LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Five

      The Devil’s in the Whiskey

      Quinn awoke to the sound of birds chirping and sheep bleating. He was sprawled on his back on the bed, still in the clothes he’d worn on the plane—which reeked of cigarette and peat smoke—his head pounding like the bass drum in a marching band. Not yet wanting to risk opening his eyes, which felt sandpaper scratchy, he ran his tongue over teeth as fuzzy as moss-covered rocks.

      While he might have the mother of all hangovers, the prodigious amount of alcohol he’d drunk last night had not, unfortunately, impaired his memory. He recalled everything about the night before, including the fact that he’d made an ass of himself by hitting on Nora Fitzpatrick.

      In between fanciful stories of banshees, warriors and revolution, Brady Joyce had waxed eloquent about his widowed daughter, clearly a man prone to overembellishment. Quinn, upon first stumbling out of the patrol car last night, had discovered that perhaps for the first time in the man’s life, Brady had been guilty of understatement.

      Nora Fitzpatrick’s face, haloed by a wavy cloud of hair as bright as the cozy peat fire burning in the parlor hearth, had brought to mind a pre-Christian Celtic goddess. Her eyes were a soft mystical green that could have washed off the velvet hills of the countryside. And her mouth! At first sight of her lush unpainted lips, he’d felt an instant desire to taste them.

      Quinn had no intention of apologizing for experiencing a sexual attraction. His approach, however, had definitely lacked subtlety.

      She’d looked somehow familiar, but remembering the tug of recognition he’d experienced when he’d first seen the country from the plane, Quinn had discounted the sensation.

      One thing he hadn’t been able to discount was that momentary flash of shared sexual awareness, when he’d caught a glimpse of something in her eyes, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on. It couldn’t be inexperience, since she had, after all, been married. She’d even had a child, he recalled Brady telling him. A son.

      Innocence, perhaps?

      Whatever it was, even tanked as he’d been, every instinct Quinn possessed had told him that Nora Fitzpatrick was trouble. With a capital T.

      “No point in borrowing trouble,” he muttered, quoting his mother, who’d always possessed a natural knack for doing exactly that. “The widow Fitzpatrick is off-limits.”

      He’d no sooner stated the vow when he heard a whimper he first thought might have come from him. Gingerly opening one eye, he came face-to-face with a huge furry gray, white and black muzzle and a pair of limpid brown eyes.

      “Either Brady has taken to parking a Buick in the bedroom, or you’re the biggest damn dog in Ireland.”

      The beast whimpered again, a thin sound more suited to some toy breed a tenth its size, then self-consciously looked away.

      “You can’t be shy.”

      One ear cocked. But the dog still refused to meet Quinn’s gaze.

      He reached out, caught hold of the muzzle and turned the fuzzy face back toward him. “Hell, don’t tell me I hurt your feelings.”

      He’d never had a dog. The closest he’d ever come to having a pet was the field mouse he’d captured when he was seven and his family had been living in a trailer outside Apache Junction, Arizona. Using money earned running errands for a local bookie, he’d bought a hamster cage from Kmart, which he hid in a kitchen cupboard. Since his mother had never been one to cook, it had seemed the safest place.

      He’d kept the mouse for nearly a week, feeding it limp lettuce from a nearby Safeway Dumpster. Unfortunately his father had discovered it while searching for a carton of cigarettes, cussed him out royally, then whipped him with a belt that had left welts for two weeks. Years later he still had the scars from the buckle to remind him of that day.

      The mouse had fared even worse. His father had suffocated it in a plastic bag, then tossed it outside for the feral desert cats to tear apart.

      “You realize, of course,” Quinn said to the dog now, “you’re too big to be such a candy-ass.”

      The dog rolled brown eyes beneath furry beetled brows.

      “I’m not going to hurt you, dammit.”

      Another whimper. And if a dog could look dubious, this one was definitely pulling it off. Quinn shook his head in disgust, then wished he hadn’t when boulders started tumbling around inside.

      “Lord, we’re a pitiful pair,” he muttered, crawling out of the double bed.

      Although his legs felt as if he were walking on the deck of a rolling ship, Quinn managed to make his way into the adjoining bathroom, which smelled vaguely of flowers, followed by the wolfhound who trailed a safe three feet behind. One look at the haggard face in the mirror assured him he looked every bit as bad as he felt.

      He opened the medicine cabinet, found a bottle of aspirin, poured three of them into his palm and swallowed them dry. He found a new toothbrush and a bar of soap still in its wrapper, realized that Nora Fitzpatrick must have left them for him, and decided the woman, while still Trouble, was a saint.

      He brushed his fuzzy teeth, splashed cold water onto his face, then took a long hot shower that filled the small room with steam and smoothed out some of the kinks in his hungover and jet-lagged body. The towel he wrapped around his hips was a far cry from the thick Egyptian-cotton ones he was accustomed to, but it was pleasantly soft and smelled like sunshine.

      By the time he’d shaved with the razor he found in the cabinet, he was beginning to feel as if he just might live.

      “So what do you think?” he asked the dog, who was sitting on its haunches watching his every move. “Feel up to some breakfast?”

      When the oversize tail began thumping on the floor and the huge pink tongue lolled, Quinn decided he’d just found the dog’s weakness.

      “Guess that’s the magic word.” Ignoring the lightning bolts behind his eyes, he bent and rubbed the massive multihued streaked head. “The room’s supposed to come with two meals a day. Let’s go see what’s on the menu.”

      Fearing he’d have to wear yesterday’s clothes, which could definitely use an airing, Quinn was gratified to see his luggage lined up just inside the bedroom door. Apparently the friendly police officer who’d arrived to take Brady and him to the farm had rescued the suitcases from his rental car. As he pulled on a pair of clean briefs, Quinn decided a donation to the local police benevolent fund was definitely in order.

      He made his way down the stairs; the dog, appearing a bit more emboldened, stayed close on his heels, nails clicking on the wood.

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