Born in Fire, Page 4

  Two hundred and fifty pounds," she decided. A hundred of that was due to his gold cuff links.

  "I'll write you a check," Then he smiled, and Maggie realized she was grateful he didn't seem to use that particular weapon often. Lethal, she thought, watching the way his lips curved, his eyes darkened. Charm floated down on him, light and effortless as a cloud. "And though I'll add it to my personal collection—for sentiment, shall we say?—I could easily get double that for it at my gallery."

  " 'Tis a wonder you stay in business, Mr. Sweeney, soaking your clients that way."

  "You underestimate yourself, Miss Concannon." He crossed to her then, as if he knew he'd suddenly gained the upper hand. He waited until she'd tipped her head back to keep her eyes level with his. "That's why you need me."

  "I know exactly what I'm doing."

  In here." He lifted an arm to encompass the room. I've aeen that quite dramatically for myself. But the business world is a different matter."

  "I'm not interested in business."

  "Precisely," he told her, smiling again as if she'd answered a particularly thorny question. "I, on the other hand, am fascinated by it"

  She was at a disadvantage, sitting on the bench with him hovering over her. And she didn't care for it "I don't want anyone messing in my work, Mr. Sweeney. I do what I choose, when I choose, and I get along very well."

  "You do what you choose, when you choose." He picked up a wooden form from the bench as if to admire the grain. "And you do it very well. What a lots it would be for someone with your talent to merely get along. As to ... messing about with your work, I have no intention of doing so. Though watching you work was certainly interesting." His eyes cut from the mold back to her with a speed that made her jolt. "Very interesting."

  She pushed off the bench, the better to stand on her own feet To gain the room required, she shoved him aside. "I don't want a manager."

  "Ah, but you need one, Margaret Mary. You need one badly/'

  "A lot you know about what I'd be needing," she mumbled, and began to pace. "Some Dublin sharpie with fancy shoes."

  Twice as much, he'd said; her mind replayed his earlier words. Twice what she'd asked. And there was Mother to care for, and the bills to pay, and Sweet Jesus, the price of chemicals was murderous.

  "What I need's peace and quiet. And room." She whirled back at him. His very presense in the studio was crowding her. "Room. I don't need someone like you coming along and telling me we need three vases for next week, or twenty paperweights, or a half dozen goblets with pink stems. I'm not an assembly line, Sweeney, I'm an artist."

  Very calmly, he took a pad and a gold pen out of his pocket and began to write.

  "What are you doing there?"

  "I'm noting down that you're not to be given orders for vases, paperweights or goblets with pink stems."

  Her mouth twitched once before she controlled it "I won't take orders, at all.

  His eyes flicked to hers. "I believe that's understood. I own a factory or two, Miss Concannon, and know the difference between an assembly line and art. I happen to make my living through both."

  That's fine for you then." She waved both arms before setting her fists on her hips. "Congratulations. Why would you be needing me?"

  "I don't." He replaced the pen and pad. "But I want you."

  Her chin angled up. "But I don't want you."

  "No, but you need me. And there is where we'll complement each other. I'll make you a rich woman, Miss Concannon. And more than that, a famous one."

  He saw something flicker in her eyes at that. Ah, he thought, ambition. And he turned the key easily in the lock. "Do you create just to hide your gift on your own shelves and cupboards? To sell a few pieces here and there to keep the wolf from the door, and horde the rest? Or do you want your work appreciated, admired, even applauded?" His voice changed, subtly, into a tone of sarcasm so light it stabbed bloodlessly. "Or . . . are you afraid it won't be?"

  Her eyes went molten as the blade struck true. I'm not afraid. My work stands. I spent three years apprenticing in a Venice glass house, sweating as a pontil boy. I learned the craft there, but not the art. Because the art is in me." She thumped a hand on her chest "It's in me, and I breathe in and out into the glass. Any who don't like my work can jump straight into hell."

  "Fair enough. I'll give you a show at my gallery, and we'll see how many take the jump."

  A dare, damn him. She hadn't been prepared for it "So a bunch of art snobs can sniff around my work while they slurp champagne."

  "You are afraid."

  She hissed through her teeth and stomped to the door. "Go away. Go away so I can think. You're crowding my head.'"

  "We'll talk again in the morning." He picked up hii coat "Perhaps you can recommend a place I could stay the night. Close by."

  "Blackthorn Cottage, at the end of the road."

  "Yes, I saw it." He slipped into his coat. "Lovely garden, very trim."

  "Neat and tidy as a pin. You'll find the beds soft and the food good. My sister owns it, and she has a practical, homemaking soul."

