She tipped her head to his shoulder. “When you gave me my gift back at Central, magic vests for my bullpen? You undid me. We get each other. We get what’s important to each other.”
“You’ve time for mooning over each other later.” Robbie strode up to pluck Eve off the wall. “I’m for another dance with my niece.”
For a third time, Eve thought what the hell, and danced.
* * *
She woke alone, and in a stream of pearly sunlight. A memo cube sat on the stand by the bed. Once activated, Roarke’s voice streamed out.
It seems I’m off to the fields. There’ll be coffee and breakfast down in the kitchen whenever you’re up and ready.
If coffee was involved, she could be up, and she could get ready.
The shower didn’t come close to the multi-jets and steam at home, or the luxury of the villa in Greece, but it did the job.
She dragged on pants, a shirt, and, with her mind still blurry, automatically reached for her weapon harness. It took her a second to remember she’d locked it away in her bag.
She walked out in the quiet—unless you counted the occasional mooing cow or baaing sheep (which she did, absolutely).
Down the creaky stairs and toward the kitchen. Already the air smelled like glory—with coffee a happy top note.
“Good morning to you, Eve. I heard you stirring, so there’s coffee fresh and ready for you.”
“Thanks.” Eve grabbed a mug while Sinead, an apron over her own shirt and pants, her red-gold hair bundled up, heated a skillet on the stove.
“Roarke’s own blend it is, so not to worry. He told me coffee was his first gift to you.”
“Yeah. A sneaky way to get past my defenses.”
“A cagey man is Roarke. And now, can you handle a full Irish for breakfast?”
“After last night I figured I was good for a week. But maybe.”
“Danced it all off, as did I. Why don’t you start with a bit of the soda bread—it’s full of currants and baked just this morning.”
“That’s what I smelled. I remember it from when we were here last year.”
Now the smell of frying meat joined the chorus.
Eve sat at the kitchen table. It seemed odd to just sit there while somebody cooked. No AutoChef for Sinead. But it seemed the right thing.
“Roarke’s in the field?”
“Aye, didn’t they drag him off—and his own fault for being an early riser. A Brody trait.”
“Is it? He’s up before dawn pretty much every day. ’Link meetings, holo-meetings with somebody on the other side of the world.”
“It is, yes. The farmer in us, I suppose.”
“It’s hard to see farmer in Roarke.”
Sinead sent a smile over her shoulder. “But he plows and plants and tends and harvests right enough.”
“You could say that.” Eve drank more coffee. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“And you, you guard the fields and those who work them, and keep the predators at bay. It’s a fine match you’ve made.”
In short order, she put a plate in front of Eve.
“I see his face still, the first time he knocked on my door. The grief in his eyes—my sister’s eyes. Sure Siobhan’s were as green as mine, but the look in them, the shape of them. My sister’s child. And I see his face as so much lifted from him when he saw you land in the near field. And I knew, as he looked at you, he’d found the love she never did.”
She set aside a dish towel. “I wonder if I could speak to you about things on my mind.”
“Sure. Is there a problem?”
“It’s not the now, but the before. I’ll have some tea and sit while you eat.”
Sinead took her time about it, and Eve realized she sensed nerves.
“Sure I thought this a good time, with just the two of us, to say what so troubles me.” She sat, sighed. “We didn’t fight for him, you see, for our Roarke. Just a babe, and with that bastard Patrick Roarke. My sister’s child, and we didn’t fight for him.”
Because she thought it helped those nerves, Eve ate. “That’s not what I heard. Patrick Roarke nearly killed your brother when he went to Dublin to try to find out what happened to your sister.”
“He did, oh sweet Jesus, he did, and would see us all in the ground, he warned, if any of us came back. In those times, those hard times, Patrick Roarke had cops and more in both his hands and his back pocket. Still, we knew of the baby and let him go. We let Siobhan’s son go. And as time went on, we thought—on my life, we believed—Roarke himself knew of us, of his mother. And more time went on, and we heard—some time after it happened—that Patrick Roarke was dead. I thought of my children, not much younger than my sister’s child.”
“You thought he knew,” Eve said as Sinead stared into her tea. “And if he’d wanted contact, he’d reach out to his mother’s family, since Patrick Roarke couldn’t stop him. You thought—why wouldn’t you?—maybe he’s his father’s child, and I have my own to protect.”
Tears swirled, but Sinead didn’t shed them when she nodded. She sipped some tea as she gathered herself to say more.
“And that became a kind of comfort as more time passed. You’d hear of Roarke—the young man who made fortunes—you’d hear of deeds done in shadows—rumors of them. His life in New York City. A kind of empire, isn’t it?”
“And not really ‘kind of.’”
“I’d wonder, when I let myself wonder, what kind of man he was. Like his father? Ruthless, murderous, heartless? I might see a picture of him at some fancy place with some beautiful woman on his arm. I’d think: Where is Siobhan, where is my sister in this man? I couldn’t find her in him, you see. I couldn’t see her in him a’tall, so easier still to turn away, to let go.”
She sighed again. “Then I saw a picture of him with you, this policewoman with serious eyes. Not so glamorous as others, but more memorable to my thinking. And when I looked at him standing with you, I thought: Ah, well now, oh aye, there she is, there’s a bit of my sister after all. Who is this woman who brought Siobhan out in him?”
“She was always there, Sinead.”
Those tears shimmered over the Brody green. “I know that now. I think I knew that the moment I opened the door to him. But—”
“You opened the door to him,” Eve interrupted. “You let him in. You gave him family. Regrets aren’t just useless in this case, they’re just wrong.”
“We let him go.”
“You took him in,” Eve corrected, “when he needed you, and opened a door he hadn’t known existed. One he thought you’d shut in his face. His years in Dublin, with that fucker Patrick Roarke, and beyond that made him what he is. Who he is. Regret what you did or didn’t? You regret who he made himself.”
Blinking at the tears, Sinead sat back. “That’s very Irish of you.”
“Is it?” With a shrug, Eve polished off her breakfast. “Just strikes me as logic.”
“You love him, very much.”
“He’s a complicated, irritating, arrogant, fascinating, generous man. I love him, very much, even when he pisses me off. Which is fairly regularly. And yet. Do you know what he gave me for our anniversary?”