“I figured you’d find a way to get an I’m sorry out of me before it was over.”

She stared at him a moment, then saying nothing, turned and walked into the adjoining bedroom.

“Christ.” Gray scrubbed his hands over his face, pressed his fingers against his closed eyes, then dropped his hands. You could only wallow in your own idiocy so long, he decided.

“I’m crazy,” he said, stepping into the bedroom.

She said nothing, only adjusted one of her windows to let in more of the cool, fragrant night air.

“I am sorry, Brie, for all of it. I was in a pisser of a mood this morning, and just wanted to be alone.”

She gave him no answer, no encouragement, only turned down the bedspread.

“Don’t freeze me out. That’s the worst.” He stepped behind her, laid a tentative hand on her hair. “I’m having trouble with the book. It was lousy of me to take it out on you.”

“I don’t expect you to adjust your moods to suit me.”

“You just don’t expect,” he murmured. “It’s not good for you.”

“I know what’s good for me.” She started to move away, but he turned her around. Ignoring the rigid way she held herself, he wrapped his arms around her.

“You should have booted me out,” he murmured.

“You’re paid up through the month.”

He pressed his face into her hair, chuckled. “Now you’re being mean.”

How was a woman supposed to keep up with his moods? When she tried to push away, he only cuddled her closer.

“I had to get away from you,” he told her, and his hand roamed up and down her back, urging her spine to relax. “I had to prove I could get away from you.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Drawing back as far as he would permit, she framed his face in her hands. “Grayson, I know you’ll be leaving soon, and I won’t pretend that doesn’t leave a crack in my heart. But it’ll hurt so much more, for both of us, if we spend these last days fighting over it. Or around it.”

“I figured it would be easier if you were mad. If you tossed me out of your life.”

“Easier for whom?”

“For me.” He rested his brow on hers and said what he’d avoided saying for the last few days. “I’ll be leaving at the end of the month.”

She said nothing, found she could say nothing over the sudden ache in her chest.

“I want to take some time before the tour starts.”

She waited, but he didn’t ask, as he once had, for her to come with him to some tropical beach. She nodded. “Then let’s enjoy the time we have before you go.”

She turned her face so that her mouth met his. Gray laid her slowly onto the bed. And when he loved her, loved her tenderly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

For the first time since Brianna had opened her home to guests, she wished them all to the devil. She resented the intrusion on her privacy with Gray. Though it shamed her, she resented the time he spent closed in his room finishing the book that had brought him to her.

She fought the emotions, did everything she could to keep them from showing. As the days passed, she assured herself that the sense of panic and unhappiness would fade. Her life was so very nearly what she wanted it to be. So very nearly.

She might not have the husband and children she’d always longed for, but there was so much else to fulfill her. It helped, at least a little, to count those blessings as she went about her daily routine.

She carried linens, fresh off the line, up the stairs. Since Gray’s door was open, she went inside. Here, she set the linens aside. It was hardly necessary to change his sheets since he hadn’t slept in any bed but hers for days. But the room needed a good dusting, she decided, since he was out of it. His desk was an appalling mess, to be sure.

She started there, emptying his overflowing ashtray, tidying books and papers. Hoping, she knew, to find some little snatch of the story he was writing. What she found were torn envelopes, unanswered correspondence, and some scribbled notes on Irish superstitions. Amused, she read:

Beware of speaking ill of fairies on Friday, because they are present and will work some evil if offended.

For a magpie to come to the door and look at you is a sure death sign, and nothing can avert it.

A person who passes under a hempen rope will die a violent death.

“Well, you surprise me, Brianna. Snooping.”

Blushing red, she dropped the notepad, stuck her hands behind her back. Oh, wasn’t it just like Grayson Thane, she thought, to come creeping up on a person.

“I was not snooping. I was dusting.”

He sipped idly at the coffee he’d gone to the kitchen to brew. To his thinking, he’d never seen her quite so flummoxed. “You don’t have a dust rag,” he pointed out.

Feeling naked, Brianna wrapped dignity around her. “I was about to get one. Your desk is a pitiful mess, and I was just straightening up.”

“You were reading my notes.”

“I was putting the notebook aside. Perhaps I glanced at the writing on it. Superstitions is all it is, of evil and death.”

“Evil and death’s my living.” Grinning, he crossed to her, picked up the pad. “I like this one. On Hallowtide—that’s November first.”

“I’m aware of when Hallowtide falls.”

“Sure you are. Anyway, on Hallowtide, the air being filled with the presence of the dead, everything is a symbol of fate. If on that date, you call the name of a person from the outside, and repeat it three times, the result is fatal.” He grinned to himself. “Wonder what the garda could charge you with.”

“It’s nonsense.” And gave her the chills.

“It’s great nonsense. I used that one.” He set the notebook down, studied her. Her high color hadn’t quite faded. “You know the trouble with technology?” He lifted one of his computer disks, tapping it on his palm as he studied her with laughing eyes. “No balled up papers, discarded by the frustrated writer that the curious can smooth out and read.”

“As if I’d do such a thing.” She flounced away to pick up her linens. “I’ve beds to make.”

“Want to read some of it?”

She paused halfway to the door, looking back over her shoulder suspiciously. “Of your book?”