  He lifted a brow at the tone, but said nothing. Then I trust I'll be comfortable enough until morning."

  "Just get out" She pulled open the door to the rain. "I'll call the cottage in the morning if I want to talk to you again."

  "A pleasure meeting you, Miss Concannon." Though it wasn't offered, he took her hand, held it while he looked into her eyes. "A greater one watching you work." On an impulse that surprised both of them, he lifted her hand to his lips, lingered just a moment over the taste of her skin. I'll be back tomorrow."

  "Wait for an invitation," she said, and closed the door smartly behind him.

  Chapter Four

  AT Blackthorn Cottage, the scones were always warm, the flowers always fresh and the kettle always On the boil. Though it was early in the season for guests, Brianna Concannon made Rogan comfortable in her serenely efficient manner, as she had all the other guests she's welcomed since that first summer after her father's death. She served him tea in the tidy, polished parlor where a fire burned cheerfully and a vase full of freesia scented the air.

  "I'll be serving dinner at seven, if that suits you, Mr. Sweeney." She was already thinking of ways to stretch the chicken she'd planned to cook so it would feed one more.

  That will be fine, Miss Concannon." He sipped die lea and found it perfect, a far cry from the chilly, sugar-laden soft drink Maggie had tossed at him. "You have a lovely place here."

  Thank you." It was, if not her only pride, perhaps her only joy. "If you need anything, anything at all, you've only to ask."

  "If I could make use of the phone?"

  "Of course." She started to step away to give him privacy, when he held up a hand, a signal of command to anyone who has served.

  The vase there on the table—your sister's work?"

  Brianna's surprise at the question showed only in the quick widening of her eyes. "It is, yes. You know of Maggie's work?"

  "I do. I have two pieces myself. And I've just purchased another even as it was made." He sipped his tea again, measuring Brianna. As different from Maggie as one piece of her work was from another. Which meant, he assumed, that they were the same somewhere beneath what the eye could see. "I've just come from her workshop."

  "You were in Maggie's workshop?" Only true shock would have driven Brianna to ask a question of a guest with such a tone of disbelief. "Inside?"

  "Is it so dangerous, then?"

  A hint of a smile crossed Brianna's face, lightening her features. "You seem to be alive and well."

  "Well enough. Your sister is an immensely talented woman."

  "That she is."

  Rogan recognized the same undercurrent of pride and annoyance in the statement as he had when Maggie had spoken of her sister. "Do you have other pieces of hers?"

  "A few. She brings them by when the mood strikes her. If you'll not be needing anything else at the moment, Mr. Sweeney, I'll see about d
inner."

  Alone, Rogan settled back with his excellent tea. An interesting pair, he thought, the Concannon sisters. Brianna was taller, slimmer and certainly more lovely than Maggie. Her hair was rose gold rather than flame and fell in soft curls to her shoulders. Her eyes were a wide, pale green, almost translucent Quiet, he thought, even a trifle aloof, like her manner. Her features were finer, her limbs softer, and she'd smelled of wildflowers rather than smoke and sweat. All in all she was much more the type of woman he found appealing. Yet he found his thoughts trailing back to Maggie with her compact body, her moody eyes and her uncertain temper. Artists, he mused, with their egos and insecurities, needed guidance, a firm hand. He let his gaze roam over the rose-colored vase with its swirls of glass from base to lip. He was very much looking forward to guiding Maggie Concannon.

  "So, is he here?" Maggie slipped out of the rain into the warm, fragrant kitchen.

  Brianna continued to peel potatoes. She'd been expecting the visit "Who is he?"

  "Sweeney." Crossing to the counter, Maggie snatched a peeled carrot and bit in. "Tall, dark, handsome and rich as sin. You can't miss him."

  "In the parlor. You can take in a cup and join him for tea."

  "I don't want to talk to him." Maggie hitched herself up on the counter, crossed her ankles.

  "What I wanted, Brie, love, is your opinion of him."

  "He's polite and well-spoken."

  Maggie rolled her eyes. "So's an altar boy in church."

  "He's a guest in my home—"

  "A paying one."

  "And I've no intention," Brianna went on without pause, "of gossiping about him behind his back."

  "Saint Brianna." Maggie crunched down on the carrot, gestured with the stub of it. "What if I were to tell you that he's after managing my career?"

  "Managing?" Brianna's hands faltered before they picked on the rhythm again. Peelings fell steadily on the newspaper she'd laid on the counter. "In what way?"

  "Financially, to start. Displaying my work in his galleries and talking rich patrons into buying it for great sums of money." She waved the remains of the carrot before finishing it off. "All the man can think about is making money."

  "Galleries," Brianna repeated. "He owns art galleries?"

