A Woman's Heart

by JoAnn Ross

  He could hear the thud as clearly now as when it had happened—a dull muted sound like a melon falling out of the refrigerator and smashing onto the floor. He remembered the blood—so much of it, pouring out of the back of her poor broken head, turning her blond hair crimson, staining his hands as he tried to staunch the flow, drenching his shirt as he’d knelt beside her and held her close like a broken doll. Salty tears had poured down his face, even though his father had always whupped him harder whenever he’d cry, calling him a faggot sissyboy.

  And so, by age nine, Quinn had come not to expect anything good from life. He’d always been suspicious of anything that came too easily. Such belief had allowed him to distance himself from reality during the harsh years that had followed his mother’s brutal murder.

  He’d developed his own defense system—never trust, never let anyone get too close, always be prepared to end a relationship if it threatened to become personal. The tactic had worked just fine for years, allowing him to secure his feelings beneath a thick layer of seemingly impenetrable ice.

  The one thing he’d never counted on was coming to Ireland and meeting a woman who possessed her own personal blowtorch.

  He was going to have to tell Nora about his past, he realized. Let her know exactly what kind of man she’d be marrying. And if she changed her mind, well, hell, he’d get over it and move on. The way he always had. No harm, no foul.

  As he pulled up in front of the Irish Rose, Quinn wondered when he’d become such a goddamn liar.

  The buzz of convivial conversation stopped the instant Quinn opened the oak door. It didn’t dwindle, table by table, bar stool by bar stool, but ended abruptly. Nearly every eye in the pub was on him. The sole exception was Cadel O’Sullivan, who was sitting in his regular spot at the end of the long bar, hunched over a bottle of Bushmills malt.

  “O’Sullivan.” Quinn’s low voice was like an alarm siren in a room so atypically quiet it would have been possible to hear a toothpick drop.

  Kate’s attacker looked up, his gaze as flat and cold as a snake’s. “Well, well,” he said scornfully, tossing back a shot of the whiskey while meeting Quinn’s stone-hard eyes. “If it isn’t the rich Yank who’s been screwing our women. What the fock do you want, Gallagher?”

  “I want to talk to you. Outside. Where we won’t risk breaking any of Brendan’s furniture.”

  “Ah.” The cruel mouth twisted in a smirk. “So, it’s a fight you’d be wanting to start up with me, not a conversation at all.” He filled his glass from the bottle and tossed back another long swallow.

  “I’d say you’re the one who started the fight,” Quinn said with a reasonableness he was a long way from feeling. “When you decided to treat Kate like a punching bag.”

  A low murmur spread across the room. The cold smile was instantly replaced by a dark scowl. “You’d be having no right interfering in the personal business between a man and his wife.”

  “Even if I felt that way, which I damn well don’t, I figure I’m entitled. Since your wife is Nora’s sister-in-law, and I’m going to be marrying Nora.”

  “So the boys have been telling me.” The smirk was back, testing, taunting. Quinn couldn’t decide whether Cadel O’Sullivan was the stupidest man he’d ever met or merely had a death wish. “Weren’t we all sitting right here discussing the interesting fact that only a month ago, the widow Fitzpatrick was going to have to leave her farm for the city?”

  He gave a wink that was rampant with sexual innuendo. “Looks as if lifting her skirt and focking a rich Yank solved that little problem.”

  Quinn saw red. Literally. It swirled in front of his eyes like his mother’s blood so many years ago. The next thing he knew he was pulling Cadel from his bar stool.

  “You have exactly two seconds to apologize,” he ground out. “And then I’m going to kill you.”

  “It’ll take a better man than you to do that, Yank.” At the same time Cadel spat in Quinn’s face he shot a mean right jab into Quinn’s gut.

  The meaty fist was like a cudgel. Quinn felt his bones rattle, the breath leave his lungs. The scarlet veil in front of his eyes darkened. And with a mighty roar, he was on the Irishman, his balled fists pounding, bare knuckle against bone, left, right, left, right, each blow landed for Nora. For Kate. For Jamie and Brigid.

