The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

Yours shines, Darcy, and always has.”
    “I could do it,” she said quietly. “I believe I could, and not make a mess of it. More, and better, I think I’d like it. Attention,” she said with a glint in her eye, “is food and drink to me.”
    “You’d have a banquet this way, wouldn’t you?”
    “I would. Trevor had me go up and talk to his man this morning. Nigel, from London. He didn’t paint a picture that was all rose and gilt, and I appreciated that. It would be hard work.”
    “You know how to work hard. And how to dance around the task when you’ve had enough, which is almost as important.”
    Another brick of worry tumbled off her shoulder. “I wouldn’t have to dance if you weren’t such a slave driver. And I have a feeling Trevor’s cut from the same cloth. He’ll push me, and I won’t always like it.”
    “It sounds as if you’ve decided.”
    “I suppose I have.” She waited a moment, and discovered she felt relief instead of excitement. The excitement, she thought, would come. “I haven’t quite put it all in its place as yet, and I’m not ready to tell Trevor. I prefer letting him dangle a bit longer, and perhaps nudging him toward sweetening the pot.”
    “There’s my girl.”
    “Wheeling a deal’s the Gallagher way. There’s more still.” Holding her breath, she took the stone from her pocket, held it out.
    It wasn’t surprise she saw in his eyes so much as acknowledgment, then a kind of resignation. “I knew you’d be the third. I didn’t want to think about it.”
    “Why?”
    He looked at her then, eye to eye. “My girl,” he murmured.
    The force of love was so fierce it nearly dropped her. “Oh, Aidan, you’ll make me cry again.”
    “We can’t have that.” To give them both time to compose, he got two bottles of water from under the bar. “So, you went up to Old Maude’s grave?”
    “No. Tower Hill.” She took the water, drank deeply when she realized her throat was dust-dry. “There are flowers blooming over John Magee now. I was hardly surprised to see him. Carrick, I mean. Still, my heart shook.”
    She pressed her fist to it, and in the fist she held the stone. “It’s a wonder, isn’t it? He looks sharp, Carrick does, and bold. But behind his eyes is sorrow. Love is such a tangle.”
    “Do you love Trevor?”
    Because it seemed hot against her heart, she lowered the stone. “Yes. It’s not what I thought it would be. It’s not soft and easy, and it sure as hell doesn’t make me feel like a queen. There’s been a change in me since the minute I looked out my window and saw him. There might not have been anyone else there for a space of time, and so I should have known it was already too late to stop it.”
    He knew that feeling very well, and the stuttering nerves that went with it. “And would you, if you could?”
    “I think I would. Stop it or slow it or something until I could get my breath steady. Or the man could catch up with me. He keeps himself one step back. It’s a cold step and a deliberate one. I understand it, as I’ve taken it often enough myself. He wants me.”
    She said it musingly, then caught Aidan’s wince. “Oh, don’t go male and brotherly on me now when you’ve been doing so well.”
    “I am male and your brother.” He shifted, and now he drank deep as well. “But go on.”
    “There’s passion, and love would be bland without it.
    “There’s a caring that stops it from being nothing but heat. But that step, the chill in it, stops it all just short of . . . trust,” she decided. “And acceptance.”
    “One of you has to take the step forward instead of back.”
    “I want it to be him.”
    There was a trace of her old arrogance in her tone. It worried Aidan as much as it amused him. She opened her fingers, letting the stone rest on her palm where, like a heart, it pulsed its blue light.
    “Carrick showed me things, amazing things. I could have them, he said. I’ve only to wish for it. Riches and excitement, fame and glory, love and beauty. To wish for it, but only one wish, one choice.”
    “What do you want?”
    “All of it.” She laughed, but there was something brittle in the sound that broke his heart. “I’m selfish and greedy and want all. I want everything I can snatch up and hold, then I want to go back and get more. Why can’t I want the simple and the ordinary and the quiet, Aidan? Why can’t I be content with easy dreams?”
    “You’re so hard on yourself, mavourneen .