Tears Of The Moon goa-2 Read online

  Tears Of The Moon

  ( Gallaghers of Ardmore - 2 )

  Nora Roberts

  No one understands why Shawn Gallagher, a talented songwriter, doesn't put his musical gift to profitable use - least of all Brenna O'Toole, a fiercely independent tomboy who has been secretly in love with him for years. But it is only when Shawn gives in to the mysteries of magic that he gets the chance to fulfill his destiny as musician - and a man.

  Ah, kiss me, love, and miss me, love,

  and dry your bitter tears.

  IRISH PUB SONG

  CHAPTER One

  Ireland is a land of poets and legends, of dreamers and rebels. All of these have music woven through and around them. Tunes for dancing or for weeping, for battle or for love. In ancient times, the harpists would travel from place to place, playing their tunes for a meal and a bed and the loose coins that might come with them.

  The harpists and the seanachais-the storytellers-were welcome where they wandered, be it cottage or inn or campfire. Their gift was carried inside them, and was valued even in the faerie rafts beneath the green hills.

  And so it is still.

  Once, not so long ago, a storyteller came to a quiet village by the sea and was made welcome. There, she found her heart and her home,

  A harpist lived among them, and had his home where he was content. But he had yet to find his heart.

  There was music playing in his head. Sometimes it came to him soft and dreamy, like a lover's whisper.

  Other times it was with a shout and a laugh. An old friend calling you into the pub to stand you for a pint. It could be sweet or fierce or full of desperate tears. But it was music that ran through his mind. And it was his pleasure to hear it.

  Shawn Gallagher was a man comfortable with his life. Now there were some who would say he was comfortable because he rarely came out of his dreaming to see what was happening in the world. He didn't mind agreeing with them.

  His world was his music and his family, his home and the friends who counted. Why should he be bothered overmuch beyond that?

  His family had lived in the village of Ardmore in the county of Waterford, in the country of Ireland for generations. And there the Gallaghers had run their pub, offering pints and glasses, a decent meal and a fine place for conversation as long as most cared to remember.

  Since his parents had settled in Boston some time before, it was up to Shawn's older brother, Aidan, to head the business. That was more than fine with Shawn Gallagher, as he didn't quibble to admit he had no head for business whatsoever, or the desire to get one. He was happy enough to man the kitchen, for cooking relaxed him.

  The music would play for him, out in the pub or inside his head, as he filled orders or tweaked the menu of the day.

  Of course, there were times when his sister, Darcy-who had more than her share of the family energy and ambition-would come in where he was working up a stew or building some sandwiches and start a row.

  But that only livened things up.

  He had no problem lending a hand with the serving, especially if there was a bit of music or dancing going on. And he cleaned up without complaint after closing, for the Gallaghers ran a tidy place.

  Life in Ardmore suited him-the slow pace of it, the sweep of sea and cliff, the roll of green hills that went shimmering toward shadowed mountains. The wanderlust that the Gallaghers were famed for had skipped over him, and Shawn was well rooted in Ardmore's sandy soil.

  He had no desire to travel as his brother, Aidan, had done, or as Darcy spoke of doing. All that he needed was right at his fingertips. He saw no point in changing his view.

  Though he supposed he had, in a way.

  All of his life he'd looked out his bedroom window toward the sea. It had been there, just there, foaming against the sand, dotted with boats, rough or calm and every mood in between. The scent of it was the first thing he'd breathe in as he leaned out his window in the morning.

  But when his brother had married the pretty Yank Jude Frances Murray the previous fall, it seemed right to make a few adjustments.

  In the Gallagher way, the first to marry took over the family home. And so Jude and Aidan had moved into the rambling house at the edge of the village when they returned from honeymooning in Venice.

  Given the choice between the rooms above the pub and the little cottage that belonged to the Fitzgerald side of Jude's family, Darcy had decided in favor of the rooms. She'd browbeaten Shawn, and whoever else she could twist around her beautiful finger, into painting and hauling until she'd turned Aidan's once sparse rooms into her own little palace.

