The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

both. “She’s the next thing to a sister to me, and I won’t have you teasing her that way.”
    He ladled soup into a thick, generous bowl. “Maybe you should have a word with her before you flay into me.”
    “Don’t think I won’t.” She snatched up the bowl. “I know how you are with women, Shawn Gallagher.”
    He inclined his head. “Do you now?”
    “That I do.” She said it in her darkest, most forbidding tone, added a toss of her head, and stalked out.
     
     
    The minute she’d served Finkle his bowl and fussed over him enough to bring a rise of color to his cheeks, Darcy informed Aidan she was taking a fifteen-minute break. And was out the door before he could tell her different.
    In her hurry she forgot to take off her apron or grab her jacket, so her tip money jingled cheerfully in her pocket as she raced down to her family home.
    As a result, she was out of breath and pink of cheek when she dashed through the door. She headed straight upstairs to the door of the nursery, where Brenna was rolling varnish onto the freshly sanded floor.
    “I want to know what’s going on.”
    “Well, I’m putting on this first coat of sealer. It takes a day or two to dry good and hard. Then I’ll put on another, and that will be that.”
    “With you and Shawn. Damn it, Brenna, you can’t go around letting him kiss you that way. People’ll get the wrong impression.”
    Brenna kept rolling. She hadn’t worked up the nerve to look at her friend. “Actually, I imagine they’d get the right one. I should’ve told you, Darcy, I just didn’t know how.”
    Darcy braced herself with a hand on the doorjamb as the blood drained out of her face. “There’s—there’s something to tell me?”
    “Well, not so much, really. But not for lack of trying on my part.” Time to face the music, Brenna told herself, and she turned around. “I want to sleep with him. That’s all.”
    “You want to—” Because her throat had snapped shut, Darcy broke off and rubbed a hand over it. “You want to sleep with Shawn? Well, why?”
    “The usual reasons.”
    Darcy started to speak, then raised a hand to hold Brenna off while she gathered her own thoughts. “All right, I’m thinking. You’ve been in somewhat of a sexual drought just recently, so I can see you’d . . . No, no, I’m not quite seeing. It’s Shawn we’re speaking of here. Shawn who’s been a thorn in both our sides since we were babies.”
    “Sure and it’s an oddity, I admit. But the thing here is, Darcy, I’ve had a bit of a . . . of a yen for him for . . . well, forever. I just thought it was time to act on it or I’d always have one, and where would that get me?”
    “I’m sitting down.” She did so, right in the doorway. “You acted on it.”
    “I did, and he was as surprised as you are by the idea, at least initially. And he wasn’t very flattering about it, either. But he’s in the way of interested now. It’s just that I’ve discovered this is yet one more thing you can’t rush Shawn over. And it’s fair to killing me.”
    Meticulously, she coated her roller with varnish and spread it thin and smooth. “I’m sorry you’re upset about it. I’d hoped that we could just get it done, so to speak, with no one the wiser.”
    “Don’t you have any feelings for him, then?”
    “Of course I do.” Brenna’s head came up again. “Of course I do, Darcy. We’re all like family. This is just . . . it’s just different.”
    “It’s different, that’s the truth.” Struggling to adjust, Darcy sighed out a breath. “I was going to protect you from him—knowing that he has a way with women that can make them softheaded over him, and him barely noticing half the time. But now that I’ve heard what you’ve said, Brenna, I have to turn that coin over.”
    Genuinely surprised, Brenna set her roller on the end of the pan. “You think he needs protecting from me? Darcy, I’m not exactly your femme fatale sort of woman.” She spread her arms, knowing very well how she looked in her grubby work clothes and battered boots. “I think Shawn’s safe from the likes of me.”
    “Then you don’t understand him, not in his heart. There’s romance in him, the kind of dreaminess that builds castles in the air. He has a delicacy of feeling. He’d cut off his arm before he’d cause hurt to another. Cut them both off because he caused a moment’s pain to someone he cared for. And he cares for you. It’s not so far a step from caring