HauntingBeauty
Epilogue
IT had been seven years since Dáirinn MacGrath—Danni to her friends and family—had left for New York and Columbia University. She’d graduated in the top of her class and worked freelance before becoming a staff writer for the New York Times. It was the culmination of a lifetime of goals and dreams, and she was a good reporter—a great one, she’d heard her editor say. She always seemed to know when a story was about to break or a witness about to spill his secrets. A gift, her editor called it. A gift.
But though she loved every minute of her life, as Danni approached her twenty-fifth birthday, she acknowledged that something was missing. She began to have dreams that tormented her and chased her through the nights. Dreams of losing something, something near and dear. Something irreplaceable.
Then she’d done the story on abandoned children and her life had changed completely. Her article sparked a reform in the child protection agency and in the adoption laws which prevented so many good couples from adopting children and placed so many hopeless children in abusive homes. The work she’d done had opened her heart to the plight of the lost and abandoned children of the world.
She decided then and there that she would make a difference to as many as she could. Her Nana Colleen had told her once that a person should look in their own backyard before they thought to clean up another’s. And so Danni had come home to start here.
Ballyfionúir hadn’t changed much in the passing years, and yet coming home for the first time in so long, it seemed to Danni that the differences were profound. There was a shine to the fishing village brought on in part by the increase in tourism. There were specialty shops and pubs, and dining establishments lining the cobbled road. The once faded buildings were now painted in stunning pastels with bright colored doors. There was still nothing in the way of hotels—the overriding opinion was that tourists should find their way home before the need for sleep came around.
Her mother had written and told her that her stepbrother Sean was back in town as well. He’d turned his eye on the MacGrath ruins and intended to restore it. A noble undertaking, though she’d much prefer it if they were simply destroyed. She didn’t remember anything about the night her father had vanished, but it always seemed to her that something dire had taken place in the cavern beneath the ruins and she associated it with his desertion.
She let out a sigh, knowing Rory remembered much more, though he’d never talk about it. Rory had sworn he’d never return to Ballyfionúir and he meant it. She knew her mother missed him terribly and blamed herself, though Danni never understood why.
As she drove her rented car up to the house, she saw the workers and equipment everywhere. The grounds around the house and ruins looked to be in absolute chaos, and she frowned. She’d been dreaming of the peace and quiet of her home, not this bedlam of hammers and saws and huge cranes. It made her angry. Damn Sean Michael Ballagh, she thought even as her heart sped up at the idea that he might appear at any moment.
The last time she’d seen him, she’d been thirteen, he’d been twenty-two and gone to school in London for the past four years. Four years during which she’d changed from a schoolgirl to a teenager who dreamed of him coming home some day and seeing her as woman. He wasn’t her real brother, after all, and she’d never thought of him as one.
But instead of sweeping her into his arms and declaring his intentions to wait for her to reach a marriageable age, he’d brought another woman home with him—a lovely thing with black hair and blue eyes and breasts that couldn’t be real. He’d given Danni’s ponytail a tweak and tossed her a soft stuffed animal he’d brought as a gift. It was a puppy, which she secretly loved. But at that moment, it made her feel like a child being placated and dismissed with a toy. She’d been so hurt and angry that she’d locked herself in her room and hadn’t come out for the entire weekend, not even to say good-bye.
By the time he’d made it home again, she’d been off to college herself, and now twelve years had passed. Well, she was definitely a woman now.
She glanced down at her faded jeans and old sweater. She needed to shower and clean up before she said hello to him. No matter that her crush on Sean was long over, she was woman enough to want to look sophisticated and poised when she saw him—hell and gone from that gawky thirteen-year-old girl anyway.
She turned to go inside and see her parents when a small black and brown ball of fur raced at her from the direction of the construction. It was barking crazily and charging like Danni was a meaty stew bone in danger of being tossed out. A dog? Startled, Danni stepped back against the car as the animal came to an ungainly stop at her feet. It was a dog, she realized. A mongrel mixture of so many breeds that it barely resembled a canine. It had long thin legs and a stout body. No tail, but perky ears and brown eyes that now looked at her with adoration she didn’t deserve.
“Hi there,” she said, squatting down. The dog had fur like silk and wagged its entire body as she greeted it. “Is it a dog you’re trying to be?” Danni laughed as she scratched behind its ear.
A stern voice called to the little beast, and Danni looked up to see a man following the same path the dog had from the midst of the construction.
He was tall with broad shoulders and the layered muscles of a warrior, though he moved with easy grace and long, purposeful strides. He wore a T-shirt that might have been white when he’d put it on but was now covered with dirt. A denim button-down hung open over it. Faded blue jeans hugged lean hips and long legs. Not just tall. Not just broad. A big man.
He stopped in front of where she knelt with the dog and hunkered down beside them. Danni’s eyes followed the powerful line up from flat belly to muscular chest to his tanned throat, square jaw, coming to a stop at eyes not quite green, not quite gray. Eyes like the Irish Sea itself. She might not have recognized the man Sean had become if not for those unforgettable eyes.
For a moment she could only stare, and it seemed somewhere beyond her memory, beyond this moment in time, there was a history stretching out behind them both. An inexplicable past and future entwined and interwoven, binding them together. Images rushed at her . . . his arms around her, his body close and hot, his mouth on hers. But she’d never . . . They’ d never . . .
And yet, like a song she couldn’t forget, the thoughts played on and she knew she had . . . they had. And she’d been waiting her whole life to have what they’d shared again. It was crazy but it felt too real to doubt.
His eyes seemed to darken, and the look in that sea of green and gray somehow mirrored the complex and chaotic emotions churning inside her. He understood. He felt it, too. The knowledge rolled over her and stole her breath. He felt it, too.
He smiled then, a slow, knowing smile that spread across his face and showed the two dimples that Danni had fallen in love with so long ago. She felt herself smiling back, though her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. The rest of the world seemed to fall away, and there was only Danni and Sean and endless possibilities. The future before them was bright and shining and waiting for whatever fate had in store for them next.
“Welcome back, Danni,” he said, his voice a smoky baritone that brushed against her skin like velvet and made her lean closer. She reached out, needing to touch him, to believe in the overwhelming rush of what she felt. He took her hand, pulling her closer still, and a million thoughts filled her head, but not one of them was to resist. This was where she belonged, where she was meant to be.
He paused, his gaze moving over her face, as if to memorize every feature. And then he spoke again, his words as soft as the warm and fragrant breeze. “It’s good to have you home. Isn’t it forever I’ve been waiting to see you again?”
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