The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

himself.
    He caught the scent the minute he stepped into the bedroom. Delicate, female, like rose petals freshly fallen onto dewy grass.
    “A ghost who wears perfume,” he murmured, oddly amused. “Well, if you’re modest turn your back.” So saying, he stripped where he stood, then walked into the bath.
    He spent the rest of his evening alone, catching up on paperwork, scanning the faxes that had come in on the machine he’d brought with him, shooting off replies. He treated himself to a beer and stood outside with it in the last of the dying light listening to the aching silence and watching stars pulse to life.
    Tim Riley, whoever the hell he was, looked to be right. There was no rain coming yet. The foundation he was building would set clean.
    As he turned to go back in, a streak of movement overhead caught his eye. A blur of white and silver across the darkening sky. But when he looked back for it, narrowing his eyes to scan, he saw nothing but stars and the rise of the quarter moon.
    A falling star, he decided. A ghost was one thing, but a flying horse ridden by the prince of the faeries was another entirely.
    But he thought he heard the cheerful lilt of pipes and flutes dance across the silence as he shut the door of the cottage for the night.

 
     
     
     
TWO
     
     
    D ARCY G ALLAGHER DREAMED of Paris. Strolling along the Left Bank on a perfect spring afternoon with the scent of flowers ripe in the air and the cloudless blue sky soaring overhead.
    And perhaps best of all, the weight of shopping bags heavy in her hands.
    In her dreams she owned Paris, not for a brief week’s holiday, but for as long as it contented her. She could stop to while away an hour or two at a sidewalk cafeÉ, sipping lovely wine and watching the world—for it seemed the whole of the world—wander by.
    Long-legged women in smart dresses, and the darkeyed men who watched them. The old woman on her red bicycle with her baguettes spearing up out of her bakery sack, and the tidy children in their straight rows marching along in their prim school uniforms.
    They belonged to her, just as the wild and noisy traffic was hers, and the cart on the corner bursting with flowers. She didn’t need to ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower to have Paris at her feet.
    As she sat sampling wine and cheese that had been aged to perfection, she listened to the city that was hers for the taking. There was music all around her, in the cooing of the ubiquitous pigeons and the swirling whoosh when they took wing, in the steady beep of horns, the click of high, thin heels on sidewalks, the laughter of lovers.
    Even as she sighed, blissfully happy, the thunder rolled in. At the rumble of it, she glanced skyward. Clouds spewed in from the west, dark and thick. The brilliant sunlight fell into that false twilight that precedes a storm. The rumble became a roar that had her leaping to her feet even while those around her continued to sit, to chat, to stroll as if they heard or saw nothing amiss.
    Snatching up her bags, she started to dash away, to safety, to shelter. And a bolt of lightning, sizzling blue at the edges, lanced into the ground at her feet.
    She woke with a start, the blood pounding in her ears and her own gasp echoing.
    She was in her own rooms over the pub, not in some freakish thunderstorm in Paris. She found some comfort in that, in the familiar walls and quiet light. Found more comfort when she sat up and saw the clothes and trinkets she’d treated herself to in Paris strewn around the room.
    Well, she was back to reality, she thought, but at least she’d bagged a few trophies to bring home with her.
    It had been a lovely week, the perfect birthday present to give herself. Indulgent, she admitted, taking such a big chunk of her savings that way. But what were savings for if a woman couldn’t use them to celebrate in a spectacular way her first quarter century of living.
    She would earn it back. Now that she’d had her first good taste of real travel, she intended to experience it on a more regular basis. Next year, Rome, or Florence. Or perhaps New York City. Wherever it was, it would be someplace wonderful. She would start her Darcy Gallagher holiday fund this very day.
    She’d been desperate to get away. To see something, almost anything that wasn’t what she saw every day of her life. Restlessness was a sensation she was accustomed to, even appreciated about herself. But this had been like a panther inside her, pacing and