Born in Shame
Page 83

“That’s quite a segue.”
“I guess it is, and a question I never figured I’d ask anyone.” She turned to study him now. “I’m asking you because you’re an American.” When his grin broke out, hers followed. “I know how that sounds, but hear me out. You make your home here, in Ireland, but you’re still a Yank. You make your living by creating fiction, telling stories, but you do it on modern equipment. There’s a fax machine in your office.”
“Yeah, that makes all the difference.”
“It means you’re a twentieth-century man, a forward-looking man who understands technology and uses it.”
“Murphy has a top-of-the-line milk machine,” Gray pointed out. “His new tractor’s the best modern technology’s come up with.”
“And he cuts his own turf,” Shannon finished, smiling. “And his blood is full of Celtic mystique. You can’t tell me that part of him doesn’t believe in banshees and fairies.”
“Okay, I’d say Murphy’s a fascinating combination of old Ireland and new. So your question to me is do I believe in visions.” He waited a beat. “Absolutely.”
“Oh, Grayson.” Frustrated, she sprang up, strode two paces down the path, turned, and strode back. “How can you sit there, wearing Nikes and a Rolex and tell me you believe in visions?”
He looked down at his shoes. “I like Nikes, and the watch keeps pretty good time.”
“You know very well what I mean. You’re not going to have any trouble rolling into the twenty-first century, yet you’re going to sit there and say you believe in fifteenth-century nonsense.”
“I don’t think it’s nonsense, and I don’t think it’s stuck in the fifteenth century, either. I think it goes back a whole lot further, and that it’ll keep going through several more millenniums.”
“And you probably believe in ghosts, too, and reincarnation, and toads that turn into princes.”
“Yep.” He grinned, then took her hand and pulled her down again. “You shouldn’t ask a question if the answer’s going to piss you off.” When she only huffed, he toyed with her fingers. “You know when I came to this part of Ireland, I had no intention of staying. Six months maybe, write the book, and pack up. That’s the way I worked, and lived. Obviously Brianna’s the main reason I changed that. But there’s more. I recognized this place.”
“Oh, Gray,” she said again.
“I walked across the fields one morning, and I saw the standing stones. They fascinated me, and I felt a tug, a power that didn’t surprise me in the least.”
Her hand tensed in his. “You mean that.”
“I do. I could walk down the road there, or drive to the cliffs, through the village, wander around in ruins, cemeteries. I felt connected—and I’d never felt that connection with anything or anyone before. I didn’t have visions, but I knew I’d been here before and was meant to come back.”
“And that doesn’t give you the creeps.”
“It scared the shit out of me,” he said cheerfully. “Just about as much as falling in love with Brianna did. What’s scaring you more, pal?”
“I don’t know. I have these dreams.”
“So you said before. Are you going to tell me about them this time?”
“I have to tell somebody,” she murmured. “Whenever I start to talk about it with Murphy I get . . . panicked. Like something’s got a hold of me. I’m not the hysterical type, Gray, or the fanciful type. But I can’t get past this.”
She began slowly, telling him of the first dream, the details of it, the emotions of it. The words came easily now, without the hot ball in her throat that swelled each time she tried to discuss it with Murphy.
Still, she knew there was more, some piece, some final link that part of her was blocking out.
“He has the broach,” she finished. “Murphy has the broach I saw in my dreams. He found it in the dance when he was a boy, and he says he started having the same dreams.”
Fascinated, and with one part of his brain coolly filing away the facts and images for a story to be spun, he whistled. “That’s pretty heavy stuff.”
“Tell me about it. I feel like I’ve got the weight of a hundred-pound ax at the back of my neck.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I said heavy, not scary. Certainly not threatening.”
“Well, I am threatened. I don’t like it, this having my unconscious intruded upon. And this nasty feeling that I’m supposed to fix whatever went wrong doesn’t agree with me. Gray, when I see a magician vanish in a puff of smoke, I know it’s a trick. I may enjoy it, be entertained if it’s well done, but I’m fully aware there’s a trapdoor and misdirection.”
“Rock and a hard place again, pal. Logic against illogic. Reason against emotion. Have you considered relaxing and just seeing which side wins?”
“I’ve considered finding an analyst,” she muttered. “And I’m telling myself the dreams will stop once I’m back in New York, back in the routine I’m used to.”
“And you’re afraid they won’t.”
“Yes, I’m afraid they won’t. And I’m very afraid that Murphy won’t understand why I have to go.”
“Do you understand?” Gray asked quietly.
“Logically, yes. And still logically, I can understand my connection here. With Murphy, with all of you. I know I’ll have to come back, that I’ll never break the ties, or want to. And that the life I’m going back to will never be quite the same as the one I had before. But I can’t fix dreams, Gray, and I can’t stay and let my life drift. Not even for Murphy.”
“Want advice?”
She lifted her hands, then let them fall. “Hell, I’ll take what I can get.”
“Think through what you’re going back to and what you’re leaving behind. Make a list if it helps the logical side. And after you’ve weighed them, one against the other, see which side of the scale dips.”
“Pretty standard advice,” she mused. “But not bad. Thanks.”
“Wait till you get my bill.”
She laughed, tilted her head onto his shoulder. “I really love you.”