Ten Brides for Ten Hot Guys

by Donna Fasano

  “I’m telling you, Fiona, when I ordered, I didn’t realize the servings would be so—” He waved his hand back and forth over the plate piled with golden fried fish.

  The delicious aroma wafted over Julia. The gnawing ache in her belly deepened.

  “Bountiful,” Cameron concluded. “I suppose I just got carried away.”“And you’ll be carrying away one of those orders, I’m supposin’, as well, since you certainly can’t eat them both now.” Fiona folded her arms over her chest and huffed.

  He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “You know fish and chips doesn’t keep well. Does not keep well at all.”

  “You should eat it, Miss Reed,” Fiona suggested, pushing the plate toward Julia.

  “Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Cameron slapped the heel of his hand against his forehead.

  Julia rolled her eyes and shook her head, directing her gaze heavenward. “How on earth does a man who is such a lousy actor make a living as a secret agent?”

  “I’m not a secret agent.”

  Her lips twitched, fighting against the urge to break into a grin. “But you are a lousy actor.”

  He picked up the fork beside his plate and offered it.

  She placed her hand on his wrist. “But I want to make it crystal clear that I’m only accepting this meal because you’ve already paid for it.”

  “I understand,” he murmured.

  “And it would be wrong to let it go to waste out of a sense of foolish pride,” she said firmly.

  “I understand,” he repeated.

  “And because, Mr. Cameron Brennan William O’Dea—” She moved in closer, so close she could see the golden-tipped fringe of his lashes around his emerald eyes. “In regard to your comment earlier today, I do always tell the truth.”

  He blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  She lifted her hand from his. Giving a quick salute with the shiny fork, she cocked her head and answered, “I have to admit it, I’m hungry. And that’s the truth.”

  The conversation veered from one topic to another as they ate. Fiona kept chatting at a lively pace that surprised Julia. Just putting up a good front or was her trust in Cameron just that unshakable? Occasionally the tension around the woman’s sometimes wincing smile hinted that fear and pain lay beneath the calm exterior. Each time that happened Cameron took subtle but immediate action. A squeeze of her arm. A hand on her back. A quick joke to lighten the mood of the moment.

  Watching him practically anticipate the ebb and flow of the anxious mom’s emotions left Julia more in awe of him than before and more certain that she needed to keep herself from reading too much into any interaction the two of them had. Because he was either a well-travelled agent able to focus so fiercely on his task that you couldn’t tell scrutiny from kindness or a good loving man who had a full, busy life that could never do more than simply cross paths with hers.

  ~*~

  “I guess we can’t put it off any longer, Fiona,” Cameron finally said, tossing his napkin on the table next to his meal, which he’d hardly touched. He’d hoped no one else would pick up on that evidence that he was more worried than he let on. He did not let it come through in his voice as he added, calmly, almost soothingly, “We need to talk about Michael and Devin and what we need to do next.”

  “Whatever it is, Cam, tell me it will bring Devin home safely—and soon.” Fiona drummed her short nails on the tablecloth. “I promised him he wouldn’t be gone long when we spoke today.”

  “I need to ask you about that,” he said, taking her hand in his. “I need to know everything that was said. Did Devin give any indication where he might be?”

  “None.” She lowered her gaze.

  “What about the rest of the conversation?” He prodded gently, aware of her fragile state, but not wanting to miss anything that might aid his search for the boy.

  “There isn’t much to tell.” She raised her shoulders then let them fall in heavy resignation. “We spoke a moment about missin’ one another and about how soon we’d be together. He told me his Uncle Mike was looking fine well after him.”

  “And fishing?” Cameron wet his lips and narrowed one eye at her. “Did he mention anything about fishing?"

  Her red-brown eyebrows angled downward over her perplexed gaze. “Fishing?”

  “You don’t think Shaughnessy has taken your nephew fishing, do you?” Julia asked.

  Cameron lifted his shoulders, feeling the tenseness in his muscles beneath the coarse wool of his sweater. “It’s just something Devin said to me, that it was like going on a fishing trip with his Uncle Mike.”

