Page 25 of Over Verdant Irish Hills

Bets surfaced quickly from sleep, a habit from being a mother. Were the boys playing? She shook herself and remembered where she was.Whenshe was. Her hands weren’t the ones of a young mother as she hiked the sheet up higher on her body. And the man next to her was Linc, who was snoring gently beside her, his arms still around her.

He gripped her for a moment, but when she eased away, he rolled onto his back. They hadn’t gone to sleep until after three in the morning. The way he’d opened his heart to her, telling her what she was to him, had opened up a tender desire inside her. Their lovemaking had been fraught with an intimacy Bets had never felt before—something Linc had apparently never experienced before either. They’d held each other’s gaze while their bodies joined, their loving slow and thorough.

She was in new territory again—her, Bets O’Hanlon, at the age of sixty-one.

The feelings Linc unlocked inside her were deep and raw, and yet she wasn’t alone with them. He was with her every step of the way, marveling at the power of their connection as much as she was.

“Come back to bed,” he called out as she stepped on a squeaky floorboard.

She wrapped herself in a terrycloth robe. “Don’t you hear the pounding?”

He lifted his head and cocked his ear. “Sounds like someone putting in fenceposts. Probably Carrick.”

“His fields aren’t that close to mine.” Okay, so she was paranoid after the murder of her roses. “I’m going to check it out.”

His groan was heartfelt, but he rolled to the side of the bed and stood up. “I’ll go with you, but I refuse to have visitors for tea this morning, Bets. I’d prefer to go back to bed with you.”

“That can be arranged. After. Come on.”

His naked body had her sneaking a long peek before he pulled on his clothes from last night. She let herself out of her bedroom, and his heavy footsteps sounded behind her.

“I’m going to need a robe,” he muttered.

“You can wear one of mine.”

“That will be the day,” he said in his John Wayne impression.

With a laugh, she headed down the stairs, grabbed her sandals, and went out the front door. The wasteland that had been her front garden still lodged a hard ball of emotion in her throat. But she followed the sound down the path through her land, past the treehouse and the original shed where she’d begun the arts center. Mary and her minions had managed to close it down a year ago, and if not for Carrick Fitzgerald’s donation of the building they were currently using, they would have been finished before they’d truly started.

She growled low in her throat. When she realized the pounding was coming from her rose garden, she took off at a run.

“Dammit, Bets,” Linc called behind her.

She didn’t stop. Her arms and legs pumped with effort as she raced down the path. At the edge, she skidded to a halt, a stitch in her side. Liam, Kade, and Carrick lifted their heads while Jamie speared the ground with his shovel.

“It’s okay, Mum,” Liam immediately called out, striding toward her. “We had an idea about how to make your roses even safer. Good morning, Linc.”

Shit. Caught by her son and the boys who might as well be her own.

“Morning,” he called, joining her. “You fencing in Bets’ garden?”

“We were drinking at Summercrest last night, and we got to talking,” Liam explained. “We thought putting an electrical fence around your garden might help some.”

Linc cleared his throat. “I heard someone talk about sitting in a lawn chair all night with a shotgun.”

“Funny, I heard that too,” Carrick shot back. “We thought we’d start with the fence and save the older generation the trouble.”

“It’s not a perfect solution, Mum,” Liam said, clutching the shovel he was holding. “But we thought it might make you feel better.”

Had she acted so crazy yesterday they’d felt they needed to resort to this? Yes, she realized, she had. “Boys, I appreciate the thought, but I’m more likely to shock myself trying to enter my garden than anything else.”

Liam looked off in the distance before saying, “We were only trying to help, Mum.”

“I know that.” She walked toward her son and put her arms on his strong shoulders, shoulders that were doing their best to carry her burdens. “And I appreciate it. I’m sorry I was cross yesterday.”

He threw the shovel aside and hugged her. “Me too. I hated seeing you so upset, Mum. I would have replanted your whole rose garden but I knew you’d want to choose your own varieties.”

She patted his back before edging away. “Me too, but an electrical fence isn’t the answer.”

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