Born in Shame (12 page)

Shannon supposed she'd been a great disappointment to Brianna when she'd appeared downstairs in casual slacks and a plain silk shirt.

That hadn't stopped Brianna from telling her she looked lovely, to have a wonderful time, and not to worry about when she got in. If Gray hadn't come along and dragged his wife out of the hall, she might never have gotten away.

It was, Shannon supposed, sisterlike behavior, and didn't make her as uncomfortable as she'd expected.

She was grateful both Brianna and Gray had insisted she take the car. It wasn't a long trip to Murphy's, but the road would be dark after sunset, and it looked like rain.

Only minutes after pulling out of the driveway, she was pulling in to a longer one that squeezed between hedges of fuchsia that had already begun to bloom in bloodred hearts.

She'd seen the farmhouse from her window, but it was larger, and undoubtedly more impressive up close. Three stories of stone and wood that looked as old as
the land itself, and equally well tended, rose up behind the hedge and before a tidy plot of mixed flowers.

There were flat arches of dressed stone above the tidy square windows of the first floor. She caught a glimpse of a side porch and imagined there were doors leading to it from the inside.

Two of the chimneys were smoking, puffing their clouds lazily into the still blue sky. A pickup truck was in the drive ahead of her, splashed with mud. Beside that was an aged compact raised onto blocks.

She couldn't claim to know much about cars, but it certainly had seen better days.

But the shutters and the front porch of the house were freshly painted in a mellow blue that blended softly with the gray stone. There was no clutter on the porch, only a pair of rockers that seemed to invite company. The invitation was completed by the door that was already open.

Still, she knocked on the jamb and called out. “Murphy.”

“Come in and welcome.” His voice seemed to come from up the stairs that shot off from the main hallway. “I'll be a minute. I'm washing up.”

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. To satisfy her curiosity, she walked a little farther down the hall and peeked into the first room, where again, a batten door was open in welcome.

A parlor, of course, she noted. Every bit as tidy as Brianna's, if lacking some of her feminine touches.

Old, sturdy furniture was set on a wide planked floor that gleamed. A turf fire simmered in a stone hearth, bringing its ancient and appealing scent into the room. There were candlesticks flanking the thick wood mantel, bold, sinuous twists of emerald. Certain they were Maggie's work, she went in for a closer look.

They looked too fluid, too molten to be solid. Yet the
glass was cool against her fingers. There was a subtle, fascinating hint of ruby beneath, as though there were heat trapped inside waiting to flame out.

“You'd think you could poke your fingers straight into the heart of it,” Murphy commented from the doorway.

Shannon nodded, tracing the coils again before she turned. “She's brilliant. Though I'd prefer you not tell her I said so.” Her brow lifted when she studied him. He didn't look so very different from the man who walked his fields or played his music in pubs. He was without his cap, and his hair was thick, curled, and a bit damp from his washing. His sweater was a soft gray, his slacks shades darker.

She found it odd that she could picture him as easily on the cover of
GQ
as on
Agricultural Monthly.

“You wash up well.”

He grinned self-consciously. “You look at things, people, more as an artist does once you're used to them. I didn't mean to keep you.”

“It's no problem. I like seeing where you live.” Her gaze glanced off him and focused on a wall of books. “That's quite a library.”

“Oh, that's just some of them.”

He stayed where he was when she crossed over. Joyce, Yeats, Shaw. Those were to be expected. O'Neill, Swift, and Grayson Thane, of course. But there was a treasure trove of others. Poe, Steinbeck, Dickens, Byron. The poetry of Keats and Dickinson and Browning. Battered volumes of Shakespeare and equally well-thumbed tales by King and MacAffrey and McMurtrey.

“An eclectic collection,” she mused. “And there's more?”

“I keep them here and there around the house, so if you're in the mood, you don't have to go far. A book's a pleasant thing to have nearby.”

“My father wasn't much on reading, unless it had to do with business. But my mother and I love—loved to. In the end, she was so ill, I read to her.”

“You were a comfort to her. And a joy.”

“I don't know.” She shook herself and tried a bright smile. “So, am I getting a tour?”

“A child knows when she's loved,” Murphy said quietly, then took her hand. “And yes, you'll have a tour. We'll go outside first, before it rains.”

But she made him stop a half a dozen times before they'd traveled from the front of the house to the back. He explained the raftered ceiling, and the little room off the right where his mother still liked to sew when she came to visit.

