Briarwood Cottage (7 page)

From that day forward, Cass had been the only woman for him. Google “animal magnetism” and you’d undoubtedly find their picture. And despite her refusal to admit it after that debacle in Egypt, he’d always be the only man for her.

The challenge, Duncan had decided after hearing that she was on her way to Castlelough, would be to make the most of this serendipitous time together to remind her of what they’d once had. To convince her that while they could never go back to that innocent, sunset time they’d gotten married on a tropical beach, they
could
reclaim their once-in-a-lifetime bond.

One problem was the way they’d parted that morning at Shannon. Which he’d long ago accepted had been his damn fault. His only excuse for acting like an overbearing chauvinist male was the blood-chilling fear of losing her. Too many journalists had already been killed in the Middle East. The possibility of his bride becoming another statistic, one of those tragic fatality stories fellow correspondents would rush to file, had been unthinkable.

Which was why he’d lost his temper when she’d insisted on going to Egypt. A country she’d covered before, and one, as she’d pointed out at the time, that hadn’t been as dangerous as the one he’d been headed to. Unfortunately, his bone-chilling fear for her safety had been realized, making it one of the few times in his life Duncan wished to hell he’d been wrong.

When he’d first arrived in Cairo, harried and insane with worry, she’d looked utterly lost. Uncharacteristically vulnerable and tragically broken. But even as he’d sat beside her bed, listening to the doctor relate her various injuries, including the miscarriage, she hadn’t wept a single tear. Instead, she’d retreated into a cold, dark place, and nothing he’d attempted over the next six weeks together back in New York had managed to infiltrate it.

He’d always known what Cass was thinking. Or feeling. They’d been synced in a way Duncan had never felt with any other person. Enough so that he’d been naive, or arrogant, enough to believe the connection between them would be impossible to sever.

But he’d been wrong. Once they’d returned home to the States, he’d felt totally incapable of knowing what was going through that talented mind. Or how to reach her wounded, ice-encased heart.

When she’d told him that she no longer loved him and sent him away, she’d driven a stake through his heart. But even that hadn’t made him fall out of love with her. She might as well have tried to force the sun to stop rising in the morning. Or setting in the evening.

The thing to do, Duncan decided now, was to channel his inner Marine. Winning Cassandra Carpenter back was the most important mission he’d ever embark on.

And just like those other missions, failure was not an option.

Meanwhile, understanding she needed some time and space to adjust, he decided to write those damn stories for Winston. Because while there was nothing the billionaire network news titan couldn’t buy for himself, Duncan definitely owed him for sending him to Ireland.

W
ell. This certainly
wasn’t what she’d expected. Not that she’d known what to expect, which had been part of Cassandra’s problem. Unlike her überplanner, perfectionist cousin, a life bouncing back and forth between traveling the globe with her parents and staying on the commune with Sedona—whenever her mother and father took off for somewhere they felt was too dangerous for their daughter—had taught Cassandra to not only accept the unexpected but to thrive on it.

Until Egypt.

On their wedding day, as the sun had set into the sea in a dazzling red glow, Cassandra had realized that her entire life had become divided into
Before Duncan
and
After Duncan
.

Until that tumultuous, terrifying day when she’d lost that child she’d never gotten to share with her husband had taken over the top place.

But what, she wondered, as she watched Duncan put the plates into the dishwasher, if it might be possible to recapture what they’d had together? He’d always been an expert at hiding his thoughts, but unless she was totally misreading him, which could be possible since she wasn’t as sure of anything as she’d once been, he was pleased she’d shown up here.

After all, he’d gone to the trouble of shopping at the local store, asking the shopkeeper for menu advice, actually giving thought to a meal instead of dialing for takeout as they usually did on those rare occasions when they were together in New York.

Of course, the main reason for all that takeout Chinese and pizza was because they’d spent so much stolen time together making love.

Which hadn’t left much time for talking.

