Rewind, Danni thought, amazed. We're rewinding time.

The sounds came in stilted blasts. Suddenly her mother was holding another Dairinn in her arms as the child tried desperately to break free. And then her father and Rory reappeared, fighting over the Book and then Rory was moving away. Sean seeped back into his flesh, standing just a few feet away from her. She met his eyes, bundled her thoughts tight and sent them into his mind.

One chance. One chance.

In reverse, Cathan fired his gun at Danni, only now the bullet made its way back into the gun. Cathan swung it away and aimed once more at Niall. The bullet jerked from Michael's body, seeming to yank him up from the ground and toss him back where he'd stood beside his father.

Danni squeezed Dairinn's hand once and then she let go.

Like a rubber band stretched hard, time flew at them with a snap. Rewind was over and now the seconds rushed forward. Danni was on her feet, moving even before she'd caught her balance. Cathan raised the gun to Niall once more, but Danni knocked his hand just as he fired and the shot went wild.

He whipped the pistol against her face and pain exploded everywhere. Without wasting a second, he shot her point-blank in the stomach and then swung the gun at Niall and fired again. Danni watched in slow motion as the bullet streaked unerringly at Niall Ballagh. Once more, Michael lunged for his father, but this time, the grown-up Sean made it there first. The bullet caught him square in the chest and slammed him back against the wall. His heart stopped instantly and he sank to the ground, eyes sightless.

Danni's scream of agony came from the pit of her soul. Once again, she felt the life draining out of her. She was numb and death rushed at her like a blur and she welcomed it, for what was life without Sean? With her last gasping breath, she watched her fate unfold.

Rory was already fighting for the Book with her father, but Danni saw that Dairinn wasn't going to let him go this time. Even as Dairinn grabbed from behind, Rory disappeared as he had before, but Dairinn held on. Danni felt the child throw her thoughts out like a rope and catch him. And then she pulled. Her brother came back with a whir that knocked them both to the ground.

But her father and the Book of Fennore were gone for good.

Everything became hazy then. The voices around her warbled and she realized she was fading, just as Sean was. She lifted her hand and it felt heavy, but she could see right through it. Fading, like a morning mist.

There was a moment of panic. What would happen now? They'd changed history. Changed their own lives . . . But the fear waned with her existence. She closed her eyes on the alarmed voices and she gave in to the tide of destiny.

Chapter Forty-three.

IT wasn't dream; it wasn't vision. It was some hybrid in between.

She looked down at her own body, bloody and battered . . . defeated. But she felt no pain. She felt no fear.

She stepped away, turning as a familiar voice called her name. She smiled as she looked into his unusual eyes-not quite green, not quite gray-and took the hand he held out to her. Without a word, she followed him out of the cavern and into the bright light that waited.

Chapter Forty-four.

ON her fifth birthday, Dairinn MacGrath declared she would be called Danni and would answer to nothing else. When they thought of it, the people of Ballyfionuir attributed the demand to the child's queerness. It was the way of the Ballaghs and the MacGraths, and didn't they all know it? After Cathan MacGrath had disappeared without a trace-no doubt run off with some whore from Cork or even Limerick-the townsfolk tended to indulge the children. And who wouldn't in their shoes?

Sure and for years tongues wagged about Cathan's abandonment of his family. Some speculated he'd not gone off at all, but had been shot by an irate father for impregnating his daughter. Others wa gered it more likely that a jealous husband had done in the wretched man. A small minority thought he might have pulled the trigger on himself and ended his sinful ways, the cheating gobshite.

And didn't some think a darker fate had taken Cathan MacGrath? Hadn't they all heard rumors about what he'd been up to? Didn't the old women talk about him when they were pissfaced on a Saturday night? They said he'd found the Book of Fennore. They said he would be cursed for all of eternity because of it.

Whatever his fate, he was missed like a famine-or not at all, as they say.

The MacGrath twins were raised by their mother and her second husband, Niall Ballagh, who brought to the union two sons from his first marriage. Lucky for the couple, Ballagh's mother was usually available to lend a hand. Fia had given birth to a lovely daughter six months after that momentous night when her husband disappeared. The baby girl was said to be a blessing of unimagined proportions.

It was widely agreed that Danni MacGrath was able to overcome the trauma of losing her birth father, but her twin brother Rory lacked the fortitude to do the same. A serious child, he became sullen and withdrawn. As the teen years approached, his pensive ways turned brooding and then destructive. At the age of twelve, the boy was sent away for a summer to live with his Aunt Edel and her American husband. A dentist, they say. The townspeople who had suffered his vandalism and petty thievery for years were much relieved-more so when the boy refused to return home. The gossip said young Rory sent word home and occasionally there was a picture, too. He had nice teeth, the boy did, and they all decided it was for the best that he'd gone.

