"It isn't against you."
But he took her arms, his eyes insistent. "Tell me what I did."
"I don't know." She shouted it, then, shocked by the bitterness, pressed against him. "I don't know. And if I do somehow I can't tell you. This isn't my world, Murphy. It's not real to me."
"But you're trembling."
"I can't talk about this. I don't want to think about it. It makes everything more insane and impossible than it already is."
"Shannon-"
"No." She took his mouth in a desperate kiss.
"This won't always be enough to soothe either of us."
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"It's enough now. Take me back, Murphy. Take me back and we'll make it enough."
Demands wouldn't sway her, he knew. Not when she was clinging so close to her fears. Helpless to do otherwise, he kept her under his arm and led her back to the truck.
Gray saw the truck coming as he walked back to the inn and hailed it. The minute he stepped up to Shannon's window he could sense the tension. And he could see quite easily, though she'd done her best to mask it, that she'd been crying.
He sent Murphy an even look, exactly the kind a brother might aim at anyone who made his sister unhappy.
"I've just come back from your place. When you didn't answer the phone, Brianna started worrying."
"We went for a drive," Shannon told him. "I asked Murphy to take me to Loop Head."
"Oh." Which explained quite a bit. "Brie was hoping we could go out to the gallery. All of us."
"I'd like that." She thought the trip might dispel the lingering depression. "Could you?" she asked Murphy.
"I have some things to see to." He could see it would disappoint her if he made excuses, and that she wouldn't talk to him now in any case. "Could you hold off for an hour or two?"
"Sure. We'll take Maggie and the monster with us. Rogan's already out there. Come by when you're ready."
"I need to change," Shannon said quickly. She was already opening the door as she glanced back at Murphy. "I'll wait for you here, all right?"
"That's fine. No more than two hours." He nodded toward Gray, then drove off.
"Tough morning?" Gray murmured.
"In several ways. I can't seem to talk to him about what happens next." Or what happened before, she admitted.
"What does happen next?"
"I have to go back, Gray. I should have left a week ago." She leaned into him when he draped an arm over
her shoulder, and looked out over the valley. "My job's on the line."
"The old rock and a hard place. I've been there a few times. No way to squeeze out without bruises." He led her through the gate, down the path, and to the steps. "If I were to ask you what you wanted in your life, for your life, would you be able to answer?"
"Not as easily as I could have a month ago." She sat with him, studying the foxglove and nodding columbine. "Do you believe in visions, Gray?"
"That's quite a segue."
"I guess it is, and a question I never figured I'd ask anyone." She turned to study him now. "I'm asking you because you're an American." When his grin broke out, hers followed. "I know how that sounds, but hear me out. You make your home here, in Ireland, but you're still a Yank. You make your living by creating fiction, telling stories, but you do it on modern equipment. There's a fax machine in your office."
"Yeah, that makes all the difference."
"It means you're a twentieth-century man, a forward-looking man who understands technology and uses it."
"Murphy has a top-of-the-line milk machine," Gray pointed out. "His new tractor's the best modern technology's come up with."
"And he cuts his own turf," Shannon finished, smiling. "And his blood is full of Celtic mystique. You can't tell me that part of him doesn't believe in banshees and fairies."
"Okay, I'd say Murphy's a fascinating combination of old Ireland and new. So your question to me is do I believe in visions." He waited a beat. "Absolutely."
"Oh, Grayson." Frustrated, she sprang up, strode two paces down the path, turned, and strode back. "How can you sit there, wearing Nikes and a Rolex and tell me you believe in visions?"
He looked down at his shoes. "I like Nikes, and the watch keeps pretty good time."
"You know very well what I mean. You're not going to have any trouble rolling into the twenty-first century, yet you're going to sit there and say you believe in fifteenth-century nonsense."
"I don't think it's nonsense, and I don't think it's stuck in the fifteenth century, either. I think it goes back a whole lot further, and that it'll keep going through several more millenniums."
"And you probably believe in ghosts, too, and reincarnation, and toads that turn into princes."
"Yep." He grinned, then took her hand and pulled her down again. "You shouldn't ask a question if the answer's going to piss you off." When she only huffed, he toyed with her fingers. "You know when I came to this part of Ireland, I had no intention of staying. Six months maybe, write the book, and pack up. That's the way I worked, and lived. Obviously Brianna's the main reason I changed that. But there's more. I recognized this place."