It occurred to her now that she knew little about her husband other than he came from old financial wealth, had dropped out of Princeton, and that his mother was a “functioning” alcoholic. She’d figured out for herself that he wasn’t close to his family when, months after their wedding, he was still dodging her questions about when she was going to meet James and Angela McCaragh.

Cassandra had spoken briefly with them on the phone the day after the wedding. James’s cool, patrician tone hadn’t invited familiarity, while Duncan’s mother, who, only a bit warmer, had informed Cassandra that she hoped for grandchildren.

Something that definitely hadn’t been in their plans. At least not in the near future. After all, it would have been impossible to care for a family while they were both chasing to all corners of the globe at a moment’s notice.

After Cassandra returned to New York from Egypt, Angela had called again late one night, but apparently the “functional” part of Duncan’s mother’s drinking problem hadn’t been in full operational mode. After five minutes of listening in on the painful rambling, Duncan had taken the phone away from Cassandra, calmly informed his mother they appreciated her call, and hung up.

And that had been that.

Despite everything she’d witnessed as a correspondent, Cassandra was, at heart, an optimist. She might have lost the ability to hope and dream, but there were more and more times, like now, when she could feel a flicker of spirit that had managed to survive.

After Egypt, she’d been so badly broken she hadn’t been certain that she’d ever be able to put herself back together again. But she had and she was growing stronger every day. Three months ago, she hadn’t even been able to leave Sedona’s apartment. Two months ago, she wouldn’t have thought she’d ever get back on a plane. Especially by herself. But she had gotten on that plane and come here today, divorce papers in hand, certain that her marriage was irrevocably broken.

Now, after his unexpected declaration, she was confused. And conflicted.

“Why don’t you take a nap?” Duncan suggested as her eyelids grew heavy. “Then later, maybe if you feel up to it, since scrambled eggs is pretty much the height of my culinary expertise, we can drive into town and get a late lunch or early supper at the pub.”

“As lovely as breakfast was, I am capable of feeding myself,” she said, not wanting him to think that just because the spark was still there between them she was going to leap into the flames.

“Of course you are. But you have to eat. And I have to eat. And if you could see the contents of my refrigerator, you’d understand why I’m suggesting letting someone else do the cooking.”

She could go to the market herself tomorrow, Cassandra decided. Meanwhile, with more important issues to deal with, this was not a hill to die on. Except…

Having dinner with Sedona and her friends in a familiar place was one thing. Going out in public with a man who drew attention wherever he went was a challenge she wasn’t sure she was prepared for.

“While you’re catching up on sleep, I’ll go track down something resembling a story for Winston,” Duncan suggested as her weary mind debated with her heart. “We can talk about what to do for dinner when I get back.”

As he carried her bags down the short hallway to the bedroom, Cassandra decided that as much as she wanted—needed—to settle matters, waiting until she was better-rested made sense.

After all, not only was Duncan stuck here for a month, she could work from anywhere, and it wasn’t as if she had a hard deadline. Dan Gagnon had been more than willing to take her stories whenever she turned them in.

The bedroom was as charming as the rooms she’d seen thus far. The interior stone walls had been painted white, the floor lake-blue. A black iron bed echoed the simple black frames of the photographs of local landscapes and children adorning the walls. A blue and white quilt on the bed had been turned down to reveal white sheets.

After stripping off her travel-rumpled clothing, Cassandra slid between those sheets that carried the clean, fresh scent of line drying she remembered all too well from their honeymoon, then fell like a stone into sleep.

U
nreasonably distracted by
his wife sleeping—alone—just down the hallway, Duncan headed into town to see what he could discover about the mythical Lady. Deciding that few would know what was going on in the town better than a bartender, he dropped back into the pub.

“So, has anyone in this town actually ever seen the Lady?” he asked Patrick Brennan, who was back behind his bar.

“I personally only know the stories second-and third-hand,” Patrick said. “But there are those who have more familiarity with the subject.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share names?”