Niall Ballagh's eldest son, Sean, attended school in London and became famous for his renovations of historical monuments. The youngest had not fared so well, but tragedy was nothing new to Ballyfionuir.

All in all, the townsfolk often remarked over a pint at Sulley's Pub, they'd come out on the right of things.

Epilogue.

IT had been seven years since Dairinn MacGrath-Danni to her friends and family-had left for New York and Columbia University. She'd graduated in the top of her class and worked freelance before becoming a staff writer for the New York Times. It was the culmination of a lifetime of goals and dreams, and she was a good reporter-a great one, she'd heard her editor say. She always seemed to know when a story was about to break or a witness about to spill his secrets. A gift, her editor called it. A gift.

But though she loved every minute of her life, as Danni approached her twenty-fifth birthday, she acknowledged that something was missing. She began to have dreams that tormented her and chased her through the nights. Dreams of losing something, something near and dear. Something irreplaceable.

Then she'd done the story on abandoned children and her life had changed completely. Her article sparked a reform in the child protection agency and in the adoption laws which prevented so many good couples from adopting children and placed so many hopeless children in abusive homes. The work she'd done had opened her heart to the plight of the lost and abandoned children of the world.

She decided then and there that she would make a difference to as many as she could. Her Nana Colleen had told her once that a person should look in their own backyard before they thought to clean up another's. And so Danni had come home to start here.

Ballyfionuir hadn't changed much in the passing years, and yet coming home for the first time in so long, it seemed to Danni that the differences were profound. There was a shine to the fishing village brought on in part by the increase in tourism. There were specialty shops and pubs, and dining establishments lining the cobbled road. The once faded buildings were now painted in stunning pastels with bright colored doors. There was still nothing in the way of hotels-the overriding opinion was that tourists should find their way home before the need for sleep came around.

Her mother had written and told her that her stepbrother Sean was back in town as well. He'd turned his eye on the MacGrath ruins and intended to restore it. A noble undertaking, though she'd much prefer it if they were simply destroyed. She didn't remember anything about the night her father had vanished, but it always seemed to her that something dire had taken place in the cavern beneath the ruins and she associated it with his desertion.

She let out a sigh, knowing Rory remembered much more, though he'd never talk about it. Rory had sworn he'd never return to Ballyfionuir and he meant it. She knew her mother missed him terribly and blamed herself, though Danni never understood why.

As she drove her rented car up to the house, she saw the workers and equipment everywhere. The grounds around the house and ruins looked to be in absolute chaos, and she frowned. She'd been dreaming of the peace and quiet of her home, not this bedlam of hammers and saws and huge cranes. It made her angry. Damn Sean Michael Ballagh, she thought even as her heart sped up at the idea that he might appear at any moment.

The last time she'd seen him, she'd been thirteen, he'd been twenty-two and gone to school in London for the past four years. Four years during which she'd changed from a schoolgirl to a teenager who dreamed of him coming home some day and seeing her as woman. He wasn't her real brother, after all, and she'd never thought of him as one.

But instead of sweeping her into his arms and declaring his intentions to wait for her to reach a marriageable age, he'd brought another woman home with him-a lovely thing with black hair and blue eyes and breasts that couldn't be real. He'd given Danni's ponytail a tweak and tossed her a soft stuffed animal he'd brought as a gift. It was a puppy, which she secretly loved. But at that moment, it made her feel like a child being placated and dismissed with a toy. She'd been so hurt and angry that she'd locked herself in her room and hadn't come out for the entire weekend, not even to say good-bye.

By the time he'd made it home again, she'd been off to college herself, and now twelve years had passed. Well, she was definitely a woman now.

She glanced down at her faded jeans and old sweater. She needed to shower and clean up before she said hello to him. No matter that her crush on Sean was long over, she was woman enough to want to look sophisticated and poised when she saw him-hell and gone from that gawky thirteen-year-old girl anyway.

She turned to go inside and see her parents when a small black and brown ball of fur raced at her from the direction of the construction. It was barking crazily and charging like Danni was a meaty stew bone in danger of being tossed out. A dog? Startled, Danni stepped back against the car as the animal came to an ungainly stop at her feet. It was a dog, she realized. A mongrel mixture of so many breeds that it barely resembled a canine. It had long thin legs and a stout body. No tail, but perky ears and brown eyes that now looked at her with adoration she didn't deserve.

"Hi there," she said, squatting down. The dog had fur like silk and wagged its entire body as she greeted it. "Is it a dog you're trying to be?" Danni laughed as she scratched behind its ear.

