The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

plan, without effort, it was . . . she was everything.
    Part of him was thrilled. He wasn’t incapable of love. But there was just enough fear snaking through that thrill to remind him to be cautious. Be careful.
    He went to the back door, opened it to cool his head with air gone damp and misty. He needed a clear head to deal with Darcy.
    Magic, she’d said. There was magic tonight. He believed that, and was beginning to accept that there had been magic all along. In her, in this place. Maybe it was fate, and maybe it was luck. He’d have to work out if that luck was good or bad. Loving Darcy wasn’t going to be a smooth and easy road. Then again, he’d never really wanted the smooth and easy.
    He didn’t want what his grandparents had—the chill formality of their marriage with no passion, with no humor or affection. There’d never be anything like chilly formality with a woman like Darcy.
    He wanted her, and would figure out how to keep her. He didn’t doubt that. It was just a matter of calculating what to offer, how to offer, and when to offer what she wouldn’t be able to resist.
    The last echo of the dream drifted back to him. Give what’s only yours to give.
    He closed the words out, shut the door. He’d had enough of magic for one night.

SEVENTEEN

    T HE MORNING WAS misty. Darcy woke to light gray with rolling fog, and the bed empty beside her. There was nothing new in either. The fog would burn off before long if it was meant to. And as far as she could tell, Trevor was always up before dawn.
    The man was a robot when it came to such matters.
    She rolled over, wishing he was there to cuddle up against and knowing that because he wasn’t she wouldn’t sleep for wondering what he was up to. She supposed neither of them had gotten a reasonable night’s sleep since they’d become lovers. But running on sexual energy seemed to be working.
    She felt wonderful.
    She rose to take her robe from the hook in the closet. She had clothes in there as well and other things she deemed necessary for basic living throughout the cottage. It was a kind of living together they were doing, she knew, and had been all summer. Though neither of them mentioned it. In fact, they took great pains to avoid the subject, as if it were politics or religion.
    He had a few things in her rooms over the pub, for the times he stayed there. And though it was a first for her, this having her things on a man’s shelf and his on hers, it had been a casual process, this shifting of items from place to place and melding of homes and lifestyles. Casual, she thought as she walked into the bath to turn on the shower, because that’s how they treated the entire business between them.
    Yet there had been nothing casual in what had happened the night before. The scope of it was . . . She stepped under the spray, closing her eyes, tilting back her head. It was beyond anything she’d experienced before, anything she’d known two people could create between them.
    It had to have been the same for him. He couldn’t have touched that way, been touched by her that way, unless he felt something deep and something true.
    Lovemaking. Dreamily, she circled soap over her wet skin while the steam rose and closed her in. She hadn’t understood what that meant before Trevor. Not what it could mean. Vulnerability. She’d never realized that being vulnerable to someone else could be beautiful. Safe and warm and lovely. Just as knowing that for that stretch of time, in that soft world, he’d been vulnerable as well.
    Here, at last, was a man she could open herself to completely, could promise herself to. And trust, and love, and cherish. They would spend their lives together, going wherever fate took them, grabbing hold of what life offered and making more from it. Through rushed days or quiet nights, in solitude or crowds. Making children, building homes.
    She would make her mark beside him, and open all the doors she’d always longed to pass through.
    It was possible to have everything after all, she thought. All you needed first was love.
    He heard her singing of it when he stepped into the bedroom, of love and longing. It made him ache. He stood, while her voice slipped through the door she hadn’t quite closed and twined around him. He waited until her song ended, until he saw her moving around the room through the narrow opening.
    He’d spent part of his wakeful night deciding just what to do about her.
    He gave the door a quick knock with