The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

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 crouch 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