A stern voice called to the little beast, and Danni looked up to see a man following the same path the dog had from the midst of the construction.

He was tall with broad shoulders and the layered muscles of a warrior, though he moved with easy grace and long, purposeful strides. He wore a T-shirt that might have been white when he'd put it on but was now covered with dirt. A denim button-down hung open over it. Faded blue jeans hugged lean hips and long legs. Not just tall. Not just broad. A big man.

He stopped in front of where she knelt with the dog and hunkered down beside them. Danni's eyes followed the powerful line up from flat belly to muscular chest to his tanned throat, square jaw, coming to a stop at eyes not quite green, not quite gray. Eyes like the Irish Sea itself. She might not have recognized the man Sean had become if not for those unforgettable eyes.

For a moment she could only stare, and it seemed somewhere beyond her memory, beyond this moment in time, there was a history stretching out behind them both. An inexplicable past and future entwined and interwoven, binding them together. Images rushed at her . . . his arms around her, his body close and hot, his mouth on hers. But she'd never . . . They' d never . . .

And yet, like a song she couldn't forget, the thoughts played on and she knew she had . . . they had. And she'd been waiting her whole life to have what they'd shared again. It was crazy but it felt too real to doubt.

His eyes seemed to darken, and the look in that sea of green and gray somehow mirrored the complex and chaotic emotions churning inside her. He understood. He felt it, too. The knowledge rolled over her and stole her breath. He felt it, too.

He smiled then, a slow, knowing smile that spread across his face and showed the two dimples that Danni had fallen in love with so long ago. She felt herself smiling back, though her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. The rest of the world seemed to fall away, and there was only Danni and Sean and endless possibilities. The future before them was bright and shining and waiting for whatever fate had in store for them next.

"Welcome back, Danni," he said, his voice a smoky baritone that brushed against her skin like velvet and made her lean closer. She reached out, needing to touch him, to believe in the overwhelming rush of what she felt. He took her hand, pulling her closer still, and a million thoughts filled her head, but not one of them was to resist. This was where she belonged, where she was meant to be.

He paused, his gaze moving over her face, as if to memorize every feature. And then he spoke again, his words as soft as the warm and fragrant breeze. "It's good to have you home. Isn't it forever I've been waiting to see you again?"

Dear Reader, Thank you for selecting Haunting Beauty from all of the many fabulous choices in your bookstores and libraries. I hope you enjoyed Danni and Sean's story. I know writing it changed my life.

I love talking to readers and would love to hear from you. You can find me at www.erinquinn.info , where you can read first chapters of my upcoming releases and find my blog, where I probably talk too much but occasionally say something interesting. You can also e-mail me at write2erinquinn@aol.com. I promise you' ll hear back.

All my best,

Erin Quinn.

Turn the page for a preview of the next.

paranormal romance from Erin Quinn.

Haunting Warrior.

Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!.

" HURRY, Ruairi. Hurry."

The whispered command tickled the inside of Rory MacGrath's ear, feather light and taunting. He brushed it away and rolled over, trying to block out what he instantly knew. He wasn't dreaming anymore. If he opened his eyes, he'd find the woman standing beside him.

He acknowledged this even as he accepted that seeing her wouldn't make her real, wouldn't make her more than a projection of his own mind. A fantasy he'd conjured and spewed into this semi-somnolence. He felt his heartbeat begin to race; his breath slowing and deepening-combatant symptoms to the paralyzing awareness.

He thought he opened his eyes, but couldn't be sure if he only imagined it. Either way, he saw her waiting impatiently beside the couch where he'd fallen asleep watching ESPN. The apartment was dark, lit only by the flickering screen of the TV behind her. It cast her in gray and white dreamscape shadows. And then the flashing screen went blank, and they were both bathed in darkness.

This-of all that was about to come-it was this that he hated the most. The black on black void held him captive for interminable moments.

Sound came before the light was restored. It was rumbling, indistinct, but a sensory input that his panicking mind grasped gratefully. There was something out there. Something more than his fear. More than his sleep-deadened body.

A flicker heralded the flame of a candle. An instant later others sparked to life until the boundaries of a room could be determined in the glow. He was no longer in his apartment.

He scanned his surroundings quickly before fixating on the woman again. It was impossible not to. She looked the same as she had last night and the night before and the night before that. She had dark hair-too burnished for black, too velvety rich for brown. It was full and silken and glossy as mink. It hung to her waist in a wave of body and bounce, gleaming with the flicker of the candlelight. Her eyes were brown, dark with flecks of gold that burned like the tiny flickering flames around her. Even his dream self couldn't believe their luminousness. Her lips were full and soft, one corner caught between her teeth. She looked exotic, her skin dusky and her features fine.

