That lack of awareness added one more layer, and that was sweetness.
Absently, with his eyes still gritty from a restless night, he began to sketch. Allena Kennedy from New York City, the square peg in what appeared to be a family of conformists. The woman who had yet to find herself, yet seemed perfectly content to deal with where she’d landed. A modern woman, certainly, but one who still accepted tales of magic.
No, more than accepted, he thought now. She embraced them. As if she’d just been waiting to be told where it was she’d been going all along.
That he wouldn’t do, refused to do. All his life he’d been told this day would come. He wouldn’t passively fall in, give up his own will. He had come back to this place at this time to prove it.
And he could almost hear the fates giggling.
Scowling, he studied what he’d drawn. It was Allena with her long eyes and sharp bones, the short and shaggy hair that suited that angular face and slender neck. And at her back, he’d sketched in the hint of faerie wings.
They suited her as well.
It annoyed the hell out of him.
Conal tossed the pad aside. He had work to do, and he’d get to it as soon as he’d had some tea.
The wind was still up. The morning sun was slipping through the stacked clouds to dance over the water. The only thunder now was the crash and boom of waves on the shore. He loved the look of it, that changing and capricious sea. His years in Dublin hadn’t been able to feed this single need in him, for the water and the sky and the rough and simple land that was his.
However often he left, wherever he went, he would always be drawn back. For here was heart and soul.
Turning away from the sea, he saw her.
She knelt in the garden, flowers rioting around her and the quiet morning sun shimmering over her hair. Her face was turned away from him, but he could see it in his mind. She would have that half-dreaming, contented look in her eyes as she tugged away the weeds he’d ignored.
Already the flowers looked cheerful, as if pleased with the attention after weeks of neglect.
There was smoke pluming from the chimney, a broom propped against the front wall. She’d dug a basket out of God knew where, and in this she tossed the weeds. Her feet were bare.
Warmth slid into him before he could stop it and murmured welcome in his ear.
“You don’t have to do that.”
She looked up at his voice, and she was indeed happy. “They needed it. Besides, I love flowers. I have pots of them all over my apartment, but this is so much better. I’ve never seen snapdragons so big.” She traced a finger on a spike of butter-yellow blooms. “They always make me think of Alice.”
“Alice?”
“In Wonderland. I’ve already made tea.” She got to her feet, then winced at the dirt on the knees of her trousers. “I guess I should’ve been more careful. It’s not like I have a vast wardrobe to choose from at the moment. So. How do you like your eggs?”
He started to tell her she wasn’t obliged to cook his breakfast. But he remembered just how fine the soup had been the night before. “Scrambled would be nice, if it’s no trouble.”
“None, and it’s the least I can do for kicking you out of your own bed.” She stepped up to the door, then turned. Her eyes were eloquent, and patient. “You could have stayed.”
“I know it.”
She held his gaze another moment, then nodded. “You had some bacon in your freezer. I took it out last night to thaw. Oh, and your shower dripped. It just needed a new washer.”
He paused at the doorway, remembered, as he hadn’t in years, to wipe his feet. “You fixed the shower?”
“Well, it dripped.” She was already walking into the kitchen. “You probably want to clean up. I’ll get breakfast started.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m grateful.”
She slanted him a look. “So am I.”
When he went into the bedroom, she did a quick dance, hugged herself. Oh, she loved this place. It was a storybook, and she was right in the middle of it. She’d awakened that morning half believing it had all been a dream. But then she’d opened her eyes to that misty early light, had smelled the faint drift of smoke from the dying fire, the tang of heather she’d put beside the bed.
It was a dream. The most wonderful, the most real dream she’d ever had. And she was going to keep it.
He didn’t want it, didn’t want her. But that could change. There were two days yet to open his heart. How could his stay closed when hers was so full? Love was nothing like she’d expected it to be.
It was so much more brilliant.
She needed the hope, the faith, that on one of the days left to her he would wake up and feel what she did.