Born in Shame (9 page)

“Do you like music?” he asked her.

“Sure. Who doesn't like music?”

He paused long enough to pick up his pint, sip. He supposed he'd have to get used to his throat going dry whenever she was close. “Is there a tune you'd like to hear?”

She lifted a shoulder, let it fall casually. But she was sorry he'd stopped playing. “I don't know much about Irish music.”

Gray leaned forward. “Don't ask for ‘Danny Boy,' ” he warned in a whisper.

Murphy grinned at him. “Once a Yank,” he said lightly and ordered himself to relax again. “A name like Shannon Bodine, and you don't know Irish music?”

“I've always been more into Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin.”

With his eyes on hers and a grin at the corners of his
mouth he started a new tune. The grin widened when she laughed.

“It's the first time I've heard ‘When a Man Loves a Woman' on a mini accordion.”

“ 'Tis a concertina.” He glanced over at a shout. “Ah, there's my man.”

Young Liam Sweeney scrambled across the room and climbed into Murphy's lap. He aimed a soulful look. “Candy.”

“You want your mum to scrape the skin off me again?” But Murphy looked over, noted that Maggie had stopped at the bar. He reached into his pocket and took out a wrapped lemon drop. “Pop it in quick, before she sees us.”

It was obviously an old routine. Shannon watched Liam cuddle closer to Murphy, his tongue caught between his tiny teeth as he dealt with the wrapping.

“So, it's family night out, is it?” Maggie crossed over, laid her hands on the back of Brianna's chair. “Where's the baby?”

“Diedre snatched her.” Automatically Brianna scooted over so that Maggie could draw up another chair.

“Hello, Shannon.” The greeting was polite and coolly formal before Maggie's gaze shifted, narrowed expertly on her son. “What have you there, Liam?”

“Nothing.” He grinned over his lemon drop.

“Nothing indeed. Murphy, you're paying for his first cavity.” Then her attention shifted again. Shannon saw the tall dark man come toward the table, two cups stacked in one hand, a pint glass in the other. “Shannon Bodine, my husband, Rogan Sweeney.”

“It's good to meet you.” After setting down the drinks, he took her hand, smiling with a great deal of
charm. Whatever curiosity there was, was well hidden. “Are you enjoying your visit?”

“Yes, thank you.” She inclined her head. “I suppose I have you to thank for it.”

“Only indirectly.” He pulled up a chair of his own, making it necessary for Shannon to slide another inch or two closer to Murphy. “Hobbs tells me you work for Ry-Tilghmanton. We've always used the Pryce Agency in America.”

Shannon lifted a brow. “We're better.”

Rogan smiled. “Perhaps I'll look into that.”

“This isn't a business meeting,” his wife complained. “Murphy, won't you play something lively?”

He slipped easily into a reel, pumping quick, complicated notes out of the small instrument. Conversation around them became muted, punctuated by a few laughs, some hand clapping as a man in a brimmed hat did a fast-stepping dance on his way to the bar.

“Do you dance?” Murphy's lips were so close to her ear, Shannon felt his breath across her skin.

“Not like that.” She eased back, using her glass as a barrier. “I suppose you do. That's part of it, right?”

He tilted his head, as amused as he was curious. “Being Irish you mean?”

“Sure. You dance . . .” She gestured with her glass. “Drink, brawl, write melancholy prose and poetry. And enjoy your image as suffering, hard-fisted rebels.”

He considered a minute, keeping time with the tap of a foot. “Well, rebels we are, and suffering we've done. It seems you've lost your connection.”

“I never had one. My father was third- or fourth-generation, and my mother had no family I knew about.”

That brought a frown to her eyes, and though he was sorry for it, Murphy wasn't ready to let it go.

“But you think you know Ireland, and the Irish.” Someone else had gotten up to dance, so he picked up a new tune to keep them happy. “You've watched some Jimmy Cagney movies on the late-night telly, or listened to Pat O'Brien playing his priests.” When her frown deepened, he smiled blandly. “Oh, and there'd be the Saint Patrick's parade down your Fifth Avenue.”

