His silver brows rose again, his grin flashed bright. “I am handsome—and so you’ve said yourself. We’ll leave them to themselves a bit.” He slid his arms around her waist. “Let’s be home, a ghra. I’m already missing Ireland.”

With a swirl of white smoke, a shiver of white light, they were home.

*  *  *

By the time Rowan got home, heated up a can of soup and devoured a section on basic plumbing repairs, it was sunset. For the first time since her arrival she didn’t stop and stare and wonder at the glorious fire of the dying day. As the light dimmed, she merely leaned closer to the page.

With her elbows propped on the kitchen table, and her tea going cold, she almost wished a pipe would spring a leak so she could test out her new knowledge.

She felt smug and prepared, and decided to tackle the section on electrical work next. But first she’d make the phone call she’d been putting off. She considered fortifying herself with a glass of wine first, but decided that would be weak.

She took off her reading glasses, set them aside. Slipped a bookmark into the pages, closed the book. And stared at the phone.

It was terrible to dread calling people you loved.

She put it off just a little longer by neatly stacking the books she’d bought. There were more than a dozen, and she was still amused at herself for picking up several on myths and legends.

They’d be entertaining, she thought, and wasted a little more time selecting the one she wanted for bedtime reading.

Then there was wood to be brought in for the evening fire, the soup bowl to wash and carefully dry. Her nightly scan of the woods for the wolf she hadn’t seen all day.

When she couldn’t find anything else to engage her time, she picked up the phone and dialed.

Twenty minutes later, she was sitting on the back steps, the backwash of light from the kitchen spilling over her. And she was weeping.

She’d nearly buckled under the benign pressure, nearly crumbled beneath the puzzled, injured tone of her mother’s voice. Yes, yes, of course, she’d come home. She’d go back to teaching, get her doctorate, marry Alan, start a family. She’d live in a pretty house in a safe neighborhood. She’d be anything they wanted her to be as long as it made them happy.

Not saying all of those things, not doing them, was so hard. And so necessary.

Her tears were hot and from the heart. She wished she understood why she was always, always pulled in a different direction, why she needed so desperately to see what was blurred at the edges of her mind.

Something was there, waiting for her. Something she was or needed to be. It was all she was sure of.