“Do you think I’d miss an evening out with you?” With his free hand he circled her waist and swept her into a quick waltz.

Her face was already glowing. “I thought you were going to work.”

“I can always work.” Even as her lips curved, he was lowering his to them.

Shannon waited a beat, then another before clearing her throat. “Maybe I should wait outside, in the car. With my eyes closed.”

“Stop it, Grayson, you’re embarrassing Shannon.”

“No, I’m not. She’s just jealous.” And he winked at the woman he already considered his sister-in-law. “Come on, pal, we’ll find a guy for you.”

“No, thanks, I just got rid of one.”

“Yeah?” Always interested, Gray handed the baby to his wife so that he could circle Shannon’s waist. “Tell us all about it. We live for gossip around here.”

“Leave her be,” Brianna said with an exasperated laugh. “Don’t tell him anything you don’t want to find in a book.”

“This wouldn’t make very interesting reading,” Shannon decided and stepped outside into the damp air. It had rained, and was raining still, just as predicted.

“I can make anything interesting.” Gray opened the car door for his wife with some gallantry, then grinned. “So, why’d you dump him?”

“I didn’t dump him.” It was all just absurd enough to brighten her mood. Shannon slid into the backseat and shook back her hair. “We parted on mutually amenable terms.”

“Yeah, yeah, she dumped him.” Gray tapped his fingers on the back of the seat as he eased into the road. “Women always talk prissy when they break a guy’s heart.”

“Okay, I’ll make it up.” Shannon flashed Gray a smile in the rearview mirror. “He crawled, he begged, he pleaded. I believe he even wept. But I was unmoved and crushed his still-bleeding heart under my heel. Now he’s shaved his head, given away all his worldly goods, and joined a small religious cult in Mozambique.”

“Not too shabby.”

“More entertaining than the truth. Which was we didn’t really share any more than a taste for Thai food and office space, but you’re welcome to use either version in a book.”

“You’re happier without him then,” Brianna said complacently. “And that’s what’s important.”

A little surprised at how simple it was, Shannon raised a brow. “Yes, you’re right.” Just as it was a great deal more simple than she had supposed to sit back and enjoy the evening.

O’Malley’s pub. It was, Shannon decided as she stepped inside, an old black-and-white movie starring Pat O’Brien. The air faintly hazed from cigarettes, the murky colors, the smoke-smudged wood, the men hunkered at the bar over big glasses of dark beer, the laughter of women, the murmuring voices, the piping tune in the background.

There was a television hung behind the bar, the picture on some sort of sporting event, the sound off. A man wearing a white apron over his wide girth glanced up and grinned broadly as he continued to draw another brew.

“So, you’ve brought the little one at last.” He set the pint down to let it settle. “Bring her by, Brie, let us have a look at her.”

Obliging, Brianna put Kayla, carrier and all, atop the bar. “She’s wearing the bonnet your missus brought by, Tim.”

“That’s a sweet one.” He clucked Kayla under the chin with a thick finger. “The image of you she is, Brianna.”

“I had something to do with it,” Gray put in as people began to crowd around the baby.

“Sure and you did,” Tim agreed. “But the good Lord in his wisdom overlooked that and gave the lass her mother’s angel face. Will you have a pint, Gray?”

“I will, of Guinness. What’ll you have, Shannon?”

She looked at the beer Tim O’Malley finished drawing. “Something smaller than that.”

“A pint and a glass,” Gray ordered. “And a soft drink for the new mother.”

“Shannon, this is Tim O’Malley building your Guinness.” Brianna laid a hand on Shannon’s shoulder. “Tim, this is my . . . guest, Shannon Bodine from New York City.”

“New York City.” With his hands moving with the ease and automation of long experience, Tim beamed into Shannon’s face. “I’ve cousins to spare in New York City. You don’t happen to be knowing Francis O’Malley, the butcher.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Bodine.” A man on the stool beside Shannon took a deep, considering drag from his cigarette, blew out smoke with a thoughtful air. “I knew a Katherine Bodine from Kilkelly some years back. Pretty as fresh milk was she. Kin to you, maybe?”

Shannon gave him an uncertain smile. “Not that I know of.”

“It’s Shannon’s first trip to Ireland,” Brianna explained. There were nods of understanding all around.

“I knew Bodines from Dublin City.” A man at the end of the bar spoke in a voice cracked with age. “Four brothers who’d sooner fight than spit. The Mad Bodines we called them, and every man son of them ran off and joined the IRA. That’d be back in . . . thirty-seven.”

“Thirty-five,” the woman beside him corrected and winked at Shannon out of a face seamed with lines. “I went out walking a time or two with Paddy Bodine, and Johnny split his lip over it.”

“A man’s got to protect what’s his.” Old John Conroy took his wife’s hand and gave it a bony squeeze. “There was no prettier lass in Dublin than Nell O’Brian. And now she’s mine.”

Shannon smiled into the beer Gray handed her. The couple were ninety if they were a day, she was sure, and they were holding hands and flirting with each other as if they were newlyweds.

“Let me have that baby.” A woman came out of the room behind the bar, wiping her hands on her apron. “Go, get yourself a table,” she said, gesturing Brianna aside. “I’m taking her back with me so I can spoil her for an hour.”

Knowing any protest was useless, Brianna introduced Shannon to Tim’s wife and watched the woman bundle Kayla off. “We might as well sit then. She won’t let me have the baby back until we leave.”

Shannon turned to follow, and saw Murphy.