Love, Luck, and Little Green Men: A Contemporary Romance
Page 26
Ma had tears in her eyes as her gaze met mine in the mirror. “You’re beautiful, honey. Absolutely beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Tammy added. “Brendan will have a hard time keeping his hands off you.”
“Tammy!” I hissed, my eyes darting to her then back to my mother in the mirror.
Ma waved her hand dismissively. “Tammy’s right. The poor man’s waited decades. You’ll be lucky if you get the door shut on the hotel room before—”
“Ma!”
The three of us looked at each other for a moment in the mirror, then all three burst into giggles. I turned around. “Tammy, you look beautiful, too.”
She smiled and curtsied. The emerald green bridesmaid dress looked great with her blond hair. I’d chosen the color, but let her pick the style. She’d selected a straight-line dress with spaghetti straps. I was happy to have such a good friend as my maid of honor. I hoped one day to return the favor. At the rate things were going between her and Seamus, I might get my wish very soon.
A rap sounded at the door and Riley peeked his head in. “Whoa, Mom. Brendan’s gonna freak when he sees you.” What his compliment lacked in eloquence, it made up for in sincerity.
Riley stepped into the room, looking so grown up in the black tux he wore as best man. The green cummerbund and bow tie brought out the green in his eyes. He walked over and gave me a kiss on the cheek and a long, warm hug. “Love ya’, Mom.”
“Oh, Riley. I love you, too.” I felt tears forming in my eyes and turned my head upward to blink them back. The last thing a bride needs is mascara running down her cheeks. After one last squeeze, I released him.
“It’s time,” Riley said, crooking his arm to escort my mother to her place in the front pew. Arm in arm, they gave me one last smile and headed out the door.
I stood and shuffled forward while Tammy fluffed out my train behind me. “There must be fifty yards of fabric back here. You could camp under this thing.”
She was right, the dress weighed a ton. But the instant I’d put in on, I knew it was the one.
Another light rap sounded at the door as Riley returned for Tammy. My father was with him, his cane in his right hand. The four of us stepped out into the quiet foyer together. I could hear soft murmuring from our guests in the pews. When the organist saw Riley and Tammy waiting at the back, she kicked in with a pretty piece of music. Tammy took Riley’s arm for their walk up the aisle. The effect of the two of them arm in arm, with Riley standing almost three feet taller than Tammy, was a bit comical, but neither of them cared. I didn’t, either. I was blessed to have such wonderful people in my life.
After the two of them began their procession, I stepped up next to my Da. I linked my right arm with his left and looked up at him. He beamed with pride. “Such a lovely lass. Brendan’s a very lucky man.”
I smiled up at him. “We’re both lucky.”
He nodded. “’Tis true.”
“I love you, Da.”
“And I love you, Erin.”
As I stepped into the doorway with my father, I looked to the altar. Brendan’s face lit up so much I could see his smile all the way to the back of the church. In an hour, after we’d exchanged vows and did a lot of kneeling and standing and kneeling again, we’d be husband and wife. I felt like a princess in a fairy tale.
Who would’ve ever thought this was possible?
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
GETTIN’ HITCHED
The ceremony went off without a hitch. The service was officiated by the parish’s new priest, a young man not long out of seminary, just as Brendan had been all those years ago when he’d first joined St. Anthony’s. We were surprised at the enormous turnout. We’d issued a blanket invitation to the congregation, and the vast majority had taken us up on it. Every pew had been filled.
After the ceremony, we walked to the Knights of Columbus hall beside the church building and stood in place for our receiving line. Apparently, as I was told by more than one parishioner, there had been speculation for years about me and Brendan. One of the women leaned over and whispered to me in the line. “I’m so glad y’all finally got together. I could always tell you two had something special.”
Perhaps the biggest shock was that Stella Nagley attended the wedding. Probably she simply had nothing to do and didn’t want to be left out. I accepted her best wishes and the secondhand toaster she’d brought as our gift as she breezed past us on her way to the buffet. I didn’t even wish for her to choke on the crudités. Guess I’d grown spiritually.
Once the dinner dishes had been cleared away, the DJ cued up some dance tunes. Tammy helped me bustle the train on my dress to keep it out of my way. You can’t very well do the electric slide, the cotton-eyed Joe, or the traditional chicken dance with eight feet of fabric tripping you up.
Seamus was a big hit with the crowd, grabbing the mic and singing a few Irish folk ballads when the DJ went on break. He emptied a glass of champagne with his finger, and the teens begged him to do it over and over again as they tried to figure out how he did it. Their attempts to solve the mystery were futile.
At midnight, the party wrapped up and we ran to Brendan’s truck as the partygoers pelted us with rice. Riley and his friends had tied cans to the back bumper and written “Just Hitched” in white shoe polish on the back window. We drove out of the lot to the tinny clanging of cans dragging behind us.
***
We stayed in the honeymoon suite of a fancy hotel downtown on our wedding night.
Despite his excitement, Brendan was even slower undoing my buttons than Tammy had been fastening them. The tiny buttons weren’t made for big, manly fingers. He issued a loud groan. “Jakers! This may take me all night.”
“I hope not!” I laughed, shooting him a coy look over my shoulder. The anticipation only made me want him more.
Finally, the two of us were in bed together, nothing at all between us now.
