Page 6 of Irish Rose
He liked her family. They would be called salt of the earth, he supposed. Simple, but not simple-minded. Apparently their farm did well enough, as long as they worked seven days a week. Mary McKinnon had a dressmaking business on the side, but seemed more interested in discussing children with Dee than fashion. The brothers were fair, except for the oldest, Cullen, who had the looks of a Black Irish warrior and the voice of a poet. Unless Burke missed his guess, Erin had her softest spot there. Throughout the meal he watched her, curious to see what other soft spots he might discover.
By the time dinner was over, Burke was glad he’d let Travis talk him into an extra few days in Ireland. The trip had been profitable, the visit to the track at Curragh educational, and now it seemed it was time to mix business with a little pleasure.
“You’ll play for us, won’t you, Cullen?” Adelia was already reaching across the table to grip Erin’s oldest brother’s hand. “For old times’ sake.”
“He’ll take little enough persuading,” Mary McKinnon put in. “You’d best clear a space.” She gestured to her two youngest sons. “It’s only fitting that we dance off a meal like that.”
“I just happen to have my pipe.” Cullen reached in his vest pocket and drew out the slim reed. He stood, a big man with broad shoulders and lean hips. The fingers of his workingman’s hands slid over the holes as he lifted the instrument to his lips.
It surprised Burke that such a big, rough-looking man could make such delicate music. He settled back in his chair, savored the kick of his Irish whiskey and watched.
Mary McKinnon placed her hand in her youngest son’s and, without seeming to move at all, set her feet in time to the music. It seemed a very restrained dance to Burke, with a complicated pattern of heels and toes and shuffles. Then the pace began to pick up—slowly, almost unnoticeably. The others were keeping time with their hands or occasional hoots. When he glanced at Erin, she was standing with a hand on her father’s shoulder and smiling as he hadn’t seen her smile before.
Something shimmered a bit inside him—shimmered, then strained, then quieted, all in the space of two heartbeats.
“She still moves like a girl,” Matthew McKinnon said of his wife.
“And she’s still beautiful.” Erin watched her mother whirl in her son’s arms, then spin with a flare of skirt and a flash of leg.
“Can you keep up?”
With a laugh that was only slightly wistful, Erin shook her head. “I’ve never been able to.”
“Come now.” Her father slid an arm around her waist. “My money’s on you.”
Before she could protest, Matthew had spun her out. His grin was broad as he held her hand high and picked up the rhythm of the timeless folk dance she’d been taught as soon as she could walk. The pipe music was cheerful and challenging. Caught up in it and her family’s enthusiasm, Erin began to move instinctively. She put her hands on her hips and tossed up her chin.
“Can you manage it?”
Adelia looked up at her eighteen-year-old cousin. “Can I manage it?” she repeated with her eyes narrowed. “The day hasn’t come when I can’t manage a jig, boyo.”
Travis started to protest as she joined her cousins on the floor, but then he subsided. If there was one thing his Dee knew, it was her own strength. The depth of it continued to surprise him. “Quite a group, aren’t they?” he murmured to Burke.
“They’re all of that.” He drew out a cigar, but his eyes remained on Erin. “I take it you don’t jig.”
With a chuckle, Travis leaned back against the wall. “Dee’s tried to teach me and labeled me hopeless. I’m inclined to believe you have to be born to it.” He saw Brendon go out to take his place as his mother’s partner. His mother’s son, Travis thought with a ripple of pride. Of all their children, Brendon was the most strong-willed and hardheaded. “She needed this more than I realized.”
Burke managed to tear his eyes from Erin long enough to study Travis’s profile. “Most people get homesick now and again.”
“She’s only come back twice in seven years.” Travis watched her now, her cheeks pink with pleasure, her eyes laughing down at Brendon as he copied her moves. “It’s not enough. You know, she’ll take you to the wall in an argument—half the time an argument no sane man can understand. But she never complains, and she never asks.”
For a moment Burke said nothing. It still surprised him after four years that his friendship with Travis had become so close, so quickly. He’d never considered himself the kind of man to make friends, and in truth had never wanted the responsibility of one. He’d spent almost half his thirty-two years on his own, needing no one. Wanting no one. With the Grants, it had just happened.
“I don’t know much about women.” At Travis’s slow smile, Burke corrected himself. “Wives. But I’d say yours is happy, whether she’s here or in the States. The fact is, Travis, if she loved you less I might have made a play for her myself.”
Travis continued to watch her as his mind played back the years. “The first time I saw her I thought she was a boy.”
Burke drew the cigar out of his mouth. “You’re joking.”
“It was dark.”
“A poor excuse.”
His chuckle was warm and easy as he looked back. “She seemed to think so, too. Nearly took my head off. I think I fell for her then and there.” He heard her laugh and looked over as she shook her head and stepped away from the dancers. She came to him, hands outstretched. The jeweled ring he’d put on her finger years before still glimmered.
“I could go for hours,” she claimed, a little breathlessly. “But these two have had enough.” With her free hands, she covered her babies. “Are you going to try it, Burke?”
“Not on your life.”
