Page 61 of Shadow Spell

“What’s this about a fire at your mother’s?”

“It was nothing. Go on now.”

He squinted at her. “You look terrible.”

“And that’s all I needed to finish off my fecking day. Thanks for that.”

She started to shut the door in his face, but he put a shoulder to it. For a foolish minute, each pushed against the other. She tended to forget the man was stronger than he looked.

“Fine, fine, come in then. The day’s been nothing but a loss in any case.”

“Your head hurts, and you’re tired and bitchy with it.”

Before she could evade, he laid his hands on her temples, ran them over her head, down to the base of her skull.

And the throbbing ache vanished.

“I’d taken something for it already.”

“That works faster.” He added a light rub on her shoulders that dissolved all the knots. “Sit down, take your boots off. I’ll get you a beer.”

“I didn’t invite you for a beer and a chat.” The bad temper in her tone after he’d vanished all those aches and throbs shamed her. And the shame only added more bad temper.

He cocked his head, face full of patience and sympathy. She wanted to punch him for it.

She wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and just breathe.

“Haven’t eaten, have you?”

“I’ve only just gotten home.”

“Sit down.”

He walked over to the kitchen—such as it was. The two-burner stove, the squat fridge, miserly sink, and counter tucked tidily enough in the corner of her living space, and suited her needs.

She grumbled rude words under her breath, but she sat and took off her boots while she watched him—eyes narrowed—poke around.

“What are you after in there?”

“The frozen pizza you never fail to stock will be quickest, and I could do with some myself for I haven’t eaten either.”

He peeled it out of the wrap, stuck it in the oven. And unlike her mother, remembered to set the timer. He took out a couple bottles of Harp, popped them open, then strolled back.

He handed her a beer, sat down beside her, propped his feet on her coffee table, a man at home.

“We’ll start at the end of it. Your mother. A kitchen fire, was it?”

“Not even that. She burned a joint of lamb, and from her reaction, you’d think she’d started an inferno that leveled the village.”

“Well then, your ma’s never been much of a cook.”

Meara snorted out a laugh, drank some beer. “She’s a terrible cook. Why she got it into her head to have a little dinner party for Donal and his girl is beyond me. Because it’s proper,” she said immediately. “In her world, it’s the proper thing, and she must be proper. She’s bits of Belleek and Royal Tara and Waterford all around, fine Irish lace curtains at the windows. And I swear she dresses for gardening or marketing as if she’s having lunch at a five-star. Never a hair out of place, her lipstick never smudged. And she can’t boil a potato without disaster falling.”

When she paused, drank, he patted her leg and said nothing.

“She’s living in a rental barely bigger than the garden shed where she lived with my father, keeps it locked like a vault in defense against the bands of thieves and villains she imagines lie in wait—and can’t think to open a bleeding window when she has a house full of smoke.”

“She called for you then.”

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