The kitchen was as big as a barn, and as scrupulously clean as any she'd ever seen. Still, it surprised her to see colored jars of herbs and spices ranged on the counter, and the gleam of copper-bottomed pots hanging over it.

“Whatever you've got in the oven smells wonderful.”

“ 'Tis chicken, and needs some time yet. Here, try these.”

He brought a pair of Wellingtons out of an adjoining room and had Shannon frowning. “We're not going to go tromping around in . . .”

“More than likely.” He crouched down to slip the first boot over her shoe. “When you've got animals, you've got dung. You'll be happier in these.”

“I thought you kept the cows out in the field.”

Delighted, he grinned up at her. “You don't go milking them in the fields, darling, but in the milking parlor. That's done for the night.” He led her out the back where he stepped easily into his own Wellies. “I kept you waiting as one of the cows took sick.”

“Oh, is it serious?”

“No, I'm thinking it's not. Just needed some medicating.”

“Do you do that yourself? Don't you have a vet?”

“Not for everyday matters.”

She looked around and found herself smiling again. Another painting, she thought. Stone buildings neatly set among paddocks. Woolly sheep crowded together near a trough. Some huge and wickedly toothed machine under a lean-to, and the bleat and squawk of animals not ready to call it a day.

There was Con, sitting patiently beside the near paddock, thumping his tail.

“Brie sent him, I'd wager, to see I behaved myself with you.”

“I don't know. He seems as much your dog as hers.” She looked over at him as Murphy bent to greet the dog. “I'd have thought a farmer would have at least one or two hounds of his own.”

“I had one, died seven years ago this winter coming.” With the ease of mutual love, Murphy stroked Con's ears. “I think of getting another from time to time, but never seem to get around to it.”

“You've got everything else. I didn't realize you raised sheep.”

“Just a few. My father, now, he was one for sheep.” He straightened, then took her hand as he walked. “I'm more a dairy man myself.”

“Brianna says you prefer horses.”

“The horses are a pleasure. In another year or two they may pay their way. Today I sold a yearling, a beautiful colt. The entertainment of horse trading nearly balances out the losing of him.”

She glanced up as Murphy opened the barn door. “I didn't think farmers were supposed to get attached.”

“A horse isn't a sheep that you butcher for Sunday dinner.”

The image of that made her just queasy enough to let the subject stand. “You milk in here?”

“Aye.” He led the way through a scrubbed milk parlor with glistening stainless machines and the faint scent of cow and milk drifting through the air. “ 'Tisn't as romantic as doing it by hand—and I did that as a boy—but it's faster, cleaner, and more efficient.”

“Every day,” Shannon murmured.

“Twice daily.”

“It's a lot of work for one man.”

“The lad at the farm next helps with that. We have an arrangement.”

As he showed her through the parlor, the barn, outside again to the silo and the other sheds, she didn't think one boy would make much difference in the expanse of labor.

But it was easy to forget all the sweat, the muscle that had to go into every hour of the day when he took her into the stables to show his horses.

“Oh, they're even more beautiful close up.” Too enchanted to be wary, she lifted her hand and stroked the cheek of the chestnut filly.

“That's my Jenny. I've had her only two years, and she I'll never sell. There's a lass.” It took only the sound of his voice to have the horse shifting her attention to Murphy. If Shannon had believed such things possible, she'd have sworn the filly flirted with him.

And why not? she mused. What female would resist those wide, skilled hands, the way they stroked, caressed? Or that soft voice, murmuring foolish endearments?

“Do you ride, Shannon?”

“Hmm.” The lump that had abruptly lodged in her
throat caused her to swallow hard. “No, I never have. In fact, I guess this is as close as I've ever been to a horse.”

“But you're not afraid of them, so it'll be easier for you to learn if you've a mind to.”

He took her through, letting her coo her fill and pet and play with the foals newly born that spring, and watched her laugh at the frisky colt who would have nibbled on her shoulder if Murphy hadn't blocked the muzzle with his hand.

“It would be a wonderful way to grow up,” she commented as they walked back to the house. “All this room, all the animals.” She laughed as she stopped at the rear door to toe off her boots. “And the work, of course. But you must have loved it, since you stayed.”

“I belong to it. Come in and sit. I've some wine you'll like.”

Companionably she washed her hands at the kitchen sink with him. “Didn't any of your family want to stay and work the farm?”

