“Brianna.” He waited until she stopped retreating, until her eyes lifted to his again. “You have an incredibly appealing face.”

As compliments went, she wasn’t sure how this one fit. She nodded. “Thank you. I like yours.”

He cocked his head. “Just how careful do you want to be about this?" It took her a moment to understand, and another to find her voice. “Very,” she managed. “I think very.”

Gray watched her disappear into the house before he turned back to the job at hand. “I was afraid of that,” he muttered.

Once she was on her way—the Fiat’s engine definitely needed an overhaul—Gray took a long walk over the fields. He told himself he was absorbing atmosphere, researching, priming himself to work. It was a pity he knew himself well enough to understand he was working off his response to Brianna.

A normal response, he assured himself. She was, after all, a beautiful woman. And he hadn’t been with a woman at all for some time. If his libido was revving, it was only to be expected.

There had been a woman, an associate with his publishing house in England, whom he might have tumbled for. Briefly. But he’d suspected that she’d been much more interested in how their relationship might have advanced her career than in enjoying the moment. It had been distressingly easy for him to keep their relationship from becoming intimate.

He was becoming jaded, he supposed. Success could do that to you. Whatever pleasure and pride it brought carried a price. A growing lack of trust, a more jaundiced eye. It rarely bothered him. How could it when trust had never been his strong point in any case? Better, he thought, to see things as they were rather than as you wanted them to be. Save the I wants for fiction.

He could turn his reaction to Brianna around just that way. She would be his prototype for his heroine. The lovely, serene, and composed woman, with secrets in her eyes and ice floes, banked fires, and conflicts stirring beneath the shell.

What made her tick? What did she dream of, what did she fear? Those were questions he would answer as he built a woman out of words and imagination.

Was she jealous of her stunningly successful sister? Did she resent her demanding mother? Was there a man she wanted and who wanted her?

Those were questions he needed to answer as he discovered Brianna Concannon.

Gray began to think he would need to combine them all before he could tell his tale.

He smiled to himself as he walked. He would tell himself that, he thought, because he wanted to know. And he had no qualms whatsoever about prying into someone’s private thoughts and experiences. And no guilt about hoarding his own.

He stopped, turned a slow circle as he looked around him. Now this, he decided, was a place a person could lose himself in. Roll after roll of glistening green fields bisected with gray stone walls, dotted with fat cows. The morning was so clear, so shining, that he could see the glint of window glass in cottages in the distance, the flap of clothes hung out on lines to dry in the breeze.

Overhead the sky was a bowl of swimming blue—postcard perfect. Yet already, at the west rim of that bowl, clouds were swarming together; their purple-edged tips threatened storm.

Here, in what seemed to be the center of a crystallized world, he could smell grass and cow, hints of the sea carried on the air, and the faint, faint scent of smoke from a cottage chimney. There was the sound of wind in the grass, the swish of cows’ tails, and the steady trumpet of a bird who celebrated the day.

He almost felt guilty about bringing even fictional murder and mayhem to such a place. Almost.

He had six months, Gray thought. Six months before his next book hit the stands and he flung himself, as cheerfully as possible, into the fun house ride of book tours and press. Six months to create the story that was already growing inside his head. Six months to enjoy this little spot in the world, and the people in it.

Then he would leave it, as he had left dozens of other spots, hundreds of other people, and go on to the next. Going on was something he excelled at.

Gray swung over a wall and crossed the next field.

The circle of stones caught his eye and his imagination immediately. He had seen greater monuments, had stood in the shadow of Stonehenge and felt the power. This dance was hardly more than eight feet, the king stone no taller than a man. But finding it here, standing silent among grazing, disinterested cows, seemed wonderful to him.

Who had built it, and why? Fascinated, Gray rounded the outside circumference first. Only two of the lintels remained in place, the others having fallen off in some long-ago night. At least he hoped it had been at night, during a storm, and the sound of them crashing to earth would have vibrated like a roar of a god.

He laid a hand on the king stone. It was warm from the sun, but carried an underlying iciness that thrilled. Could he use this, he wondered? Somehow weave this place and the echoes of ancient magic into his book?

Would there be murder done here? He stepped into the circle, into the center. A sacrifice of sorts, he mused. A self-serving ritual where blood would splash the thriving green grass, stain the base of the stones.

Or perhaps it would be love done here. A desperate and greedy tangle of limbs—the grass cool and damp beneath, the full white moon swimming overhead. The stones standing guard as the man and woman lost themselves in need.

He could imagine both with equal clarity. But the second appealed more, so much more, he could all but see Brianna lying on the grass, her hair fanned out, her arms lifted up. Her skin would be pale as milk, soft as water.

Her slim hips would arch, her slender back bow. And when he drove himself into her, she would cry out. Those neat, rounded nails would score his back. Her body would plunge like a mustang under his, faster, deeper, stronger, until . . .

“Good morning to you.”

“Jesus.” Gray jolted back. His breathing was unsteady, his mouth dust dry. Later, he promised himself, later it would be amusing, but for now he fought to rip himself out of erotic fantasy and focus on the man approaching the circle of stones.

He was dark, strikingly handsome, dressed in the rough, sturdy clothes of a farmer. Perhaps thirty, Gray judged, one of the stunning Black Irish who claimed jet hair and cobalt eyes. The eyes seemed friendly enough, a little amused.

Brianna’s dog was prancing happily at his heels. Recognizing Gray, Con galloped into the circle to greet him.

“An interesting spot,” the man said in a musical west county brogue.

“I didn’t expect to find it here.” Rubbing Con’s head, Gray came through a space between stones. “It isn’t listed on any of the tourist maps I have.”