“One day, when you remember the first time you heard it, I hope it pleasures you.” Content for now, she sipped her tea, smiled. “Tell me a story, Grayson.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

He didn’t leave on the first of June as he’d planned. He could have. Knew he should have. But it seemed wrong, certainly cowardly, to go before he was positive Brianna was well on the mend.

The bandages came off. He’d seen for himself the bruises and had iced down the swelling of her shoulder. He’d suffered when she turned in her sleep and caused herself discomfort. He scolded when she overdid.

He didn’t make love with her.

He wanted her, hourly. At first he’d been afraid even the most gentle of touches would hurt her. Then he decided it was best as it was. A kind of segue, he thought, from lover, to friend, to memory. Surely it would be easier for them both if his remaining days with her were spent in friendship and not in passion.

His book was finished, but he didn’t mail it. Gray convinced himself he should take a quick detour to New York before his tour and hand it over to Arlene personally. If he thought, from time to time, how he had asked Brianna to go off with him for a little while, he told himself it was best forgotten.

For her sake, of course. He was only thinking of her.

He saw, through the window, that she was taking down the wash. Her hair was loose, blowing back from her face in the stiff western breeze. Behind her, the finished greenhouse glistened in the sunlight. Beside her, flowers she’d planted swayed and danced. He watched as she unhooked a clothespin, popped it back on the line, moved onto the next, gathering billowing sheets as she went.

She was, he thought, a postcard. Something that personified a place, a time, a way of life. Day after day, he thought, year after year, she would hang her clothes and linens to dry in the wind and the sun. And gather them up again. And with her, and those like her, the repetition wouldn’t be monotony. It would be tradition—one that made her strong and self-reliant.

Oddly disturbed, he walked outside. “You’re using that arm too much.”

“The doctor said exercise was good for it.” She glanced over her shoulder. The smile that curved her lips didn’t reach her eyes, and hadn’t for days. He was moving away from her so quickly, she couldn’t keep up. “I barely have a twinge now. It’s a glorious day, isn’t it? The family staying with us drove to Ballybunion to the beach. Da used to take Maggie and me there sometimes, to swim and eat ice-cream cones.”

“If you’d wanted to go to the beach, you’d only had to ask. I’d have taken you.”

The tone of his voice had her spine stiffening. Her movements became more deliberate as she unpinned a pillowslip. “That’s kind of you, I’m sure, Grayson. But I don’t have time for a trip to the sea. I’ve work to do.”

“All you do is work,” he exploded. “You break your back over this place. If you’re not cooking, you’re scrubbing, if you’re not scrubbing, you’re washing. For Christ’s sake, Brianna, it’s just a house.”

“No.” She folded the pillowslip in half, then half again before laying it in her wicker basket. “ ’Tis my home, and it pleases me to cook in it, and scrub in it, and wash in it.”

“And never look past it.”

“And where are you looking, Grayson Thane, that’s so damned important?" She choked off the bubbling temper, reverted to ice. “And who are you to criticize me for making a home for myself.”

“Is it a home—or a trap?”

She turned then, and her eyes were neither hot nor cold, but full of grief. “Is that how you think, really, in your heart? That one is the same as the other, and must be? If it is, truly, I’m sorry for you.”

“I don’t want sympathy,” he shot back. “All I’m saying is that you work too hard, for too little.”

“I don’t agree, nor is that all you said. Perhaps it was all you meant to say.” She bent down and picked up her basket. “And it’s more than you’ve said to me for these past five days.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He reached out to take the basket from her, but she jerked it away. “I talk to you all the time. Let me take that.”

“I’ll take it myself. I’m not a bloody invalid.” Impatiently she set the basket at her hip. “You’ve talked at me and around me, Grayson, these last days. But to me, and of anything you were really thinking or feeling, no. You haven’t talked to me, and you haven’t touched me. Wouldn’t it be more honest to just tell me you don’t want me anymore?”

“Don’t—” She was already stalking past him toward the house. He’d nearly grabbed at her before he stopped himself. “Where did you get an idea that like?”

“Every night.” She let the door swing back and nearly caught him in the face with it. “You sleep with me, but you don’t touch me. And if I turn to you, you turn away.”

“You’re just out of the f**king hospital.”

“I’ve been out of the hospital for nearly two weeks. And don’t swear at me. Or if you must swear, don’t lie.” She slapped the basket onto the kitchen table. “Anxious to be gone is what you are, and not sure how to be gracious about it. And you’re tired of me.” She snapped a sheet out of the basket and folded it neatly, corner to corner. “And haven’t figured out how to say so.”

“That’s bullshit. That’s just bullshit.”

“It’s funny how your way with words suffers when you’re angry.” She flipped the sheet over her arm in a practiced move, mating bottom to top. “And you’re thinking, poor Brie, she’ll be breaking her heart over me. Well, I won’t.” Another fold, and the sheet was a neat square to be laid on the scrubbed kitchen table. “I did well enough before you came along, and I’ll do well enough after.”

“Very cool words from someone who claims to be in love.”

“I am in love with you.” She took out another sheet, and calmly began the same routine. “Which makes me a fool to be sure for loving a man so cowardly he’s afraid of his own feelings. Afraid of love because he didn’t have it as a boy. Afraid to make a home because he never knew one.”

“We’re not talking about what I was,” Gray said evenly.