  “True enough,” Fiona added as she squinted thoughtfully toward the restaurant door. “They did go off fishing plenty o’ times. Sometimes in the summer for a week or more.”

  Her gaze moved to Cameron’s face. “Now that you mention it, Devin told me, ‘Just pretend, Mom, that I’m off early on spring break with Uncle Mike, just like we planned.’”

  “He had a trip planned with Michael for spring break?" Cameron asked.

  Fiona nodded. “He talked about it almost to the point of obsession. Was the only thing I’ve seen Michael excited about except that blasted treasure in a long time. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought there was some connection.”

  “Do you think there was?” Cameron pulled a small notebook and pen from the parka hung on a hook beside their table. He flipped open the pad and began making notations, starting with the word gold, double underlined and in capital letters.

  “Michael never let on that there was. He did say that if he didn’t have the gold by Devin’s Spring Break he was going on this trip.”

  “Did he say anything else? Think carefully, Fiona.”

  She narrowed one eye. “Michael said he needed to go there—to see for himself. Oh, and here’s a direct quote: he said he’d grown tired of trying to ‘wait him out’—him being you, of course.”

  Cameron's pen made a deep indention as he wrote “wait him out.”

  “I assumed he meant this was a much-needed vacation. Still, when he talked of it his eyes got all wild. You know that look.” Her eyes met his and their gazes held a moment or two as if she wanted to drive home the point that Michael wasn’t the only one to have been affected by their family’s history with this troublesome gold. “That’s why, even though it sounded like just the kind of place he’d love, I didn't want Devin to go along.”

  “Where?” Cameron asked.

  Fiona shut her eyes and gave out a weary sigh. “Not far. A place Michael said he had to go, to see it for himself. Cumberland Falls, Kentucky.”

  “Cumberland Falls?” He made note of the name and tapped it with his pen. One, two, three taps and suddenly a wave of recognition… and sadness washed over him. “Isn’t that the place Da was wanting us all to visit before… before the accident?”

  “Yes, your father did speak of it often.” Fiona’s eyes washes with unshed tears but not a single one fell. She sniffled and went on, “He insisted that next time you were in the area for a visit, we’d all of us go.”

  Thoughts of his late father, and with him his only brother, weighed heavy on Cameron. But that only reinforced his need to get Devin home soon. “You said earlier that Michael said he needed to see for himself—see what for himself?”

  “The moonbow,” Fiona said softly.

  “Moonbow?” He scribbled down the strange term first as two words, then on second thought put them together and suddenly they struck a chord in him. “Like… a rainbow?”

  “Exactly.” Julia scooted closer and leaned in as if she might find some clue on the page with his writing on it. “It’s a natural phenomenon that appears over the waterfall there on the night of a full moon. Craig and his girlfriend talked about going to see it once.”

  “Full moon,” he muttered as he copied down the word then drew a large circle as full as the moon itself around it. Then, knowing Julia was watching his every move, added a smile and two eyes, one of them winking
to the doodle.

  Her eyes went wide. She knew that he knew that she was making a study of him and had the good grace to act just embarrassed enough to pull back a fraction of an inch, but stubborn and committed enough not to give him too much space.

  Around them the sounds of the lunch crowd had begun to fade but Cameron hunkered in even closer, creating an intimate circle between the two of them.

  “And it so happened that Devin’s spring break coincided with the next occurrence of that self same moonbow.” Fiona gave a worry-burdened smile and Cameron had to edit his thoughts to force himself not to forget the circle was the three of them. “There was a part of me that found the very idea of that almost too charming to resist myself.”

  “But you hadn’t agreed that Michael could take Devin?” Julia asked insistently.

  Cameron scowled at her to imply she had begun to tread on family business.

  “Excuse me for butting in,” she said. “But my experience in social service makes me ask. Do you realize that the kidnapping charge might be nullified if Fiona gave Michael permission for a trip?”

