The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

need anything but a bikini and a coating of sun oil.”
    She wandered the kitchen as she spoke, a woman with a stunning face, clear, creamy skin, and brilliant blue eyes. Her mouth was full, unapologetically sexual whether it was sulking or smiling. She’d painted it hot red that morning to keep herself cheerful on a chill and dreary day.
    She had a figure that left no doubt she was female, and her love affair with fashion had her outfit it in bold colors and soft fabrics.
    She had the Gallagher yen to travel, and the determination to do so in the style to which she longed to become accustomed. Lavish.
    Since today wasn’t the day for that, she picked up the order and started out just as Brenna came in. “What have you been into this time, then?” Darcy demanded. “You’ve black all over your face.”
    “Soot.” Brenna sniffed and scrubbed the back of her hand over her nose. “Dad and I’ve been cleaning out a chimney, and a right mess it is. I got most of it off me.”
    “If you think so, you didn’t look in a mirror.” Giving her friend a wide berth, Darcy went out.
    “She’d spend all her days looking in one if she had her choice,” Shawn commented. “Are you wanting lunch, then?”
    “Dad and I will have some of that stew. Smells fine.” She moved over, intending to ladle it up herself, but Shawn stepped between her and his precious stove.
    “I’d just as soon do that for you, as you didn’t get off as much of that chimney as you might think.”
    “All right. We’ll have some tea as well. And, ah, I need a word with you later.”
    He glanced over his shoulder. “What’s wrong with now? We’re both of us here.”
    “I’d rather do it when you’re not so busy. I’ll come back after the lunch shift if that suits you.”
    “You know where to find me, don’t you?” He set the stew and the tea on a tray.
    “I do, yes.” She took the tray from him and carried it out to the back booth where her father waited.
    “Here we are, Dad. Stew hot from the pot.”
    “And smelling like heaven.”
    Mick O’Toole was a bantam of a man, small and spare of build with a thick thatch of wiry hair the color of sand and lively eyes that drifted like the sea between green and blue.
    He had a laugh like a braying donkey, hands like a surgeon’s, and a soft spot for romantic tales.
    He was the love of Brenna’s life.
    “It’s good to be warm and snug now, isn’t it, Mary Brenna?”
    “That it is.” She spooned up stew and blew on it carefully, though the scent of it made her want to risk a scalded tongue.
    “And now that we are, and about to have our bellies filled as well, why don’t you tell me what’s worrying your mind.”
    He saw everything, Brenna thought. That was sometimes a comfort, and other times a bit of a nuisance. “It’s not a worry so much. Do you know how you told us what happened when you were a young man and your grandmother died?”
    “I do, yes. I was right here in Gallagher’s Pub. Of course, that was when Aidan’s father manned the bar, before he and his wife took off for America. You weren’t more than a wish in my heart and a smile in your mother’s eye. There I was, back where young Shawn is right now, in the kitchen. I was fixing the sink in there, as it had a slow and steady leak that finally made Gallagher give me a whistle.”
    He paused to sample the stew, dabbing his mouth with his napkin, as his wife was fierce on table manners and had trained him accordingly.
    “And as I was on the floor, I looked over and there was my grandma, wearing a flowered dress and a white apron. She smiled at me, but when I tried to speak to her, she shook her head. Then lifting a hand in a kind of farewell, she vanished. So I knew at that moment she’d passed over and that what I’d seen had been the spirit of her come to say good-bye. For I had been her favorite.”
    “I don’t mean to make you sad,” Brenna murmured.
    “Well.” Mick let out a breath. “She was a fine woman, and lived a good and long life. But it’s left to us still living to miss those who aren’t.”
    Brenna remembered the rest of the story. How her father had left his work and run down to the little house where his grandmother, two years a widow, lived. And he found her in her kitchen, sitting at the table in her flowered dress and white apron. She’d died quiet and peaceful.
    “And sometimes,” Brenna said carefully, “those who pass on miss others. This morning, in Faerie Hill Cottage, I