Luck of the Irish: Complete Edition

by Liz Gavin

  “I can.”

  “I was the worst one of all. I didn’t want a new mother. I wanted my own mother back, which was impossible. I blamed Sally for that. She was patient and never gave up on me. Just when I was starting to trust her, open up to her, my father blew it and she dumped him.”

  “You must have been devastated.”

  “I was sad to see her go, but I was angrier at my father for having scared her off like that. Another effect of Sally’s influence over me was that I admired her. When she left my father, that admiration led me to start questioning my mother’s choices. I couldn’t understand why she had stayed with a man like my father. Not understanding her made me resent her, which made me feel guilty and even angrier.”

  “She loved your father. She also loved you and your brothers. She wouldn’t have abandoned you.”

  “Yet, I felt as if she had abandoned me. I know it sounds insane, but deep inside me I felt like she had made the worst mistake by sticking with him. I used to think that if she had had the courage to leave my father, she would have offered us a better life away from all that we had to suffer in his hands.”

  “You don’t know that. No one does.”

  “As a boy, I didn’t know that, Keira. In fact, none of those feelings were clear to me, back then. I sorted them out as I grew older. At that time, I only felt the hatred and the frustration. Most of all, I hated the fact I couldn’t do anything to fix my situation. So, I acted out. I didn’t study. I hung out with the wrong crowd. Jennifer was the only person who saw my act for what it truly was – a cry for help. Luckily, she was also the only person I listened to and she always had a lot to say to me about my attitude. She saved me from myself.”

  “I have to remember to thank her for that,” Keira joked to lighten up the situation.

  “She’ll love for you to do that. Well, long story short, after Sally left, my father didn’t remarry, but had a series of girlfriends, who got younger as he got older. They only stayed until he started beating them up. My brothers left home as soon as they got their jobs, but stayed in Cork. I wanted to go as far away as I could. Jennifer moved to Dublin to go to college. My life became unbearable without her around to keep me grounded. That’s why I moved to Dublin when I was seventeen.”

  “Gosh, Declan, I am so sorry you suffered like that. I wish I could make it all go away,” she whispered as she pulled him for a quick kiss.

  She meant to soothe his pain from those memories but she forgot her good intentions as soon as her own body reacted to his proximity. She ran her fingers through his hair. He held her close against his chest, splaying his big hands over the small of her back. Even through the layers of clothing, Keira felt his heart pounding. It was going as fast as hers. He savored her lips without hurry. She melted in his arms, feeling electric shocks traveling through her nerve endings. She kissed him back, hungrily, until they couldn’t breathe. He released her mouth, she gasped. He leaned his forehead against hers and smiled into her eyes.

  “Believe me, Keira, there’s nothing I’d like more than to let you make my pain go away, but not today. I’ll gather the last shreds of self-control I still have, I’ll get up from this bed, and take a shower.”

  “But you still haven’t told me why you came to Cork.”

  He stopped at the bathroom door, turned to her and smiled, “I need to cool off, Keira. When I finish, we’ll go out for a walk, and I’ll tell you the rest of the story in a public place. I don’t trust myself to be locked up in a bedroom with you like this. I’ll end up doing something I shouldn’t do.”

  His meaning dawned on her as she heard him turn on the shower. She blushed and giggled as she stood up and opened the closet door to look for some clothes. She smiled at her reflection on the mirror, holding a dress in front of her body. It was perfect.

  “Thank you for convincing me to get out of that room. It’s such a beautiful day.”

  “You’ve been lucky. Sunny days are rare in Ireland,” he looked at her but Keira didn’t notice.

  They were lying on the grass at Fitzgerald Park, not too far from the fountain. The air was warm and the breezy carried music and the sounds of children playing nearby. He propped himself up on one elbow, resting his head on one hand and observed her for a while. She didn’t move a muscle. He got a leaf of grass and teased her nose with it. She fanned her hand in front of her face thinking it was an annoying insect. When Declan drew the shape of her lips with the leaf, she opened one eye, frowning at him.

