“I will, since you’ve decided to ask politely. She said to me, ‘His heart’s in his song.’ I thought perhaps she meant the faerie prince, but when I was telling Ma of it, she said it meant you.”

“If she did, I don’t know what she meant by it.”

“I don’t know any more than you, but I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind me coming by now and then.”

“You already do,” he pointed out and made her squirm a little.

“If you don’t want me there, you’ve only to say so.”

“That’s not what I said, or what I meant. I’m just saying you do come ’round.”

“I thought I could come ’round when you weren’t there as well. Like today. Just to see if she’d come back. I could do a few chores for you while I was there.”

“You don’t need to find work to come by. You’re always welcome.”

It softened her, not only that he said it, but that he meant it. “I know, but I like keeping busy. So I’ll slip in from time to time since you don’t mind.”

“And you’ll tell me if you see her again?”

“You’ll be the first.” She rose to carry her bowl and mug to the sink. “Do you think . . .” She trailed off, shook her head.

“What?”

“No, it’s nothing. Foolish.”

He came up behind her, gave her neck a quick squeeze with his clever fingers. She wanted to arch and purr like a cat, but knew better. “If you can’t be foolish with a friend, who else is there?”

“Well, I was wondering if love really lasts like that, through death and time.”

“It’s the only thing that really lasts.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Not so it took root, and if it doesn’t, I suppose it’s not love at all.”

She let out a sigh that surprised them both. “If it takes root in one and not the other, it has to be the worst thing in the world.”

He felt a quiver in his heart that he took for sympathy. “There, Brenna darling, have you gone and fallen in love on me?”

She jerked, whirled, gaped at him. He was watching her with such—such bloody affection, such patience and sympathy, she could have beaten him black and blue. Instead, she just shoved clear of him and snatched up her toolbox. “Shawn Gallagher, you are truly a great idiot of a man.”

With her nose in the air and her tools clanking, she stalked out.

He only shook his head, then went back to his cleaning up. With that little quiver around his heart again, he wondered who it was that O’Toole had set her sights on.

Whoever, Shawn thought, slamming a cupboard door just a little too forcefully, the man had better be worthy of her.

THREE

BRENNA WASN’T IN the best of moods when she clomped into the Gallagher house. She didn’t knock— didn’t think to. She’d been breezing in and out of the old house, just as Darcy breezed in and out of the O’Tooles’, for as long as either could remember.