"So it's royalty you think you are. Well, that's it then," the voice warned. "I'm off to find me switch." The dire words were punctuated by forceful steps pounding down the hall.

Down the hall?

Danni's eyes flew open and she was awake in an instant. Someone was walking down her hall? Who? Who was in her house? From behind her, a deep voice said, "Pay her no mind. She's always threatening me with the switch."

Danni sat bolt upright, aware of too many things at once. The room she slept in was unfamiliar. Small and sparse, the walls were painted a dull white that was relieved only by the large and gruesome crucifixion hanging over the bed. A window on the far wall had pale gray curtains that showed glimmers of a dawning and overcast sky through the gaps at the middle.

A rough wood chest of drawers with a mirror hanging above it stood directly opposite. On its surface, a small framed picture perched atop a lacy doily. And there was Jesus again, this time with a halo and long, flowing golden brown hair. The bed she lay on was in the center of the third wall. It was narrow, with four posts and a down comforter that felt heavy and warm. Bean lay curled at her feet, watching her with alert eyes that belied the dog's stillness.

And beside Danni, looking years younger in sleep, was Sean Ballagh.

She bounded out of the bed, realizing only as the cold air hit her skin that she wasn't wearing anything-not a stitch. A yelp burst from her lips as she snatched the comforter off the bed, rolling the little dog to her feet in a barking ball of fur as she pulled the length free. Sean jumped at the sounds and the sudden action, and was instantly standing, facing her from the other side of the bed. He wasn't wearing anything either.

As she stared in shock at his rumpled hair, his sleepy green eyes, his sculpted body, naked and beautiful-memories flooded in. The dream . . . the vision . . .

"My God, was that real?"

The changing expressions on his face told her he'd followed the same train of thought to the same, unbelievable end. They stared at one another for a stunned moment before once more, footsteps sounded in the hall. An instant later the door burst open. Sean reached for the sheet and tugged it around his waist as they faced the tiny woman standing on the threshold.

She had skin the color of bleached bone and eyes like blazing black fires. Her narrow shoulders were stiff and square above crossed arms and the line of her back was ramrod straight. She appeared to be anywhere between forty-five and sixty-five, but Danni couldn't have said which birthday loomed the closest. Her stance was somehow regal, but the lines bracketing her eyes and mouth spoke of a tired worldliness and tragic burdens. As promised, she clutched a thin, stripped branch in her hand.

"And sure look at the two of you acting like a wedding gives you leave to sleep the whole day through. Is it Buckingham Palace you're thinking I live?" She flicked a glance at Danni and then turned the full glare on Sean. "Now get some clothes on so you can eat. Yer uncle will not wait for you to dally with your woman. He'd just as soon throw you over with the hook and line."

Two things registered at once with Danni. First was Sean's expression. He stared at the tiny thunderbolt of a woman open-mouthed, neither responding nor moving. If it hadn't been so ironic, Danni would have said he looked like he'd seen a ghost. The second was the woman herself. She stared right back at him.

She saw him.

"Do you think I'm talking to hear myself?" she demanded. The black eyes swung to Danni. She eyed her from head to toe, taking in every detail in between. Self-consciously, Danni tucked the blanket tighter around her.

"And sure you've the look of one of our own." It sounded more accusation than compliment, but she didn't give Danni a chance to find out which was its intent. Bean jumped down from the bed and unbelievably, wagged her stubby tail right up to the woman's feet.

"A dog?" she exclaimed disdainfully. "Is that what this thing is trying to be? And hungry by my judgment. Another mouth to feed. Do you think I'm a fecking American with food bursting out my cupboards just for the having?" But she bent down and scratched Bean behind the ear. Bean tilted her head to give better access.

Straightening, the woman shook the switch in Sean's direction. "Are you not going to introduce me to your bride, then? Where are your manners, Sean? You were raised better than that."

Sean's mouth shut with a snap.

