"It's always more comforting to wait at home. I've waited a long time. He thinks you're the last. I wonder, could he be right when you don't wish to be, and wish it so strongly?"

It was impossible. A man didn't hold a conversation with a ghost. Someone, for some reason, was playing games, and it was time to put a stop to it. He strode forward, reached out to take her arm. And his hand passed through her as it would through smoke.

The keys slipped out of his numb fingers and clattered on the floor at her feet.

"Is it so difficult to believe that more exists than what you can touch?" She said it kindly, because she understood what it was to fight beliefs. She could have allowed him to touch an illusion of what she had been, but it would have meant less to him. "You already know it in your heart, in your blood. It's only a matter of letting your mind follow."

"I'm going to sit down." He did so, abruptly, on the side of the bed. "I dreamed of you."

And for the first time, she smiled. Mixed with gentle humor was compassion. "I know it. Your coming here to this place at this time was determined long ago."

"Fate?"

"It's a word you don't like, one that makes you want to brace for battle." She shook her head at him. "Such a thing as fate takes us to certain points along a path. What you do here and now is up to you. The choice at the end of a path. I made mine."

"Did you?"

"Aye. I did what I thought right." Annoyance filtered into the musical voice. "It doesn't make it right, but only what I thought, and what I felt needed to be done. My husband was a good man, a kind one. We had children together who were the joy of my life, a home that contented us."

"Did you love him?"

"I did, oh, aye, I did after a time. A warm and settled love we had, and he would have asked no more of that from me. 'Twasn't the flash and burn I felt for another. Do you see that's what I believed it was I felt for Carrick? A fire that would flame hot and high, then die away to nothing but ash. And there I was wrong."

She turned, as if looking out the window, beyond the glass, beyond the rain. "I was wrong," she repeated. "I've bided in this place a long time, a long and lonely time, and still the burn of that love, the ache and the joy of it's inside me. It's so easy for love to hide itself under passion and not be recognized."

"Most would say it's easy to mistake passion for love."

"Both are true enough. But for me, I feared the fire, even as I longed for it. And fearing, and longing, never looked into the flames for the jewels that waited there for me."

"I know about passion, but I don't know about love. And still, I've looked for you in other women."

Her eyes met his again. "You haven't realized what you look for, and I hope you will. We're coming to the end of it, one way or the other. Look hard at what you want to build, then make your choices."

"I know what-" But she was fading away. He leaped to his feet, reached out again. "Wait. Damn it!" Alone, he tried to pace off nerves, but they stretched and snapped inside him.

How the hell was he supposed to handle this? Dreams and magic and ghosts. There was nothing solid there, nothing tangible. Nothing believable, if it came to that.

But he did believe, and that was what worried him.

CHAPTER Six

"You're looking a bit the worse for wear this morning."

Trevor took another gulp of the coffee he'd brought to the site with him and sent Brenna a murderous look. "Shut up."

She didn't bother to disguise her snort of amusement. She was used to him now and didn't worry overmuch about his bark. When the likes of him meant to bite, they didn't warn you first.

"And cross as well. There now, I can have someone bring out a nice rocking chair and you can sit under an umbrella and have a bit of a nap."

He sipped again. "Have you ever seen a cement mixer from the inside?"

"As rough as you look 'round the edges this morning, I could take you one-handed. Seriously, you can go into the kitchen and have your coffee in peace and in quiet."

"Construction zones cheer me up."

"And me." She glanced around at the tacks of equipment, the hulking machines, the men hefting pipe and cheerfully insulting each other. "Odd creatures, aren't we? Dad's off this morning doing a spot of repair jobs here and there, so I'm glad you're here and in the mood for working off your sulks."

"I'm not sulking. I don't sulk."

"Ah, well, brooding, then. I enjoy a good brood myself, though most often I prefer just punching something and being done with it."

"Shawn must lead an interesting life."

