“I barely spoke to Brenna last night in the pub.” Sulking now, Shawn set the cakes to sizzling. “We were, the both of us, busy.”

“I might expect that sort of answer from most men, but you’re a poet, and you know very well just how much can be said with a look. The two of you clicked eyes together every blessed time you stepped out of the kitchen. Nothing I haven’t been expecting for years.”

“Oh, bloody hell.” He muttered it, well under his breath, but the woman had ears like a rabbit.

“Now, what’s the matter? It’s a pretty business seeing the two of you starting to dance in the same direction.”

And a mouth, Shawn thought, that flapped like a sheet in a gale. “Ah, the thing of it is, Mrs. Duffy—and I’m hoping you’ll take this as delicate as it’s meant—if, as things are, Brenna hears any talk of the two of us . . . dancing in the same direction, as you put it, she’ll do a very fast jig the opposite way.”

Judging the progress of the frying, she reached up for soup bowls. “And since when has Mary Brenna O’Toole heard anything if it didn’t please her to? The girl’s ears are as stubborn as the rest of her—and good luck to you with her.”

He shook the fry basket to drain more chips. “You’ve a point there, well taken.”

“I’ve known the two of you since you were both bumps under your mothers’ aprons.” She ladled up soup and was generous with dumplings. “And ten years back—aye ten, as I recall it was the summer my Patrick broke his arm falling off the cabin roof, where he had no business being in the first place. Ten years ago this summer I said to Mr. Duffy as we sat out in the pub of an evening, and Brenna sat with her family at a near table, and you were playing one of your tunes on the fiddle while your father worked the bar . . .”

She trailed off as she set the bowls aside for Darcy. “I said to him, as I watched her watching you, and saw that now and again a glance of yours would land in her direction, there’s something that will come around when the time’s right.”

“I never thought of her that way back then.”

“Of course you did,” Kathy said comfortably. “You just didn’t know it.”

When it was time for the evening shift, Darcy lay in wait for Brenna. And nearly missed her, as Brenna came in the front instead of the back.

“You missed a great crowd today.” Darcy sauntered over. It took only a strategic shift of her body to corner Brenna by the coatrack. “Shawn was late for work,” she continued in a whisper, “and was drunk besides. What’s going on?”

“I can’t talk about it now. I made a mess of things, I can say that much.”

Darcy laid a hand on Brenna’s shoulder until she finished her study. “You look terrible. Was it a big fight or a little one?”