  “What?” he hid the leaf of grass but his guilty expression gave him away.

  “Are you for real? I was enjoying a bit of sun. Why did you have to do that?”

  “I couldn’t resist. You looked yummy,” he leaned and pecked her lips.

  Keira sat up straight and moved to cradle Declan’s head on her lap, playing with his hair.

  “Are you ever going to finish telling me how you got to my hotel yesterday?”

  “I guess I’ll have to or you’ll never let me be,” he sighed, pretending to be upset, and laced his fingers through hers. “After you left Dublin, I was a wreck. I didn’t sleep or eat well. I was absent-minded. I couldn’t put a finger on why I felt like that and told myself I was worried you were driving alone. That was part of the reason. The truth was I missed you, every second of the day. Harry, Màire, and Jennifer pointed that out to me many times. Harry and Màire got really pissed off at me, because I was messing up at work, and they had to do my job as well as theirs. They actually told me to get my act together or else.”

  “You didn’t get fire, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. I had some overdue vacation days I had planned to use, when you returned to Dublin. I figured I’d better use them to come meet you and drive you back home.”

  “That was sweet,” she kissed the back of his hand.

  “Jennifer noticed I cared for you more than I would admit to myself. When she pointed that out to me, I denied it but she convinced me. She also said I had to tell you that.”

  “I know you do, Declan, just as much as I care for you.”

  “I was terrified, though. I feared… No! I’m still afraid that my past experiences will get in the way. I didn’t want them to ruin our chances. So, during my flight here I decided to stop by my father’s house to confront him.”

  He stopped talking because Keira leaned forward and kissed him. It was a sweet kiss, in which she hoped he could feel her feelings for him.

  “It must have been tough on you, seeing your father, I mean. You’re not close, right? When did you last talk to your father?”

  “Nine years ago. Since I left for Dublin, to be more accurate.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Why talk to him now?”

  “I went to his house looking for some kind of closure. I wanted to talk to him, not as a son talks to his father, I needed to talk to him as a grown man talks to another man, you know? I wanted to confront him about the horrible things he did to my mother, to me, and to my brothers. I wanted to put the past behind me, once and for all.”

  Keira heard the frustration in his voice, “What went wrong?”

  He raised an eyebrow and smiled, “Now, you’re the one who’s starting to know me too well, miss. It turns out my father doesn’t remember much of anything.”

  “He’s got Alzheimer’s?”

  Declan nodded and Keira sighed, rolling her eyes, “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

  “I won’t deny it I was frustrated. There’s a nurse, Rose, taking care of him. She is a very nice lady, who made me go inside and sit down for tea. She told me my brothers never visit my father. Apparently, my grandparents had set up some trust fund before they passed away for my father. He benefits from it, now. Rose said that’s how she gets paid. The whole time I was there, my father looked at me funny, as if he was trying to remember who I was.”

  “Did he?”

  “No.”

  “It must have been disturbing.”

  “I was pissed off; that’s how I felt. The bloody
bastard is screwing me up even now, I mean, being sick and all.”

  Keira ran her fingers through his soft hair for a while analyzing Declan’s situation.

  “Maybe life is giving him what he deserves. Have you thought about that? I mean, Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease. The idea of losing my memory creeps me out.” she shivered at the thought.

  “I think it’s quite the opposite. It’s a mean disease for the relatives, who see their loved one fading away before their eyes. Scientists say people who have Alzheimer’s, at a certain stage of the disease, barely understand what’s going on with them. To people like my father, forgetting the past might be a blessing.”

  “I don’t know about that, Declan. I do know, though, you won’t be able to get the answers you wanted to get from your father. The best thing you should do, now, is concentrate on your future.”

  Declan sat upright in front of her and grabbed her face with both his hands. He stared into her blue eyes until she thought she was drowning in a green sea. When she couldn’t bear the intensity of the emotions she saw in his dark green eyes, he kissed her. He knew he couldn’t let their kiss get too passionate in the middle of the day, in a public park, so he used all his self-control to keep the fiery kiss from consuming them both. She kissed him back with the same abandon and they were breathing heavily when he finally let go of her mouth.