“I'm the oldest son, and when me father died, it fell to me. My older sisters married and moved away to start families of their own.” He took a bottle from the refrigerator, a corkscrew from a drawer. “Then my mother remarried, and my younger sister Kate as well. I have a younger brother, but he wanted to go to school and learn about electrical matters.”

Her eyes had widened as he poured the wine. “How many are there of you?”

“Five. There were six, but my mother lost another son when he was still nursing. My father died when I was twelve, and she didn't marry again until I was past twenty, so there were only five.”

“Only.” She chuckled, shook her head, and would have raised her glass, but he stayed her hand.

“May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full
moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.”

“Sliante,”
she said and smiled at him as she drank. “I like your farm, Murphy.”

“I'm pleased you do, Shannon.” He surprised her by leaning down and pressing his lips to her brow.

Rain began to patter softly as he straightened again and turned to open the oven door. The scents that streamed out had her mouth watering.

“Why is it I always thought Irish cooking was an oxymoron?”

He hefted out the roaster, set it on the stove top. “Well, it's the truth that it's more often a bit bland than not. I never noticed myself as a lad. But when Brie started experimenting, and trying out dishes on me, I began to see that my own dear mother had a certain lack in the kitchen.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Which I would deny unto death if you repeated such slander.”

“She'll never hear it from me.” She rose, too intrigued not to take a closer look. The chicken was golden, beaded with moisture, flecked with spices, and surrounded by a browned circle of potatoes and carrots. “Now, that's wonderful.”

“It's Brie's doing. She started me an herb garden years back, hounded me till I took the time to tend it.”

Shannon leaned back on the counter, eyeing him. “Weren't you a little miffed when Gray came along and beat your time?”

He was well and truly baffled for a minute, then grinned as he transferred chicken from pan to platter. “She was never for me, nor I for her. We've been family too long. Tom was a father to me when mine died. And Brie and Maggie were always my sisters.” He carved off a small slice at the breast. “Not that it's a brotherly
feeling I have toward you, Shannon. I've waited for you long enough.”

Alarmed, she shifted, but he'd moved smoothly to box her in, back to the counter. Still, all he did was lift the bite of chicken to her lips.

And his thumb grazed lightly, seductively, over her bottom lip when she accepted his offer. “It's good. Really.” But her chest felt thick, and alarm increased when he skimmed a hand over her hair. She made her tingling spine straighten until they were eye to eye.

“What are you doing, Murphy?”

“Well, Shannon.” He touched his lips to hers lightly, almost breezily. “I'm courting you.”

Chapter
Ten

Courting?
Flabbergasted, Shannon gaped at him. It was ridiculous, a foolish word that had nothing to do with her, or her lifestyle.

Yet it had certainly tripped off his Irish tongue easily. She had to make him swallow it again, and fast.

“That's crazy. It's absurd.”

His hands were on her face again, fingertips just skimming her jawline. “Why?”

“Well . . . because.” In defense she moved back, gestured with her glass. “In the first place, you hardly know me.”

“But I do know you.” More amused than offended at
her reaction, he turned back to carve the chicken. “I knew you the minute I saw you.”

“Don't start that Celtic mysticism with me, Murphy.” She strode back to the table, topped off her wine, and gulped it. “I'm an American, damn it. People don't go around courting people in New York.”

“That might be part of what's wrong with it.” He carried the platter to the table. “Sit down, Shannon. You'll want to eat while it's hot.”

“Eat.” She rolled her eyes before closing them in frustration. “Now I'm supposed to eat.”

“You came to eat, didn't you?” Taking on the duties of host, he filled the plate by her chair, then his own before lighting candles. “Aren't you hungry?”

“Yes, I'm hungry.” She plopped down in her chair. After flicking her napkin onto her lap, she picked up her knife and fork.

For the next few minutes she did eat, while her options circled around in her head. “I'm going to try to be reasonable with you, Murphy.”

“All right.” He sliced into the chicken on his plate, sampled, and was pleased he'd done a good job. “Be reasonable then.”

“Number one, you've got to understand I'm only going to be here another week, two at the most.”

“You'll stay longer.” He said it placidly as he ate. “You haven't begun to resolve the problems and feelings that brought you here. You haven't once asked about Tom Concannon.”

Her eyes went cold. “You know nothing about my feelings.”

“I think I do, but we'll leave that for now since it makes you unhappy. But you'll stay, Shannon, because there are things for you to face. And to forgive. You're not a coward. There's strength in you, and heart.”