  “Of course I didn’t give Michael permission to snatch my child, or to take him anywhere.” Fire flashed in Fiona’s eyes. “These last few weeks I haven’t allowed Devin to go off at all with Michael. With all this gold nonsense building up so, I didn’t feel right about it.”

  “So, you’d say the gold adds an element of danger to the situation?” Julia acknowledged Cameron’s none too subtle throat-clearing with a glance, lowered her voice to a whisper and pressed on. “I wouldn’t ask, but I do understand the ins and outs of kids and the system. Having all the facts could make a critical difference.”

  “Tis a curse on this family, that blasted gold is, I say.” Fiona hissed the last words, spilling out her anger against the source of her trouble.

  “It and all the hoopla that surrounded it,” Cameron agreed, clenching his pen in one fisted hand while resting his other hand protectively over his sister-in-law’s wrist.

  “Hoopla?” The word seemed to cast a cloud of confusion over Julia’s lovely face.

  The waitress arrived and asked if she could clear away their plates. Cameron used the interruption to his advantage and asked her to box up his food. Not for him but for Julia, who he thought could do with another good meal between now and pay day.

  As the waitress worked, Cameron pressed his back to the seat, tapped his pen to the paper and took a moment to weigh the situation.

  Julia’s fine gaze never wavered from his. He’d seen his share of tough women, of smart women, and of kind to the core of their being women. The last kind got to him the most, probably because he felt they needed him the most. He stole a glance at Fiona who had just seen a lifetime of loyalty to Michael Shaughnessy repaid with treachery then at Julia again.

  She had folded her arms, leaned back and fixed her eyes on him, waiting for him to explain. She wasn’t going to budge until he did. Tough, smart and kind all in one. And sexy even in jeans, a shabby sweater and shoes that should have gone to that great shoe tree in the sky months ago. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself the luxury of finding any woman sexy.

  Who was he kidding? He hadn’t allowed himself to see Julia that way, he couldn’t help it. Her hair, her skin, her lips, her…

  “Hoopla?” The moment the waitress disappeared, Julia made a gesture to prod him to on. “You can’t say something like that and just leave it hanging, O’Dea.”

  He laughed. It was time to tell her. She’d earned it. With her involvement, with her steadfast service of others, with her kind and caring heart and with her unwillingness to let him ‘leave anything hanging’, she had earned his trust. Well, for the most part.

  The soft cushion sighed with the shift in weight. He folded his hands between his open knees and leaned toward her. “Fifty years ago in Ireland, Michael Shaughnessy’s grandfather and my own robbed a private treasure—a chest of antique gold coins, the ill-gotten gain of a very corrupt local official.”

  “Robbed? That gold is stolen?” Julia looked at him, then Fiona, then him again.

  “It was all very Robin Hood-esque, I assure you.” Fiona’s shoulders shimmied as she tipped her head up, her Irish pride, her family pride, ruling the moment. “For a time they thought they might get away with it, but then the truth began to come to light.”

  “My grandfather talked too much, bragged on and on.” Cameron tapped his hiking boot against the table leg. Pride was the last thing he felt telling this tired, familiar tale. How he wished he could keep the old angers from swelling within his chest. “Michael’s grandfather escaped to America only to be deported for the crime soon after. Both of them died in prison.”

  “Well, that explains how the gold got here from Ireland.” Julia tilted her head to one side. “But none of that qualifies as ‘hoopla’ in my book.”

  “Some saw the robbery, not as an act of thievery and avarice, but as a political statement, a means of common man’s justice.” Cameron rubbed one hand along his cheek. “My grandfather became something of a local legend, his woeful story told in pubs and passed from father to son these past fifty years. Michael, my brother, and I grew up in our small town with that as our legacy.”

  Julia narrowed her eyes and nodded as if she could just picture the whole thing. “So, your grandfathers had become folk heroes?”

  Cameron barked out a sharp laugh. “Those men were no heroes.”

  “To your father they were, and to Michael Shaughnessy.” Fiona’s eyes sparked with a challenge for him to deny it, to deny the passions of these men who meant so much to them both. After a moment of holding Cameron’s gaze, she relinquished. Her shoulders sagged . She sighed and shook her head. “But I don’t want them to become heroes to Devin.”