Lifting her chin, the woman gave Danni a sudden, beaming smile that transformed her wizened face. "I am this eejit's great-aunt Colleen Ballagh. And you would be?"

"Danni," she said, dry mouthed. "Danni Jones."

"Danni Ballagh now, so it is. You're marked as well as the rest of us, aren't you, then?"

There was no explanation for that comment either, but her eyes softened for just a moment and Danni saw something of lost splendor in them. Not too many years ago, this woman had been a beauty.

"Get dressed. Your things have yet to arrive, but from the sound of your travel, I imagine the bloody Protestants up north are tossin' them in the bogs by now. It's good the charity of the Sacred Heart lives in Ballyfionuir. Father Lawlor has provided some things to tide you over. You'll find them in the chest." She gave a sharp nod to the chest of drawers and mirror and then shot Bean a quick glance. "You come with me and I'll see what I've got to feed you."

Bean obeyed without question, stepping out as Colleen Ballagh shut the door with a force that rattled the picture of Jesus on the chest. Neither Sean nor Danni spoke as she strode down the hall.

In the shuddering silence, Danni tried to form a coherent question from the knot of confusion in her head. But all she managed was a choked, "What the hell?"

She stared at Sean, demanding he give her an answer she could comprehend, an explanation that would make this writhing chaos orderly. He hadn't moved a muscle since the door flung open, and he looked as if he'd been skewered by a hot poker. As she watched him, any hope that he'd explain this insanity vanished. He appeared at once hurt and bewildered. The second she understood, but the first was as perplexing as the situation.

"That was my grandmother," he murmured at last.

"Your great-aunt," Danni corrected him.

"No, she's my grandmother."

Putting aside for the moment everything else, Danni hauled the comforter tighter and moved around the bed. "Why did she say she was your great-aunt if she's your grandmother?"

"I can't be knowing that, can I?" he said sharply. "I don't know how we are here. It's like a dream. Like. . . ." He looked at her, and Danni knew he was thinking of the night, of touching her, of making love. But that was a dream-Danni's dream . . . wasn't it?

"Did you see that dog of yours?" Sean said. "It didn't even snarl at her."

His look of betrayal was almost funny, but the unfolding drama sapped any humor from the situation. Colleen's voice rose again, demanding that they get themselves to the kitchen before she was forced to wield the dreaded switch.

"She's not kidding this time," Sean said.

Numb, Danni moved to the window and pulled back the curtain. Outside the barest trace of a watery sun had yet to breach the horizon. The moon still glowed brightly, illuminating a patchwork of paddocks, hemmed by low stone walls and trimmed by a winding road that led up and out of the valley. She could see the steep and craggy drop to the ocean, which surrounded the island like a natural fortress. She craned her neck and looked to where the sea met the skyline in a silky blur of gray and green.

Sean came to stand behind her. She felt the heat of him as he bent forward to look out the window. A weak part of her wanted to lean back against him, to let him hold her and reassure her. But which was more crazy she didn't know-wanting reassurance from a ghost or thinking that touching him would bring anything so mild as comfort.

"Where are we?" she whispered, knowing the answer but needing to hear it all the same.

"Ballyfionuir."

It was impossible of course. Too impossible to even consider.

"Why did she call me your bride?"

Sean gave her a look filled with incredulous anger. "Why did she call you anything? Why are we here? How are we here?"

"We're not," Danni said with more confidence than she felt. "This is a just a dream. I'm imagining it."

"The hell you are."

He moved to the chest and yanked open a drawer. Inside were two neat stacks of clothes. He pulled out a flannel button-down, gray trousers, and a white undershirt. In the next drawer he found socks and a pack of boxers still wrapped in plastic. He tossed all of it on the bed.

Still too stunned to move, she watched him rip open the plastic and remove a pair of boxers before dropping the sheet. His back flexed as he bent and pulled them on. He was such a big man, trimmed of any fat and layered with muscle from broad shoulders to long legs. Everything solid and strong and masculine in between. She remembered how it felt to have all that power, all that hard sinew against her own soft curves, and the memory made her insides feel hot and liquid. She couldn't tear her eyes away as he tugged a white T-shirt over his head and down his chest.