  That was fine with Shawn.

  He preferred the little cottage on the faerie hill with its view of the cliffs and the gardens, and its blessed quiet.

  Nor did he mind the ghost who walked there.

  He'd yet to see her, but he knew she was there. Lady Gwen, who wept for the faerie lover she had cast away and waited for the spell to run its course and free them both. Shawn knew the story of the young maid who'd lived three hundred years before in that very same cottage on that very same hill.

  Carrick, prince of the faeries, had fallen in love with her, but instead of giving her the words, offering his heart, he had shown her the grandeur of the life he would give her. Three times he brought her a silver bag of jewels, first diamonds cast from the fire of the sun, then pearls formed from tears dripped from the moon, and finally sapphires wrung from the heart of the sea.

  But doubting his heart, and her own destiny, she refused him. And the jewels he poured at her feet, so legend had it, became the very flowers that thrived in the dooryard of the cottage.

  Most of the flowers slept now, Shawn thought, bedded down as winter blew over the coast. The cliffs where it was said the lady often walked were stark and barren under a brooding sky.

  A storm was biding its time, waiting to happen.

  The morning was a raw one, with the wind knocking at the windows and sneaking in to chill the cottage. He had a fire going in the kitchen hearth and his tea was hot, so he didn't mind the wind. He liked the arrogant music it made while he sat at the kitchen table, nibbling on biscuits and toying with the lyrics for a tune he'd written.

  He didn't have to be at the pub for an hour yet. But to make sure he got there at all, he'd set the timer on the stove and, as a backup, the alarm clock in his bedroom. With no one there to shake him out of his dreams and tell him to get his ass moving, he tended to forget the time altogether.

  Since it irritated Aidan when he was late, and gave Darcy an excuse to hammer at him, he did his best to stay on schedule. The trouble was, when he was deep enough in his music, the buzzing and beeping of the timers didn't register and he was late in any case.

  He was swimming in it now, in a song of love that was young and sure of itself. The sort, to Shawn's thinking, that was as fickle as the wind but fun while it lasted. A dancing tune, he decided, that would require fast feet and flirting.

  He would try it out at the pub sometime, once it was polished a bit, and if he could convince Darcy to sing it. Her voice was just right for the mood of it.

  Too comfortable to bother going into the parlor where he'd jammed the old piano he bought when he moved in, he tapped his foot for rhythm and refined the lyrics.

  He didn't hear the banging at the front door, the clomp of bootsteps down the hallway, or the muttered curse.

  Typical, Brenna thought. Lost in some dream world again while life went on around him. She didn't know why she'd bothered to knock in the first place-he rarely heard it, and they'd been running tame in each other's houses since childhood.

  Well, they weren't children anymore, and she'd as soon knock as walk in on something she shouldn't.

& nbsp; He could have had a woman in here, for all she knew. The man attracted them like sugar water attracted bees.

  Not that he was sweet, necessarily. Though he could be.

  God, he was pretty. The errant thought popped into her head, and she immediately hated herself for it. But it was hard not to notice, after all.

  All that fine black hair looking just a bit shabby, as he never remembered when it was time for a trim. Eyes of a quiet and dreamy blue-unless he was roused by something, and then, she recalled, they could fire hot and cold in equal measure. He had long, dark lashes that her four sisters would have sold their soul for and a full, firm mouth that was meant, she supposed, for long kisses and soft words.

  Not that she knew of either firsthand. But she'd heard tell.

  His nose was long and just slightly crooked from a line drive she'd hit herself, smartly, when they'd been playing American baseball more than ten years before.

  All in all, he had the face of some fairy-tale prince come to life. Some gallant knight on a quest. Or a slightly tattered angel. Add that to a long, lanky body, wonderfully wide-palmed hands with the fingers of an artist, a voice like whiskey warmed by a turf fire, and he made quite the package.

  Not that she was interested, particularly. It was just that she appreciated things that were made well.

