Page 19 of Over Verdant Irish Hills

“Which is nothing,” she shot back.

“They called the police—”

“Who won’t do anything. They only arrested Mary’s son because we had video footage of him from the art center’s cameras, dead to rights. Dammit, I should have known she’d fire back at me.”

All her earlier relaxation was gone. Every muscle was tense with anger. “How about we focus on the fact that your other rose garden wasn’t touched. You can still enter the competition next month, and we both know you’ll beat Mary Kincaid’s ass. If you go home now, you’ll be dancing to her tune. The best revenge is to stay here with me in Paris.”

Only a few days ago, he remembered what he’d told her in the rosy twilight outside her house.When we finally come together, there will be no force on earth strong enough to pull me away from you.

She had agreed with him then.

No longer, it seemed.

“You don’t understand!” She pulled her hands free after a moment. “I need to go home, Linc. Those roses are mine. Grown by my hands. I can’t just act like they aren’t important to me.”

He wasn’t suggesting otherwise, but clearly she wasn’t hearing him. “All right, sugar. If that’s the way you feel, then we’ll go home.”

Rising, he let himself into the bathroom and, to give himself the first semblance of privacy since they’d arrived, he shut the door. He stared at himself in the mirror. He wanted to smash something.

He’d found everything he could have ever wanted with Bets, but now they were rushing home.

She was wrong. Hedidunderstand why she needed to go back. But he also wanted to be more important to her than a pile of dead roses and a decades-long vendetta.

Who would have imagined Linc Buchanan could be hurt over such a thing?

You’d think he would be too old for such romantic drivel, but it turned out he was nothing but an old fool.

All he could do was take a shower and armor back up.

CHAPTERSEVEN

Her rose garden looked like a freshly dug graveyard.

Bets pressed a hand to her mouth as she took in the bare black soil under the soft light of the late afternoon sun. All twenty of her prized rosebushes were gone.

“They probably wanted to spare you, Bets,” Linc said, putting a comforting hand to her back. “I expect they also wanted to clean up the poison before the Irish wind took it.”

“Yeah, lye is nasty business,” she heard Liam say softly.

She turned around. Her son was standing on the stone terrace in his work clothes, work gloves in hand, jaw tight. “She got all of them?”

He nodded, tucking his gloves in his back pocket. “Aunt Mary was thorough, although she denied any involvement to the Garda. Mum, I’m so sorry.”

All the love she’d put into her beautiful garden was gone. Every single rose she’d planted and cared for like her own child. They had been her babies. Her pride and joy. “She even killed her own mother’s roses,” she said, sorrow swamping her voice.

“She never liked you having them.” Liam walked toward her. “Remember how she refused the cuttings you wanted to give her? Dad was cross for days.”

That hadn’t been why, but Liam had been too young to know the real reason. Bruce hadn’t thought the roses were worth fighting over. Bets had agreed, in the beginning. Isn’t that why she’d sucked it up to sour-faced Mary and tended the little cuttings until they rooted? She’d presented them as a gift, but Mary had tossed them in the rubbish bin, saying cuttings weren’t the same as the real roses—on O’Hanlon land,herland.

Liam extended his hand to Linc, who shook it. “I’m sorry this dragged you back from Paris.”

“You should have called me,” Bets said, turning her head as Liam kissed her cheek.

“We covered that on the phone, Mum,” he said in a quiet voice, standing in front of her with his arms at his sides. “I told you I was sorry.”

He had, and she was being petulant—not how she wanted to be. “I know, Liam. I’m sorry. I’m just so upset. It’s hard to see this. I don’t know what I thought—”

“It’s like Linc said. We didn’t want the lye to spread with the wind and kill more plants, or even the nearby trees. Carrick, Jamie, and Kade came over this morning with Donal and a few other men from the village and helped me dig everything up and haul it off.”

---