Catch Him(51)

She tilted her head as if considering it. “I’ll think about it while I go upstairs and change.”

Declan smiled at the challenge. That was something Sinead had never been for him. She’d been open and honest from the moment they met about her interest in him. Her attraction. Even her feelings, although she was stubbornly refusing to admit them now.

No, she’d never been a challenge, and he liked that about her. Their relationship had happened easily and naturally without any game playing. Now, things were different. He knew he was going to have to work to earn her trust back. Work to prove he was worthy of her love. Work to show her, her heart was safe in his possession.

Declan couldn’t help it, but he sort of liked that too.



* * *

They were sitting on the couch in the game room with the explosions happening on the large sixty-inch screen TV. Sinead was cuddled up next to him on the couch munching on popcorn he’d made for her.

“I can’t believe you picked a boy movie. You should be sucking up to me big time right now. We should be watching Beaches or something.”

“First this is not a boy movie, it’s a man movie, and I’m simply trying to show you how things will be between us as we move forward with our relationship.”

“You mean you’ll always get your way?”

“Exactly.”

“I hate you right now.”

“No, you don’t. You love me. Now how about you say that with me. Declan, I love you.”

“Tell me a story about you,” she said instead. “I mean a real one.”

“All the stories I told you were real,” he said softly. “My father left us, my mother was an alcoholic, and I raised Mary. You more than anyone—you should know how true all that is, as it was those stories that led you here.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Ireland, then here for that summer I told you about, then back to Ireland. My American grandfather met an Irish girl and moved to Ireland because she wouldn’t leave her family. They had my mother…”

“Margaret,” Sinead answered. “That’s how I found the farm. Mary Gallagher, daughter of Margaret Gallagher, daughter of Jackson Tierney. Tierney Farms of Middleburg, Virginia is actually listed in an old phone book, which thankfully all that stuff is now archived on line. You know it makes me think, if I found her so easily how come Garrett couldn’t?”

“I told you, he’s not nearly as clever as you are. He might have known Mary’s last name, but in general she would have never have talked about our mother. Only to say what she was and that she died. And she was too young to remember that summer we spent on the farm or our grandfather. Only you would have been able to make the connection to this farm. Which still makes me wonder… if I didn’t tell you all of it on purpose.”

“You wanted me to find you.”

Declan looked down at her, and the truth of it seemed fairly obvious. “Yes, my love. I do think I wanted you to find me.”

“Tell me the rest of the story,” she insisted.

“Yes, well my grandparents raised my mum in Ireland. Happy, I think for a time. Then my grandmother passed. My mum was only twenty. It must have shook them both. That’s when my grandfather came back to the States. I asked him why. He said it was too painful to be in a place he knew his wife would never come home to him again. I remembered thinking how things could be different between a man and a woman. All I remember of my father was yelling and shouting. Anger and bitterness. Then he was gone and I thought that was better. But it wasn’t.”

“How did you get out? I mean how did you manage to build an empire?”

Declan considered that. “I suppose I was willing to do the things no one else was. My skills were singular focus, fierce determination and a lack of fear. Once I set an objective for myself I couldn’t be stopped. That included making money.”

“You’re also really good at faking accents.”

“Also that. Determination and accents. That’s how I did it.”

Sinead rested her head on his shoulder. He thought that was a good sign. A level of trust she must have felt.

“Did you do bad stuff?”

“Illegal stuff, yes. Are you going to arrest me?”

She threw up her hands. “I can’t. I’m not a cop anymore.”

“They fired you then,” he said regretfully.

“No, I quit.” She turned and tilted her face up to him. “I think I knew that having met you my life had changed. I knew nothing was going to be the same. Going back to my old job, my old life… wasn’t possible.”

“And what did your new life look like?”