He'd met a few who were cousins. In fact, he had two of them employed as laborers.

With Mick out of commission for the next few days, he'd have to spend more time at the site. But he didn't mind. It would keep his mind focused on what it needed to be focused on. And give him less time to let it wander around Darcy.

He felt he'd straightened things out in that area as well. Both of them were too sensible to be influenced by legends, or self-interested faeries. Or dreams of a blue heart that beat steady and strong deep in the sea.

He had business to see to, he reminded himself as he carried coffee up to his office in the cottage. Calls to make, contracts to negotiate, supplies to order. He couldn't waste time thinking about what he did or didn't see, did or didn't believe. Responsibilities wouldn't wait while he pondered just how much of Irish myth was real and how much was imagined.

He touched the disk under his shirt. Real, he thought. As real as it gets. But he was handling it.

He glanced at his watch, and thought he might just catch his father at home in New York. And stepping into the bedroom, he jerked and spilled hot coffee over the back of his hand.

"Goddamn it!"

"Oh, there's no need to profane." With a quiet cluck of her tongue, Gwen continued to ply her needle. She sat in the chair in front of the tidy hearth, her hair neatly bound back, her face composed, her hands quick and clever as she embroidered a white cloth.

"You'll want salve on that burn," she told him.

"It's nothing." What was a little discomfort compared to seeing ghosts? Much less to conversing with one. "I'd nearly convinced myself not to believe in you."

"Sure and you need to do what makes you most comfortable. Would you rather I let you be?"

"I don't know what I'd rather." He set the coffee down on the table, turned his desk chair around to face her. And sitting, he sucked absently at the sting on his hand. "I had dreams about you. I told you that. I didn't tell you I halfway believed I'd find you when I came here. Not you," he corrected, fumbling just enough to annoy himself. "Someone-" the word "alive" seemed rude somehow. "Real. A woman."

Her gaze when it lifted to his was gentle and full of understanding. "You thought perhaps you'd find the woman you'd dreamed of, and that she would be for you?"

"Maybe. Not that I'm looking particularly," he added. "But maybe."

"A man can fall in love with a dream if he lets himself. It's a simple matter with no effort, no work, no troubles. And no real joy, when it comes down to it. You prefer working for something, don't you? It's part of who you are."

"I suppose so."

"The woman you did meet is a great deal of effort and work and trouble. Tell me, Trevor, does she bring you joy as well?"

"You mean Darcy?"

"And who else have you been walking with?" Gwen questioned. "Of course I'm speaking of Darcy Gallagher. A beautiful and complicated woman that, with a voice like-" She trailed off, shaking her head and lightly laughing. "I was going to say like an angel, but there's little of the angels about that one. No, she's a voice like a woman, full and rich and tempting to a man. She's tempted you."

"She could tempt the dead. No offense."

"None taken. I wonder, Trevor, don't you think she's what you're looking for?"

"I'm not looking for anything. Anyone."

"We all look. The lucky find." Her hands, stilled, lay on the cloth with bright patterns of thread. "The wise accept. I was lucky, but not wise. Could you not learn something from my mistake?"

"I don't love her."

"Maybe you do and maybe you don't." Gwen picked up her needle again. "But you haven't opened your heart to the risk of it. You guard that part of yourself so fierce, Trevor."

"It may be that part of myself doesn't exist." Chewed off at the knee in Ardmore, he thought, before I was even born. "That I'm just not capable of loving someone the way you mean."

"That's foolishness."

"I hurt another woman because I couldn't love her."

"And, I think, hurt yourself in the process. It puts doubts about yourself in your mind. Both of you, I can promise, will not only survive it, but be better off for the experience. Once you stop thinking of your heart as a weapon instead of a gift, you'll find what you're looking for."

"My heart isn't the priority here. The theater is."

She made a sound that might have been agreement. " 'Tis a grand thing to be able to build, and build to last. This cottage, simple as it is, has lasted lifetime and lifetime. Oh, sure a few changes here, another room there, but the core of it remains. As does the faerie raft beneath it, with its silver towers and blue river."

"You chose the cottage over the castle," he pointed out.