She wore a blue dress with white sleeves-something that laced in places where there should have been seams or zippers. It bloused and flowed over her round shoulders, past hips that made him think of sex in a deep, drowning way. The hem brushed a scattering of twigs and straw on the floor. Not even her feet peeped out.

She stood in the center of a room with three stone walls. Behind him hung a thick woven curtain that served as the fourth. He knew it without turning to look. There was a table with a pitcher on it in the corner beside a lumpy bed covered by a scarlet blanket. The room was damp and drafty, making the tapestries on the walls billow, but the woman seemed oblivious to the cold.

As he watched, she began to untie the dress, letting it fall, revealing a white shift beneath it. The thin material silhouetted her body for a moment before she began to remove that, too. Even as some part of him shouted again that she wasn't real, Rory succumbed to the seduction. She was every fantasy he'd ever had, ever wanted.

Her skin was so smooth it might have been carved from the waxed light that made it gleam. Her breasts were full and heavy, and he felt the air leave his lungs as she bared them. She glanced up then-every time, every night, at just that moment. Almost as if she'd heard him. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes defiant. Anger, bordering rage, filled their depths. So much of the dream made no sense, but that part-that look of fury mixed but never diluted by acquiescence. It bewildered him the most.

When she was stripped bare, she stood in the flickering light and stared at something just over his shoulder.

And this was where the fantasy ended.

He turned-every time he turned-even though by now a part of him knew what he'd see. A tall man with overlong hair stood just behind him. A man dressed in a weird get-up that looked like it had come from a movie set. Archaic, like the dress the woman had stripped off.

The man wore a cloak made of some animal fur-not politically correct faux fur, but the real thing, with paws stretched flat at four points and the stub of tail nearly dragging the floor. It was flung back from his massive shoulders, revealing a heavy circle of gold round his throat. An obscure word floated to the top of Rory's thoughts. A torque. That's what it was called. It was as thick as Rory's fingers and engraved with Celtic spirals covering its surface. It looked heavy. The man's shirt had a wide slit for his head and boxy sleeves that fell to his forearms, and the front was embroidered with more spirals and symbols in purple and gold at the hem and seams. It hung to his thighs, like a dress. Beneath it were short pants that gathered below his knees and leather sandals wrapped midway up powerful calves, Roman style.

But even his bizarre attire was not the strangest part. What made Rory gasp was more tangible. It shook him no matter how many times he faced it.

The man looked exactly like Rory. He didn't resemble; he wasn't similar. Literally, he could have been Rory's reflection.

As Rory stared, he became aware of the ebb and flow of noises coming from beyond the curtained wall, a rumble that now distinguished itself into laughter and conversations he hadn't noticed while he'd watched the woman strip. He'd heard only the beat of his heart pounding in his ears then. Now sounds surged into the candlelit room, the drone of speaking men mingling with raucous hoots and jeers, an occasional giggle or shriek of mirth from the women. One man's words rose above the rest as the speaker threatened to come in and show Rory where everything went. The man used Rory's name, but pronounced it with the same Gaelic inflection that his dream woman had used when she'd urged him to hurry. Ruairi.

Rory frowned, realizing he recognized the voice. He knew he'd heard it before. From their expressions, it was familiar to the naked woman and his identical twin too.

A surge of lewd cheers followed the man's threat. Volunteers offered to help with the endeavor.

The taunts galvanized Rory's twin into action, and he began stripping away the strange costume with nimble, frantic fingers. He unfastened a gold chain holding the fur cloak at his throat and tossed the heavy garment onto the bed before bending to untie the sandals. Frowning, Rory went back to watching the woman as she watched his double. She stood straight and proud, neither hunching to cover her nudity or posing to flaunt it. She wore no expression, but her eyes sparked and flared with something Rory couldn't quite identify. It couldn't be longing. There was too much anger for that. Her fingers curled in on each other in a tight fist. Then they eased, then they contracted again.

But it was the way her gaze swept over his twin, the way her breasts lifted with a soft breath and her tongue moistened her lips that enthralled him.

He couldn't look away, though that distant awareness inside him was shouting again, warning him not to relax, not to be mesmerized by the rise and fall of those lovely breasts. But he couldn't stop himself as he stared at her, aching to touch her.

He knew the end of this fantasy dream was coming, as it always did just at this point when he felt he might explode with the want and need rising inside him. He braced himself for it, for what came after when he awoke alone and aching. She would torment him during the wakeful hours afterward. The sight of her, close enough to touch . . . to smell . . . to taste. . . . He would imagine she was every where, just out of reach.