  Onlookers scattered, rescuing pints as they scrambled to the edges of the room to watch the fight. O’Sullivan might be bigger, but his strength was brutish, unschooled, his blows random and unplanned.

  “Come on, O’Sullivan,” Quinn taunted, “you can do better than that.” He feigned to the right, dodging a wild roundhouse punch. “I guess you’re a lot more used to beating up defenseless women and children than you are taking on someone closer to your own size.”

  His opponent’s answering roar was like a wounded lion. He lowered his massive head like a buffalo and charged, butting Quinn in the ribs, which caused them both to fall to the hand-pegged floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

  They rolled over and over, landing random wild blows, any boxing technique Quinn might have learned during his days in the navy lost in the heat of the escalating battle.

  Cadel managed to push himself unsteadily to his feet long enough to pick up a chair, lift it high, then bring it down in the direction of Quinn’s head. It landed on his shoulder, instead, then a booted foot slammed into the ribs the Irishman’s thick head had already pounded. Grabbing it, Quinn managed to pull the giant down for second time.

  “She’s not worth this trouble,” Cadel taunted yet again as he aimed a left uppercut at Quinn’s jaw. “Didn’t Conor Fitzpatrick tell everyone that his wife should have stayed in the convent for all the good she was in bed?”

  A muffled oof escaped his split lip as Quinn landed a blow on the brute’s nose. The sound of bone breaking was followed by a string of curses as crimson blood gushed. “Or maybe the woman’s picked up a few tricks since then.” He swiped at the blood with the back of his hand and just barely managed to evade the follow-up blow. “Maybe, when I finish here with you, I’ll pay a little visit to the farm and try out the red-haired little slut meself.”

  Quinn had been trying, with lessening success, to keep some faint vestige of control on his temper. But the vulgar threat caused the last thread to break. Hatred he’d spent a lifetime trying to ignore exploded inside him, like red-hot lava bursting forth from a volcano. He straddled O’Sullivan, forced him onto his back and began pounding. And pounding. And pounding. His fists fast and brutal.

  He had no idea when the bloodthirsty calls of encouragement turned to cries of concern. He remained unaware of Brendan placing the emergency call to his cousin, shook off the hands that grabbed at his sleeves. All Quinn knew was that this man represented everything he’d ever hated in his life, and he was not going to stop until he’d achieved revenge.

  For his mother, for Kate and for a nine-year-old boy who’d tried his best to save a life and had never forgiven himself for having failed.

  In the end it took five of them—the bartender, Brendan’s cousin, Sergeant O’Neill, and three other strapping men whose strength bespoke a lifetime of cutting hay and peat, to drag this Yank, who seemed to have gone berserk, off the nearly unconscious bully.

  “You’ll be killing him,” the bartender told Quinn.

  “That was the idea.” Quinn bent down, put his bloody hands on his knees and drew in a deep breath, realizing his error when his ribs burned.

  “Nora would never forgive me if I had to put you away in jail for manslaughter,” the sergeant said. “We’d best be getting you to the car so I can drive you to casualty and have you seen to.”

  Quinn wanted to object to that suggestion. Intended to object. Unfortunately he failed to see O’Sullivan stagger to his feet. A blow like a boulder falling from a cliff landed against the back of Quinn’s head. His already wobbly knees gave out. Then everything went black.

  “You can’t be serious about this.” Nora watched, stunned as Quinn emptied
out the dresser, literally throwing clothes into the suitcase.

  “I’m sorry.” Christ, talk about an understatement. The problem was, there were absolutely no words for what he was feeling. Nothing he could say that would make either one of them feel any better. “I tried to warn you.” Sweaters tumbled on top of briefs, socks tangled with jeans. His shirt was spotted with blood, some his, some O’Sullivan’s, but Quinn wasn’t going to take time to change. “I told you I wasn’t any good for you.”

  “That’s not true.” She was not going to resort to tears, Nora vowed, even if she thought that the age-old feminine ploy might get him to change his mind. She didn’t want him to look back on this day and believe he’d been trapped.