“So?”

“So, it tells you nothing, does it? You want to know the Irish, Shannon, then you listen to the music. The tune, and the words when there are words to hear. And when you hear it, truly, you might begin to know what makes us. Music's the heart of any people, any culture, because it comes from the heart.”

Intrigued despite herself, she glanced down at his busy fingers. “Then I'm to think the Irish are carefree and quick on their feet.”

“One tune doesn't tell the whole tale.” Though the child was dozing now in his lap, he played on, shifting to something so suddenly sad, so suddenly soft, Shannon blinked.

Something in her own heart broke a little as Brianna began to quietly sing the lyrics. Others joined in, telling the tale of a soldier brave and doomed, dying a martyr for his country, named James Connolly.

When he'd finished, Rogan took the sleeping boy into his own lap, and Murphy reached for his beer. “It's not all ‘MacNamarra's Band,' is it?”

She'd been touched, deeply, and wasn't sure she wanted to be. “It's an odd culture that writes lovely songs about an execution.”

“We don't forget our heros,” Maggie said with a snap in her voice. “Isn't it true that in your country they have tourist attractions on fields of battle? Your Gettysburg and such?”

Shannon eyed Maggie coolly, nodded. “Touché.”

“And most of us like to pretend we'd have fought for the South,” Gray put in.

“For slavery.” Maggie sneered. “We know more about slavery than you could begin to imagine.”

“Not for slavery.” Pleased a debate was in the offing, Gray shifted toward her. “For a way of life.”

“That should keep them happy,” Rogan murmured as his wife and brother-in-law dived into the argument. “Is there anything you'd particularly like to do or see while you're here, Shannon? We'd be pleased to arrange things for you.”

His accent was different, she noted. Subtly different, smoother, with a hint of what she would have termed prep school. “I suppose I should see the usual tourist things. And I don't suppose I could go back without seeing at least one ruin.”

“Gray's put one nearby in his next book,” Murphy commented.

“He did, yes.” Brianna glanced behind her, trying not to fret because Diedre had yet to return the baby. “He did a nasty murder there. I'm just going to go back and see how Kayla's fairing. Would you have another pint, Murphy?”

“I wouldn't mind. Thanks.”

“Shannon?”

With some surprise, Shannon noted her glass was empty. “Yes, I suppose.”

“I'll get the drinks.” After passing Liam to his wife, Rogan rose, giving Brianna a pat on the cheek. “Go fuss with the baby.”

“Do you know this one?” Murphy asked as he began to play again.

It only took her a moment. “ ‘Scarborough Fair'.” It
meant Simon and Garfunkel to her, on the oldies station on the radio.

“Do you sing, Shannon?”

“As much as anyone who has a shower and a radio.” Fascinated, she bent her head closer. “How do you know which buttons to push?”

“First you have to know what song you've a mind to play. Here.”

“No, I—” But he had already slipped an arm around her and was drawing her hands under the straps beneath his.

“You have to get the feel of it first.” He guided her fingers to the buttons, pressed down gently as he opened the bellows. The chord that rang out was long and pure and made her laugh.

“That's one.”

“If you can do one, you can do another.” To prove it he pushed the bellows in and made a different note. “It just takes the wanting, and the practice.”

Experimentally she shifted some fingers around and winced at the clash of notes. “I think it might take some talent.” Then she was laughing again as he played his fingers over hers and made the instrument come to life. “And quick hands. How can you see what you're playing?”

With the laugh still in her eyes, she shook back her hair and turned her face to his. The jolt around her heart was as lively as the tune, and not nearly as pleasant.

“It's a matter of feeling.” Though her fingers had gone still, he moved his around them, changing the mood of the music yet again. Wistful and romantic. “What do you feel?”

“Like I'm being played every bit as cleverly as this little box.” Her eyes narrowed a bit as she studied him.
Somehow their positions had shifted just enough to be considered an embrace. The hands, those hard-palmed, limber hands, were unquestionably possessive over hers. “You have some very smooth moves, Murphy.”

“It occurs to me you don't mean that as a compliment.”

