The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

to take a blow I’d have dodged otherwise. Oh, and very well you might bite your cheek to hold back the grin, but I see your eyes laughing clear enough.”
    “I’m sure you’re mistaken.” Jude looked deliberately aside. “But I’ll make the coffee.”
    “And how’s your head faring this morning?” he asked as he followed her out and down the stairs.
    “It’s fine.”
    He lifted a brow. “No ill effects due to squeezing a bit too much of the grape?”
    “Maybe a little headache.” She was too proud of it to be embarrassed. “I took some aspirin.”
    “I’ve better than that for you.” He rubbed a hand casually over the back of her neck, miraculously hitting just the spot that made her want to purr, then moved to the counter as they entered the kitchen. The jar he picked up was filled with some dark and dangerous-looking red liquid.
    “Gallagher’s Fix. It’ll set you up right and tight.”
    “It looks awful.”
    “Not a half-bad taste all in all, though some say it needs a bit of acquiring.” He took a glass from the cupboard. “When a man serves drinks for a living, he’s honor-bound to have a cure for the morning after.”
    “It’s only a little headache.” She studied the glass he poured dubiously.
    “Then drink only a little, and I’ll fix you some breakfast.”
    “You will?”
    “A bit of this, a bit of that, and a little lie-me-down.” He nudged the glass on her. She was a bit pale and her eyes were shadowed. He wanted to cuddle her until she felt herself again. “You’ll wake up forgetting you had a hedonistic orgy last night.”
    “It wasn’t an orgy. There weren’t any men.”
    He grinned, fast and bright. “Next time invite me. Here now, sip a little and start the coffee, and some tea as well. I’ll see to the rest.”
    It seemed like a nice connection to the evening to have a handsome man cooking breakfast in her kitchen. That was one more thing that had never happened to her before.
    It was amazing, she thought, just how quickly, and how completely, a life could change. Jude sipped carefully, found the brew more tolerable than expected. Drinking the rest, she put on the kettle.
    “Jude, you’ve no sausage. You’ve no bacon.”
    The quiet shock in his voice amused her. “No, I don’t really eat it.”
    “Don’t eat it? How do you cook breakfast?”
    Because the shock wasn’t so quiet now, she couldn’t resist fluttering at him. Imagine, she thought, flirting before breakfast. “Usually by putting a piece of whole wheat bread in the toaster and pressing down the little lever.”
    “A single piece of toast?”
    “And a half a grapefruit or a cup of whatever fresh fruit I have on hand. But now and then, I confess, I go wild and have an entire bagel with low-fat cream cheese.”
    “And this is what a sensible person calls breakfast?”
    “Yes, a healthy one.”
    “Yanks,” Aidan shook his head, as he took out eggs. “Why is it you think you’ll live forever and why do you want to, I’d like to know, when you deny yourselves so many of the basic pleasures in life?”
    “Somehow I manage to get through day after day without gnawing on greasy pig meat.”
    “A little testy in the morning, are we? Well, you wouldn’t be if you’d eat a proper breakfast. But we’ll do what we can for you.”
    She turned, prepared to snarl at him, but with the hand that wasn’t holding the eggs, he cupped the back of her neck and nudged her up against him, then nipped her bottom lip. Before she’d recovered from that, he was followingup the quick bite with a long, soft kiss that drained what few thoughts were left in her head.
    “Do you have to do that before breakfast?” Brenna complained.
    “Aye.” Aidan ran that wonderful hand down Jude’s spine, then up again. “And after, if I have my way about it.”
    “Bad enough you come in, stomping about and waking a body up.” Scowling, and wearing the robe she’d wrapped herself in the night before, Brenna headed straight for the jar and poured some Gallagher’s Fix into a glass. Gulping it down, she eyed Aidan narrowly. “Are you making breakfast then?”
    “I’m about to. You’re looking a bit peaked this morning, Mary Brenna. Do you want a kiss as well?”
    She sniffed, then grinned at him. “I wouldn’t mind it.”
    He obliged her by putting the eggs aside and stepping up to lift her off the floor by her elbows. When she whooped, he planted a loud, smacking kiss on her lips. “There you have it, and