  “You are good for me.” She wanted to touch him even more than she needed to weep. Nora resisted both urges. “What you did in The Rose for Kate—”

  “I almost killed a man.”

  “No!” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t have done that, Quinn.”

  “I would have. If they hadn’t pulled me off him.”

  “You were angry. At what he’d done to Kate. And rightfully so. There’s been many a time I’ve wished Cadel O’Sullivan dead.”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” He stopped on his way to the bathroom to retrieve his shaving kit and turned toward her, his dark eyes as bleak and empty as a tomb. “We’re not talking about wishing, Nora. We’re talking about me pounding a man to a bloody pulp with my fists.”

  “You weren’t the only one doing the hitting.” She reminded him of the lump on the back of his head and the cracked rib the X ray had revealed. “And you didn’t start it.”

  “Every man in that pub knew I didn’t go there to have a conversation with O’Sullivan. I went there to beat his goddamn brains out.”

  “Which would be difficult to do, since I don’t believe he has any.”

  He shook his head, ignoring the pain that hit like lightning behind his eyes. “You’re not taking this seriously, dammit.”

  “Of course I am. I take it seriously indeed when the man I love, the man who says he loves me,” she said pointedly, “tells me he’s walking away from what we’ve made together.”

  “I do love you.” The one thing he refused to do was lie, even though it might have made it easier on both of them. “More than I ever thought possible. And I know, if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never feel about any other woman the way I feel about you.”

  “Not that I’d want to be arguing with you, Quinn, but you have a strange way of showing such love.”

  “I know it seems that way.” His head was spinning. Deciding he’d better sit down—just for a moment before he fell down—Quinn sank onto the mattress.

  “But believe it or not, it’s because I love you that I’m leaving. Before I end up hurting you. Or Rory. Or one of the other kids. I’m a violent man, Nora. I come from violent bloodstock. I thought I could overcome my past. I thought I had.”

  He dragged both hands through his hair, flinching as his fingers brushed against the lump Cadel had raised with that heavy bottle of Murphy’s stout. “Obviously I was wrong.”

  “No.” On this point, Nora was very clear. “I have no words to tell you how sorry I am about your mother.”

  He’d told her his life story while she’d driven him back to the farm from the hospital. Since the doctor had refused to release him if he intended to drive with a head injury, Quinn had reluctantly allowed the casualty-department nurse to call Laura, who’d followed in the Mercedes. His former lover was now waiting downstairs in the front parlor to take him to the inn until tomorrow’s flight back to America.

  Nora had kept silent during the telling of the horror tale, and Quinn knew he’d never forget the sight of those silent tears falling on the slender hands gripping the steering wheel.

  “What happened to you when you were just a lad was every bit as much a crime. No child should have to suffer so, Quinn. And it breaks my heart that you had no adults in your life to protect you from such brutality.” She pressed crossed hands against that tender saddened heart. “As you protected Kate and Jamie and Brigid today.”

  He knew where she was going. And didn’t buy it. “What I did—using violence to respond to violence—isn’t the answer.”

  “Not under usual conditions. But perhaps it’s the only thing a man like Cadel understands. It will be a long while before he raises his hand to his wife again.”

  Those words caught his reluctant attention. “She’s not staying?”

  “No. But although we have divorce now in Ireland, it’s not an easy thing. Even in the best of circumstances, with parties agreeing, it takes five years of separation. Which doesn’t matter to Kate,” she said sadly, “since she’s understandably in no hurry to get involved with another man.”

  “She deserves better.”

  “Aye.” Nora sighed and wondered again what might have happened if only she’d been able to convince Kate to write that letter to Andrew Sinclair so many years ago. “She does, indeed.”

  “And so do you.”

  “So we’re back to your misguided belief that you’re not good enough for me?”

  “Doesn’t it always come back to that?” Wasn’t that why he’d tried like hell to stay away from this woman in the first place? “Did I tell you I saw some distant cousin of mine at the horse fair?”

  “No.” She’d been waiting, but he’d remained silent on the matter. “But Michael mentioned he’d introduced you to a Gallagher he knew from Connemara.”

