Trying Sophie: A Dublin Rugby Romance

by Norinne, Rebecca

  Trying Sophie

  A Dublin Rugby Romance

  Rebecca Norinne

  Contents

  Pronunciation Guide

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  More Dublin Rugby Romance

  A Note from the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Rebecca Norinne

  Coming Soon

  For rugby fans everywhere who love a good romance.

  Pronunciation Guide

  If you’re not actually from Ireland, the names here can be incredibly difficult to pronounce. You should have heard me the first time I read Circle of Friends, pronouncing Dun Laoghaire in my head (incidentally, it’s Dun-Leery). So it was no surprise when a few of my early readers in Canada and the U.S. asked how some of the names in this book are pronounced. After sending them a cheat sheet, I promised to include the pronunciation guide in the final draft, which you’ll find below.

  Since I’m not a linguist, I pulled the pronunciations (including emphasis) from an Irish baby names website and polled my friends here in Dublin. If anything is incorrect, please accept my humblest apologies.

  Declan: DECK-lan

  Aoife: EE-fa

  Moira: MOY-rah

  Colm: C-uh-lum

  Cian: KEY-an

  Eoin: O-in

  Aidan: AID-un

  Liam: LEE-um

  Siobhan: SHIV-awn

  Róisín: Ro-SHEEN

  Prologue

  18 Years Ago—Sophie

  “Declan O’Shaughnessy, you were instructed to stick with your partner on this outing and you have disregarded that instruction.”

  “But Mrs. Brennan—”

  “No excuses, Declan. You were matched with Sophie and I don’t want to hear another word of it.”

  I’d already explained to our teacher I’d be happier doing the assignment on my own, but she wouldn’t hear a word of it either. Instead she’d done the worst: she’d forced me to pair up with Declan for the scavenger hunt. Before today the girls at St. Andrew’s Primary School had ignored me but now they were paying attention. Too much attention, circling me like a pack of tiny, angry hyenas. Sometimes grown-ups could be so blind.

  One of the things about going through life invisible was that people ignored you and that meant you saw and heard things. Things maybe they didn’t want you seeing and hearing. Which was how I’d learned what all the teachers really thought of Declan. He was what they called a “real looker.” And, when he grew up, they all said he was going to “make something of himself” because he had “natural charisma.” I didn’t fully understand what they meant, but I figured it had something to do with how his friends followed his every command and the way girls swooned when he was around. Girls including me.

  Mrs. Brennan wrapped her arm around my shoulder and gently nudged me forward. I was nervous to face him since my frizzy hair was acting up and my loaner glasses gave me bug eyes. I dropped my chin to my chest and hoped my hair would cover my face so he wouldn’t see me blush. Eventually, I smiled shyly while inside I begged him to like me.

  “This is Sophie’s first week at school and I want the class to make her welcome.”

  “Aww, Mrs. Brennan,” Declan whined in a high-pitched tone that might have made my ears hurt if they weren’t already ringing with embarrassment. “I don’t want to make her welcome. My mam says she’s an uppity yank who only thinks she’s Irish. But she’s not really. She wasn’t even born here.” Declan stomped his foot and crossed his arms over his chest. “And, she smells like fish and chips,” he added with a definitive nod.

  “Now Declan, you know Sophie’s mother was born right here in Ballycurra. That makes Sophie Irish too,” Mrs. Brennan informed the small tyrant. “Why, I even babysat her mam when she was a young lass like Sophie here. I assure you, the Fitzgeralds are as Irish as you and me.”

  I kept the tight smile pasted on my face but inside I was crying. As the two argued back and forth, I knew there was no reasoning with Declan. He’d made up his mind about me and that was that.

  “Her da’s not Irish, so if anything she’s only half Irish!” He looked over his shoulder to his friends who nodded in agreement and then turned back to us, a smug smile stretching his face.

  Technically speaking, Declan wasn’t wrong which only made it that much worse.

  When it looked like Mrs. Brennan wasn’t going to be able to rein him in, I realized I was going to have to stand on my own. Squaring my shoulders, I stared back at him, unblinking, showing him I would not be made to feel less than just because he didn’t like me. When he scowled, I stifled a laugh and his face turned red. He’d wanted people to laugh at me and the fact that I was laughing at him instead was not part of the plan. While he tried to appear intimidating, he actually looked silly, all puffed up like an indignant pigeon.

  “Ugly, smelly, stupid girl!” he spat out.

  And just like that my bravado fled. He could make fun of the way I looked and the way I smelled, but I’d never had anyone call me stupid before. The smile I’d forced onto my face a few minutes before faded. When my traitorous eyes pooled with tears, I cast them downward to stare at a pile of crimson and gold leaves that had fallen from the park’s trees and lay scattered along the walkway, fluttering in the wind. I self-consciously nudged the toe of my black oxfords through the pile at my feet, sending some of the leaves dancing in the early autumn breeze. Instead of blurting out what I really wanted to say—that of the two of us, he was the one who lacked intelligence—I held all of my hurt and anger inside and did my very best not to let Declan see me cry.

