Night Music

This time no flicker of emotion showed in her face. “In that case.” Taking the coffee from her basket, she returned to him. Taking his hand in hers, offering no comment on the scars marring his palm, she placed the packet in his grasp. “Be my guest, Mr. I’m-called-Devlin O’Hara.”

Spinning about, she walked away, dismissing him again. He started to call out, to apologize, but he’d disturbed her enough for one day. Or any day, for he wouldn’t be around for more.

He would keep to the letter of the half day he’d promised Valentina. Then he would turn his back on Belle Terre and the woman his sister thought could be saved.

“Perhaps she can.” His lips barely moved, his words only a breath more than a thought. As he watched her move down the aisle, he remembered details he’d missed from afar—the frown line etched between her tawny brows, shadows lying like bruises beneath lightless eyes. The bittersweet tilt of a beautiful mouth.

A mouth meant for kisses, not sorrow.

While he struggled to put the errant thought aside, Devlin O’Hara felt a twinge of regret that he couldn’t erase the frown, or put a sparkle back in her eyes. On impulse he’d called her Lady Golden Eyes, but he suspected that in moments of unbridled anger or love those eyes would be as bfiercely golden brown as a tigress’s.

Against his will, his thoughts turned again to her lips. The gentle bow, the full under lip, as tawny pink as a rose petal moist with dew. How would her mouth look in a smile meant only for him? How would it feel beneath his? How sweet would she taste?

With more force than he intended, he dropped the coffee in his basket. Even in his mind he wouldn’t be lover or savior.

If she could be led back to the living, it wouldn’t be by his hand. There was still fire banked there beneath the ice of grief and guilt. Hopefully someday she would be warmed enough by it to reach out and find her own way to resolution.

There was strength beneath the aloof veneer. Strength that allowed her to cut herself off from pain that might destroy her. So now she lived in limbo. For some, in the long run, it could be destructive…for others only a period of quiet healing.

Was that the key? Was Kate Gallagher a woman who sought a quiet life denied her? Perhaps that explained why her voice remained quiet and calm, whether she was or not. The outward control was a gift as well as a skill for one who had gone from mediating bitter arguments to leading a team of first response for The Black Watch.

How many countries, and how many volatile and unstable situations had she gone into? How many times had she risked her life, with only that skill and Paul Bryce to aid her? How many times had she been underestimated and misjudged? How many rebels and dissidents hadn’t looked past the subdued decorum?

Valentina had called her Simon’s best first weapon of choice. A dangerous trust, a treacherous and threatening existence. One that drew partners close, spurring unrivaled bonds. Even love.

Losing Paul Bryce would have been like losing a part of herself. Though she might heal in the self-imposed solitude, until she regained that part and rejoined the real world, Kate Gallagher would never be truly whole.

Like strength, spirit was there. He saw it in her face and her eyes. He heard it in her voice. Perhaps she was even halfway toward awakening it. Wanting only an intermediary, a person or a need, that would draw her the rest of the way.

Devlin could only hope that person, or that need, would come to her before it was too late. Before she settled into a life that was half what it should be.

As he watched her slipping unheeding past fellow shoppers, Devlin O’Hara held little hope the mentor she should have was among them. After months of living in Belle Terre, she was as much a stranger as he. Her wall of silence was too much for their native Southern gentility.

Suddenly he realized Kate had stepped to the checkout line, zipped through with her meager purchases, and was ready to leave. He’d followed and watched her discreetly for some time. After their encounter, if he continued much longer, despite her distraction she would become aware of his scrutiny. Even so, less because of his promise to Valentina than for reasons he couldn’t explain, Devlin wasn’t ready to step back and go away.

“No. Thank you, the flowers are lovely. But…” Her low voice shook him from his reverie. She’d paused by the door as she spoke to the tiny child who stood by an elderly lady and her pails and baskets filled with flowers of every sort imaginable. The bouquet the child offered was wrapped in a sheaf of green paper and surely contained at least one of each blossom.

The child said nothing as she held the bouquet out to Kate, a smile dimpling her cheeks.

“It would please her if you would take the flowers.” The old woman’s voice was quavery and weak. “God knows, there’s little enough in her young life that’s pleasing.”

“But I haven’t the proper change.”

“The flowers are a gift,” the woman interrupted. “Tessa hopes they might keep you from looking so sad.”

Kate hesitated.

“Please,” the woman pleaded.