"I did. Aye, I did. For the wrong reasons, but in spite of it, I won't regret my children or the man who gave them to me. Perhaps Carrick will never understand that part of my heart. I've come to understand it would be wrong to ask him to do so. Hearts can merge and the people who hold them still stand as they are. Love accepts that. It accepts everything."

He saw now what pattern she worked into the cloth. It was the silver palace, its towers bright, its river blue as gemstones, its trees heavy with golden fruit. And on a bridge that spanned the water were two figures, not yet finished.

Herself, Trevor realized, with her hands held out toward Carrick's.

"You're lonely without him."

"I have-" She brushed a finger gently over the threads that formed a silver doublet. "An emptiness in me. A place that waits. As I wait."

"What happens to you if the spell isn't broken?"

She lifted her head again, her eyes dark and soft and quiet. "I'll bide here, and see him only in my heart."

"For how long?"

"For as long as there is. You have choices, Trevor Magee, as once I had. You have only to make them."

"It's not the same," he began, but she faded away, like mist. "It's not the same," he said again, to the empty room. Though he turned the chair around, it was some time before he picked up the phone and managed to get on with the business at hand.

He called his father first, and that connection of voice to voice soothed his nerves. With his rhythm back, he fell into routine, contacted Nigel in London, and his counterpart in Los Angeles. He checked the time again, noted it was closing in on midnight. Seven in New York, he thought, and called the ever reliable Finkle at home.

Notes were piled on his desk, his computer up and running, and the phone tucked on his shoulder with Finkle's voice droning through when he heard the sound of a car pulling in. Trevor shifted, angled so he could see through the window.

And watched Darcy walk toward the garden gate.

He'd forgotten the wine.

She considered knocking, but she'd seen the light in his office window. Working, are you? With a sly glint in her eye she let herself in the front door. She thought they'd soon put a stop to that, and walked straight up the stairs.

She paused at the door to his office, finding herself both irritated and pleased when he continued with his phone call and waved her in with a little finger crook.

Irritated that he didn't appear to have been anxiously awaiting her. And pleased because she imagined she would shortly have him panting like an eager pup.

"I'll need that report before New York closes tomorrow." Trevor scribbled something down, nodded. "Yeah, well, they've got till end of day to accept the offer or it's off the table. Yes, that's exactly how I want you to put it. Next item. I'm not satisfied with the bids on the Dressier project. Make it clear that if our usual lumber supplier can't do better, we'll look to alternate sources."

He glanced over absently, took a sip of his coffee as Darcy unbuttoned her coat. Then inhaled caffeine like air-and choked on it.

The coat dropped to the floor, and he saw she wore nothing beneath it but his bracelet, high heels, and a very feline smile.

"Perfect," he managed. "Jesus, you're perfect." As

Finkle's voice buzzed in his ear, he simply hung up, got to his feet.

"I take it business hours are over."

"They are."

She looked around the room, angled her head. "I don't see my glass of wine."

He discovered it was just possible to speak when a man's heart was in his throat. "I forgot it." His breath already ragged, he crossed to her. "I'll get it later."

She tipped her head back to keep her eyes on his, and saw what she'd wanted to see. Desire, raw as a fresh wound. "I've a powerful thirst."

"Later" was all he could say before his mouth came down on hers.

He possessed. With quick, hard hands, restless lips, he took what she'd offered. Gave her what she'd wanted. Desperation was what she'd wanted from him, that jagged edge of need as dangerous as it was primitive. She'd come to him naked and shameless to lure the animal.

He was rough, and his recklessness added a slick layer of excitement. No control now, nor the need for it. So she lost herself in the wicked spell of her own brewing.

He shoved her against the wall, feasting on her throat, drugged on that sharply sexual taste of perfumed female flesh. And his hands streaked over her, bruised over her, greedy for the curves, the swells, the secrets of woman.

Hot, wet, vibrant.

His fingers slid over her, into her, driving her up. Even as he felt her body shudder, felt the violence of the orgasm rip through her, he looked into her eyes. In the dark and clouded blue, he thought he saw the flash of triumph.

He might have been able to pull back then, to clear his head enough to find his finesse, but she moved against him, one lazy, stretching arch, and her arms twined around him like chains wrapped in velvet.