Page 1 of Wild Irish

Chapter 1

Delaney

“Sharp left, wide right,” I mutter, knuckles white as they grip the steering wheel, repeating the only driving instructions the lady at the rental counter gave me when I arrived in Dublin.

Muscles tense, fingers tingling with nerves, I swallow past the enormous lump in my throat and try to remember to stay to the left without hitting the stone wall and bushes that were built perilously close to the side of the road.

I’ve been driving for two hours on what my phone’s GPS claims to be a highway. Highway, my ass. There’s barely enough room to fit two cars going each way.

I cringe when my phone tells me to take another roundabout in two point two kilometers.

As if driving on the wrong side of the road isn’t difficult enough, they had to make up their own measurement system, and have you drive in death-trap circles every hundred feet.

I shouldn’t be here. Not alone. This was supposed to be Maeve’s trip. Not mine.

She’d been planning every detail since she was sixteen. She’d just never been healthy enough to ever take it.

Now, she never will.

A wave of grief washes over me, and I have to blink back the tears before they threaten to blur my vision.

It’s one thing to lose your best friend, it’s a whole other level of grief when she’s also your sister.

I turn the radio on, needing the distraction, but it seems like every damn channel is playing the same song.

“I see her face. Blurred by time. Arms outstretched, but never mine.” The voice is pure Irish brogue, deep and sexy, but the words are gut-wrenching, playing with my already fragile emotions. “Let the Irish rains wash away yer tears. Let me kiss away yer pain…”

A small, almost hysterical laugh rumbles in my throat. If only it were that easy.

“Come to me, my love. I’m waiting on the shore. It’s safe in yer harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”

Safe.

What a joke.

There’s nothing safe,nothingabsolute in this world. Not the job I worked my ass off to get, or the sweet, well-spoken guy I allowed into my heart, and especially not the doctor’s prognosis that my sister would get better.

I lost them all.

One heartbreak after another.

So, I packed my bags, bought the first ticket out of O’Hare International, gave my cheating fiancé his ring back, and decided to finally do the one thing my sister made me promise – cross off every adventure on her bucket list.

I pull out the folded note from my pocket, and clutch it to my chest.

“If something happens…” She’d placed it in my hand before her surgery. That list had gone everywhere with her. All of her dreams scribbled down on a damn piece of lined paper. “If I can’t…”

“You’re going to be fine.”

“Promise me.”

I’d made the promise. Not because I’d thought she wouldn’t make it, but because I believed with all my heart she would.

Live your life for both of us, Delaney.

I can’t hold back the tears that spill over my cheeks. Anger mixing with anguish.

“Damn you, Maeve. And damn your list. And damn you for leaving me alone.”

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