Page 27 of Enchanted
“She loves her daughter,” Rowan corrected, and poured the tea.
“Then she should expect the daughter she loves to pursue her own gifts, explore her own talents,” he said casually, but continued down the path of her family. “Perhaps one of your grandparents was an artist.”
“No, my paternal grandfather was a teacher. It seems to come naturally through the family. My grandmother on that side was what I suppose you’d call a typical wife and mother of her time. She still keeps a lovely home.”
He struggled against impatience—and against a wince as Rowan added three spoons of sugar to her cup. “And on your mother’s side?”
“Oh, my grandfather’s retired now. They live in San Diego. My grandmother does beautiful needlework, soI suppose that’s a kind of art.” Her lips pursed for a moment as she stirred her tea. “Now that I think of it, her mother—my great-grandmother—painted. We have a couple of her oils. I think my grandmother and her brother have the rest. She was … eccentric,” Rowan said with a grin.
“Was she, now? And how was she eccentric?”
“I never knew her, but children pick up bits and pieces when adults gossip. She read palms and talked to animals—all decidedly against her husband’s wishes. He was, as I recall, a very pragmatic Englishman, and she was a dreamy Irishwoman.”
“So, she was Irish, was she?” Liam felt a low vibration along his spine. A warning, a frisson of power. “And her family name?”
“Ah …” Rowan searched back through her memory. “O’Meara. I’m named for her,” she continued, contentedly drinking tea while everything inside Liam went on alert. “My mother named me for her in what she calls an irresistible flash of sentiment. I suppose that’s why she—my great-grandmother—left me her pendant. It’s a lovely old piece. An oval moonstone in a hammered silver setting.”
In a slow and deliberate move, Liam set aside the tea he could no longer taste. “She was Rowan O’Meara.”
“That’s right. I think there was some wonderfully romantic story—or else I’ve made it up—about how my great-grandfather met her when he was on holiday in Ireland. She was painting on the cliffs—in Clare. That’s odd—I don’t know why I’m so sure it was Clare.”
She puzzled over that for a moment, then shrugged it away. “Anyway, they fell in love on the spot, and she went back to England with him, left her home and her family. Then they immigrated to America, and eventually settled in San Francisco.”
Rowan O’Meara from Clare. By the goddess, fate had twisted around and laid one more trap for him. He picked up his tea again to wet his throat. “My mother’s family name is O’ Meara.” He spoke in a voice that was flat and cool. “Your great-grandmother would be a distant cousin of mine.”
“You’re kidding.” Stunned and delighted, Rowan beamed at him.
“In matters such as family, I try not to joke.”
“That would be amazing. Absolutely. Well, it’s a small world.” She laughed and lifted her cup. “Nice to meet you. Cousin Liam.”
In the name of the goddess, he thought, and fatalistically tapped his cup to hers. The woman currently smiling at him out of those big, beautiful eyes had elfin blood, and didn’t even know it.
“There’s your rainbow, Rowan.” He continued to look at her, but he knew the colored arch had spread in the sky outside. He hadn’t conjured it—but sensed his father had.
“Oh!” She leaped up and, after one quick peek out the window, dashed to the door. “Come out and see. It’s wonderful!”
She raced out, clattered down the steps and looked up.
She’d never seen one so clear, so perfectly defined. Against the watery blue sky, each luminous layer stood out, shimmering at the edges with gold, melting into the next color, from rose to lavender to delicate yellow to candy pink. It spread high, each tip grazing the tops of the trees.
“I’ve never seen one so beautiful.”
When he joined her, he was both disconcerted and touched when she took his hand. But even as he looked up at the arch, he promised himself he wouldn’t fall in love with her unless it was what he wanted.
He wouldn’t be maneuvered, cajoled, seduced. He would make his decision with a clear mind.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t take some of what he wanted in the meantime.
“This means nothing more, and nothing less, than the other,” he said.
“What?”
“This.” He cupped her face, bent down and laid his lips on hers.
Soft as silk, gentle as the rain that was still falling through the pearly sunlight. He would keep it that way, for both of them, and lock down on the needs that were fiercer, more keen than was wise or safe.
Just a taste of that innocence, a glimpse of that tender heart she had no idea how to defend, he told himself. He would do what he could to keep that heart from falling too deeply, or he might be forced to break it.
