it was too late.”
“Says who?”
“Her brother.”
Ryan stared at him. “You took Bryan’s word on something that important? What the hell were you thinking?”
“Why would he lie to me?” Michael asked defensively.
“To protect his sister,” Sean suggested. “Geez, bro, that one’s so obvious, even I could see it. For an ex-SEAL, you’re awfully gullible.”
“He said she went away with someone,” Michael retorted. “That sounds as if it’s too late to me.”
Sean groaned. “She did. She and Moira went to Ireland for a week.”
Michael stared. “Ireland? With Moira?” He’d given up on her because she’d gone away for a few days with her best friend? Maybe he had been a little too quick to accept the possibility that she didn’t care about him because of his past. Maybe he’d bought into the idea that he wasn’t worth loving. He could see it so clearly now, how he’d been influenced by his parents’ abandonment. After all, if they had found him so unlovable, then sooner or later wouldn’t Kelly likely reach the same conclusion? Why fight for someone he was destined to lose anyway? If that had been his thinking when he took Bryan’s words at face value, then he really was pitiful.
As for Bryan’s role in all this by deliberately misleading him, Michael resolved to deal with that later.
He stood up suddenly and headed for the door. “You guys stick around and finish your beers,” he told his brothers. “I’ve got someplace I need to be.”
“Think he’s going out for more pizza?” Sean joked.
“Not if he’s half as smart as I think he is,” Ryan retorted.
Michael grinned at them. “I’m smart enough to go after the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Of course you are,” Ryan confirmed. “Whatever the past, at least the three of us have started a new Devaney family tradition.”
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
“We hang on to the people we love.”
Chapter Fifteen
The trip to Ireland had been everything Kelly had always imagined it would be, but she hadn’t enjoyed herself. An image of a dark-haired, moody Irishman back home kept intruding. If it hadn’t been for Moira, she would have cut the trip short and gone home early.
But to what? she wondered despondently. She had her work, of course, but there would be no social life, not as long as the memory of one man refused to let her alone. She’d never been the type who could counter a broken heart with a whirlwind of dating, especially when none of the men ever measured up. Maybe she needed to accept the fact that she was a one-man woman and always had been.
She looked across the table in the pub where she and Moira were having dinner and saw that her best friend was regarding her with a worried frown, the same frown she’d been wearing for most of the trip.
“We might as well go home,” Moira said with resignation. “You’re obviously having a terrible time.”
“Don’t be silly,” Kelly said, instantly consumed with guilt. “I’m not going to spoil your vacation by cutting it short.”
“Believe me, that would probably be better than traveling from village to village with a woman who’s not really seeing the scenery.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Suggesting this trip was probably a bad idea in the first place. I just wanted to get you away from all the bad memories in Boston for a while. Bryan agreed it was a good idea.”
“Bryan was just scared I’d cave in and go looking for Michael,” Kelly said.
“Would you have done that?”
Kelly sighed heavily. “More than likely. I love him. I can’t help it. I think I’ve loved him since I was a kid. These past few months have only deepened what I feel for him.”
“The man hurt you,” Moira reminded her, sounding as fiercely protective as Bryan would.
“I know,” Kelly acknowledged. “But he didn’t do it intentionally. I all but threw myself at him before he was ready to think about anything but getting back on his feet again. I was ready for a relationship. He wasn’t.”
“And you think that’s changed by now?”
“I honestly don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out.”
This time it was Moira who sighed deeply. “By going home,” she concluded. “We can make the arrangements to leave in the morning.”
Kelly knew her friend would do that, too, but she couldn’t let her. “I have a better idea. Let’s call Bryan and see if he can’t come over here and join you. I know the two of you were planning a trip together before