  “You don’t get it, baby. If I want to concentrate on my future, our future, I need to understand my past. Now that I’ve found you, I can’t risk losing you, Keira.”

  “Lose me?” she scoffed. “Where is this coming from? Why would you lose me?”

  “As far as relationships go, I have a terrible track record. I’ve told you I tried having a relationship with one girlfriend after another, and got disappointed every time. They told me I was afraid of commitment, but that wasn’t true. I wanted to commit. I want to commit. But, I’m afraid I’ll become like my father,” his voice broke off.

  For the first time, Declan admitted, to another person, he harbored those fears. For years, they weren’t clear, even to himself. He had realized he had them when Jennifer broke up with him. Since Keira had entered his life, those fears tormented him day and night.

  “Your innocence has captured my heart from the start, Keira. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, if I destroyed it, like my father destroyed my mom’s.”

  Keira knelt on the grass and, lacing her arms around his shoulders, pulled him close to her. She held him in a tight embrace without uttering a word. Declan was surprised and confused, but didn’t complain. When she let go of him, she sat on her heels and held his hands, keeping her eyes locked on his.

  “Don’t ever say such a thing again, please. You are nothing like your father, do you hear me? You are kind, caring, and patient. You are a good man, baby. This is something nobody could say about your father. You’ve got qualities, which your father never had. The ones that convinced me I could trust you. I don’t trust people easily. Today, I trust you with my life – literally,” she lifted his hand and put it over her heart. “Do you feel it? My heart told me I could trust you. If you doubt yourself, don’t doubt my heart. It knows you well.”

  Forgetting where they were, Declan crushed Keira against his chest and kissed her like he had never kissed her before – with his heart and soul. He wasn’t convinced he deserved her but he was surely going to do his best to be worthy of her love.

  Keira wanted that kiss to wipe away all the sadness and the pain that Declan’s father had caused him. She gave herself freely to him, letting her defenses down and opening up her heart to let him in.

  Neither one of them heard Keira’s cell phone ringing because they were too wrapped up in the moment to notice such a mundane thing. Eventually, the annoying sound penetrated their cocoon and Keira reached for the phone.

  “Don’t bother with that, please,” Declan begged, out of breath, grazing her lower lip and trying to take the phone from her. “The only people that matter in this world are right here, right now.”

  “Hello,” she answered the call, chuckling and wriggling out of Declan’s strong arms. “Yes, this is she,” she paused and listened. Declan saw her face turning ashen before she shouted into the mouthpiece, “What? When? How did that happen?”

  Declan waited impatiently for Keira to hang up, which she did without saying another word to whoever had been on the other side of the telephone line. She slumped onto the hard ground and stared at him, sheer panic clouding her blue eyes, “Paul has escaped.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “How did that happen?”

  “They didn’t say. Inspector Heller told me he’s at the hotel, waiting for us,” she stared into space. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I’m here and I won’t let anything happen to you, love.”

  Collecting their things, they ran out of the park and took a cab back to the hotel. When the car pulled over, it was surrounded by a crowd of reporters, all trying to get a statement from Keira, all shouting their questions at the same time. Declan got out of and pushed them out of the way to let Keira pass through the people shoving microphones and digital recorders in her face.

  “Miss Ashe, how long did you know Mr. O’Hallon before the attack?”

  “Is it true he was your boyfriend, Miss Ashe?”

  “Are you going to testify in the trial or are you going back to America?”

  Keira had never been the center of attention, so she felt cornered, uncomfortable. Declan’s arm around her shoulders gave her a sense of safety, even though his anger was evident by the swear words he mumbled under his breath. His muscles tensed up under his shirt and she noticed a bluish vein pulsing in his tighten jaw, when she looked up at him.

  “Miss Ashe, are you afraid Mr. O’Hallon might come after you now?”