“As it happens, I suspect Patrick would be referring to me,” a man sitting next to him at the bar commented. He held out a hand. “Michael Joyce. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

The name was instantaneously recognizable. Duncan narrowed his eyes and studied the man dressed in jeans, work boots, and a black fisherman’s sweater more closely. His hair was shot with strands of silver, and his features were more chiseled than the ones on the back of his award-winning books, but it was a face that Duncan knew well.

“Word gets around fast.”

“It does, indeed,” Patrick said as he dipped a pint glass into some sudsy water in the sink behind the bar. “Though, in this case, it’s not so much local gossip as for the fact that you happen to be speaking with your landlord.”

Okay. That was unexpected. “
You
own Briarwood Cottage?”

“That and a few others,” Michael Joyce said as he lowered a heavy mug of coffee to the bar. “As much as I enjoy farming, during the winter months when the land lies fallow, I found myself getting restive. So, I began restoring—”

“More like rebuilding from a rubble pile,” Patrick Brennan interjected.

“I was fortunate to have your brother doing most of the building while I served as a laborer,” Michael responded to Patrick. “Bram’s more than just a contractor. The way he can re-envision a famine cottage, keeping the historical bones while making it livable again, reminds me of those cathedral builders of old.”

“Don’t be telling him that,” Patrick said. “He can be insufferable enough to live with.”

The laugh they shared suggested a long and close friendship. A revolving door of first boarding schools and later Duncan’s vagabond life had precluded such relationships. There were many other reporters he was friendly with, but none he could actually call friends. He’d always been a loner.

Until Cass. Who’d been not only the woman he loved but his one true friend. Which was why, on the anniversary of their meeting this week, he’d admittedly gone off the rails and ended up in that brawl. Yet, showing the serendipitous nature of life, hadn’t that tumble brought him here to Ireland? Even if he’d searched the entire world, he couldn’t have found a better location to remind his wife of the connection they’d once shared.

“I’m impressed,” he said, returning to the conversation. “It’s obviously not new construction, but no way would I have guessed that it dates back to the 1800s.”

“It does indeed,” Joyce said. “That cottage, like Fair Haven, which was the first I restored, once belonged to my family. As did the castle, in ancient times. Though it’s true enough that some of the famine homes Bram and I have been salvaging were little more than ruins from a tragic time.”

“When their occupants left either on death carts to be put in the ground or coffin ships across the Atlantic to Canada and America,” Patrick said.

“Or Australia, often for the so-called crime of stealing a loaf of bread or rasher of bacon to feed a starving family.” An apple-cheeked man who brought to mind an ancient leprechaun sitting on the other side of Joyce joined the conversation. From his sour tone, he could have been talking about an event that had occurred yesterday, which wasn’t all that surprising, since Duncan had discovered early in his career that displaced populations tended to have very long memories.

“There are also those who’d be telling you that many of the residents never entirely left,” the elderly man added. “That the cottages would be haunted.”

“I’m not going to be one to discount the possibility that, given their former circumstances, some spirits would have found moving on a bit challenging,” Michael Joyce allowed. “But I’ve yet to hear a complaint, so if there were to be any ghosts hanging around, they’re benevolent ones who aren’t into disturbing the guests.”

“The woman who booked the cottage didn’t mention your being the owner.” Duncan would’ve been a great deal more eager about this trip had he known he’d be meeting a man he’d admired for so many years.

“That’s because all bookings are done anonymously through a property leasing agent,” the old man piped up again before Joyce could answer. “Our Michael is one who enjoys his privacy. Why, when he first arrived back in Castlelough, didn’t he act like an old hermit monk, living out there all alone on his farm? Then his daughter appeared out of the blue from the North and—”

“That would be a story for another time, Fergus,” Joyce said firmly.

Duncan didn’t need his journalism instincts to realize that the topic of Michael Joyce’s daughter, whatever its nature, was a sensitive one.

“I’ve studied all your books,” he said, returning the conversation to its original track in order to fill in the silence that had fallen. “Especially those from your war photojournalism days.”