“Brianna can keep an eye on herself,” said the woman in question as she came back into the kitchen. “Gray, leave some of those tarts for Rogan.”

“See?”

Gray merely sneered at Maggie and pulled his wife down in the chair beside him. “Aren’t you hungry, Murphy?”

Because that unblinking stare was beginning to annoy her, Shannon drummed her fingers on the table. “Mr. Muldoon’s too busy staring at me to bother eating.”

“Clod,” Maggie muttered and jabbed Murphy with an elbow.

“I beg your pardon.” Murphy snatched up his teacup hastily enough to have it slop over the rim. “I was woolgathering is all. I should get back.” And maybe when he returned to his own fields he’d find his sanity waiting. “Thank you, Brie, for the tea. Welcome to Ireland, Miss Bodine.”

He grabbed his cap, stuffed it on his head, and hurried out.

“Well, never did I think to see the day that Murphy Muldoon left his plate full.” Baffled, Maggie rose to take it to the counter. “I’ll just take it for Rogan.”

“Yes, do,” Brianna said absently. “Do you think he’s coming down with something? He didn’t look himself.”

Shannon thought he’d looked healthy enough, and with a shrug forgot the odd Mr. Muldoon and finished her tea.

Later when the sky was just losing its bloom of blue and edging toward gray, Shannon took a tour through Brianna’s back gardens. Her hostess had wanted her, quite clearly, to vacate the kitchen after the family’s evening meal. No particular fan of washing dishes, Shannon had agreed to the suggestion that she take some air and enjoy the quiet of evening.

It was certainly the place to do nothing, Shannon decided, intrigued as she strolled around the outside of a greenhouse. Though it appeared Brianna rarely took advantage of comfortable laziness.

What didn’t the woman do? Shannon wondered. She cooked, ran the equivalent of a small, exclusive hotel, cared for an infant, gardened, enticed a very attractive man, and managed to look like some magazine shot of Irish Country Times while she was at it.

After circling the greenhouse, she spotted a picturesque sitting area on the edge of a bed of impatiens and violas. She settled into the wooden chair, found it as comfortable as it looked, and decided she wouldn’t think about Brianna, or Maggie, or the household she was a temporary part of. She would, for just a little while, think of nothing at all.

The air was soft and fragrant. There was a pretty chiming from a copper hanging of fairies near a window close by. She thought she heard the low of a cow in the distance—a sound as foreign to her world as the legend of leprechauns or banshees.

Murphy’s farm, she supposed. She hoped, for his sake, he was a better farmer than conversationalist.

A wave of fatigue washed over her, the jet lag her nerves had held at bay for hours. She let it come now, cocoon her and blur the edges of too many worries.

And she dreamed of a man on a white horse. His hair was black and streaming behind him, and his dark cloak whipped in the wind and was beaded with the rain that spewed like fury from an iron-gray sky.

Lightning split it like a lance, speared its flash over his face, highlighting the high Celtic bones, the cobalt eyes of the black Irish, and the warrior. There was a copper broach at the cloak’s neck. An intricate twist of metal around a carving of a stallion’s reared head.

As if in sympathy, his mount pawed the chaotic air, then pounded the turf. They drove straight for her, man and beast, both equally dangerous, equally magnificent. She caught the glint of a sword, the dull sheen of armor sprayed with mud.

Her heart answered the bellow of thunder, and the rain slapped icily at her face. But there wasn’t fear. Her chin was thrust high as she watched them bullet toward her, and her eyes, narrowed against the rain, gleamed green.

In a spray of mud and wet the horse swerved to a halt no more than inches from her. The man astride it peered down at her with triumph and lust shining on his face.

“So,” she heard herself say in a voice that wasn’t quite hers. “You’ve come back.”

Shannon jerked awake, shaken and confused by the strangeness and the utter clarity of the dream. As if she hadn’t been asleep at all, she thought as she brushed the hair back from her face. But more remembering.

She barely had time to be amused at herself by the thought when her heart tripped back to double time. There was a man standing not a foot away, watching her.

“I beg your pardon.” Murphy stepped forward out of the shadows that were spreading. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you were napping.”

Miserably embarrassed, she pulled herself upright in the chair. “So you came to stare at me again, Mr. Muldoon?”

“No—that is, I . . .” He blew out a frustrated breath. Hadn’t he talked to himself sternly about just this behavior? Damn if he’d find himself all thick-tongued and soft-headed a second time around her. “I didn’t want to disturb you,” he began again. “I thought for a minute you’d come awake and had spoken to me, but you hadn’t.” He tried a smile, one he’d found usually charmed the ladies. “The truth of it is, Miss Bodine, I’d come back around to apologize for gaping at you during tea. It was rude.”

“Fine. Forget it.” And go away, she thought irritably.

“I’m thinking it’s your eyes.” He knew it was more. He’d known exactly what it was the moment he’d looked over and seen her. The woman he’d waited for.

The breath she huffed out was impatient. “My eyes?”

“You’ve fairy eyes. Clear as water, green as moss, and full of magic.”

He didn’t sound slow-witted now, she realized warily. His voice had taken on a musical cadence designed to make a woman forget everything but the sound of it. “That’s interesting, Mr. Muldoon—”

“Murphy, if it’s the same to you. We’re in the way of being neighbors.”

“No, we’re not. But Murphy’s fine with me. Now, if you’ll excuse—” Instead of rising as she’d intended, she shrank back in the chair and let out a muffled squeal. Something sleek and fast came charging out of the shadows. And it growled.

“Con.” It took no more than the single quiet syllable from Murphy to have the dog skidding to a halt and flopping his tail. “He didn’t mean to scare you.” Murphy laid a hand on the dog’s head. “He’s been for his evening run, and sometimes when he comes across me, he likes to play. He wasn’t growling so much as talking.”