She was a civilized woman who believed in using reason, diplomacy, and compromise to solve disputes. She could only pity someone who preferred using force and bunched fists.

Even if he did have a beautiful face and muscles that just rippled when put into use.

She was much too sensible to be blinded by the physical.

She would record his stories, thank him for his cooperation. And that would be that.

Then she opened the door, and he was standing in the rain, his hair gleaming with it, his smile warm as summer and just as lazy. And she felt about as sensible as a puppy.

"Good day to you, Jude."

"h.e.l.lo." It was a testament to his effect on her that it took her a full ten seconds to so much as notice the enormous man beside him clutching flowers in his huge hand. He looked miserable, she noted, the rain dripping off the bill of his soaked cap, his wide face pale as moonlight, his truck-grill shoulders slumped.

He only sighed when Aidan rammed an elbow hard into his ribs.

"Ah, good day to you, Miss Murray. I'm Jack Brennan. Aidan here tells me I behaved badly last night, in your presence. I'm sorry for that and hope to beg your pardon."

He shoved the flowers at her, with a pitiful look in his bloodshot eyes. "I'd had a bit too much of the drink," he went on. "But that's no excuse for using strong language in front of a lady-though I didn't know you were there, did I?" He said that with a slide of his eyes toward Aidan and a mutinous set to his mouth.

"No." She kept her voice stern, though the wet flowers were so pathetic they melted her heart. "You were too busy trying to hit your friend."

"Oh, well, sure Aidan's too fast for me to plant a good one on him when I'm under the influence, so to speak." His lips curved, for just a moment, into a surprisingly sweet smile, then he hung his great head again. "But despite circ.u.mstances being what they were, it's no excuse for behaving in such a manner in front of a lady. So I'm after begging your pardon and hoping you don't think too poorly of me."

"There now." Aidan gave his friend a hearty slap on the back. "Well done, Jack. Miss Murray's too kindhearted to hold a grudge after so pretty an apology." He looked back at her, as if they were sharing a lovely little joke. "Aren't you, Jude Frances?"

Actually she was, but it irritated her to be so well pegged. Ignoring Aidan, she nodded at Jack. "I don't think poorly of you, Mr. Brennan. It was very considerate of you to come by and bring me flowers. Would you like to come in and have some tea?"

His face brightened. "That's kind of you. I wouldn't mind-"

"You've got places to go, Jack."

Jack's brows drew together. "I don't. Particularly."

"Aye, you do. This and the other. You take my car and be about it. You'll remember I told you Miss Murray and I have business to tend to."

"All right, then," he muttered. "But I don't see how one b.l.o.o.d.y cup of tea would matter. Good day, Miss Murray." Shoulders hunched, cap dripping, he lumbered back to the car.

"You might have let him come in out of the rain," Jude commented.

"You don't seem to be in any great hurry to ask me in out of it." Aidan angled his head as he studied her face. "Maybe you hold a grudge after all."

"You didn't bring me flowers." But she stepped back to let him come inside and drip.

"I'll see that I do next time. You've been cleaning. The house smells of lemon oil, a nice, homey scent. If you get me a rag, I'll wipe up this wet I'm tracking in to your nice, clean house."

"I'll take care of it. I have to go up and get my tape recorder and so forth. We'll work in the kitchen. You can just go ahead back."

"All right, then." His hand closed over hers, making her frown. Then he slipped the flowers out of her fingers. "I'll put these in something for you so they don't look quite so pitiful."

"Thank you." The stiffly polite tone was the only defense she could come up with against six feet of wet, charming male in her hallway. "I'll only be a minute."

She was barely longer than that, but when she walked into the kitchen he already had the flowers in one of Maude's bottles and was handily brewing a pot of tea.

"I started a fire there in your hearth to take the chill off. That all right, then?"

"Of course." And she tried not to be annoyed that every one of the tasks he'd done took her three times as long to accomplish. "Have a seat. I'll pour the tea."

"Ah, it needs to steep a bit yet."

"I knew that." She mumbled it as she opened a cupboard for cups and saucers. "We make tea in America, too." She turned back, set the cups on the table, then hissed out a breath. "Stop staring at me."

"Sorry, but you're pretty when you're all fl.u.s.tered and your hair's falling down."

Mutiny ripe in her eyes, she jammed pins back in violently enough to drill them into her scalp. "Perhaps I should make myself clear. This is an intellectual arrangement."

"Intellectual." Wisely he controlled the grin and kept his face sober. "Sure it's a fine thing to have an interest in each other's minds. You've a strong one, I suspect. Telling you you're pretty doesn't change that a bit, does it?"

"I'm not pretty and I don't need to hear it. So if we can just get started?"

He took a seat because she did, then c.o.c.ked his head again. "You believe that, don't you? Well, now, that's interesting, on an intellectual level."

"We're not here to talk about me. My impression was that you have a certain skill as a storyteller and are familiar with some of the myths and legends particular to this area."

"I know some tales." When her voice went prim that way it just made him want to lap at her, starting anywhere at all. So he leaned back in his chair. If it was intellectual she wanted, he figured they could begin with that- then move along.

"Some you may know already, in one form or another.

The oral history of a place may shift here and there from teller to teller, but the heart of it remains steady. The shape-shifter is told one way by the Native Americans, another by the villagers of Romania, and still another by the people of Ireland. But the same threads weave through."

While she continued to frown, he lifted the pot to pour the tea himself. "You have Santa and Father Christmas and Kris Kringle-one may come down the chimney, another fills shoes with candy, but the basis of the legend has its roots in the same place. Because it does, time after time, country after country, the intellect comes to the conclusion that the myth has its core in fact."

"You believe in Santa Claus."

His eyes met hers as he set the pot down again. "I believe in magic, and that the best of it, the most true of it, is in the heart. You've been here some days now, Jude Frances. Have you felt no magic?"

"Atmosphere," she began, and turned her recorder on. "The atmosphere in this country is certainly conducive to the forming of myths and the perpetuation of them, from paganism with its small shrines and sacrifices to the G.o.ds, Celtic folklore with its warnings and rewards and the addition of culture seeded in through the invasions of the Vikings, the Normans, and so on."

"It's the place," Aidan disagreed. "Not the people who tried to conquer it. It's the land, the hills and rock. It's the air. And the blood that seeped into all of it in the fight to keep it. 'Tis the Irish who absorbed the Vikings, the Normans, and so on, not the other way around."

There was pride there that she understood and respected. "The fact remains that these people came to this island, that they mated with the women here, pa.s.sed down their seed, and brought with them their superst.i.tions and beliefs. Ireland absorbed them, too."

"Which came first, the tale or the teller? Is that part of your study then?"

He was quick, she thought. A sharp mind and a clever tongue. "You can't study one without studying the other. Who tells and why, as much as what's told."

"All right, I'll tell you a story that was told to me by my grandda, and to him by his father, and his by his for as far back as any knows, for there have been Gallaghers on this coast and in these hills for longer than time remembers."

"The story came down paternally?" Jude interrupted and was met with that quirked brow. "Very often stories come down the generations through the mother."