The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

started to speak, then closed her mouth.
    “No, have your say.” Aidan gave her hand a squeeze. “You’re part of this.”
    “Well, I think he will agree. After some negotiations and posturing and perhaps a few more adjustments. You may have to give a bit more, but in the end you’ll have fairly close to what you’re after—because in the end, all parties want the same thing.”
    “Magee wants his theater,” Darcy put in.
    “More than that.” In an automatic gesture, Jude slapped Shawn’s hand before he could sneak Finn a biscuit. “He has a reason for choosing this place, and the kind of man who helms that successful a business can indulge himself from time to time. His people came from here,” she went on. “His great-uncle was engaged to my great-aunt.”
    “Of course.” Shawn tapped a finger against the whiskey bottle as it came to him. “John Magee who was lost in the first great war. His youngest brother—Dennis, was it—went off to America to make his fortune. I didn’t put it together before now.”
    “I don’t know how much sentiment is in the motive for this Magee selecting Ardmore,” Jude went on, “but it’s bound to be part of the motivation. If this Magee had anything like my background, he grew up on stories of Ireland, and of this area in particular. Now he wants a more tangible tie with the place his family came from. I understand that.”
    “That Yank sentiment over ancestors.” Amused, Darcy helped herself to the whiskey. “I’ll never understand it. Ancestors . . . sure and they’ve been dead for long years, haven’t they? But if sentiment helps glue the deal, that’s fine with me.”
    “That’ll be part of it, but—sorry, it’s the psychologist in me again—he’ll also have his eye on profit. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have one of the largest companies in the States. And for the same reasons, he’ll have his eye on his reputation.”
    “And ours will be on our own.” Shawn lifted his glass.
    “You’ve quite the reputation, don’t you?” Darcy sent Shawn a sour smile.
    “Not as well rounded as yours, darling.”
    “At least I don’t go around seducing childhood friends.”
    Slowly, and with a dangerous gleam in his eye, he set his glass down again. Before feathers could fly, Aidan stretched an arm between them. “Now what? What’s all this?”
    “Ah, she’s got her nose out of joint because I kissed Brenna.”
    “Well, there’s nothing to squabble about . . .” Aidan’s hand dropped onto the table. “Brenna O’Toole?”
    “Of course Brenna O’Toole.”
    “What were you doing kissing our Brenna?”
    “Aidan.” Jude tugged on his sleeve. “This is Shawn’s business.”
    “It’s ours as it’s Brenna.”
    “Mother of God. It’s not as if I grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the kitchen floor to force myself on her in a carnal fashion while she tried to fight me off.”
    “You were on the kitchen floor?”
    “We were not.” At his wits’ end, Shawn pressed his fingers to his eyes. “A man can’t have a simple life in this family. I kissed Brenna, and not for the first time. Neither do I plan on it being the last. And I fail to see why that’s such a puzzlement to everyone who knows us. And an outrage as well.”
    Darcy folded her hands. She’d learned something she’d hoped to by the poking at him. He hadn’t mentioned that it was Brenna who’d initiated the shift in relationship. With another man she’d chalk it up to ego. But with Shawn she knew it was instinctive protection of the woman involved.
    The fact both pleased and worried her.
    “It’s just . . . surprising,” Aidan said.
    “I’m not outraged.” Darcy sent Shawn a sweet, sisterly look. “But puzzled I am. After all, Brenna’s seen you naked already—some years ago, to be sure, but still such things linger in the mind. And having had a good look at your equipment, I can’t think why she’d be the least bit interested.”
    “That’s a question you’ll have to put to her.” He wanted to leave it at that, dignified, dismissive, but it rankled. “I wasn’t more than fifteen, and the water was cold. A man’s not at his best just out of frigid water, you know.”
    “That’s your story, son, and you stick with it.”
    “And you shouldn’t have been looking in that direction. But you always were a perverted sort.”
    “Why shouldn’t I have looked? Everyone else was. He lost his trunks in the sea,” she explained to Jude, “and