"He's a darling man, and the love of my life, so I do my best to keep him from tedium." 'Tedium," Trevor muttered, "kills." She nodded. He didn't look cool and reserved this morning, nor did his voice hold that faint tint of distance. She judged him to be a man that put all of that up as a barrier until the one he dealt with proved trustworthy. She was glad to have passed the mark. "I should tell you the lines from the new well and those from the septic are to be inspected this morning. All goes okay, we'll be burying them by end of day."

She headed over to show Trevor the progress. The ground was muddy from the night's rain, which continued to fall steadily. It dripped off the brim of Brenna's cap, glimmered on the little silver faerie she had pinned on it, as she hunkered down beside a trench.

The smell of mud and men and gasoline pleased her enormously.

"As you see, we've used the grade of material you specified, and a pretty job it is, too. Dad and I dealt with a busted septic line during the flood last winter, and it's not an experience I'm after repeating any time in the near future."

"This'll hold." He crouched where he was, scanned the area. He could see it perfectly, the long, low sweep of the theater, faced with stone to blend with the existing pub, the trim of dark, distressed wood. Charming and simple, but what it was built of, and built on, would be the best that modern technology offered.

That was the dream, after all. Taking what was here, respecting it, even showcasing it, while using the material and ingenuity man had devised along the way. That's why he was here, to put the Magee mark on the place they'd come from. It had nothing to do with old legends and lovely ghosts.

Tuning back to the present, he glanced back and saw Brenna patiently watching him. "Sorry, mind wandered."

He looked perplexed and not a little angry. She hesitated. After all, they'd only known each other in the face-to-face manner for a handful of days. "If it's something to do with the job that's troubling you, I hope you'll tell me so I can do what I can to smooth it out. That's part of what you're paying me for. If it's a personal matter, I'll be glad to listen if it's something you feel the need to talk through."

"I guess it's a combination. I appreciate it, but I'll mull a while."

"I find I mull most successfully when my hands are busy."

"Good point." He straightened. "Let's get to work."

It was rough and messy work, and most wouldn't find it pleasant. Trevor did. Large sheets of plywood were spread over the mud to give barrows and boots traction as material was transported. He hauled lumber for studs and joists, stood under the tarp where the plumbers worked and listened to rain patter on canvas. He drank a gallon of coffee and began to feel marginally human again.

Brenna was right, he decided. Busy hands kept the mind occupied so what was troubling it could stew and turn in the corners. He would figure out what was happening and what to do about it while he dealt with the business at hand.

That, he thought, amused at himself, was a great deal more efficient than brooding.

Drenched and muddy and in a much happier frame of mind, he hefted another board. And nerves danced in his belly, up his spine, over the back of his neck. He was compelled, as he had been the night before, to look up.

Darcy stood in the window, watching him through the thin curtain of rain.

She didn't smile, nor did he. In that meeting of eyes was an acute awareness that was primitive, sexual, erotic as the slide of naked flesh on naked flesh. There was nothing of the casual flirtation that had passed between them that first morning. Nothing of the clever, seductive game they'd played since.

The flash and burn. Yes, he understood that exactly as he stood in the chilly rain staring at a woman he barely knew.

Barely knew, he thought, but had to have. And he didn't give a damn how quickly the fire died. Annoyed that he could be so easily manipulated by his own desires, he shifted the lumber on his shoulder and carried it to the team of carpenters.

When, unable to do otherwise, he looked back, she was gone.

She acted as if nothing had happened, as if that bolt of knowledge hadn't flashed between them. When Trevor came in out of the wet for lunch, she sent him a casual glance and continued to take the orders at one of her stations without a single hitch of rhythm.

It was admirable, and infuriating. He'd never had a woman stir both emotions in him so effortlessly.

The lunch crowd was thinner today. He supposed the weather kept some of the tourists within the confines of the hotel. Knowing it was perverse, he deliberately chose a table in Sinead's section. It would be interesting to see what move Darcy made in this little chess match they appeared to be playing.

Clever, was Darcy's opinion when she noticed his strategy. Though it would cost him in speed of service, he'd made his point. It was her turn to take a step ahead or back. Then again, she pondered as she scooped up the tip from a table that had just cleared, there was always sideways.