From the place he’d taken in the express line, Devlin could see the sudden glitter of tears in Kate’s eyes. Looking from the young, handsome woman to the fair child who could have been her daughter, he found himself praying she would accept the flowers, for all their sakes.

Though few of his prayers had been answered of late, his heart lifted when Kate knelt before the silent child. Taking the flowers, solemnly she kissed a dimpled cheek. “Thank you, Tessa. I’ve never had a bouquet or a present as lovely.”

Tessa ducked her head shyly, saying nothing. Even when Kate said goodbye, the child didn’t look up or speak.

“Have a good day, ma’am.” The lady spoke for both.

“Thank you.” Kate paused at the exit. Stroking the flowers across her cheek, she smiled. A blinding, wonderful smile. “How could I not?”

Devlin caught his breath, dazzled by the woman he’d glimpsed. The woman Kate Gallagher must be again. Impulsively, he moved toward her. An insistent voice called him back.

“Your change, sir. And your coffee.”

“Keep it.” Eager for another glimpse of that woman, he flung the words over his shoulder.

“I can’t, sir. Please.” The clerk’s plea was plaintive, even disturbed. “It would mean my job.”

Impatient, Devlin returned to the counter. He wanted neither change nor coffee. The purchase had been justification for time spent in the store, an excuse to stay close to Kate. Taking up the coins, mindful not to forget his purchase lest he be summoned back again, he hurried to the exit. Pausing to tweak a golden curl and wink down at little Tessa, he stepped into the street in time to see the lady of his concern drive away.

He’d come to the coastal town because he’d given his word. All he intended was a quick trip from the Chesapeake, a short stay and a quicker look at Valentina’s latest lamb. Then, home.

If there was such a place.

Quickly in, quickly away. An ironclad plan, with no expectations of more. But that was before he’d seen Kate Gallagher.

“‘The best-laid schemes o’mice and men gang aft agley,”’ he quoted in a muttered undertone. All for a smile.

Could he leave now? With a ghost of the rueful grin that had once set every young heart it touched aflutter, he mocked his own frailty. “I must. I should. But how, Lady Golden Eyes?”

Two

Music washed over him, ebbing and flowing like the tide lapping at his feet. In the time he’d sat on the derelict palmetto washed from another shore, the mood of the pianist changed. From tentative beginnings the tempo had gradually quickened, then swelled, filling this secluded section of shore with its moods.

First it was wild with the violence of unspeakable torment. Next, fiercely angry, each note resounding as if the musician fought the music, the instrument, and herself. Then the temperament changed, quieted. In slow, muted notes despair reached a deeper level, and Devlin heard the throb of anguish that defied solace.

As the piano fell silent, one note lingering in the night, he knew he’d been given rare insight into the heart of Kathleen Moira Gallagher, daughter of a roving diplomat. Once a model and an icon of beauty, a gifted pianist and a lawyer, an agent of The Black Watch and Simon’s mediator par excellence, now she was simply a grieving woman whose soul stumbled.

When he’d followed her surreptitiously from Ravenel’s to Summer Island, the gated, guarded seasonal playground of the wealthy of Belle Terre, it was to quiet a need he thought had died forever on Denali. To subdue a faltering, resurrected impulse to ease the hurts of others, he’d come to make himself believe he, least of all, could lead her back into the life she should have.

A simple matter, quickly done. So he hoped. Instead he’d tarried long in this single day he’d promised Valentina he would devote to Kate Gallagher. Tramping from one end of the somnolent paradise to the other, seeking proof of peace, the healing panacea Kate needed, he’d delayed and detoured, exploring marshes, docks, and the house that would have been his. Had he decided to stay.

Before he was ready, before innate urges were stifled, night had fallen. With the lights of Belle Terre sparkling in the near distance, the moon lifted over sea and shore like a great gold and silver globe. Silver and gold, the color of her hair. A reminder he didn’t want. And, without intending it, he’d found himself on this part of the shore, sitting at the base of zigzagging steps leading where he’d never meant to go. To Kate.

When the first note sounded, he’d turned from it. The step away wouldn’t come. He willed himself not to stay. He had.

Crouching on the salt-scoured palmetto, he listened.

Now the shore was quiet, the spell of her music ended. He was free to go. He knew he wouldn’t. “The blind and the halt, Kate.” He stared up at her house and the light that left more in darkness than it illuminated. “We shall see where one leads the other.”