Clever enough when it suits you, aren’t you?”
“I have my moments. That 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 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’s been very distracted the last few days.”
“Has he now?”
“And short-tempered.” Brenna found her appetite coming back. I’m delighted to hear it. I hope he suffers, the donkey’s ass.”
Brenna went through the rest of her workday whistling, her mood bright and her hands nimble. She supposed it wasn’t very charitable of her to take pleasure in the idea of another’s unhappiness, but she was human, after all.
You asked him to go to bed with you?”
“I did, and you’d think I’d smashed him in the balls with my wrench. So that’s the end of that.”
Jude folded her hands, leaned forward. “I’m going to pry.”
Brenna’s lips twitched. “Oh, you haven’t started that yet?”
“Not nearly. What exactly did you say to him?”
“I said, plain enough, that I thought we should have sex. And what’s wrong with that?” she demanded, gesturing with her spoon. “You’d think a man would appreciate clear, honest speaking.
Fixing a 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.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it shows?”
Before Jude could answer, Brenna was up, pacing, knocking the heels of her hands against the sides of her, moaning out curses. “I’ll have to move away, leave my family. I can go to the west counties. I have some people, on my mother’s side, in Galway. No, no, that’s not far enough. I’ll have to leave the country entirely. I’ll go to Chicago and stay with your granny until I get on me feet. She’ll take me in, won’t she?
I’m wondering, if there was something you wanted, had wanted for some time, what would you do about it?”
“If I’ve wanted it, why don’t I have it?”
“Because you haven’t made any real effort to get it as yet.”
“And why haven’t I?” He arched his sandy brows. “Am I slow or just stupid?”
Brenna thought it over, decided he couldn’t know he’d just insulted his firstborn.
It was a lie, of course, and she was prepared to confess it to her priest. But she’d be damned if she’d tell him she’d been playing with his music.
Her pride was worth the penance.
He felt a quiver in his heart that he took for sympathy. “There, Brenna darling. Have you gone and fallen in love on me?”
She jerked, whirled, gaped at him. He was watching her with such—such bloody affection, such patience and sympathy. She could have beaten him black and blue. Instead, she just shoved clear of him and snatched up her toolbox. “Shawn Gallagher, you are truly a great idiot of a man.”
With her nose in the air and her tools clanking, she stalked out.
He only shook his head, then went back to his cleaning up. With that little quiver around his heart again, he wondered who it was that O’Toole had set her sights on.
Whoever, Shawn thought, slamming a cupboard door just a little too forcefully, the man had better be worthy of her.
The second surprise came on the heels of the first when she noted the only thing keeping her from rolling off the bed was the arm that Shawn had banded around her.
He’d sprawled himself in the middle of the mattress, shoving her to the outer edge. But, she thought, at least he was considerate enough to see that she stayed there and didn’t fall on her face.
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’re as pretty as she is.”
“Don’t be saying such things loud enough for herself to hear you, or she’ll skin us both.”
Touched and amused, she kissed his cheek. And Shawn came through the door.
It would have been comical, she decided, and was a pity that no one noticed but herself noticed the way he stopped dead in his tracks, stared, then jolted when the door swung back and slapped him in the ass.
I liked how she was trying to make him jealous with Jack.
Jack sighed into his beer when Brenna strode out. “She smells like sawdust,” he said more to himself than otherwise. “It’s very pleasant.”
“What are you doing sniffing at her?” Shawn demanded.
Jack just blinked at him. “What?”
“I’ll be back in a minute.” He shoved up the pass-through on the bar, let it fall with a bang that had Aidan cursing him, then rushed through the door after Brenna.
“Wait a minute. Mary Brennan? Just a damn minute.”
She paused by the door of her truck, and for one of the first times in her life felt the warm glow of pure female satisfaction stream through her. A fine feeling, she decided. A fine feeling altogether.
Schooling her face to show mild interest, she turned. “Is there a problem, then?”
“Yes, there’s a problem. What are you doing flirting with Jack Brennan that way?”
She let her eyebrows rise up under the bill of her cap. “And what business might that be of yours, I’d like to know?”
“A matter of days ago you’re asking me to make love with you, and I turn around and you’re cozying up to Jack and making plans to have dinner with some Dubliner.”
She waited one beat, then two. “And?”
“And?” Flustered and furious, he glared at her. “And it’s not right.”
She only lifted a shoulder in dismissal, then turned to open the truck door.
“It’s not right,” he repeated, grabbing her again and turning her to face him. “I’m not having it.”
“So you said, in clear terms.”
“I don’t mean that.”
“Oh, well, if you’ve decided you’d like to have sex with me after all, I’ve changed my mind.”
“I haven’t decided—” He broke off, staggered. “Changed your mind?
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