Page 70 of Beside Golden Irish Fields
“Are you serious?” Jamie set his beer down and stared at him. “You’d be all right with me helping Kade and not you?”
“I am,” he said, pounding his brother’s back heartily in support.
Sorcha appeared suddenly, and he jumped in his chair. Kade put a hand on his arm and smiled in her direction. She clapped, as if applauding him, and then disappeared.
“What’s going on?” Brady asked.
“Do you smell oranges?” Declan asked, sniffing in the direction of the house. His tone turned hopeful. “You didn’t buy that whole duck on special this week and make it with the orange sauce in the packet? I’ve had five compliments from some very good customers about it this week.”
Kade’s mouth moved as he fought laughter.
“When have you ever known me to make a whole chicken, to say nothing of a whole duck?” Carrick asked, still regaining his balance after seeing Sorcha.
Jamie opened his mouth, but Carrick gave him a look. He lifted his beer to his lips instead.
“I’ve got it,” Brady said, tapping the side of his head.
“You’ve got what, brother?” Declan asked, scoffing. “You’re as thick as a fencepost sometimes.”
Brady laughed. “Thick, am I? Like I don’t know the secrets of every person in this village. I even figured out Mary Kincaid’s. She’s been awfully odd for a few months, mixing something up in her greenhouse and then laying an old curtain from her house over top of it. For a while I thought she might have finally killed a man—”
“Jesus! It’s this secret rose fertilizer everyone in the village has been mumbling about,” Declan said. “You’re not the only one who knows everyone’s secrets.”
“Bets will have her hands full with the flower competition this year,” Jamie said. “Brother, you’d best not have messed up her chances at victory with your sheep wreaking havoc. You’d never hear the end of it.”
He poked Jamie in the shoulder. “And you, brother, are behind on your news. I brought Bets not one but two new rose bushes to replace the ones my sheep nibbled on.”
“Nibbled!” Jamie made an anguished cry and crossed himself. “If that’s nibbling, then you wouldn’t know if a cannibal was eating you alive.”
“As a butcher, I’ve wondered if humans taste like chicken.”
Everyone booed Declan, with Brady throwing his beer cap at him, which he batted away like a Roman centurion might have a druid’s arrow back in the day.
“God bless us for putting up with you, brother,” Brady said, wincing. “Sometimes I think you’re more daft than Mum and Dad put together.”
“All because I believe in expanding my mind?” Declan made a tsking sound. “And this from a man who only reads the same one hundred addresses every day all year round.”
From there, it devolved, as it often did, with Brady telling a story or two about the recent imbroglios he’d witnessed while delivering mail, and Declan chiming in with gossip about a married woman buying an expensive cut of meat for someone other than her spouse.
Finally, Kade put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Carrick. Let’s go to the shed. I can help you gather up a few of your young sheep, and we can spray a handful tonight.”
This had been their custom for the last few years. After the shearing, Jamie or Kade would help him put words on his growing lambs. Most of their bodies weren’t full size quite yet, but they were close enough. This way he didn’t have to look at an entire herd of sheep devoid of her poetry.
They both rose, leaving the others, and Kade headed to the pasture closest to the shed to gather up the smaller sheep. Then Sorcha appeared in front of him, and he jumped again.
“You’ll always have my words, you know, in the same place I’ll always be. In your heart. As someone you once loved very much.”
She disappeared in the blink of an eye.
He clenched his jaw. Dammit, why was everyone on him so? Part of him wanted to hurl his bottle at the shed and hear it shatter into a million pieces like he felt inside.
Except he didn’t feel that way anymore.
He was tired of feeling fragmented and tortured. He wanted a night out with the guys where no one joked about greeting cards and cleaving out broken hearts. Just a normal night with them.
Or with a special woman who wore paint splatters on her jeans…
Kade was leading a trio of sheep into the shed. He called over his shoulder. “Come on! These seemed the most docile. We can get the guys to help after they’ve had it out.”
