but not sure what came next.” She raised her eyes to his. “Not unlike what you’re going through now.”
“Taking tourists on puffin tours was on your list of new career possibilities?”
She rolled her eyes and bit back a smile. He would always try to make her laugh, despite the seriousness of what was on her mind—or his. Since the arrests of his arms traffickers and the breakup of their network, he’d been half jokingly talking about quitting the FBI and setting himself up as a tour boat operator off the coast of Maine, maybe returning to lobstering to supplement his income.
She understood the temptations of a different life.
“No puffin tours,” she said. “I knew it was Sharpe Fine Art Recovery or the FBI. I briefly considered teaching or working in a museum, but they weren’t for me. You know you have options besides becoming Cap’n Colin and taking tourists on puffin tours.”
“We’d see seals and bald eagles, too, and I could do whale watches.”
She’d meant options within the FBI, but he knew that. Getting him to talk to her about his career crisis—his personal crisis—since his undercover mission had led murderous thugs to Rock Point in October wasn’t easy. He was a deep, complex man, but that didn’t mean he liked to talk.
“We’ll continue this conversation another time,” she said as they headed down the hall.
Emma paused at a reading room at the top of the curving stairs. Its double doors were open, inviting passersby in among the comfortable-looking sofas and chairs. A round table in the middle of a thick, colorful Persian carpet displayed books on Irish history, geography, art and food. The basic lines and layout of the room hadn’t changed in the extensive renovations that had transformed the musty, run-down mansion into a quirky, upscale boutique hotel.
“Is this where the stolen art was located?” Colin asked.
“The paintings were here.”
Four years ago, Paddy Murphy, the part-time caretaker, had let her peek into what had then been a library. Emma had observed musty furnishings, a threadbare rug and oppressive wallpaper. John O’Byrne had died the previous year. It had been late summer, a beautiful day on the south Irish coast. She’d already decided to have a go at Quantico. She hadn’t known if she’d make it through the training and become an FBI agent, but she’d known she’d had to try. That trying was part of whatever was next for her.
“Thinking again, Emma?” he asked.
She smiled. “Always.”
He winked, slipped an arm around her. “Not always.”
They descended the stairs and headed into the bar lounge, a low fire in its marble fireplace, and outside through French doors to a tiled terrace. Colorful pots of ivy and scarlet and lavender cyclamen glistened in the morning sun. A half-dozen tables overlooked the gardens, pebbled paths meandering among rosebushes, hydrangeas, rhododendrons and raised flower and herb beds, inviting even now, in early November.
Emma sighed, admiring the gardens. “It’s a perfect spot for a romantic getaway.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
They took a walkway past beds of deep-colored pansies, rows of trimmed-back hedges and pale pink cyclamen that had taken over a corner by the ornate iron gate.
Colin opened the gate. “Did your thief go in and out this way?”
“It’s a good guess, but that’s all it is,” Emma said. “We don’t know. It was a dark, rainy night. He could have escaped several different ways without being seen.”
“You’re sure it’s a he?”
“Another good guess but we don’t know.”
“‘We’ meaning the Sharpes or the FBI?”
“Both.”
They went out the gate, shutting it behind them, and turned left onto a narrow street, following Kitty’s directions.
“My question bugged you,” Colin said calmly.
“I expected it,” Emma said. “I’d have asked it myself in your place.”
“It still bugged you.”
They passed a gray stone house with dark green shutters and white lace curtains in tall, sparkling windows. Most of the buildings in the village were painted in a range of primary colors, with colorful awnings, flower boxes and flowerpots, the occasional bench out front. Simple, lovely—Emma wished she could dismiss her nagging doubts about Julianne’s choice of Declan’s Cross and just enjoy the day.
They came to the promised red-painted bookshop on the north end of the village and turned right, as Kitty had instructed, onto a narrow lane that took them uphill. Emma felt herself relax as she breathed in the cool, salt-tinged air. The lane leveled off, curving along dramatic cliffs that dropped straight down to the sea, then winding through a patchwork of rolling fields dotted with grazing sheep.
She remembered how much she’d loved the atmosphere of Declan’s Cross on her one 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.”