  "In Dublin and Cork. He has interests in others in London and New York. Paris, too, I think. Probably Rome. Everybody in the art world knows Rogan Sweeney."

  The artworld was as removed from Brianna's life as the moon. But she felt a quick, warm pride that her sister could claim it "And he's taken an interest in your work."

  "Stuck his aristocrat's nose in is what he's done." Maggie snorted. "Calling me on the phone, sending letters, all but demanding rights to everything I make. Now today, he pops up on my doorstep, telling me that I need him. Hah."

  "And, of course, you don't."

  "I don't need anyone."

  "You don't, no." Brianna carried the vegetables to the sink to rinse. "Not you, Margaret Mary."

  "Oh, I hate that tone, all cold and superior. You sound just like Mother." She slid off the counter to stalk to the refrigerator. And because of it, she was swamped with guilt "We're getting along well enough," she added as she pulled out a beer. The bills are paid, there's food on the table and a roof over all our heads." She stared at her sister's stiff back and let out a sound of impatience. "It can't be what it once was, Brie."

  "You think I don't know that?" Brianna's lilting voice turned edgy. "Do you think I have to have mere? That I can't be content with what is?" Suddenly unbearably sad, she stared out the window toward the fields beyond. "It's not me, Maggie. "Tisn't me."

  Maggie scowled down at her beer. It was Brianna who suffered, Maggie knew. Brianna who had always been in the middle. Now, Maggie thought, she had the chance to change that. All she had to do was sell part of her soul.

  "She's been complaining again." "No." Brianna tucked a stray hair away in the knot at the nape of her neck. "Not really." "I can tell by the look on your face she's been in one of her moods—and taking it out on you." Before Brianna could speak, Maggie waved a hand. "She'll never be happy, Brianna. You can't make her happy. The good Lord knows I can't. She'll never forgive him for being what he was."

  "And what was he?" Brianna demanded as she

  turned around. "Just what was our father, Maggie?"

  "Human. Flawed." She set her beer down and walked to her sister. "Wonderful. Do you remember, Brie, the time he bought the mule, and was going to make a fortune having tourists snap pictures of it in

  a peaked cap with our old dog sitting on its back?"

  "I remember." Brie would have turned away, but Maggie grabbed her hands. "And I remember he lost more money feeding that cursed, bad-tempered mule than he ever did with his scheming."

  "Oh, but it was fun. We went to the Cliffs of Mohr, and it was such a bright summer day. The tourists swarming about and the music playing. And there was Da holding that stupid mule, and that poor old dog, Joe, as terrified of that mule as he would have been of a roaring lion."

  Brianna softened. She couldn't help it. "Poor Joe sitting and shivering with fear on that mule's back. Then that German came along, wanting a picture of himself with Joe and the mule."

  "And the mule kicked." Maggie grinned and picked up her beer again for a toast. "And the German screamed in three different languages white he hopped about on one foot. And Joe, terrified, leaped off and landed right on a display of lace collars, and the mule ran, scattering tourists. Oh, what a sight People shouting and running, ladies screaming. There was a fiddler there, remember? And he just kept playing a reel as if we'd all start dancing any moment."

  "And that nice boy from Killarney caught the mule's lead and dragged him back. Da tried to sell him the mule there and then."

  "And nearly did. It's a good memory, Brie."

  "He made many memories worth laughing over. But you can't live on laughter alone."

  "And you can't live without it, as she would. He was alive. Now it seems this family's more dead than he is."

  "She's ill," Brianna said shortly.

  "As she has been for more than twenty years. And ill she'll stay as long as she has you to tend to her hand and foot."

  It was true, but knowing the truth didn't change Brianna's heart "She's our mother."

  That she is." Maggie drained the beer and set it aside. The yeasty taste warred with the bitterness on her tongue. "I've sold another piece. I'll have money far you by the end of the month."

  "Im grateful for it. So is she."

  "The hell she is." Maggie looked into her sister's eyes with all the passion and anger and hurt boiling beneath. "I don't do it for her. When there's enough you'll hire a nurse and you'll move her into her own place." "That isn't necessary—"

  "It is," Maggie interrupted. That was the agreement, Brie. I'll not stand by and watch you dance to her tune for the rest of her life. A nurse and a place in the village."

  "If that's what she wants."

  That's what she'll have." Maggie inclined her head. "She kept you up last night."

  "She was restless." Embarrassed, Brianna turned back to prepare the chicken. "One of her headaches."

  "Ah, yes." Maggie remembered her mother's headaches well, and how well timed they could be. An argument Maeve was losing: instant headache. A family outing she didn't approve of: the throbbing began.