She hated that he was seeing in her things she'd refused to admit to herself. She broke open one of the biscuits he'd brought to the table, watched the heat steam out. “Whether I stay a week or a year, it doesn't apply to this.”

“It all applies to this,” he said mildly. “Does the meal suit you?”

“It's terrific.”

“Did you paint more today, after I left you?”

“Yes, I—” She swallowed another bite, jabbed her fork at him. “You're changing the subject.”

“What subject?”

“You know very well what subject, and we're going to clear the air here and now. I don't want to be courted—by anyone. I don't know how things are around here, but where I come from, women are independent, equal.”

“I've some thoughts on that myself.” Idly he picked up his wine, considering his words as he drank. “It's true enough that in general your Irishman has a difficult time with seeing women as equals. Now, there's been some changes in the past generation, but it's a slow process.” He set his wine aside and went back to his meal. “There are many I'd call mate who wouldn't agree with me in full, but it may be because I've done a lot of reading over the years and thought about what I've read. I feel a woman has rights same as a man, to what he has, what he does.”

“That's big of you,” Shannon muttered.

He only smiled. “It's a step of some proportion for someone raised as I was raised. Now in truth, I don't know just how I'd react to it if you wanted to court me.”

“I don't.”

“There you are.” He lifted a hand, smiling still, as if she'd made his point for him. “And my courting you has nothing to do with rights or equality, doesn't make you
less or me more. It's just that I've the initiative, so to speak. You're the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life. And I've been fortunate enough to see a great deal of beauty.”

Flummoxed by the quick spurt of pleasure, she looked down at her plate. There was a way to handle this, to handle him, she was certain. She just had to find it.

“Murphy, I'm flattered. Anyone would be.”

“You're more than flattered when I kiss you, Shannon. We both know what happens then.”

She jabbed a piece of chicken. “All right, I'm attracted. You're an attractive man, with some charm. But if I'd been considering taking it any further, I wouldn't now.”

“Wouldn't you?” Christ, but she was a pleasure to converse with, he thought. “And why would that be, when you want me as much as I want you?”

She had to rub her dampening palms on her napkin. “Because it's an obvious mistake. We're looking at this from two different angles, and they're never going to come together. I like you. You're an interesting man. But I'm simply not looking for a relationship. Damn it, I ended one only weeks ago. I was practically engaged.” Inspiration struck. She leaned forward, her smile smug. “I was sleeping with him.”

Murphy's brows quirked.
“Was
seems to be the key. You must have cared for him.”

“Of course I cared for him. I don't jump into bed with strangers.” Hearing herself, she hissed out a breath. How had he managed to turn that around on her?

“It's past tense as I see it. I've cared enough about a woman or two to lie with her. But I never loved one before you.”

Panic had the color draining out of her face. “You're not in love with me.”

“I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you.” He said it so quietly, so simply, that she believed—for a moment completely believed. “Before that, somehow. I've waited for you, Shannon. And here you are.”

“This isn't happening,” she said shakily and pushed away from the table. “Now, you listen to me, you put this whole insane business out of your mind. It's not going to work. You're romanticizing the situation. Hallucinating. All you're going to accomplish is to embarrass both of us.”

His eyes narrowed, but she was too busy fuming to notice the change, or the danger in it. “My loving you is an embarrassment to you.”

“Don't twist my words around,” she said furiously. “And don't try to make me seem small and shallow because I'm not interested in being courted. Jesus,
courted.
Even the word's ridiculous.”

“There's another you'd prefer?”

“No, there's not another I'd prefer. What I prefer, and expect, is for you to drop it.”

He sat quietly a moment, dealing with a slowly building anger. “Because you have no feelings for me?”

“That's right.” And because it was a lie, her voice sharpened. “Do you really have some deluded idea that I'd just fall in meekly with whatever absurd plans you're cooking up? Marry you, live here? A farmer's wife, for God's sake. Do I look like a farmer's wife? I've got a career, a life.”

He moved so quickly she only had time to suck in one shocked breath. His hands were on her arms, fingers dug in. His face was a study of the pale and dark of fury.

“And my life's beneath you?” he demanded. “What I have, what I've worked for, even what I am is something less? Something to be scorned?”

Her heart was beating like a rabbit's, in quick bumpy
jerks. She could only shake her head. Who could have guessed he had such temper in him?

“I'll accept that you don't know you love me, won't clear your eyes to see that we're meant. But I won't have you disparage what I am and spurn everything I and my family for generations has struggled for.”