  “Those tales have turned many a young boy’s head,” said Cameron. “My own father, in a misplaced sense of loyalty, kept the secret of the gold’s whereabouts from everyone until he thought it ‘safe’ for the family to cash in on the treasure.”

  “Unfortunately he—and my husband—were killed right here in Cincinnati in a traffic accident last year.” Fiona rubbed one fingertip along the brim of her water glass. “My father-in- law had been the one to work out the paperwork to get us here from Ireland two years ago, but we did not know why until later.”

  “What an amazing story,” Julia whispered softly.

  So softly that, because of the sounds of the retreating lunch crowd around them, Cameron had to focus on her lips to make out what she had said. In doing so, for a moment, he was lost. Retelling the story to Julia had given it new life, or was that more to do with the women herself and what her nearness inspired in him?

  In the back of the pub someone dropped a platter, a round of applause rang out then laughter startled him back to reality.

  “It’s some kind of story, I’ll grant you that. Amazing or not remains to be seen.” He shifted his chair over the hardwood floor and scrubbed his fingers up the back of his hair, his way of reminding himself to stay centered and keep his head in the game. “In going through my father’s things after his funeral, I discovered several clues. But I kept comin’ back to his last words. They were, I knew in my heart, the greatest clue of all.”

  “So you got to see him before he passed?” Julia put her hand on his.

  It was such a simple gesture and yet for Cameron, it brought the moment into sharp focus. It shrank the world down to the two of them. He, the son unburdening the last secret of his father’s deathbed and her, the only woman outside family he would trust with this kind of vulnerability. “Aye, yes. I was in the vehicle behind them. I saw it all.”

  Her hand closed over his. His eyes fixed on the spot but he still caught the flutter of movement as Julia reached over to give Fiona’s hand a squeeze as well. Julia did not hesitate to lend comfort, even to someone she had just met and both he and Fiona drew strength from her generosity of spirit.

  “Michael was gone. It had to be instantly. He
didn’t suffer but my father…” Cameron dipped his gaze downward. “I did what I could while we waited for the ambulance but I knew… So I asked straight out where to find the gold. He smiled and I swear there was a light in his fading eyes like none I’d ever seen and he said, ‘Where would you be thinkin’ to find a pot o’ gold, man?”’

  “At the end of a rainbow,” Julia murmured then gasped softly, realizing she’d said it out loud.

  “Exactly.” He sat back, his head high. “I’ve devoted as much time as my work would allow to tracing the gold in order to return it and release my family from the burden.”

  He dragged a breath, filled with the swirling aromas of neighboring lunches, into his lungs. “I’ve followed any clues— many of them red herrings—one by one, always with Michael on my heels. Finding that billboard last night was a wild hunch. Something else had been advertised there for most of this year then that lottery sign came up and I remembered another version for that same game had been on that sign around the time of the accident. It was a fluke. Devin was with me and I stopped anyway because...”

  He exhaled, closing his eyes against the wave of obligation he felt for his nephew’s plight. His jaw clenched and his lips formed words he hardly realized he spoke aloud. “What was I thinking? It’s all my fault. All my fault.”

  “No, now none of that.” Fiona gave his shoulder a shake.

  If he hadn’t seen her hand on his arm he would not have known it was there. The stabbing pain tore at his heart. He could scarcely swallow.

  “You only intended the best, Cameron.” Fiona squeezed his arm. ‘You meant to provide a male role model for Devin. A better alternative to Michael. I don’t blame you.”

  “I never should have—”

  “That doesn’t change things, Cameron.” Fiona’s voice grew raspy with emotion. “Let’s just focus on what can be done to bring Devin back to me, where he belongs.”

  He nodded.

  “This gold has taken too heavy a toll on the O’Dea family” Fiona tossed her napkin onto the table like a warrior throwing down a gauntlet. “You’ve paid too dear a price already, Cameron. I won’t see your sorrow added to by letting you heap pointless guilt on yourself.”