  I know what she is, Maggie." Brianna's own head began to ache. That doesn't make her less of my mother."

  Saint Brianna, Maggie thought again, but with affection. Her sister might be younger than her own twenty-eight by a year, but it had always been Brianna who took responsibility. "And you can't change what you are, Brie." Maggie gave her sister a fierce hug. "Da always said you'd be the good angel and I the bad. He was finally right about something." She closed her eyes a moment "Tell Mr. Sweeney to come by the cottage in the morning. I'll speak with him."

  "You'll let him manage you, then?"

  The phrase had Maggie wincing. "I'll s
peak with him," she repeated, and headed back into the rain.

  If Maggie had a weakness, it was family. That weakness had kept her up late into the night and had awakened her early in the chill, murky dawn. To the outside world she preferred to pretend she had responsibilities only to herself and her art, but beneath the facade was a constant love of family, and the dragging, often bitter obligations that went with it. She wanted to refuse Rogan Sweeney, first on principle. Art and business, to her mind, could not and should not mix. She wanted to refuse him secondly because his type—wealthy, confident and blue-blooded—irritated her. Thirdly, and most telling, she wanted to refuse him because to do otherwise was an admission that she lacked the skill to handle her affairs alone.Oh, that was a pill that stuck bitterly in her throat. She would not refuse him. She'd made the decision sometime during the long and restless night to allow Rogan Sweeney to make her rich. It wasn't as though she couldn't support herself, and well, too. She'd been doing just that for more than five years. Brianna's bed and breakfast was successful enough that keeping two homes was no heavy burden. But they could not between them afford a third.

  Maggie's goal, indeed her Holy Grail, was to establish their mother in a separate residence. If Rogan could help clear the path to her quest, she'd deal with him. She'd deal with the very devil. But the devil might come to regret the bargain. In her kitchen with the rain falling soft and steady outside, Maggie brewed tea. And plotted. Rogan Sweeney had to be cleverly handled, she mused. With just the right amount of artistic disdain and feminine flattery. The disdain would be no problem at all, but the other ingredient would be hard coming. She let herself picture Brianna baking, gardening, curled up with a book by the fire—without the whining, demanding voice of their mother to spoil the peace. Brianna would marry, have children. Which Maggie knew was a dream her sister kept locked in her heart. And locked it would stay as long as Brianna had the responsibility of a chronic hypochondriac.While Maggie couldn't understand her sister's need to strap herself down with a man and a half a dozen children, she would do whatever it took to help Brianna realize the dream. It was possible, just possible, that Rogan Sweeney could play fairy godfather.

  The knock on the front door of the cottage was brisk and impatient. This fairy godfather, Maggie thought as she went to answer, wouldn't make his entrance with angel dust and colored lights. After opening the door, she smiled a little. He was wet, as he'd been the day before, and just as elegantly dressed. She wondered if he slept in a suit and tie.

  "Good morning to you, Mr. Sweeney."

  "And to you, Miss Concannon." He stepped inside, out of the rain and die swirl of mist.

  "Shall I take your coat? It'll dry out some by the fire."

  Thank you." He slipped out of his overcoat, watched her spread it over a chair by the fire. She was different today, he thought. Pleasant The change put him on guard. Tell me, does it do anything but rain in Clare?"

  "We enjoy good soft weather in the spring. Don't worry, Mr. Sweeney. Even a Dubliner shouldn't melt in a west-county rain." She sent him a quick, charming smile, but her eyes were wickedly amused. "I'm brewing tea, if you'd like some."

  "I would." Before she could turn to the kitchen, he stopped her—a hand on her arm. His attention wasn't on her, but on the sculpture on the table beside them. It was a long, sinuous curve in a deep icy blue. The color of an arctic lake. Glass clung to glass in waves at the tip then flowed down, liquid ice.

  "An interesting piece," he commented.

  "Do you think so?" Maggie blocked the urge to shake off his hand. It held her lightly, with an understated possession that made her ridiculously uncomfortable. She could smell him, the subtle woodsy cologne he'd probably dashed on after shaving, with undertones of soap from his shower. When he ran a fingertip along the length of the curved glass, the suppressed a shudder For a moment, a foolish one, it had felt as though he'd trailed a touch from her throat to her center.

  "Obviously feminine," he murmured. Though his eyes-stayed on the glass, he was very aware of her. The coiled tension in her arm, the quick tremble she'd tried to mask, the dark, wild scent of her hair. "Powerful. A woman about to surrender sexually to a man.

  It flustered her because he was exactly right. "How do you find power in surrender?"

  He looked at her then, those depthless blue eyes locked on her face. His hand