Shadow Spell (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 2)
“You haven’t
put any dinner on?” Branna pushed to her feet.
“I was thinking Boyle would cook it up, then Connor came in. We’ve been a bit busy with this and that since.”
“You can’t cook up pork in a fingersnap.”
Fin tried a smile. “You could.”
“Oh, save your shagging pork, and get me a platter.”
“That sort of thing’s in the—” Fin gestured toward the large dining area off the kitchen with its massive buffets and china cabinets and servers.
She marched in, yanked open a couple of drawers. And found a large Belleek platter. After moving a nice arrangement of hothouse lilies, she set the platter in the center of the table.
“It’s a frivolous use of power, but I can’t have my brother starving to death. And since I had already roasted a chicken with potatoes and carrots tonight. So.”
She shot the fingers of both hands at the platter. And the air went redolent with the scents of roasted chicken and sage.
“Thank all the gods and goddesses.” With that, Connor dived straight in, ripped off a drumstick.
“Connor O’Dwyer!”
“Starving,” he said with his mouth full as Branna fisted her hands on her hips. “I’m serious about it. What’s everyone else eating?”
“Someone set the table, for God’s sake. I need to wash up.” She turned to Fin. “Have you a powder room?”
“I’ll show you.”
She’d never been in his home, he thought. Not once would she agree to cross the threshold. It had taken her brother’s need to have her step foot in it.
He showed her the powder room tucked tidily under the stairs.
“Let me see your hands.” She held herself very straight while the voices and good, easy laughter flowed from the kitchen.
He held them out, their backs up. With a sigh of impatience, she gripped them and turned them over.
Blistered palms, welts along his fingers.
“The balm will take care of it.”
“Stop.”
She laid her hands—her palms to his palms, her fingers to his fingers.
“I’m going to thank you. I know you don’t want or need thanks. I know he’s your brother as much as mine. The brother of your heart, your spirit. But he’s my blood, so I need to thank you.”
Tears trembled in her eyes again, a glimmer over the smoke. Then she willed them back and gone. “It was very bad, very bad indeed. I can’t be sure how much worse it might have been if you hadn’t done for him what you did.”
“I love him.”
“I know it.” She studied his hands, healed now, then gave them both a moment. She lifted his hands, pressed them to her lips. “I know it,” she said again, and slipped inside the powder room.
As deep and true as his love ran for Connor, it was a shadow beside what he felt for her. Accepting it, Fin walked back to the kitchen, watched his circle prepare for their first meal together in his home.
* * *
“WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL US?” BRANNA ASKED WHEN THEY’D settled in with the food and Connor’s tale.