He was zipping his pants when he glanced back and caught her staring. For a moment something moved in his eyes, something possessive, hungry, and burning. Something that lured her more than the white ghost of her vision. She thought of the dream that had seduced her in the night, of the words he'd whispered in her ear, of his mouth moving over every inch of her skin, telling her what he wanted, whispering what he would do to her. Freeing her of the inhibitions that had always held her back before. The memory made her entire body flush.

Quickly she shuffled past him to the chest. In the top drawer, two new toothbrushes sat beside a pack of panties and a simple white bra. Below she found a pair of light blue polyester pants and a bulky beige cable-knit sweater. She'd be making quite the fashion statement, she thought wryly. She kept the blanket around her as she fumbled into the undergarments, letting it drop as she pulled on the sweater. It hung to midthigh, and the pants were so snug she had to take deep breath to get them fastened. They fit like spandex and she was glad the sweater hid the way they clung to her hips and thighs.

While she dressed, her thoughts ran the gamut of possibilities as to what had happened. What was happening still.

She didn't know if it had been a dream, what she'd done with Sean last night. Awake, her body lacked the languid feel of satisfaction she'd had in the netherworld of slumber. There was no telltale scent lingering on her skin, no sore muscles, no intimate aching. It had to have been a dream-a very vivid, memorable dream that she couldn't shake. Every time she glanced at Sean, she thought of his mouth on her skin, his hands trailing down her body, touching her like no one had ever touched her before.

Nervous, she faced Sean across the gulf of the narrow bed. She read in his expression the same disorientated anxiety she felt on her own.

"Do you remember anything, Sean? About how we got here?"

He shook his head. "We were in your kitchen-and then it felt like we were falling."

She nodded. "Before that you gave me the necklace . . ."

Remembering, she reached for it. It still hung around her neck, but there was no prickling, stinging sensation when she touched it.

"She made it sound like we had luggage that was lost," Danni murmured. "I don't remember packing. I don't remember anything but-"

She stopped, yet it seemed he heard her thoughts anyway. She didn't remember anything but his body hot against her own, moving, sliding, making her want to scream: go faster, harder, slower, longer . . . His eyes followed the trail his hands had blazed and as impossible as it was, she knew he remembered, too. If it was dream, they'd shared it.

"I'm as confused by this as you, Danni," he said, the deep smoke of his voice low and gruff. "However impossible, here we are. Let us go downstairs before she drags us by our ears. Maybe we'll make some sense of it in time."

Neither of them believed it, but silently she tossed him one of the toothbrushes and followed him out of the room. The hall was narrow and painted the same grayed white of the bedroom. There were three doors that opened off of it. The first led to a smaller bedroom with a bed, a rocking chair, and an armoire inside. The other to a room nearly identical. The last was a bathroom. Sean waited while she used it first.

Marveling at the ancient plumbing, she washed her hands and face, brushed her hair and teeth. She rinsed before finally gathering the nerve to look into the mirror. The same Danni who'd gazed back yesterday waited in the reflection. But there was something different about her now. Something wild in her eyes, in the color that stained her cheeks.

This isn't real, she mouthed to her image.

The hell it isn't, her eyes shouted back.

She waited outside the door for Sean and then followed him through the hall. A delicious aroma wafted up and teased them down the short flight of stairs. Whatever was for breakfast smelled heavenly.

The first floor of the house had a sitting room with a fireplace, a sofa, and two chairs. There was a small television with rabbit ears in the corner. It looked to be at least twenty years old with a rotary dial and two knobs for changing channels and adjusting the picture. A tall clock in the corner chimed the half hour, and Danni was shocked to see that it was only four thirty. What in the world were they expected to do so early in the morning?

