“Anything else you’d like, Brianna?” With cheerful good humor, Rogan accepted the flowers his wife piled in his arms. “More cake?”

She glanced down, flushed. “I ate every crumb, didn’t I? Thanks just the same, but I think that’ll do. Go home, both of you, and get some sleep.”

“So we will. I’ll call,” Maggie promised. The worry came back into her eyes as she left the room with Rogan. “I wish she wasn’t so hopeful, and so sure that this long-lost sister of ours will want to be welcomed into her open arms.”

“It’s the way she’s made, Maggie.”

“Saint Brianna,” Maggie said with a sigh. “I couldn’t bear it if she was hurt because of this, Rogan. You’ve only to look at her to see how she’s building it up in her head, in her heart. No matter how wrong it might be of me, I wish to God she’d never found those letters.”

“Don’t fret over it.” Since Maggie was busy doing just that, Rogan used his elbow to press the elevator button.

“It’s not my fretting that’s the problem,” Maggie muttered. “She shouldn’t be worrying over this now. She has the baby to think of, and Gray may be going off in a few months on his book tour.”

“I thought he’d canceled that.” Rogan shifted tilting blooms back to safety.

“He wants to cancel it. She’s badgering him to go, wants nothing to interfere with his work.” Impatient, annoyed, she scowled at the elevator doors. “So damn sure she is that she can handle an infant, the inn, all those bleeding guests, and this Amanda Dougherty Bodine business as well.”

“We both know that Brianna’s strong enough to handle whatever happens. Just as you are.”

Prepared to argue, she looked up. Rogan’s amused smile smoothed away the temper. “You may be right.” She sent him a saucy look. “For once.” Soothed a little, she took some of the flowers from him. “And it’s too wonderful a day to be worrying about something that may never happen. We’ve ourselves a beautiful niece, Sweeney.”

“That we do. I think she might have your chin, Margaret Mary.”

“I was thinking that as well.” She stepped into the elevator with him. How simple it was really, she mused, to forget the pain and remember only the joy. “And I was thinking now that Liam’s beginning to toddle about, we might start working on providing him with a sister, or a brother.”

With a grin Rogan managed to kiss her through the daffodils. “I was thinking that as well.”

Chapter
Three

I am the Resurrection and the Light.

Shannon knew the words, all the priest’s words, were supposed to comfort, to ease, perhaps inspire. She heard them, on this perfect spring day beside her mother’s grave. She’d heard them in the crowded, sunwashed church during the funeral Mass. All the words, familiar from her youth. And she had knelt and stood and sat, even responded as some part of her brain followed the rite.