“Yes, I think they’ve become more insistent about it since the trouble with Brigid.”

His mind flashed to a pair of golden-brown eyes and a delicate, sneering mouth. “Brigid Connor?”

“What other Brigid is in their clan? Yes, Brigid Connor. She’s working for Murphy now.”

His head whipped around. “For Murphy?”

Gemma blinked and looked up from her books. “Are you deaf? I didn’t know that could happen with our kind. Yes, Murphy. Patrick Murphy, head of Dublin. Perhaps that all-animal diet really does dull your senses after a thousand years.”

“Shut up and tell me more about Brigid.”

Gemma smirked. “She’s on his human security team now. According to Ioan, she’s quite brilliant at it. Shooting guns. Questioning suspects. He says she loves it.”

He felt a smile lift the corner of his mouth. “Is that so? She said she wanted to go into the Garda. Good for her.”

Gemma shrugged. “Well, she couldn’t go into the police with her background, could she? And Murphy was certainly happy to have her.”

He frowned, remembering Ioan and Deirdre talking about the man’s interest in forming a connection with their clan. “What do you mean about that?”

She smiled. “What do you think? She’s a lovely young woman with good connections and obvious intelligence, which Murphy has always valued. Brigid is the opposite of brainless. I imagine he’s quite interested in her.”

“She’s human.”

Gemma arched an eyebrow at him. “We all were, once.”

Carwyn looked away to study the map of the London Underground that was hanging on the wall. Brigid Connor and Patrick Murphy? He pictured the very proper man in his three-piece suit, then the girl with the brilliant purple streak in her hair who had demanded a whiskey and sneered at a beer. He could certainly see the attraction on Murphy’s side, but what would Brigid see in him? For some reason, the idea of the two of them together irritated him.

“None of my business,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Terry wanted me to invite you for Christmas, by the way. You’re not going to the States this year, are you?”

“No, Gio’s still hopping around the world being mysterious, and I don’t want to intrude on Caspar and his family. I thought about going to see Gus and Isabel, but it’s too far.”

“You’re welcome here, if you like.”

Carwyn frowned. His thoughts still swirled around a woman in a Dublin pub. “Maybe I’ll go to Ireland this year.” Gemma was silent behind him, so he turned around. She was looking at him with narrowed eyes. “What?” he asked.

“Ireland?”

“Why not?”

Wicklow Mountains

Christmas 2007

Brigid was so short that Carwyn stared down at the top of her head in the pew at Christmas Eve mass. She was sitting next to him, dressed in a simple black dress, and her hair was her natural dark brown, trimmed into a short, professional bob. Compared to the college girl he’d met two years before, she was hardly recognizable. Her pixie face had taken on the more mature angles of a woman. Her figure was slight and lovely. Luckily, the hard expression in her eyes had softened, and she seemed far more comfortable in her own skin.

She had been formal to him. Polite, but formal. Proper. And more than a little disinterested. He wondered if she was the sort to hold a grudge.

Carwyn found it oddly annoying. He somehow wished she would roll her eyes again. He’s be lying to say that he’d not thought of her in the years since he’d seen her outside the pub in Dublin. Something about the young woman had haunted his thoughts. He admired the way she’d struggled through her difficulties. She had finally found success, but for some reason, her very proper clothing and neatly cut hair bothered him.

He whipped out the Christmas program, scribbled a note in the margins, and handed it to her. She looked up at him with disapproval, but took the note, anyway.

‘What happened to the purple?’

She mouthed ‘Purple?’ and looked at him in confusion. He grabbed the note and scribbled again.

‘Hair.’

He saw a tiny smile cross her face. An appealing blush came to her cheek, and she grabbed his pen.

‘Not exactly office-appropriate.’

He scowled. ‘Not the right office, then.’

Carwyn couldn’t stop the grin when he saw her roll her eyes. She took the pen and wrote back.

‘What do you know about the right office? According to Ioan, you wear Hawaiian shirts under your vestments. Not to mention your rumored television habits.’

‘Lies. All lies. I’m a picture of devotion and obedience. Highly appropriate at all times.’

Irritating children, telling on him like that. Carwyn frowned and poked his son in the shoulder. Ioan and Deirdre were sitting in the pew in front of him. His son looked over his shoulder, then between the two of them and the note Brigid held in her lap.

“Behave, both of you,” Ioan whispered. “Brigid, I expect this behavior out of him, but not you. Father Jacob is in the middle of the homily.”

“And it’s a very boring one,” Carwyn whispered back. “Trust me, I’ve heard a few.”

He took perverse pleasure in Brigid’s quiet snort. Ioan tried to look disapproving, but he smiled before Deirdre pinched his side and he turned back to the front of the church.

Carwyn took the note and scribbled again. ‘Why preach a doom and gloom sermon on Christmas Eve?’