“Don’t ever let me hear you say that.” She fired up, flashed over. “It’s everything to you. Oh, you know how to make me feel small and selfish. I won’t have it.” She turned, fisting her hands as she strode from stone to stone. Then she leaned heavily against one as it struck, and struck hard that this was it. From the beginning it had been spiraling toward this.

She steadied herself and turned back so that she could see his face. Odd, she thought, that she was suddenly so calm, so sure.

“You’d give it up for me, the thing that makes you what you are.” She shook her head before he could answer. “This is funny, really funny. I searched my soul last night, and the night before. Part of it I ripped out to do that painting. And when I finally took a good long look, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.”

She saw the light come into his eyes before he carefully controlled it again. “You’re saying you’d stay, do without what you want. Is that supposed to comfort me, knowing you’re here but unhappy?”

“I’m giving up a lot. Really making a sacrifice.” With a half laugh she combed her fingers through her hair. “I finally figured that out, too. I’m leaving New York. You can’t smell the grass there, or see horses grazing. You can’t watch the light strike over the fields in a way that makes your throat hurt. I’m trading the sound of traffic for the sound of mockingbirds and larks. It’s going to be real tough to live with that.”

She stuffed her hands in her pockets and began to pace in a way that warned him not to touch her. “My friends—acquaintances mostly, will think of me with amusement now and again and shake their heads. Perhaps some of them will come to visit and see just what I’ve given up the fast lane for. I’m trading that for family, for people I’ve felt closer to than almost anyone I’ve known. That’s a bad deal all right.”

She stopped, looking out between the stones as the warming sun burned off the mist. “Then there’s my career, that all-important ladder to climb. Five years more, and I guarantee I would have had that metaphorical key to the executive washroom. No question, Shannon Bodine’s got the drive, she’s got the talent, she’s got the ambition, and she doesn’t blink at sixty-hour weeks. I’ve put in plenty of those weeks, Murphy, and it occurs to me that not one of them ever gave me the joy or the simple satisfaction I’ve felt since the first time I picked up a paintbrush here in Ireland. So I guess it’s going to be real tough for me to turn in my Armani jacket for a smock.”

She turned back. “That leaves one last thing by my calculation. I’m back in New York, boosting myself up the next rung on that ladder, and I’m alone while the man who loves me is three thousand miles away.” She lifted her hands. “There doesn’t seem to be any contest. I’m giving up nothing, because there’s nothing there. That’s the bright flash I had last night. There’s nothing there I want, or need, or love. It’s all right here, right here with you.

“But you had to jump right in, didn’t you?” she tossed out when he would have stepped forward. “Now I’ll never be able to throw in your face during an argument what I’ve done for you. Because I’m not doing anything, and I know it. And you would have done everything.”

He wasn’t sure he could speak, and when he did it was only one unsteady sentence. “You’re staying with me.”

She circled over to where he’d balanced the painting. With impatient rips, she tore the protective paper aside. “Look at this and tell me what you see.”

A man and a woman on a white horse, their faces as familiar to him as his own, in a land washed with light. The stone circle in the background with two of the cross stones that had fallen still in place. The copper brooch clipped to a swirling cape.

But what he saw most was that while the man held the horse from bolting with one hand, his other held the woman close. And she him.

“They’re together.”

“I didn’t mean to paint them that way. He was supposed to be riding away, as he did, leaving her when she begged him to stay. When she pleaded and cast aside every iota of pride and wept.”

Shannon took a careful breath and finished telling him what she had seen in her mind, and her heart, when she’d painted.

“He left her because he was a soldier, and his life was battles. I imagine wars demand to be tended, just as the land does. He wanted to marry her, but he wouldn’t stay, and she needed him to stay more than she needed marriage, though she knew she was carrying his child.”

Murphy’s gaze shot up, arrested on her face. “His child.”

“She never told him. It may have made the difference, but she never told him. She wanted him to stay for her, to put his sword aside because he loved her more than what he was. When he wouldn’t, they fought, here. Right here. And said things to each other to wound because each was wounded. He gave her back the broach in anger, not in memory as the legend suggests, and rode away from her. Always believing she’d wait. She cursed him as he left him, and shouted out that he’d never have peace, anymore than she, he’d never have it until he loved her enough to give up everything else.”

Shannon pressed the broach into his palm, kept hers over it. “She saw, in the fire when he fell in battle, when he bled and died. And she delivered his child alone. She’s been waiting, endlessly, for him to love her enough.”

“I’ve wondered for a long time, tried to see it, and never could.”

“Knowing the answers spoils the magic.” She set the canvas aside so it would no longer be between them. “They’re together now. I want to stay, Murphy. Not her choice, not my mother’s. Mine. I want to make a life here with you. I swear I love you enough.”

He took her hand, brought it fiercely to his lips. “Will you let me court you, Shannon?”

“No.” It came out on a broken laugh. “But I’ll let you marry me, Murphy.”

“I can settle for that.” He pulled her against him, buried his face in her hair. “You’re the one, Shannon. You’re the only one for me.”

“I know.” Closing her eyes, she rested her head on his heart. It beat there, strong and steady, as he was. Love, she thought, closed every circle. “Let’s go home, Murphy,” she murmured. “I’ll cook you breakfast.”