Oh Danny Boy: A Sweet Contemporary Romance by Josie Riviera

Author:Josie Riviera [Riviera, Josie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Danny stared into Clara’s fathomless eyes. The way she was looking at him filled him with the agonizing longing to hold her tight and never let go. Grimly, he reminded himself that Jack had hurt her deeply and her earlier life had been ridden with hardships.

“No one can make me forget the awfulness of the orphanage,” she said. “We were hungry and cold and always dirty. The caretakers tried, although there were too many of us and too few of them. Remembering those times … It makes me so sad.”

He suppressed a shudder at the deprivation she must have suffered. No one had held her. No one had loved her. Everyone needed love and acceptance, especially when they were children, especially when they were adults.

“Can you teach me how to break into a place?” He attempted to disrupt her solemn remembrances with levity. “There’s a competitor’s coffee shop down the street I’ve intended to visit. Unfortunately, they’re closed on Sunday.”

She rewarded his levity with a small smile. “I’ve never broken into a coffee shop.”

His mouth quirked. “A new career path for you, perhaps?”

“That particular career path was a small part of my long-ago past.”

She shook her hair with an impatient shake, and he longed to loosen her waves from their loose ponytail and run his hands through them. Did she have to be so perfectly shaped, so slim and willowy, her mouth so curved and inviting? He stroked his hands over her shoulders. Her fitted paisley blouse made her look small, fragile, defenseless.

“Someday,” he promised, “you will own your own dancing school.”

“It’ll take me a year to dig out from Seamus’s debt and then there’ll probably be other bills I didn’t anticipate. Maybe I’m a fool for suppressing horrific experiences, but if I dwell on them … I should look to the future, yeh?”

He felt himself becoming lost in her glorious eyes, the dark recesses pulling him in. Lightly, his thumbs stroked her cheekbones. “You’re smart and you’ve accomplished so much since you left Italy.”

She rolled her cheek against his palm. “And yet, somehow, Jack has reappeared in my life. Once, I was dependent on him to fill a void. Not anymore.” She seemed to dwell on the thought, seemed to search for the right words. “Now it’s up to me to make him go away—not you, nor Ian, nor Seamus. Nor a justice system that can’t be counted on.”

Her response brought a deluge of his own remembrances—his uninterested parents and Glenna, his beloved spit of a sister. Was he, in his effort to move forward and succeed, putting off dealing with his heartache from long ago, just like Clara? Would the past forever be nipping at his heels? No matter what he’d accomplished, he’d always label himself a poor chiseler, a child born to suicidal parents, a weak sibling who hadn’t saved his younger sister. No amount of wealth would ever change that.

He bent his head and lightly rubbed his lips over Clara’s.

She kept her hands at her sides.

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