  Unfortunately, my best effort wasn’t quite good enough.

  “Ugh. Now she’s crying! I’m not going to partner with a crybaby American who smells like fried cod!” he declared before turning his back on me.

  Mrs. Brennan rubbed my back a few times in a steady circular pattern, a small attempt to comfort me. But I’d had enough experience with schoolyard bullies to know her sympathy wouldn’t make me feel better about being the class freak. Being shy was one thing, but being ugly too gave them extra ammunition. To make me feel better about my lack of good looks, my Grandma Newport—my daddy’s mother—had once told me the story of the ugly duckling who grew up to be a beautiful swan. It didn’t seem likely we’d share the same fate.

  I’d once overheard the mother of one my classmates say it was sad that my daddy, “the devilishly handsome Langston Newport,” and my mom, “his beautiful Irish bride” h
ad produced such a homely creature. Instead of crying over something I couldn’t change, I’d focused my efforts on being smart instead. Smart people, I’d noticed, were respected despite their appearances. And so I became a book worm who lived a happy and exciting life in the pages of each new book I read.

  But things went from bad to worse when my dad left my mom when his secret girlfriend became not-so-secret when the giant belly she sported couldn’t be ignored. At first everyone was focused on the bad thing my dad had done but soon people started talking about my mom and me. Before long I became the butt of many cruel jokes from classmates and local radio DJs alike. It got so bad my mom had to institute a “no radio in the house” policy when one of them asked whether I was even a Newport since I looked nothing like the rest of my beautiful family. I’d stayed home from school that day while my mom pulled out old photo albums that showed pictures of my dad as an awkward little boy who looked just like me.

  I’d lived my whole life knowing my dad was handsome and my mom was beautiful and that we were rich, but it wasn’t until the last few months the pieces of the puzzle finally clicked. What I’d also recently come to realize was the Newports were local royalty, my grandfather being the owner of a pro basketball team with a winning record. My daddy was his heir apparent. If we’d simply been rich, no one would have cared about my parents’ divorce, but when you lived in the public eye, the public felt like they owned a piece of you.

  And then people turned against my mom. If the jokes about me were bad, the things they said about her were even worse! Before the divorce, everyone loved my parents’ fairytale romance, but when daddy left us without a penny people started calling her “that grasping Irish pub girl.” And then they began saying my mom had taken a lover well before daddy hooked up with that cheerleader. No matter how you sliced it, according to gossip, both my parents were dirty cheats, but only one of them was tarred and feathered for it. At least that’s what I overheard my mom saying. I hadn’t actually seen any feathers.

  This went on and on until one day a girl at my old school called me “that Irish slut’s daughter” and I snapped. When the lunch monitor finally pulled me off Katherine Winters, tears were streaming down my face, and a strand of her long, black hair was clenched in my hand. As I was carted off to the headmaster’s office, I overheard a teacher whisper something about my mom’s “mess with that doctor.”

  See, teachers were gossips.

  I’d ended up suspended for three days. When my mom came to pick me up, I asked her why people said she was a cheater too and her face turned bright red. Buckling me into my seat, she marched straight into my school, hands fisted at her sides. When she came back fifteen minutes later, she told me I was never going back to “that godforsaken place” that was filled with “white trash dressed up as American aristocracy.”

  So you see, I understood school bullies. Declan’s treatment was nothing compared to what I’d already been through. And yet it seemed far worse too. Maybe it was because I felt more alone here than I had back home? Despite how bad things had been in Pittsburgh, I hadn’t wanted to move to Ireland. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand why leaving Pittsburgh was a good idea, but what I still couldn’t grasp was why my mom hadn’t come with me. Before dropping me off at the airport, she’d explained there were things—adult things—I couldn’t possibly understand that she needed to take care of before I could come back.

  I’d been heartbroken to leave her behind, but I’d also hoped a new school where no one knew my daddy’s name would put an end to the teasing I’d endured since the scandal went public. One week in, though, and I could tell St. Andrew’s wasn’t going to be any better. These kids didn’t know anything about my family—my other family—but they’d found enough to tease me about without really knowing anything about me.

  On this small island a million miles away from everything and everyone I’d ever known, I was just a weirdo kid who would never fit in. An outsider. Declan and his gang of hoodlums had made that clear.

  Giving in to Declan’s whiny demands, Mrs. Brennan paired him up with a kid named Cian. As he walked away, I overheard him tell Cian I looked like a fly with my big, ugly plastic glasses. My shoulders sagged. It wasn’t my fault that my real glasses had broken on the flight here. My mom had promised to send new ones as soon as the optometrist could fill the prescription, but for now I had to wear a cast-off pair that had been hers when she was about the same age. Sadly, I couldn’t really fault Declan for his observation, cruel though it may be. The oversized, plastic green frames were hideous and when I’d first tried them on, I’d seen exactly what he’d just pointed out: they did make me look like a bug.