A half wall with spindly wooden rails divided the room from a dining area, packed with a long battered table, eight chairs, and a china cabinet. Sean didn't give her time to examine the set, but it was obviously old and cherished. The wood gleamed with a deep, burnished sheen, and the cabinet displayed a full assortment of crystal and china.

A doorway led through to a good-sized kitchen done in linoleum and papered with yellowed flowers. Open shelving covered only by a gauzy curtain of lavender took up the far wall. Through the diaphanous fabric, Danni saw a few store-bought canned goods among rows of jarred preserves, fruits, and vegetables. Something that looked suspiciously like pig feet floated in a pink brown fluid.

Colleen stood at the stove, stirring potatoes that smelled greasy and completely wonderful. Bean sat at her feet with a watchful and adoring look on her face. Every few minutes Colleen would flip a sliced potato out of the skillet to a paper towel where it would cool before she tossed it to Bean, who caught it like a show dog in the circus.

Sean moved to a kettle on a back burner and poured two mugs of tea. He added milk to one and several spoonfuls of sugar to another.

"There now," Colleen scolded, reaching over to crack his knuckles with her wooden spoon when he tried for another scoop of sugar. "Do you think I'm the fecking queen of England?"

Sean's head jerked up and he stared at his great-aunt-grandmother, Danni corrected herself-with even more surprise than when she'd burst into the bedroom. Danni had the sense that this was a ritual, something that had played out with them before-Sean shoveling sugar into his mug and Colleen admonishing him with a smack of her spoon-and that somehow this familiarity had done what the being, what the seeing, had not.

His surprise faded into a look of such gentle affection that Danni's heart contracted with it. The harsh lines of his face smoothed into a faint grin, his dimples no more than a hint in the stubble on his cheeks. He leaned over and kissed his grandmother's brow. "It's not the fecking queen I think you are, Nana. It's a beauty star from Hollywood."

To Danni's surprise, Colleen blushed like a young girl.

"It's good for me eyes to see you, Sean," she said softly.

Sean handed Danni the tea with milk. Gratefully she held it between her palms and breathed in the aroma. "How did you know the way I like it?" she asked, taking a sip.

His mouth quirked at the corner, and his gaze traveled slowly over her face and shoulders, leaving a hot tingle in its wake and a warm flush on her entire body. The Sean she'd awakened with was even more disarming than the one who'd appeared at her door. She felt wary and defenseless, jittery and needy in his presence. She stared determinedly into her cup, refusing to respond to the demand she felt in his eyes.

"What kind of husband would he be if he didna know the way his wife takes her tea?" Colleen asked, piling two plates with shiny potatoes speckled with course pepper, thick square sausages, and heaping mounds of fluffy scrambled eggs. Beside the eggs was a circle of something that looked like a sausage, but not one Danni had ever eaten before. Colleen put a plate in the center of the table, filled with hunks of fried bread. Danni's arteries hardened just looking at the feast, but her stomach growled eagerly.

Colleen stood beside them, waiting impatiently for them to lift their forks. Danni took a bite of eggs and smiled in appreciation as she chewed. Colleen beamed and waited for Sean to do the same.

Sean picked up his fork and stared at the mound of food on his plate. He took a bite of potatoes then stilled, holding it in his mouth as his eyes closed for a moment. Slowly he chewed and swallowed. The look on his face made Danni wonder what Colleen put in the potatoes. She took a bite and found them delicious, but nothing that warranted the ecstasy she read in Sean's expression as he tucked into his breakfast, savoring each bite and following it quickly with another. Like he was starved.

No. Like it had been years since he'd really tasted food . . .

"What are these?" Danni asked, tearing her eyes from that almost sexual look of pleasure on his face and pointing to the round sausagelike things on her plate.

"Do you not know?" Colleen asked, surprised. "White pudding, that is." At Danni's blank look, she explained, "That'll be pork, bread, spices of course, oatmeal, and onion. Would you rather the black pudding? Sean doesn't yearn after it as much as the white, but I have both."

"Oh no, this is fine. I just wondered."

