Lilac Lane. Sherryl Woods

are the most important thing for the moment. And I have you here to take up any slack.”

      She nodded, accepting his decision for the generosity it showed. It wasn’t up to her to tell him that his employee might be getting off too easily. If Paul was taking advantage of Luke’s good nature, he’d learn it soon enough. “Of course,” she said.

      Luke studied her intently. “Is something else on your mind?”

      “Not a thing,” she said, though she couldn’t seem to stop her gaze from straying once more to the empty street outside.

      Luke’s expression turned knowing. “If you’re wondering where Bryan is, I’ve sent him on an errand, as I do every day or two around this time.”

      “Bryan’s whereabouts are no concern of mine,” she said a little too quickly.

      “Perhaps not, but that wouldn’t stop you from wondering, I suspect. There are fishermen coming in now. He’s gone to check on the catch and buy fresh fish for tonight’s menu if he likes what he finds.”

      “Ah,” she said, a weight that wasn’t hers to be bearing lifting.

      Just then there was a pounding on the back door that startled them both, followed by a very vocal stream of what sounded like colorful obscenities. Luke chuckled. “You locked the kitchen door, didn’t you?”

      “I thought it needed to be secured with no one back there,” she said defensively. “I’ll let him in.”

      “Stay right there. I think it’s best if I do it.” He grinned at her. “You might want to stay out of his path for a bit.”

      “With pleasure,” she said. There had already been far too many unsettling encounters. Who knew where another one might lead? Certainly not to the peace and harmony Luke wanted among his staff.

      * * *

      Bryan’s day had gone from bad to worse, starting with a call from his private investigator informing him of yet another dead end. He should be used to those by now. If they’d been commonplace nineteen years ago, now there were even fewer leads to investigate, so fewer disappointments to be gotten through. Still, each one cut another slice out of his soul.

      Then there had been the odd encounter with Kiera right before the lunch hour. Her offer of a sympathetic ear had thrown him, especially after he’d jumped all over her with his foul temper. He hadn’t leaned on anyone in so long, he had no idea how to deal with it.

      And, then, just when his equilibrium was balancing out after the rough morning, Kiera—and there was no question that she was responsible, since everyone else knew the routine—had locked him out of the pub’s kitchen. He’d been left standing in the alley with heavy buckets of freshly filleted fish on ice. His sour mood had returned and, once more, she was smack at the center of it.

      All of that had thrown him completely off his game. Distracted, he’d added far too much salt to the Irish stew and left an entire batch of fish and chips in the hot oil until smoke filled the kitchen. Fortunately, before it could set off the alarms he’d opened the back door and allowed the cool spring breeze to replace the scent of food that was fried beyond hope.

      “Were you trying to burn the whole place to the ground?” Kiera inquired as she stood in the doorway of the kitchen, hands on her lush, well-rounded hips, regarding him with that superior attitude that had been getting on Bryan’s nerves since the day Luke had informed him that she was there as their latest “consultant,” direct from Ireland. Pain in the posterior was more like it, he thought, trying to intimidate her with a glare that always failed to have the desired effect. All of his carefully laid out plans to make peace with her were forgotten in the moment.

      “Get out of my kitchen,” he ordered brusquely, hoping to stake his claim on the territory once and for all. Of course, she didn’t budge. If anything, his ire kicked up the heat in her temper.

      “So it’s your kitchen, is it?” she asked. Gone in a flash was the more accommodating tone of this morning. “I was under the impression that it, like the rest of the pub, belonged to my son-in-law.”

      “Technically, perhaps, but it’s my domain in here. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I don’t need you hovering over me every minute. I know what I’m doing.”

      “Yes,” she said, her tone sarcastic. “I can see that from the smoke in the air.”

      “Have you never made a mistake, Kiera?”

      “A lifetime of them,” she replied tartly. “But never one that might chase off the patrons of the very place that provides my livelihood.”

      “Not what I’ve heard,” Bryan muttered, turning away from the woman who was rapidly becoming the bane of his existence. For a while now Kiera had made him seriously question why he’d ever left that deli in Baltimore where he’d been a master of matzo ball soup and pastrami on rye. Even with waitresses yelling their demands and the lunchtime flurry of impatient customers in a rush, it had been a lot less nerve-racking than O’Brien’s since Kiera had arrived.

      “Should I be telling my customers that fish and chips are off the menu tonight?” she inquired sweetly.

      “No, you should not,” Bryan retorted tightly. “You should tell them they’re being cooked to perfection by the chef. Now go away and let me do just that.”

      “If you can,” she said tartly, then added far more sweetly, “Would you perhaps like me to take over with your Irish stew, since I’ve been told it tastes a bit saltier than usual tonight? It’s been one of my family specialties for years now.”

      “Go away, Kiera.”

      Bryan gritted his teeth as she left, changed the oil in the deep fryer and started over. He winced when he realized that Luke had replaced Kiera in the doorway.

      “Bad night?” Luke inquired, a barely contained smile on his lips.

      “A bad few weeks,” Bryan replied, not feeling any need to censor himself. Luke knew as well as he did that Kiera had created chaos since her arrival. She’d taken her role as consultant a little too seriously, questioning everything that went on in O’Brien’s. He’d heard her cross-examining the waitstaff and seen for himself the changes she’d made with the location of table setups. In his opinion, the old arrangements of supplies had worked just fine. When he’d caught her in his pantry about to rearrange things, he’d tossed her out. Luke might be willing to overlook her criticism for the sake of family harmony, but Bryan didn’t have to do the same.

      “Bryan, we’ve talked about this. She’s trying to find her place here,” Luke reminded him. “She’s a proud woman who wants to earn what little she’s being paid. It’s not easy being in a new country with few people she knows. And she didn’t leave Ireland under the best circumstances. She’d just lost the man she loved.”

      Bryan heaved a sigh. “Moira has repeated that more times than I can count, and while I appreciate the position both of you are in, I’m just not sure how much more I can take.” He leveled a look at his boss. “And before you ask, I have no idea why the woman bugs me. I should let her comments roll off my back. I always intend to do just that. Just this morning I would have sworn we’d reached a truce of some kind, but then she says or does something and before I know it, the battle lines are drawn once more.”

      “I know it can’t be that you simply don’t like being told what to do,” Luke said. “You took my grandmother’s cooking lessons well enough when she was teaching you all of her old Irish recipes. How many times did she ask you to make the same thing over and over before she was satisfied? When she did the same to me, I came close to saying words that no grandmother should ever hear a grandson utter, but I never once heard you complain or say a sharp word. Give that same patience a try for Kiera’s sake.”

      “Nell may have been a tough taskmaster, but she’s practically a saint by comparison to Kiera Malone,” Bryan said. “And before you say it, the same could be said of Moira.”

      Luke’s