With a sigh, Gallagher began to pull glamour around him. He couldn’t entirely disguise his size in broad daylight, but he could put out the mental suggestion that his height and bulk were surely an illusion. He wasn’t standing next to anyone or anything, so perspective wasn’t an issue. And all the other parents were seated while he was standing, so of course he looked really tall.
One by one, they began to relax and turn back to their children. A couple of them even smiled at Alina.
The little girl pumping her legs in the last swing was as comfortable in sunlight as she was in shadow. In that respect, as in most others, she straddled two worlds.
Her easy smile and long ponytail made her look approachable in a way her father never would, and the petite stature she’d inherited from her mother was a fitting companion to the glamour she’d learned to cast at a very young age.
People liked her, even when they didn’t know why. Even when they’d just met her. People liked her, even when the schoolyard bully ran screaming from her, though no one had heard little Alina say a thing to him.
As Gallagher watched, his daughter slowed her swing until her sneakers grazed the ground. She looked over at the girl to her left, who wore a pink cowboy hat over pigtail braids, and frowned.
Alina closed her eyes, and a moment later her cute little red knit beret became a red cowboy hat.
Gallagher chuckled softly. When in Rome...
Or in Oklahoma.
Satisfied, Alina began to swing again, oblivious to the shocked faces of the parents watching from the cluster of benches at the edge of the park. She hadn’t yet mastered the art of performing glamour during the instant everyone around her blinked. But that would come.
Gallagher glanced at his watch. “Acushla,” he called, and though his voice hardly carried, his daughter heard him as if he’d whispered into her ear. “It’s time.”
Reluctantly, she dragged her feet in the dirt again until her swing slowed to a stop. Then she hopped out, waved to the girl still swinging next to her and raced across the playground to slide her hand into her father’s grip.
“Are they here?”
“I haven’t seen them yet, but—”
A car door closed from the lot to the left, and Gallagher turned to see a man in his late forties helping an elderly woman from the front passenger’s seat of his car. She had to be every bit of ninety years old, but once she was free from the vehicle, she walked on her own, with the aid of a cane. Behind them, a younger woman got out of the backseat carrying a large, old-fashioned picnic basket. “I think that’s them.”
The redcap and his daughter watched while the family made their way to a concrete table not far from their car. “Daddy? Let’s go!” Alina began to tug on Gallagher’s hand, and he let her pull him forward.
This was what Delilah wanted, and he’d put it off for five years, but his word was his honor.
The elderly woman looked up as they approached, and she stared at Gallagher in a mixture of awe and fear he knew well. The younger man and woman were staring, too, but they didn’t concern him. “Janice?” he said when he got close enough to be heard.
“Yes.” The old woman pushed herself to her feet with the aid of her cane, and though Gallagher towered over her, she looked right up into his eyes. “Thank you so much for meeting us. I can’t tell you what this means to me.” Finally her gaze dropped to Alina. And there it stayed.
“Well, aren’t you a little beauty!” Tears filled the old woman’s eyes. “You are her spitting image.”
Gallagher wasn’t sure whose image the old woman saw in his daughter, since she’d never met Delilah. But—
“Elizabeth, come say hi.” Janice waved the younger woman forward, and Gallagher glanced at her—then caught his breath. Stunned.
She looked just like Delilah. Or like Delilah would have looked at thirty years old.
“Alina, this is my great-granddaughter, Elizabeth. She and your mother never met, but something tells me they would have gotten along very well, if they had.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Alina stuck her right hand out as her aunt Lenore had taught her, and Gallagher’s eyes watered as he watched his daughter shake hands with the spitting image of the only woman he’d ever loved.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Elizabeth Essig said. “I have a feeling we’re going to be very good friends.”
* * *
Acknowledgments
Thanks first and foremost to my editor, Michelle Meade, whose vision for this project was instrumental in shaping Delilah’s story. Your advice, suggestions and support have been invaluable to me.
Thanks also to the entire production team at Mira, for great editing, stunning covers and all the other unseen work you all do behind the scenes to turn my stories into books.
Thanks to Rinda Elliott and Jennifer Lynn Barnes for your fresh perspectives, company and problem-solving skills. Every time I box myself into a corner, one of you punches your way through a wall to save me, and I could not be more grateful.
And, of course, thanks as always to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, who makes things happen.
ISBN-13: 9781488078682
Fury
Copyright © 2018 by Rachel Vincent
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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