“That's not what I meant—”

“You think the land just sits, pretty as a picture, and waits to be reaped?” The candlelight threw shadows over his face, making it as fascinating as it was dangerous. “There's blood spilled for it, and more sweat than can be weighed. Keeping it's hard, and keeping it's not enough. If you're too proud to accept it as yours, then you shame yourself.”

Her breath was shuddering out. She had to force herself to draw it in slowly. “You're hurting me, Murphy.”

He dropped his hands as if her flesh had burned them. He stepped back, his movements jerky for the first time since she'd known him. “I beg your pardon.”

It was his turn for shame. He knew his hands were large, and knew their strength. It appalled him that he would have used them, even in blind fury, to put a mark on her.

The self-disgust on his face kept her from giving in to the urge to rub at the soreness on her arms. However huge her lack of understanding of him, she knew instinctively he was a gentle man who would consider hurting a woman the lowest form of sin.

“I didn't mean to offend you,” she said slowly. “I was angry and upset, and trying to make the point that we're different. Who we are, what we want.”

He slipped his hands into his pockets. “What do you want?”

She opened her mouth, then shut it on the shock of finding the answer wasn't there. “I've had a number of
major changes in my life over the past couple of months, so I still need to think about that. But a relationship isn't one of them.”

“Are you afraid of me?” His voice was carefully neutral. “I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“No, I'm not afraid of you.” She couldn't help herself. She stepped forward, laid a hand on his cheek. “Temper understands temper, Murphy.” Almost certain the crisis had passed, she smiled. “Let's forget all of this, and be friends.”

Instead he stopped her heart by taking her hand, sliding it around until his lips pressed tenderly into the palm. “ ‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee the more I have, for both are infinite.” '

Shakespeare, she thought as her body softened. He would quote Shakespeare in that gorgeous voice. “Don't say things like that to me, Murphy. It's not playing fair.”

“We're past games, Shannon. We're neither of us children, or fools. Here now, I won't hurt you.” His voice was soothing, as it was when he gentled a horse. For she'd gone skittish when he'd slipped his arms around her. “Tell me what you felt when I kissed you the first time.”

It wasn't a difficult question to answer, as she was feeling it again. “Tempted.”

He smiled, pressed his curved lips to her temple. “That's not all of it. There was more, wasn't there? A kind of remembering.”

Her body was refusing her very sensible order to stay rigid and aloof. “I don't believe in those things.”

“I didn't ask what you believed.” His lips cruised from temple to jaw, patient. “But what you felt.” Through the thin barrier of silk her skin was warming. He thought he might go mad holding himself from stripping that
barrier away and finding all of her. “It wasn't just now.” He indulged himself a few miserly degrees, sliding into the kiss, savoring the way her mouth yielded for his. “It was again.”

“That's nonsense.” But her own voice seemed to come from a long way off. “And this is crazy.” Even as she spoke, her hands were fisting in his hair to hold him close, closer, until the pleasure bounded past reason. “We can't do this.” The purr of delight sounded in her throat, rippled wonderfully into his mouth. “It's just chemistry.”

“God bless science.” Nearly as breathless as she, he dragged her to her toes and tortured himself. Only for a moment, he vowed. And plundered.

Explosions burst inside of her, one after another until her system was battered by color and light. On a wild spurt of greed, she all but clawed at him in a fight for more.

Touch me, damn you. The order erupted in her head. But his hands did no more than hold while her body ached to be possessed. She knew how his hand would feel. She knew, and could have wept from the power of the knowledge. Hard palm, gentle strokes that would build and build into brands.

With a feral instinct she hadn't known lurked inside her, she dug her teeth into his lip, baiting him, daring him. At his violent oath, she flung her head back, her face glowing with triumph.

Then she paled, degree by degree. For his eyes were warrior's eyes, dark, deadly, and terrifyingly familiar.

“God.” The word burst out of her as she struggled away. Fighting for air, for balance, she pressed her hands to her breast. “Stop. God, this has to stop.”

Teetering on the thin edge of control, Murphy fisted his hands at his sides. “I want you more than I want to
take the next breath. It's killing me, Shannon, this wanting.”

“I made a mistake.” She dragged her trembling hands through her hair. “I made a mistake here. I'm sorry. I'm not going to let this go any further.” She could feel herself being pulled toward him—negative to positive. Power to power. “Stay away from me, Murphy.”