The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

kissed it. “Isn’t she wonderful? Have you ever seen the like of her?”
    Jude merely kept her hand in his and laid them both over their baby. “Shawn. You have a beautiful talent. The more Brenna loves you, and admires that, the more impatient she is with you for hesitating to share it.”
    “Then she must love me a hell of a lot.”
    “Which is my cross to bear.” Brenna bit into a biscuit and glared at him.
    “I would think,” Jude continued, “having your family perform and record your music would be the perfect solution. You trust them, and they understand you. Won’t it be easier for you to take that step when you have that bond?”
    “It shouldn’t be because of me.”
    “Oh, just answer the question,” Darcy snapped. “You fish-faced jackass.”
    “Of course it’d be easier, but—”
    “Now shut up.” Darcy nodded smugly. “And let Jude finish. Because I think she’s about to come to me, and I love the attention.”
    “You don’t shrink from attention.” Jude picked up her tea to sip. She couldn’t sit much longer in one spot. Her back was starting to ache. “Performing would be second nature to you. You’d enjoy the stage, the lights, the applause.”
    Shawn snorted. “She’ll lap it up like cream. Vanity is our Darcy’s middle name.”
    “Can I help it if all the good looks in the family waited for me?”
    “I don’t know, as I haven’t seen your face without a layer of paint since you were thirteen.”
    “The pity of it is I have to see yours every time I turn around.”
    “Since looking at each other is the next thing to looking in a mirror, you could find something else to argue over.” Aidan held up a finger before either of his siblings could snipe. “Let Jude finish.”
    “I nearly am.” Amazing, she thought, how quickly she’d become used to the rhythm of this family. “I imagine you’d enjoy being onstage, playing to the audience. But, if the idea of it terrified you, if you hated the very thought of it, you’d do it anyway. You’d do anything for these two.”
    Though the statement was perilously close to the end of her conversation with Trevor, Darcy let out an amused snort. “I do to please myself.”
    “In a great many things,” Jude agreed. “This you’d do for Aidan, and Aidan’s the pub. You’d do it for Shawn, and Shawn’s the music. Last of all you’d do it for yourself. For the fun.”
    “The fun’s a factor, isn’t it?” Darcy rose, started to move casually to the stove, but Aidan caught her hand as she went by.
    He tugged, she resisted. He tugged again. With a little sigh, she went into his lap. “Tell me what you want, Darcy darling.”
    “A chance, I suppose.”
    He nodded, met Shawn’s eyes across the table. “Let’s give it a day or two to simmer. Then I’ll talk to Magee again and see just what’s up his sleeve.”

NINE

    T HE HUMS AND grumbles and thuds outside her window drove Darcy out of bed early every morning. Whenever she thought about it going on for nearly another year, she was tempted to bury her head under the pillow and smother herself.
    Since suicide wasn’t in her makeup, though, she tried to make the best of it. She could turn up her music loud, or just lie there and pretend she was in a big, noisy city.
    New York, Chicago. All that noise was really traffic, and people bustling under her lovely, lofty penthouse flat.
    Most of the time that worked. When it didn’t, she got up and spent quite a bit of time in the shower cursing.
    Otherwise, if she was in the mood, she’d wander over to look down and watch the work for a while. And look for Trevor. She didn’t allow herself to do it daily—or allow herself to be seen daily.
    That would be predictable.
    She liked looking at him, seeing what he was up to that morning. Some days he was standing on the edge of things, his hair blowing in the wind, discussing something or other with Brenna or Mick O’Toole in the way men did, with thumbs tucked into pockets and wise, sober expressions on their faces.
    And others—and she liked the others best—he was in the middle of the thing, hammering or hauling or drilling, stripped down to his shirtsleeves, and if the angle was right she could watch a ripple of muscle.
    It was odd. Not that she hadn’t always enjoyed taking a good, long look at men, but she couldn’t remember ever being so interested in the look of one man before. Or being so fascinated by studying him as he went about manual labor.
    He had a