The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

gives me such satisfaction. Can’t I, just for this little piece of time, indulge myself with something that doesn’t have any solid, guaranteed-practical purpose or goal?
    If it’s therapy, it’s time I let it work. It’s not doing any harm. In fact, I think—I hope—it’s doing me some good. I feel attracted to the writing. That’s an odd term to use, but it fits. Writing attracts me, the mystery of it, the way words fit together on a page to make an image or a point or just to be there, sounding.
    Seeing my own words on the page is thrilling. There’s a wonderful kind of conceit in reading them, knowing they’re mine. Part of that terrifies me because it’s so incredibly exciting. For so much of my life I’ve turned away, backed away, hidden away from anything that’s frightening. Even when it is thrilling as well.
    I want to feel substantial again. I yearn for confidence. And under it all, I have a deep and nearly crushed-out delight in the fantastic. How it was nearly crushed and by whom isn’t really important. Not now that I find the glimmer of it’s still there, inside me. Enough of a glimmer for me to be able to write, at least in secret, that I want to believe in the legends, in the myths, in the faeries and the ghosts. What harm is there in that? It can’t possibly hurt me.
     
    No, she thought, leaning back again, resting her hands in her lap. Of course it can’t hurt me. It’s harmless and it makes me wonder. It’s been too long since I really let myself wonder.
    Letting out a long breath, she closed her eyes and felt nothing but the sweetness of relief. “I’m so glad I came here,” she said aloud.
    She rose to look out the window, satisfied that she’d used her writing to fight off the threat of despair. Her days here, nights here, were soothing some threatening storm inside her. These little moments of joy were precious.
    She turned away from the window, wanting the air and the outdoors. There she would ponder the other aspect of her new life.
     
    Aidan Gallagher, she thought. Gorgeous, somehow exotic, and inexplicably interested in solid, sensible Jude F. Murray. Talk about the fantastic.
    Perhaps the time spent with Aidan wasn’t quite sosoothing, she admitted, though she was careful enough to arrange things so they were never alone. Still, the lack of privacy didn’t stop him from flirting, from indulging himself in those long looks he’d spoken of, or the slow, secret smiles, the lazy brush of a hand over her arm, her hair, her cheek.
    And what was wrong with that? she asked herself as she carried a fresh bouquet of flowers over the hill to Maude’s grave. Every woman was entitled to a flirtation. Maybe, unlike the blossoms in her hand, she was a slow bloomer, but better late than never.
    She badly wanted to bloom. The idea of it was as thrilling, as frightening, as exciting as writing.
    Wasn’t it wonderful to discover that she liked being flirted with, being looked at as if she was pretty and desirable. For God’s sake, if she stayed in Ireland the full six months, she’d be thirty before she saw Chicago again, so it was high time she felt pretty, wasn’t it?
    Her own husband had never flirted with her. And if memory served, his highest compliment on her appearance had been telling her she looked quite nice.
    “A woman doesn’t want to be told she looks nice,” Jude muttered as she sat down beside Maude’s grave. “She wants to be told she’s beautiful, sexy. That she looks outrageous. It doesn’t matter if it’s not true.” She sighed and laid the flowers against the headstone. “Because for the moment, when the words are said and the words are heard, it’s perfect truth.”
    “Then may I say you’re as lovely as the flowers you carry on this fine day, Jude Frances.”
    She looked up quickly and into the bold blue eyes of the man she’d met once before in this same spot. Eyes, she thought uneasily, that she so often saw in dreams. “You move quietly.”
    “It’s a place for a quiet step.” He crouched down withthe soft grass and bright flowers adorning Maude’s grave between them.
    The water of the ancient well murmured like a pagan chant.
    “And how are you faring in Faerie Hill Cottage?”
    “Very well. Do you have family here?”
    His bright eyes clouded as they skimmed over the stones and high grass. “I have those I remember, and who remember me. I once loved a maid and would have offered her everything I had. But I forgot to offer her