  Inspectors Heller and Dwyer met with them on the sidewalk, also pushing through the crowd, trying to help Declan get Keira inside the hotel.

  “Come on, fellows, leave the girl alone. She’s been traumatized enough,” said Heller, walking ahead of Keira and Declan towards the hotel doors.

  “Let us do our job,” cried a young redheaded woman.

  “We’re just doing ours,” replied Dwyer, who stood by Keira’s right side.

  “The public has the right to know what’s going on,” shouted an older man in a dark green suit.

  Inch by inch, they fought their way through the crowd. When they were about to enter the hotel lobby, a reporter shouted, “Why did you help Mr. O’Hallon escape, Miss Ashe?”

  Before anyone could move, Declan threw a punch at the man, his fist connected to the reporter’s chin, who reeled from the sharp blow. Caught by surprise, the man lost his footing, sprawled on the sidewalk. Inspector Dwyer wasn’t fast enough to hold Declan, who dove after the reporter, straddled him by the collar, and kept beating the man up.

  All hell broke loose with cameras flashing and rolling around them, people shouting and shoving. Heller embraced Keira to shelter her, but she wriggled away to stand beside Declan.

  “Stupid motherfucker, I’ll kill you,” Declan threatened, as his fist hit the man’s bleeding nose again.

  “Declan, stop it!” Keira shouted, holding his upper arm.

  He turned to her, his forest green eyes were unfocussed, his face was a mask of rage. For a spit second, he didn’t recognize her, but she recognized the dark hatred in the depths of his tormented gaze. She squeezed his arm to get his attention and shook her head, whispering so that only Declan could hear her, “He’s not Paul or your father. He’s just doing his job. He didn’t harm me.”

  Her soft words wrenched Declan from the bloodthirsty trance he had fallen into. He shoved the poor man as he stood up. Looking down, he discovered the front of his shirt was covered in the reporter’s blood. His knuckles were bruised, but his pride had taken the hardest blow. He was ashamed of the spectacle he had made of himself.

  “I want this caveman arrested for assault and battery. You can’t go about punching
people for doing their job, man.”

  “You wouldn’t have gotten a black eye if you had done your homework. You were trying to rattle Miss Ashe with that question, Connor,” Inspector Heller replied.

  “I’ve got a picture that says otherwise, Heller,” the reporter insisted.

  He looked quite confident about the information he had gathered and the investigators couldn’t pass up a potential lead. Heller and Dwyer exchanged glances and the latter grabbed the reporter’s forearm, “Not here, Connor. Come with us.”

  It was harder for them to move with the journalists in their way, but they ignored everyone as they entered the hotel. Heller went to the reception and asked the manager for a room with some privacy. He offered them a meeting room.

  Walking down the corridor, Keira turned to Declan, “Are you okay, baby?”

  He blushed and stared at her in awe, “I should be the one asking you that. I’m such an ass, Keira. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am for having put you through that.”

  “For defending me, you mean.”

  He stopped in the middle of the corridor and held her hands. Staring into her eyes, he didn’t say a word, just shook his head.

  “What?” Keira asked when the silence got too uncomfortable.

  “You amaze me. How do you do it? How do you see a good intention behind the Neanderthal-style stunt I just pulled?”

  “Because I know your heart. It’s in the right place,” she assured him, putting a hand over his racing heart.

  Dwyer came back for them and Declan didn’t have a chance to say anything else. They sat down around a large oval table. Heller didn’t waste any time, “What was that all about, Connor? I know you very well. You enjoy a bit of drama but you’re a serious reporter. We know Miss Ashe hasn’t been anywhere near that hospital today. You say you get a picture that says otherwise. Care to explain?”.

  Before Connor answered, Keira turned to the inspectors, “I haven’t been there, but how do you know that?”

  “We’ve followed you. I’m sorry about that, Miss Ashe,” Inspector Dwyer apologized. “We were afraid you’d go back to Dublin or something. You’re our only witness in this case. We couldn’t risk losing you.”