“It’s fine with me, but will your family have time to come over? I’d like them to be at the wedding.”
“We’ll have another when we get home,” Quinn said. “Or at least a hooley. Would ye, Deirdre?”
“Have a party with your family? Yes, of course.”
Those sapphire blue eyes met hers with passion, their fire banked with love. “Would ye marry me next week and come home with me?” he asked. “I don’t mean to visit, love, I mean to stay. I’d like to go back to Ireland and live.”
She considered it and weighed the notion. Here, she had no job, little family, and nothing which mattered except Quinn. There, she’d have Quinn and a huge family. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, Quinn, to all of it. What about the pub?”
“I’ll sell it. Then I’ll use the money to start one in Dungannon. Ye don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” she said, one hand folded against his cheek. “I like the idea very much.”
“Then we will.” It was settled, then. “Give me a long kiss, mo chroide, to seal the bargain.”
And she did.
Happily Ever After
“I didn’t think you really meant we’d get married again,” Deirdre said as she dressed for her wedding day.
Quinn, resplendent as gentry in a gray swallow-tailed coat and top hat borrowed from one of his brothers, grinned. “I told ye we would, woman. The first was for the vows, this time is for the family.”
“They do know we’re already man and wife, don’t they?”
“Aye, ye know well they do. We sent the pictures, remember?”
She did. The simple snapshots of their brief, weekday afternoon wedding at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the Redemptorist Church in Kansas City depicted them in nice, but casual clothing. Deirdre had worn a short, navy blue dress with white collar and cuffs. Quinn wore his black trousers from the pub with a dress shirt and tie. Her bouquet had been fashioned from roses and daisies. Desmond served his nephew as best man and Deirdre’s aunts attended. A few of the staff from County Tyrone came, too and some of the patrons. After a brief honeymoon trip to California, a place Quinn had always wanted to experience, they returned to Missouri.
County Tyrone never reopened, but they redid the kitchen and listed it for sale with a real estate agent. It sold within weeks for a sum Deirdre still found staggering. They then headed home to Quinn’s native land, together.
Almost the moment they stepped off the plane at Shannon, Quinn’s mother, Sheila, treated Deirdre as if she were one more daughter. They’d been back three months, long enough for Quinn to open a small pub. They’d found a house and after today, they would settle down into a new life.
“Help me with the veil, please,” Deirdre asked and Quinn placed his mother’s heirloom Irish lace veil over her dark hair. He handed her the bouquet he’d bought, dark pink roses, and offered her his arm.
“I think we’re ready, mo ghra.”
“Then let’s do this thing,” Deirdre said. “But it’s the last wedding I plan to ever have.”
“Fine with me, love,” Quinn said. “Let’s go make you a Sullivan on Irish soil, then we’ll go home and see if we can’t get another wee Sullivan started.”
She grasped his hand and placed it over her belly. “I’ve been saving this as a wedding present,” she said. “But we already have.”
“Oh, woman,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. “’Tis the grandest gift ye could give me.”
His smile lit her world brighter than sunshine, and he kissed her. Then they walked out together into the sunlight and made their way down to the church to be wed, once and for always, forever.
The End
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Other Books by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy:
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Quinn's Deirdre Page 16
