Carla Neggers by Declan's Cross Read Free Book Online Page A

visit. So much had changed in the past four years. She wondered how she’d have responded to Colin if he’d turned up in Dublin back then, or if she’d run into him on her day trip down here. He was already an FBI agent, on his first undercover assignment.
    Ten to one that Colin Donovan wasn’t any different from the one walking next to her now.
    “Smiling at the view of the Celtic Sea?” he asked her.
    “It’s spectacular, but no. I was thinking about you and what it would have been like if we’d met sooner.”
    “How much sooner?”
    “Well, not when I was with the sisters. I expect I needed that time so that I’d be ready when we did meet.”
    He laughed. “Learning to shoot probably helped, too.”
    “A wonder I didn’t run into you even before the sisters, since we grew up within a few miles of each other. Maybe we did and just didn’t know it.” She slowed her pace and noticed a few yellow blossoms on a cluster of prickly gorse along the edge of the lane. So pretty, she thought, then squinted out at the horizon in the distance as she answered the question that hung between them. “I know my background as a Sharpe is complicated, but growing up around our family business, working for my grandfather, learning as much as I have from him—all of that’s a plus, Colin. Being a Sharpe is an asset in my art crimes work.”
    “Mostly an asset,” he said without hesitation.
    She glanced sideways at him. “Are you trying to provoke me?”
    “Just trying to get you to admit that I already have provoked you.”
    She sighed. “I’m not as hotheaded as you are.”
    “You have doubts, Emma. You’re not sure you’re where you’re supposed to be.”
    “I’m here with you.” She knew he meant the FBI and not him. “That’s good enough for me.”
    “No argument from me. We’ll save the deep talk for another time. I may not know all your secrets, but I know you. I know you’re worried that being a Sharpe is getting in the way of your work.” He took her hand and drew her close. “Your fingers are cold.”
    She was relieved he hadn’t pushed her for answers. “I left my gloves at the hotel.”
    “We’ll have to keep each other warm, then.”
    She smiled. “Sometimes we do think alike.”
    * * *
    A few minutes later, they came to a tan cinder-block bungalow in a small lot bordered on three sides by fields and more sheep. Emma stopped at a barbed-wire fence where four woolly ewes had gathered. They didn’t seem to mind the stiff breeze off the water, but it was colder than she expected, prompting her to pull up her jacket collar. “It’s a beautiful spot for Julianne’s stay,” she said, glancing at Colin. “If you decide you never want to leave Ireland after all, you could always take up sheep farming.”
    He patted a ewe’s head. She bleated and pushed against his palm. He grinned. “I do have a way with women, don’t you think?”
    “Very funny.”
    “I don’t see myself taking up sheep farming in Ireland. Whale watches, maybe. Irish coastal waters are a sanctuary for whales, dolphins and porpoises.”
    “Colin, you’re not serious, are you?”
    His smoky gray eyes settled on her. “I’m kidding, Emma. I won’t be staying in Ireland forever. Whatever’s next for me is back home.”
    “You won’t be going back with me on Friday. You need more time on your own here, without me.”
    “It wasn’t a mistake for you to have come,” he said.
    “I’m glad of that.”
    He stood back from the sheep, the wind catching the ends of his dark hair. He hadn’t asked her to join him in Ireland. When he’d left without her, she’d understood that he’d believed some time on his own in Finian Bracken’s Irish cottage was a way for him to decompress after his months undercover, and at least to start the process of figuring out what came next for him. She’d followed him there because she’d wanted, simply, to be with him. If he’d asked her to go back to Boston, she’d have