Born in Shame
Page 22

“She doesn’t mind being handled, that one,” Murphy said from behind her.
Shannon’s yelp had several of the cows trundling off. After some annoyed mooing, they settled down again. But Murphy was still laughing when they had, and his hand remained on Shannon’s shoulder where he gripped to keep her from falling face first off the wall.
“Steady now. You’re all nerves.”
“I thought I was alone.” She wasn’t sure if she was more mortified to have screamed or to have been caught petting a farm animal.
“I was heading back from setting my horses to pasture and saw you.” In a comfortable move he sat on the wall, facing the opposite way, and lighted a cigarette. “It’s a fine morning.”
Her opinion on that was a grunt. She hadn’t thought about this being his land. And now, it seemed, she was stuck again. “You take care of all these cows yourself?”
“Oh, I have a bit of help now and then, when it’s needed. You go ahead, pet her if you like. She doesn’t mind it.”
“I wasn’t petting her.” It was a little late for dignity, but Shannon made a stab at it. “I was just curious about how they felt.”
“You’ve never touched a cow?” The very idea made him grin. “You have them in America I’m told.”
“Of course we have cows. We just don’t see them strolling down Fifth Avenue very often.” She slanted a look at him. He was still smiling, looking back toward the tree that had started the whole scenario. “Why haven’t you cut that down? It’s in the middle of your wheat.”
“It’s no trouble to plow and plant around it,” he said easily. “And it’s been here longer than me.” At the moment he was more interested in her. She smelled faintly sinful—some cunning female fragrance that had a man wondering. And wasn’t it fine that he’d been thinking of her as he’d come over the rise?
There she’d been, as if she’d been waiting.
“You’ve a fine morning for your first in Clare. There’ll be rain later in the day.”
Brianna had said the same, Shannon remembered, and frowned up at the pretty blue sky. “Why do you say that?”
“Didn’t you see the sunrise?”
Even as she was wondering what that had to do with anything, Murphy was cupping her chin in his hand and turning her face west.
“And there,” he said, gesturing. “The clouds gathering up from the sea. They’ll blow in by noontime and bring us rain. A soft one, not a storm. There’s no temper in the air.”
The hand on her face was hard as rock, gentle as water. She discovered he carried the scents of his farm with him—the horses, the earth, the grass. It seemed wiser all around to concentrate on the sky.
“I suppose farmers have to learn how to gauge the weather.”
“It’s not learning so much. You just know.” To please himself he let his fingers brush through her hair before dropping them onto his own knee. The gesture, the casual intimacy of it, had her turning her head toward him.
They may have been facing opposite ways, with legs dangling on each side of the wall, but they were hip to hip. And now eye to eye. And his were the color of the glass her mother had collected—the glass Shannon had packed so carefully and brought back to New York. Cobalt.
She didn’t see any of the shyness or the bafflement she’d read in them the day before. These were the eyes of a confident man, one comfortable with himself, and one, she realized with some confusion of her own, who had dangerous thoughts behind them.
He was tempted to kiss her. Just lean forward and lay his lips upon hers. Once. Quietly. If she’d been another woman, he would have. Then again, he knew if she’d been another woman he wouldn’t have wanted to quite so badly.
“You have a face, Shannon, that plants itself right in the front of a man’s mind, and blooms there.”
It was the voice, she thought, the Irish in it that made even such a foolish statement sound like poetry. In defense against it, she looked away, back toward the safety of grazing cows.
“You think in farming analogies.”
“That’s true enough. There’s something I’d like to show you. Will you walk with me?”
“I should get back.”
But he was already rising and taking her hand as though it were already a habit. “ ’Tisn’t far.” He bent, plucked a starry blue flower that had been growing in a crack in the wall. Rather than hand it to her, as she’d expected, he tucked it behind her ear.
It was ridiculously charming. She fell into step beside him before she could stop herself. “Don’t you have work? I thought farmers were always working.”
“Oh, I’ve a moment or two to spare. There’s Con.” Murphy lifted a hand as they walked. “Rabbitting.”
The sight of the sleek gray dog racing across the field in pursuit of a blur that was a rabbit had her laughing. Then her fingers tightened on Murphy’s in distress. “He’ll kill it.”
“Aye, if he could catch it, likely he would. But chances of that are slim.”
Hunter and hunted streaked over the rise and vanished into a thin line of trees where the faintest gleam of water caught the sun.
“He’ll lose him now, as he always does. He can’t help chasing any more than the rabbit can help fleeing.”
“He’ll come back if you call him,” Shannon said urgently. “He’ll come back and leave it alone.”
Willing to indulge her, Murphy sent out a whistle. Moments later Con bounded back over the field, tongue lolling happily.
“Thank you.”
Murphy started walking again. There was no use telling her Con would be off again at the next rabbit he scented. “Have you always lived in the city?”
“In or near. We moved around a lot, but we always settled near a major hub.” She glanced up. He seemed taller when they were walking side by side. Or perhaps it was just the way he had of moving over the land. “And have you always lived around here?”
“Always. Some of this land was the Concannons’, and ours ran beside it. Tom’s heart was never in farming, and over the years he sold off pieces to my father, then to me. Now what’s mine splits between what’s left of the Concannons’, leaving a piece of theirs on either side.”