  Declan pacified, Mrs. Brennan went to deal with another squabble, leaving me without an assigned partner. One of the teaching assistants, Miss Flanagan, volunteered but because she knew where all the secret items were hidden, I had to complete the task on my own. Which, come to think of it, was like not having a partner at all.

  As much as my grandparents had tried to help me make friends, word had spread that I was the weird girl who never talked to anyone and who smelled like fried food. And, even though I quit wearing those awful eyeglasses a couple of weeks later, for the two years I lived in Ballycurra I was called Bug Eyes and Fly Girl. I’d also picked up the nicknames Fish & Chips, Pub Girl, and Smoky Sophie for the faint scent of cigarettes that clung to my clothes no matter how many times I begged my grandmother to wash them. The strange thing was, neither she nor my gramps smoked but the stench from the pub downstairs wafted up through the wooden rafters and floorboards straight into my closet. No amount of laundry detergent or air freshener could keep the scent at bay.

  It had been a pretty lonely existence for me, a shy eight-year-old little girl reeling from the breakup of her parents’ marriage.

  And that horrible, no good Declan O’Shaughnessy?

  Well, from that very first day at St. Andrew’s, he’d done his best to make my life a living nightmare. During the two years I’d spent in Ballycurra, he’d been the bane of my existence.

  In line for lunch he’d pull on my braid or pig tails; at break time he’d bump into me when he ran past; and in class, any time he got up to go to the chalkboard, Declan made sure to knock my pencil to the floor.

  But the absolute worst was when everyone walked home from school and he’d take the long route that brought him past Fitzgerald’s Pub. Crossing the street so he could stand under the eaves of my bedroom, he’d holler out for the entire village to hear, “See you tomorrow Fish & Chips!” while he waved his hand maniacally to and fro.

  And because life was inordinately cruel, Declan O’Shaughnessy had been the very last thing I saw when I watched the tiny village of Ballycurra disappear behind me on my way to the airport to return to America.

  Chapter One

  Sophie

  Following a particularly terrible blind date with a man named Samuel who was more interested in my money than getting to know me, I climbed the stairs to the flat I was subletting in Edinburgh’s New Town.

  Not more than 20 minutes into our meal, Samuel began asking questions that were entirely too personal for what I considered a getting-to-know-you conversation. When I balked at providing him with an up-close-and-personal look at my finances, he lost interest altogether. Instead of politely wrapping up the date like someone with good manners would have done, he pulled out his iPhone to text with his friends. Continuously.

  The sound of the notifications pinging on his phone still rang through my ears.

  When the jackass had stepped outside to take a “very important phone call,” he hadn’t returned, leaving me to pay for both of our meals and the very expensive bottle of red wine he’d ordered. As if his ditching me wasn’t insult enough, I didn’t even drink wine all that often. I’d ended up gifting the bottle to the couple sitting next to me; a couple I couldn’t help but notice appeared deeply in love.

  God, I hated people in love. Okay, not really. Just sometimes. Like w
hen my love life was shit, which was pretty much constantly.

  Needless to say, the night was not going my way.

  Now all I could think about was getting out of my fancy date clothes and in to my pajamas for a night on the couch watching Gossip Girl on Netflix. Serena van der Woodsen never had these sorts of problems, I thought as reached the top step of the fourth floor walkup.

  As I hefted my tired, achy feet up the last step, my phone chimed U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” the song I’d programmed as the ring tone for my mom.

  Madeline Fitzgerald Newport Hodges was a born and bred Irish lass with the pale, freckled skin and naturally red hair that went along with it. And yet despite her obvious ancestry, she’d devoted the last 28 years to pretending she hadn’t grown up above a pub just outside of Dublin. Now a stunning middle-aged woman who looked young enough to be my older sister, she’d managed to mostly disguise the accent she’d arrived with in the late 1980s.

  “Hey mom,” I said into the phone as I struggled to get the large brass Chubb key to turn in the ancient lock.

  Being American, the key had looked cool when my friend handed it over with instructions on its finicky nature, but over the last several weeks I’d learned first-hand what a pain in the ass it could be when it came time to actually use the thing. Not to mention how much heavier it made my key ring.

  “Dammit,” I muttered under my breath as I fumbled and it clanged loudly to the floor. “Hold on,” I said, crouching down to pick up my keys before wrestling it into the lock and turning with all my might.

  Finally!

  Once the door opened, I gathered up my belongings and brought the phone back to my ear. “Sorry about that, mom. What’s up?”

  “Is everything alright, Sophie?”

  “Yeah, I was just having technical difficulties with these damn locks.”