“I don't. It's an observation.” It was shocking to realize the pulse in her throat was hammering. His gaze lowered to her mouth, lingered so that she could feel the heat, and his intention as a tangible thing. “No,” she said very quietly, very firmly.

“As you please.” His eyes came back to hers, and there was a subtle and simple power in them that challenged. “I'd rather kiss you the first time in a more private place myself. Where I could take my time about it.”

She thought he would—take his time, that is. He might not have been the slow man she'd originally perceived. But she had a feeling he was thorough. “I'd say that completes the lesson.” Determined to find some distance, she tugged her hands from under his.

“We'll have another, whenever you've a mind to.” And indeed taking his time, he lifted his arm from around her, then set down the concertina to drink the last of his beer. “You've got music in you, Shannon. You just haven't let yourself play it yet.”

“I think I'll stick to the radio, thanks.” More agitated than she cared to admit, she rose. “Excuse me.” She went off in search of the rest room, and time to settle down.

Murphy was smiling to himself when he set his empty glass down. His brow lifted when he caught Maggie's frowning stare.

“What are you about, Murphy?” she demanded.

“I'm about to have another beer—once Rogan gets back with it.”

“Don't play games with me, boy-o.” She wasn't sure herself if it was temper or worry brewing in her, but neither was comforting. “I know you've an eye for the ladies, but I've never seen that look in them before.”

“Haven't you?”

“Stop hounding him, Maggie.” Gray kicked back in his chair. “Murphy's entitled to test the waters. She's a looker, isn't she?”

“Close your mouth, Grayson. And no, you've no right to be testing these waters, Murphy Muldoon.”

He watched her, murmuring a thanks when Rogan set fresh drinks on the table. “You've an objection to me getting to know your sister, Maggie Mae?”

Eyes bright and sharp, she leaned forward. “I've an objection to seeing you walking toward the end of a cliff that you'll surely fall off. She's not one of us, and she's not going to be interested in a west county farmer, no matter how pretty he is.”

Murphy said nothing for a moment, knowing Maggie would be simmering with impatience as he took out a cigarette, contemplated it, lighted it, drew in the first drag. “It's kind of you to worry about me, Maggie. But it's my cliff, and my fall.”

“If you think I'm going to sit by while you make an ass of yourself and get your heart tromped on in the bargain, you're mistaken.”

“It's none of your business, Margaret Mary,” Rogan said and had his wife's wrath spewing on him.

“None of mine? Damn if it isn't. I've known this soft-headed fool all of his life, and loved him, though God knows why. And this Yank wouldn't be here if it weren't for me and Brianna.”

“The Yank's your sister,” Gray commented. “Which means she's probably as prickly and stubborn as you.”

Before Maggie could bare her teeth at that, Murphy
was holding up a hand. “She's the right of it. It's your business, Maggie, as I'm your friend and she's your sister. But it's more my business.”

The hint of steel under the quiet tone had her temper defusing and her worry leaping. “Murphy, she'll be going back soon where she came from.”

“Not if I can persuade her otherwise.”

She grabbed his hands now, as if the contact would transfer some sense into him. “You don't even know her.”

“Some things you know before it's reasonable.” He linked his fingers with hers, for the bond there was deep and strong. “I've waited for her, Maggie, and here she is. That's it for me.”

Because she could see the unarguable certainty of it in his eyes, she closed her own. “You've lost your mind. I can't get it back for you.”

“You can't, no. Not even you.”

She only sighed. “All right then, when you've had your fall and lay broken at the bottom, I'll come around and nurse your wounds. I want to take Liam home now, Sweeney.” She rose, bundling the sleeping boy into her arms. “I won't ask you to talk sense to him,” she added to Gray. “Men don't see past a comely face.”

When she turned, she saw that Shannon had come out of the rest room and been waylaid by the Conroys. She sent Shannon a hard look, was answered in kind, then strode out of the pub with her son.

“They've got more in common than either one of them realizes.” Gray watched Shannon stare at the pub door before giving her attention back to the old couple.

“It's the common ground that's between them as much as under their own feet.”