Page 8 of After Indigo Irish Nights
“I won’t.” Her chuckle was hair-raising. “I will pester you until you give in. You can ask Carrick. Didn’t I help him find love again with Angie?”
He’d expected this argument. “I understand you wanting your husband to be happy again.” He pressed a finger to his brow. “But why torture the rest of us?”
“Kade doesn’t look tortured with his new wife, and your brother is happier than ever with Ellie, and that’s saying something since he arrived in the world with a smile on his face.”
Declan knew the tale. They’d been born minutes apart like most twins, but according to everyone in the delivery room, Brady had been smiling when he came out. Declan had never been as happy as his brother, sure, but his heartache had only made him more closed off. Humiliation did that to a man.
He pushed away from the car and stood tall in front of her. “You’re wrong about me and Kathleen.”
She grinned. “Then you’ve nothing to fear about becoming her fella.”
He’d put his foot in the puddle, he surely had. “I don’t want to be anyone’s fella, and I’m not sure she wants that either.”
“Really? You didn’t see the way she was looking at you? Like she wanted to devour you?”
His body reacted to that confirmation. He’d suspected she still wanted him. But they’d both undoubtedly considered the complications. Setting his heartbreak aside, he was Brady’s brother, and if anything went wrong, it would be uncomfortable for everyone involved. “If we do anything—”
“Yes,thatwill definitely be on the agenda.” She held up her hands and fire danced on her fingertips, making him step back. “Sparks fly between you. But your connection could run so much deeper, and that’s what has you scared.”
He glared at her.
Her face softened. “She made you laugh, Declan.”
When she mimicked Kathleen’s slashing motion, laughter tickled his throat again. “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Name another woman who’s done that. Certainly Morag never did.”
No, she’d inflamed other senses, he could admit now, the kind that made a man lose his head. He didn’t want to let that happen again.
“Ellie has, and my mum,” he managed to say after the fire disappeared from her fingertips—saints preserve them.
“Those women aren’t romantic interests.” She patted his shoulder, although her touch didn’t land. “You’re being stubborn, but I expected it. Morag was a right bitch, and she hurt you terribly. Of course, I didn’t know she’d slept with your old boxing nemesis back then although I suspected something along these lines. You didn’t refute her story that she’d decided she wasn’t ready for marriage and wanted to move to Dublin and work on her career.”
“Perhaps that was part of the truth for her actions.” He felt the weight of his friends guessing such things, but they’d known him well enough to not speak of it. “I want your word you won’t speak of her betrayal.”
“You have it.” She only let out an exaggerated hum of a sound. “Carrick said to leave it be when you were hurt, but it’s gone on long enough. It’s time to put the past behind you. Consider me your helpful matchmaking ghost.”
He only wanted to wake up from this nightmare. “I don’t want any of this, dammit. Leave me alone.”
She tapped his nose like she might have when they were kids, except her touch didn’t land. “Like I told Carrick, we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. You know what I used to be capable of, Declan. Think of what I might do now that I’m a ghost.”
That was a ball-shrinking thought if ever there was one. Sorcha Fitzgerald had been beautiful and bold, in her actions as much as her famous poems. She hadn’t been one to mess with in life. He’d always loved that about her. But he had to push back. “She’s not my soulmate.”
Her lyrical humming seemed to echo in his bones. “Like I said, then it won’t matter if you kiss her again…and more. Will it?”
She let the silence grow. He met her gaze dead-on. A smile curled her mouth and mischief filled her green eyes. He knew to brace himself.
“I don’t like to show off, but you seem to bring it out in me.” She laughed before raising a delicate brow. “Seamus is going to ask you tonight about buying the butcher shop in that roundabout way of his that used to drive me mad when he was my father-in-law.”
The news was like a bucket of cold water. “No— He said he’d work forever.”
Another laugh stole around him along with the scent of oranges, softer this time. “The string of retirements amongst his friends, your father included, has him thinking about a new path. Don’t believe me? You will. Then maybe you’ll have the sense to believe me about other things.”
She disappeared.
He let himself sink against the car and wiped his brow. Seamus retiring? The man had said he’d cut meat until his hands withered or he was in the grave, whichever came first.
Declan wasn’t prepared for this—financially or emotionally.
