This was the home where Brigid had given birth to her daughter, Lina, who, not wanting to break the chain of Delaney women, had kept her maiden name when she’d married, handing it down to her own daughter.
This was also the house where Brigid had soothed her granddaughter’s broken heart after what Tara would always call the “Richard debacle.” And proving that life was indeed made up of concentric circles, her grandmother had died here, as well. Of an accident, Tara thought firmly.
“Well, Grandy,” she murmured as she looped her hands over the steering wheel and gazed at the house that was once again shrouded in rain and darkness, “you got your wish. I’m here. Although I’ll be damned if I know why.”
She took the key her grandmother’s attorney had sent her out of her purse, then retrieved her overnight bag from the back seat. The larger bags in the trunk could wait until tomorrow.
She considered waiting a bit longer in hopes that the rain would at least slow down. But a glance up into a sky draped in black clouds assured her that the storm had stalled directly over Brigid’s home.
“Nice welcome, Grandy. The least you could have done was use a few of your powers to turn off the waterworks.”
She counted to three, then opened the car door and, holding her bag against her chest, made a dash for the front porch, which took longer than planned because she had to stop and unlatch the white picket gate.
By the time she reached the wide porch, she was drenched, and shivering. She’d forgotten how cold it could get in the mountains.
Beneath a winged griffin door knocker that had frightened Tara when she was a child was a shiny new doorknob. Wondering what had happened to the old hammered-brass handle she remembered having polished on more than one occasion, she managed to insert the key into the lock and was vastly relieved when it fit.
Just as she turned the knob, a clap of thunder shook the porch. An instant later she was blinded by a flash of brilliant white light. The acrid smell of sulfur assaulted her nostrils and a black veil drifted across her eyes.
Then Tara crumbled to the wooden floor beneath her feet.
Gavin, who had dozed off in a large wing chair positioned to give him a good view of the front windows, was jolted awake by the crack of thunder and almost simultaneous bolt of lightning. On some subconscious level, he’d been aware of a loud thud just after the lightning flash that had obviously struck very close to the house.
“All right!” It was what he’d been waiting for, an opportunity to catch the vandals in the act. He ran into the foyer and yanked open the ornately carved front door.
Instead of the teenage boys he’d thought he would find, Gavin found himself staring down at a seemingly lifeless form lying at his feet.
When another flash of lightning—thankfully more distant this time—lit up the sky, he stared in disbelief at a woman who could have stepped right out of that long-ago photograph of Brigid Delaney.
3
TARA HAD NO IDEA how long she’d been unconscious. One minute she was standing on the familiar front porch fretting about a missing door handle, the next thing she knew she was in some man’s arms, being carried into the darkened house. The house where her mother believed Brigid had been murdered!
“Put me down!” she demanded as she desperately tried to remember the self-defense training class she’d taken after nearly being mugged as she left her San Francisco office late one night.
“And have you swooning at my feet again?” Although the woman resembled a young Brigid Delaney, Gavin realized she had to be the granddaughter, the hotshot accounting whiz Brigid had boasted about.
“I didn’t swoon.” Tara glared up at him, frustrated when the deep shadows kept her from seeing his face. “I never swoon.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Although it was not easy, maneuvering across the crowded room in the dark with a wiggling, angry woman in his arms, he managed to make his way to the red brocade chaise.
“If you’re planning on raping me,” Tara said between gritted teeth as she landed on the antique fainting couch with a bounce, “you should know that I’ve studied karate.”
“Good for you.” Gavin reached into the drawer of the papier-mâché table and pulled out the box of matches he knew Brigid kept there. Storms were a routine part of living in this remote corner of the state, making power outages commonplace. “Perhaps, after we get to know each other better, you can entertain me by breaking bricks with your bare hands.”
The match flared as he struck it on the roughened side of the box, casting his face in an orange glow that made him look almost demonic. Her head still reeling, Tara tried to judge her chances for escape as he touched the match to the fat beeswax candle on the table.
“Who are you? And what are you doing in my grandmother’s house?”
“I’m Gavin Thomas. The guy who sent you three separate letters wanting to know what the hell you wanted me to do with this place.”
Sensing what they’d been about, and receiving disturbing vibrations from the envelopes that bore the bold masculine script, she had burned the letters without opening them.
“I don’t recall receiving any letters.” She lifted her chin and looked him right in the eye. “Obviously, the postman misdelivered them.”
“Or you mistook them for junk mail and tossed them out,” he said, deciding not to call her on the obvious lie. At least not yet.
“I suppose that’s a possibility.” Refusing to let him get the upper hand, she did not avert her gaze. Not even when his lips twitched and a wicked, knowing look came into his eyes. “If I had gotten the letters, what would they have said?”
“That I’d promised Brigid I’d look after the place until you arrived to take it off my hands. The last one mentioned, as politely as I could think to put it, that although I intended to do my best to live up to my word, I wasn’t prepared to take on a lifetime commitment.”
“Because you’re not a man who enjoys commitment.” It was not a question.
“You called that one right.” The last time he’d allowed himself to get seriously involved with a woman, he’d ended up in prison. Gavin was not eager to repeat either experience.
“Yet my grandmother still entrusted you with her house.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I tried to tell her I wasn’t the stick-around type. She didn’t believe me.”
“My grandmother was infamous for her ability to only see what she wanted to see.” Tara decided, for discretion’s sake, not to mention that Brigid’s intuitive sense of people was very seldom off the mark. “You haven’t answered my second question,” she reminded him. “What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”
“I was sleeping. Until you woke me up by collapsing on the porch.”
Tara rubbed her temple where a headache was pounding. “I don’t understand what happened.”
“From the crack that woke me up, and the sulfur smell when I opened the door, I’d say lightning struck close by. Probably one of the trees. I’ll check in the morning. I’d guess that the force knocked you down.” Leaning down, he brushed away the auburn hair that had fallen over her forehead and examined a rapidly growing lump.
When his fingertips stroked her skin with a slow touch that was meant to be soothing but in reality was anything but, Tara jerked her head away. “I suppose I should count myself lucky I wasn’t hit myself.”
“Definitely.”
The air