People joke about hearing the Hallelujah chorus, but when Brendan and I made love, it truly felt as much a spiritual experience as a physical one. Brendan was a passionate, naturally talented lover, knowing when to give and when to take, when to be gentle and when to be strong, what to whisper in my ear to send me over the edge and into a heavenly oblivion. I never wanted it to end.
I’d been wrong. We do live in a fairy world where dreams come true.
***
The trip to Ireland proved to be the perfect honeymoon. We visited Blarney castle and kissed the stone, spent a few days with Brendan’s sisters and their families in Dublin, then rented a car and drove out to the County Cork cemetery.
Seamus had drawn me a map to where my father was buried. The Order of Irish Faeries had a special place in the back of the cemetery. The gravesites were short, naturally, and each of them was covered with a patch of four-leaf clover. We walked down the row until we came to a headstone marked with the name Dermot Dunphy.
An unseen force squeezed my heart, and tears dropped from my eyes to water the clovers. I bent down and put a hand on the small mound. My father was buried here. The father I’d never met, would never get the chance to know. I gently placed a bouquet of white lilies atop the clover, put my fingers to my lips, and pressed them to the mound.
From above us came a faint tapping sound.
A child walking a few rows over in the regular part of the cemetery looked up. “Is that a woodpecker, Ma?”
His mother looked up into the trees. “Must be.”
Brendan and I exchanged glances. We knew better.
***
A year later, God blessed Brendan and me with a set of fraternal twins, a beautiful brown-eyed dark-haired girl we named Molly Grace and a pink-cheeked chubby boy with flaming red hair we named Cormac Dermot, after my two fathers. The boy never did learn to change his own diapers, but I did once find him and his twin sister standing in their cribs, laughing great big belly laughs as they looked down at a duo of stuffed teddy bears dancing on the floor between them.
“No, no.
” I shook my finger at him, then looked up at the sky. “God help us.” I could only imagine what Brendan and I would be in for during our boy’s teen years.
But I knew one thing for certain. We’d live happily ever after.
THE END
AUTHOR BIO
Diane Kelly
Though she’s never kissed the Blarney stone, author Diane Kelly seems to have inherited the “gift of gab” from her Irish ancestors. She puts this gift to work by writing funny and entertaining contemporary romances and romantic mysteries.
Diane’s debut novel, Death, Taxes and a French Manicure, won the Romance Writers of America Golden Heart award and launched her hilarious Death and Taxes romantic mystery series, which stars Tara Holloway, a rookie IRS criminal investigator.
Visit Diane and read excerpts from her books at www.dianekelly.com.
You can also find Diane on:
www.facebook.com/DianeKellyBooks
and at twitter.com/DianeKellyBooks
DEATH, TAXES, AND A FRENCH MANICURE
(BOOK #1 IN THE TARA HOLLOWAY SERIES)
Tax cheats, beware: The Treasury Department’s Criminal Investigations Division has a new special agent on its payroll. A recovering tomboy with a head for numbers, Tara’s fast becoming the Annie Oakley of the IRS—kicking ass, taking social security numbers, and keeping the world safe for honest taxpayers. Or else.
Available now on Amazon
Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure
DEATH, TAXES, AND A SKINNY NO-WHIP LATTE
(BOOK #2 IN THE TARA HOLLOWAY SERIES)
Hitting the books. Solving murders. Counting calories. It’s all in a day’s work for Tara Holloway, the U.S. treasury’s latest, greatest, soon-to-be-skinniest weapon against the biggest, richest tax cheats in the nation…
Available now on Amazon
Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte
DEATH, TAXES, AND A SEQUINED CLUTCH
(A BONUS E-NOVELLA TO THE TARA HOLLOWAY SERIES
IRS special agent Tara Holloway isn’t going to let a perfect opportunity to collect pass her by. Especially when she can do it in sequins and a bedazzled hip holster …
Available now on Amazon
Available now on Amazon
Death, Taxes, and a Sequined Clutch
ALSO BY DIANE KELLY
DIANE KELLY'S DEATH AND TAXES SERIES STARRING IRS AGENT TARA HOLLOWAY:
DEATH, TAXES, AND A FRENCH MANICURE
DEATH, TAXES, AND A SKINNY NO-WHIP LATTE
DEATH, TAXES, AND EXTRA-HOLD HAIRSPRAY
DEATH, TAXES, AND A SEQUINED CLUTCH ( A BONUS E-NOVELLA)
DEATH, TAXES, AND PEACH SANGRIA
DEATH, TAXES, AND HOT PINK LEG WARMERS (COMING JUNE 4, 2013)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2013 Diane Kelly
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, transmitted, decompiled, reverse engineered, stored in or introduced to any information storage and retrieval system, in any form, whether electronic or mechanical without the author’s written permission. Scanning, uploading or distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without permission is prohibited.
Please purchase only authorized electronic versions, and do not participate in, or encourage pirated electronic versions
Formatting by Ink Lion Books
Cover by Lyndsey Lewellen
Table Of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTHER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
AUTHOR BIO
DEATH, TAXES, AND A FRENCH MANICURE
DEATH, TAXES, AND A SKINNY NO-WHIP LATTE
DEATH, TAXES, AND A SEQUINED CLUTCH
ALSO BY DIANE KELLY
COPYRIGHT