Born in Fire (Born In Trilogy #1)

This unsettled sensation, the dilemma of it, he knew had its roots in the breezy winter afternoon when he had first seen Maggie Concannon’s work.

That first piece, spied during an obligatory tea with his grandmother, had started him on this odyssey to possess—no, he thought, uncomfortable with the word. To control, he corrected, he wanted to control the fate of the artistry, and the career of the artist. Since that afternoon, he’d been able to buy only two pieces of her work. One was as delicate as a daydream, a slim almost weightless column riddled with shimmering rainbows and hardly larger than the span of his hand from wrist to fingertip.

The second, and the one he could admit privately haunted and enticed him, was a violent nightmare, fired from a passionate mind into a turbulent tangle of glass. It should have been unbalanced, he thought now as he studied the piece on his desk. It should have been ugly with its wild war of colors and shapes, the grasping tendrils curling and clawing out of the squat base.

Instead, it was fascinating and uncomfortably sexual. And it made him wonder what kind of woman could create both pieces with equal skill and power.

Since he had purchased it a little more than two months before, he had tried with no success to contact the artist and interest her in patronage.

He had twice reached her by phone, but the conversation on her part had been brief to the point of rudeness. She didn’t require a patron, particularly a Dublin businessman with too much education and too little taste.

Oh, that had stung.

She was, she had told him in her musical west county brogue, content to create at her own pace and sell her work when and where it suited her. She had no need for his contracts, or for someone to tell her what must be sold. It was her work, was it not, so why didn’t he go back to his ledgers, of which she was certain he had plenty, and leave her to it?

Insolent little twit, he thought, firing up again. Here he was offering a helping hand, a hand that countless other artists would have begged for, and she snarled at it.

He should leave her to it, Rogan mused. Leave her to create in obscurity. It was certain that neither he nor Worldwide needed her.

But, damn it all, he wanted her.

On impulse, he picked up his phone and buzzed his secretary. “Eileen, cancel my appointments for the next couple of days. I’m going on a trip.”

It was a rare thing for Rogan to have business in the west counties. He remembered a family holiday from childhood. Most usually his parents had preferred trips to Paris or Milan, or an occasional break in the villa they kept on the French Mediterranean. There had been trips that had combined business and pleasure. New York, London, Bonn, Venice, Boston. But once, when he had been nine or ten, they had driven to the Shannon area to take in the wild, glorious scenery of the west. He remembered it in patches, the dizzying views from the Cliffs of Mohr, the dazzling panoramas and gem-bright waters of the Lake District, the quiet villages and the endless green of farmlands.

Beautiful it was. But it was also inconvenient. He was already regretting his impulsive decision to make the drive, particularly since the directions he’d been given in the nearby village had taken him onto a pitted excuse for a road. His Aston Martin handled it well, even as the dirt turned to mud under the ceaseless driving rain. His mood didn’t negotiate the potholes as smoothly as did his car.

Only stubbornness kept him from turning back. The woman would listen to reason, by God. He would see to it. If she wanted to bury herself behind hedges of furze and hawthorn, it was her business. But her art was his. Or would be.

Following the directions he’d been given at the local post office, he passed the bed-and-breakfast called Blackthorn Cottage with its glorious gardens and trim blue shutters. Farther on there were stone cabins, sheds for animals, a hay barn, a slate-roofed shed where a man worked on a tractor.

The man lifted a hand in salute, then went back to work as Rogan maneuvered the car around the narrow curve. The farmer was the first sign of life, other than livestock, he had seen since leaving the village.

How anyone survived in this godforsaken place was beyond him. He’d take Dublin’s crowded streets and conveniences over the incessant rain and endless fields every day of the week. Scenery be damned.

She’d hidden herself well, he thought. He’d barely caught sight of the garden gate and the whitewashed cottage beyond it through the tumbling bushes of privet and fuchsia.

Rogan slowed, though he’d nearly been at a crawl in any case. There was a short drive occupied by a faded blue lorry going to rust. He pulled his dashing white Aston behind it and got out.

He circled around to the gate, moved down the short walk that cut between heavy-headed, brilliant flowers that bobbed in the rain. He gave the door, which was painted a bold magenta, three sharp raps, then three again before impatience had him stalking to a window to peer inside.

There was a fire burning low in the grate, and a sugan chair pulled up close. A sagging sofa covered in some wild floral print that mated reds and blues and purples teetered in a corner. He would have thought he’d mistaken the house but for the pieces of her work set throughout the small room. Statues and bottles, vases and bowls stood, sat or reclined on every available surface.

Rogan wiped the wet from the window and spied the many-branch candelabra positioned dead center of the mantel. It was fashioned of glass so clear, so pure, it might have been water frozen in place. The arms curved fluidly up, the base a waterfall. He felt the quick surge, the inner click that presaged acquisition.

Oh yes, he’d found her.

Now if she’d just answer the damn door.

He gave up on the front and walked through the wet grass around to the back of the cabin. More flowers, growing wild as weeds. Or, he corrected, growing wild with weeds. Miss Concannon obviously didn’t spend much time tidying her beds.

There was a lean-to beside the door under which bricks of turf were piled. An ancient bike with one flat tire was propped beside them along with a pair of Wellingtons that were muddy to the ankles.

He started to knock again when the sound coming from behind him had him turning toward the sheds. The roar, constant and low, was almost like the sea. He could see the smoke pluming out of the chimney into the leaden sky.

The building had several windows, and despite the chilly damp of the day, some were propped open. Her workshop, no doubt, Rogan thought, and crossed to it, pleased that he had tracked her down and confident of the outcome of their meeting.

He knocked and, though he received no answer, shoved the door open. He had a moment to register the blast of heat, the sharp smells and the small woman seated in a big wooden chair, a long pipe in her hands.