  And what a liar she was, even to herself.

  She'd had a yen for him even before she'd beaned him with that baseball-and she'd been fourteen to his nineteen at the time. And a yen tended to grow into something hotter, something nervier, by the time a woman was twenty-four.

  Not that he ever looked at her like she was a woman.

  Just as well, she assured herself, and shifted her stance. She didn't have time to hang around mooning over the likes of Shawn Gallagher. Some people had work to do.

  Fixing a thin sneer on her face, she deliberately lowered her toolbox and let it fall with a terrible clatter. That he jumped like a rabbit under the gun pleased her.

  "Christ Jesus!" He scraped his chair around, thumped a hand to his heart as if to get it pumping again. "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing." She continued to sneer. "Butterfingers," she said sweetly and picked up her dented toolbox again. "Give you a start, did I?"

  "You damn near killed me."

  "Well, I knocked, but you didn't bother to come to the door."

  "I didn't hear you." He blew out a breath, scooped his hair back, and frowned at her. "Well, here's the O'Toole come to call. Is something broken, then?"

  "You've a mind like a rusty bucket." She shrugged out of her jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair. "Your oven there hasn't worked for a week," she reminded him with a nod toward the stove. "The part I ordered for it just came in. Do you want me to fix it or not?"

  He made a sound of assent and waved his hand toward it.

  "Biscuits?" she said as she walked by the table. "What kind of breakfast is that for a man grown?"

  "They were here." He smiled at her in a way that made her want to cuddle him. "It's a bother to cook just for myself most mornings, but if you're hungry I'll fix something up for the both of us."

  "No, I've eaten." She set her toolbox down, opened it, started to rummage through. "You know Ma always fixes more than enough. She'd be happy to have you wander down any morning you like and have a decent meal."

  "You could send up a flare when she makes her griddle cakes. Will you have some tea in any case? The pot's still warm."

  "I wouldn't mind it." As she chose her tools, got out the new part, she watched his feet moving around the kitchen. "What were you doing? Writing music?"

  "Fiddling with words for a tune," he said absently. His eye had caught the flight of a single bird, black and glossy against the dull pewter sky. "Looks bitter out today."

  "'Tis, and damp with it. Winter's barely started and I'm wishing it over."

  "Warm your bones a bit." He crouched down with a thick mug of tea, fixed as he knew she liked it, strong and heavy on the sugar.

  "Thanks." The heat from the mug seeped into her hands as she cupped them around it.

  He stayed where he was, sipping his own tea. Their knees bumped companionably. "So, what will you do about this heap?"

  "What do you care as long as it works again?"

  He lifted a brow. "If I know what you did, I might fix it myself next time."

  This made her laugh so hard she had to sit her butt down on the floor to keep from tipping over. "You? Shawn, you can't even fix your own broken fingernail."

  "Sure I can." Grinning, he mimed just biting one off and made her laugh again.

  "Don't you concern yourself with what I do with the innards of the thing, and I won't concern myself with the next cake you bake in it. We each have our strengths, after all."

  "It's not as if I've never used a screwdriver," he said and plucked one out of her kit.

  "And I've used a stirring spoon. But I know which fits my hand better."

  She took the tool from him, then shifting her position, stuck her head in the oven to get to work.

  She had little hands, Shawn thought. A man might think of them as delicate if he didn't know what they were capable of doing. He'd watched her swing a hammer, grip a drill, haul lumber, cinch pipes. More often than not, those little fairy hands of hers were nicked and scratched or bruised around the knuckles.

  She was such a small woman for the work she'd chosen, or the work that had chosen her, he thought as he straightened. He knew how that was. Brenna's father was a man of all work, and his eldest daughter took straight after him. Just as it was said Shawn took after his mother's mother, who had often forgotten the wash or the dinner while she played her music.

  As he started to step back, she moved, her butt wriggling as she loosened a bolt. His eyebrows lifted again, in what he considered merely the reflexive interest of a male in an attractive portion of the female form.