  “Patrick Gallagher. A farmer. And bootlegger.”

  “Well, now, making poitin’s not such a crime in that part of the country,” she said, misunderstanding the acid in his tone. “Well, of course, it is a crime, but—”

  “I know.” He lifted a hand that felt as if it weighed fifty pounds.

  It was more than the fight that had him feeling dead on his feet, Quinn knew. He’d certainly had his share of brawls in his younger days, and they’d never left him so wasted. And it wasn’t just that he was older. It was, Quinn thought, because he was so emotionally drained. He felt as if he’d slashed his wrists and let all his feelings drain out with the blood.

  “Michael already explained all that. My point was, that looking into his face was like looking into a goddamn mirror.”

  “The Gallaghers I’ve known over the years have always had strong features. And didn’t Gram say that she grew up with a boy in Donegal who had the look of you? That’s not so unusual, Quinn.”

  “I suppose not. But the point is, that got me to thinking about bloodlines. My bloodlines.”

  It took her a moment. And when she understood what he was saying, Nora’s heart lurched so painfully she was amazed she was able to keep from crying out.

  “Oh, Quinn.” She knelt beside him, her hand on his thigh, her green eyes as pained and earnest as he’d ever witnessed them. “You’re not like one of Kate’s horses. Like the mare you bought Rory. You’re a man. You have free will, the intelligence to make choices. Just because your father was a cruel and brutal man…”

  “Who used his fists to settle arguments,” he reminded her pointedly as he looked down at his knuckles, skinned and swollen from connecting with the bones in O’Sullivan’s face.

  “No.” Her hair flew over her shoulders in a brilliant cloud as she shook her head again. “Don’t you see he was like Cadel? Just a bully who finally met his match?” She lifted his hand and pressed her lips against the injured flesh. “You’re nothing like either one of them.”

  How he’d wanted to believe that! “I can’t take the risk.”

  “And isn’t that for me to be deciding?”

  “No.” It was his turn to shake his head. Firmly. Resolutely. “It’s not easy raising children. One day Rory, or one of his brothers or sisters, if we were to be that lucky to have them, might do something to piss me off. Something that might cause me to strike out instinctively.

  “Or perhaps you and I might have an argument. You can be a h
ardheaded woman sometimes, Nora, and—”

  “I know. And I’ll be trying to work on that.”

  “And you also have a habit of interrupting when a man’s trying to make a point.” Although Quinn could find little humor in this discussion, the memory of her doing the same thing that night in Derry when Brady was trying to tell his tale, that night they’d made love for the first time, almost made Quinn smile.

  “It’s a foolish point,” she muttered.

  “Not so foolish.” He looked down at their hands, still linked together. He brought her hand to his lips. “I truly do love you, Nora. And if I ever lifted a hand to you, I’d want to kill myself.”

  “You’d never do such a thing.”

  “You can’t know that. For certain.”

  She lifted her chin in that way that always made him want to kiss her silly. “Aye. I do. Because I know you, Quinn Gallagher. I’d stake my life on that.”

  “Don’t you understand? That could be exactly what you’d be doing.” This time he did smile, but there was not an iota of cheer in it. It was, Nora thought, the saddest thing she’d ever seen. Even sadder than that thin white scar she now knew had been caused by his father’s belt buckle.

  “No.” He released her hand and pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not going to take the chance. I’m not going to let you take the chance.”

  That said, he gave her one last look fraught with so many emotions Nora couldn’t begin to catalog them all. But none of them was the slightest bit encouraging.

  “I do love you,” he stressed yet again, wanting her to remember that one vital point. “I always will.”

  With that he was gone. Out of her bedroom. And her house.

  Laura, who’d been waiting downstairs, paused in the parlor as Quinn walked out to the Mercedes. “I’m sorry,” she said to Nora.

  “I know.” Nora never would have thought she could feel a kinship with such a glamorous movie star. But then again, ever since the Americans had come to Castlelough, she’d experienced a host of unfamiliar unexpected emotions. “But it doesn’t change things now, does it?”