off. They were cowboy boots, which brought her earlier Western-movie fantasy tumbling back.

“If I wanted you, it sure as hell would be my decision.”

“Do you always get what you want?” It wasn’t exactly a challenge. Nora was genuinely curious.

“When it comes to women? Always.” His eyes cleared. Nora looked down into those fathomless midnight depths and, feeling like a bog butterfly pinned to a cork, had the impression Quinn was giving her a warning. “But you don’t have to worry, sweetheart. You’re not my type.”

Even as she told herself it was for the best, she felt a prick of feminine annoyance at being so easily dismissed.

“And isn’t that a coincidence,” she said briskly, throwing the quilt over him. “Since you’re not my type, either.”

She held her breath, almost expecting God to send a lightning bolt through the thatched roof to strike her dead for telling such an outrageous falsehood. Because unfortunately, from the way her body had grown warm in proximity to his, it appeared that Quinn Gallagher was very much her type.

Quinn arched a sardonic brow, but didn’t challenge her lie, which relieved Nora greatly. “Then we shouldn’t have any problem, should we?”

“None at all.” If only that was true. Nora had the sinking feeling this brash American was going to provide a very large problem indeed. She reached out and turned off the bedside lamp, throwing the room into darkness. “Good night, Mr. Gallagher.”

“Good night, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.” His deep voice echoed the formality in hers. He’d already begun snoring by the time she reached the door.

She moved down the hall to the small room that, thanks to her father, would serve as her bedroom for the next four weeks. She washed her face and brushed her teeth as quietly as possible in the adjoining bathroom she was forced to share with her boarder.

Since it was chilly in the unheated room, she undressed quickly, changing into a long, cream flannel nightgown and a pair of gray-and-white caterpillar-striped wool socks Fionna had knit for her last Christmas. Then, as she knelt beside the bed the way she had every night since childhood, Nora, who was not normally a petty person, derived some small mean satisfaction from the idea that come morning, Quinn Gallagher would be suffering one hell of a hangover.