Colleen eyed her for a moment, as if seeking deception. Then, satisfied, she returned to her skillet. At her feet, Bean gave a small, apologetic woof.

"And sure I know you're there, little beastie. Wait your turn like a lady, though," Colleen said.

The back door opened, and a man and an adolescent boy strolled in with a damp breeze and murky predawn light. Thinking the morning could not be any weirder, Danni felt all the breath leave her lungs as the pair turned their eyes to her and Sean.

The man stood tall, as tall as Sean and every bit as fit. He wore his hair military short, and the cut gave the graying strands at his temples a salt-and-pepper look. His eyes were a bluer green than Sean's, but the face was put together in the same strong, square manner. He was the man she'd seen pictured in the article she'd read. The man accused of killing her family.

Sean's father.

The shock of seeing him nearly equaled the one she'd awakened to. This man had killed himself twenty years ago. Was he another ghost? Were all of them spirits in this alter-reality? If so, what did that make Danni?

Before she could even begin to think through it, to reason it out, the boy beside him drew her attention and shock trembled through her body. Wanting to turn away, wanting to run away, Danni stared at him.

Next to the solid mass of his father, the teenager looked like a willow sprouting tall with shoots of young growth. He was narrow and lean, corded like a thick rope, but a boy still by the breadth of his shoulders and the soft fuzz on his chin. The eyes though . . . The eyes that stared at her with a combination of banked resentment, bright curiosity, and masculine appreciation . . . Those were Sean's eyes.

The slow tick of the clock grated against her stretched nerves as thoughts burst in her mind like explosions. It was Sean as he'd looked in the photo from the article she'd read. Sean, as a boy. Sean, twenty years ago.

"Say morning to yer cousin Sean and his wife, Danni," Colleen told Niall and his teenaged son. Continuing with her baffling ruse about their relationship to one another, Colleen turned to the grown-up Sean and said, "This strapping lad would be your third cousin on your father's side, named Sean Michael for your great-grandda, same as you are. He answers to Michael, though. A blessing that is, or we'd be tongue-tied with the two of you Seans running about." She ruffled the boy's hair to his obvious annoyance and then looked at Sean's father. "And this fine man is your second cousin, Niall."

Danni felt sick as the scene played out in front of her. In a realm of impossibility, this latest twist put her over the edge. The young Sean-Michael as he was called-and his father were standing in front of them looking exactly as they had twenty years ago. At the same time, grown-up Sean was sitting right beside her. And none of them could possibly be real.

Except, before they'd awakened here, people only looked through Sean without ever seeing him. Suddenly these people-these people who couldn't exist-were looking right at him. And not with fear, misgiving, or confusion. But with curiosity. With friendliness.

Like the ghost she knew him to be, Sean was pale and solemn as he came to his feet. What he was thinking, she didn't know, but he stood unsteady and silent as he faced his father and, impossibly, the young version of himself.

Niall said, "Sure and Mum's been talking about your coming for weeks. You'd think you were the Sainted Peter for all her fuss. Michael has been eager enough to meet you, that's a certainty." Niall gave Michael a playful punch in the arm as he spoke. The boy shot him a poisonous look and swatted his hand away.

"You've come from America, haven't you?" Michael said, speaking to Sean, but staring at Danni like she was something he'd dreamed up for his viewing pleasure.

She felt awkward and exposed beneath the steady eyes that were so like Sean's. Not just like Sean's, she whispered to herself. One and the same. In twenty years, those very eyes would be turning her bones to putty. She frowned at an idea embedded in that elusive thought. In twenty years . . . In twenty years . . . She pulled in a deep breath. It couldn't be . . . but in some twisted way it made sense. Crazy, but . . . was it possible they could have awakened in a different time as well as a different place? Could they have opened their eyes twenty years in their own past?

"Yes, we've come from America," Sean answered, still standing, still looking like he'd been carved of stone.

"And you're a Yank, true enough?" This to Danni.