Briarwood Cottage Read Online Free Page B

assistant so uncomfortable and came up blank. “She asked me where you were staying.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “No, I’m not. And promise me you won’t yell at me?”
    “In all the years you’ve known me, have I ever yelled at you?”
    “No, but you’ve never exactly been Mr. Rogers, and even less so the past few months… I told her about the cottage.”
    “Okay.” Possibilities began spinning wildly in his head, but Duncan kept his tone neutral. “When is she arriving?”
    “She didn’t say, but I got the impression that she was going to book a flight out tonight. Which means she’ll be at Shannon in the morning.”
    Duncan had no idea what his estranged wife’s intentions might be. The woman who’d been forced through that incredibly painful crucible in Egypt had, understandably, changed. Perhaps she was coming to insist he sign those damn divorce papers she’d sent him. The ones he’d burned in a wastebasket in his Damascus Four Seasons hotel room, setting off the sprinkler system, which had not pleased a staff already tense from the street battles taking place.
    Or perhaps she’d tracked him down because having finally overcome her grief, she was ready to move on with her life. He’d kept in touch with her cousin, who, while not at all happy with the idea, had promised to keep their conversations secret. At least for now. But from what Sedona Sullivan had told him, Cass was receiving therapy and had begun to return to the living.
    If that were the case, the question on the table was whether his wife intended that life to include him.
    Damn. Although walking away from their apartment that day had not only ripped his heart to shreds and taken all meaning from his life, Duncan had struggled, against nature, to be patient as her cousin kept counseling restraint.
    Now, as thoughts of a possible reconciliation teased seductively in his head, Duncan was relieved, yet again, that Briarwood Cottage was free of the Irish kitsch he’d feared. Thankfully, there wasn’t a ceramic leprechaun anywhere in the place. On the contrary, it was a remarkably comfortable two-bedroom home that managed to blend both old and new in perfect harmony. With the view of the lake and castle ruins from the bed, he couldn’t have chosen a better location for a reunion. Surely it would remind her of their honeymoon. Of those days and nights when they’d laughed and loved, and the future lay in front of them like a sweet, ripe passion fruit, waiting to be devoured.
    Unfortunately, not only did he not have any tropical fruit handy but, except for coffee, his cupboards were bare.
    *
    “Does she enjoy smoked salmon?” Sheila Monohan, of Monohan’s Mercantile, asked when a desperate Duncan asked for help planning a late breakfast for his wife.
    “Loves it,” he said, remembering rare Sunday mornings in New York going out for bagels, cream cheese, and lox, which they’d go home and eat in bed.
    “Well, then, you can do a lovely egg scramble with smoked salmon and chives.”
    “I think I can manage that.”
    “These brown eggs from Nora Gallagher’s laying hens are wonderful. Nora, of course, was born a Joyce, then she married Conor Fitzpatrick, who was quite the horseman, which, God rest his soul, didn’t prevent him from dying in a horrible steeplechase accident.” She made a quick sign of the cross without pausing her narrative. “But then, amazingly, given that Castlelough doesn’t have many celebrities visiting us here in the back of beyond, she married Quinn Gallagher, whom you may have heard of. He’s a famous American writer.”
    “I’ve read his books.”
    “While he’s been a very good husband and has done wonderfully generous things for our village, I can’t bring myself to read his horror novels,” the storekeeper confessed. “There are already so many things to worry about in the world, more every day, it seems; I prefer a nice love story. Though I did read his book about our Lady. It was very well