  She did, after all, have a trim and tidy little body. The sort a man could scoop up one-handed if he had a mind to. And if a man tried, Shawn imagined Brenna O'Toole would lay him out flat.

  The idea made him grin.

  Still, he'd rather look at her face any day. It was such a study. Her eyes were lively and of a sharp, glass green under elegant brows just slightly darker than her bright red hair. Her mouth was mobile and quick to smile or sneer or scowl. She rarely painted it-or the rest of her face, come to that-though she was thick as thieves with

  Darcy, who wouldn't step a foot out of the house until she was polished to a gleam.

  She had a sharp little nose, like a pixie's, that tended to wrinkle in disapproval or disdain. Most times she bundled her hair under a cap where she pinned the little fairy he'd given her years before for some occasion or other. But when she took the cap off, there seemed miles of hair, a rich, bright red that sprang out in little curls as it pleased.

  It suited her that way.

  Because he wanted to see her face again before he took himself off to the pub, Shawn leaned back casually on the counter, then tucked his tongue in his cheek.

  "So you're walking out with Jack Brennan these days, I'm hearing."

  When her head came up swiftly and connected with the top of the oven with a resounding crack, Shawn winced, and wisely swallowed the chuckle.

  "I am not!" As he'd hoped, she popped out of the oven. There was a bit of soot on her nose, and as she rubbed her sore head, she knocked her cap askew. "Who said I am?"

  "Oh." Innocent as three lambs, Shawn merely shrugged and finished his tea. "I thought I heard it somewhere, 'round and about, as such things go."

  "You've a head full of cider and never hear a bloody thing. I'm not walking out with anyone. I've no time for that nonsense." Annoyed, she stuck her head back in the oven.

  "Well, then, I'm mistaken. Easy enough to be these days when the village is so full of romance. Engagements and weddings and babies on the way."

  "That's the proper order, anyway."

  He chuckled and came back to cr ouch beside her again. In a friendly way, he laid a hand on her bottom, but he didn't notice when she went very still. "Aidan and Jude are already picking out names, and she's barely two months along yet. They're lovely together, aren't they?"

  "Aye." Her mouth had gone dry with that yen that was perilously close to need. "I like seeing them happy. Jude likes to think the cottage is magic. She fell in love with Aidan here, and started her new life, wrote her book, all the things she says she was afraid even to dream of once happened right here."

  "That's lovely, too. There's something about this place," he said half to himself. "You feel it at odd moments. When you're drifting off to sleep, or just waking. It's a- a waiting."

  With the new part in place, she eased out of the oven. His hand slid up her back lazily, then fell away. "Have you seen her? Lady Gwen?"

  "No. Sometimes there's a kind of movement on the air, just at the edge of your vision, but then nothing." He pulled himself back, smiled carelessly, and got to his feet. "Maybe she's not for me."

  "I'd think you the perfect candidate for a heartbroken ghost," Brenna said and turned away from his surprised glance. "She should work fine now," she added, giving the dial a turn. "We'll just see if she heats up."

  "You'll see to that for me, won't you, darling?" The oven timer buzzed, startling them both. "I've got to be going," Shawn said, reaching over to shut it off.

  "Is that your warning system, then?"

  "One of them." He lifted a finger, and on cue there came the cheerful bell from the clock by his bed. "That's the second round, but it'll go off on its own in a minute as it's a windup. Otherwise, I found I'd be having to run in and slap it off every bloody time."

  "Clever enough when it suits you, aren't you?"

  "I have my moments. The cat's out," he continued as he took his own jacket from the hook. "Take no pity on him should he come scratching at the door. Bub knew what he was after when he insisted on moving out here with me."

  "Did you remember to feed him?"

  "I'm not a complete moron." Unoffended, he wrapped a scarf around his neck. "He has food enough, and if he didn't, he'd go begging at your kitchen door. He'd do that anyway, just to shame me." He found his cap, dragged it on. "See you at the pub, then?"