Sean's Reckoning - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,36

ways losing my brothers was worse. We were best buddies, especially Ryan and me. Mikey was a couple of years younger than me, four years younger than Ryan, but he trailed around after us whenever we’d let him.”

“What about the twins?” Deanna asked. “You never say much about them.”

“It was different with the twins,” Sean recalled. “They were still practically babies when Mom and Dad left—barely two years old. From the time they came home from the hospital, Ryan and I used to take one each and feed them, first their bottles, then that yucky stuff that passes for real food.” He shuddered at the memory. “If I don’t ever again see another jar of mashed peas or carrots, it will be too soon. I’ve never seen a worse mess in my life than those two could make having lunch.”

“You sure that’s not the real reason you don’t want to have kids of your own?” Deanna asked lightly.

“Baby food?”

She laughed. “No. I was thinking of the way babies are when you’re feeding them. You realize just how dependent they are on you. It can be scary.”

Sean thought back to the way he’d felt holding his baby brothers, as if he really were somebody’s hero. If anything, that emotion was the one reason he could see in favor of having kids. It was all the rest—the terrifying fear of letting them down—that kept him single and childless. Instead, he’d settled for being a different kind of hero, one who never had to risk his heart, just his life.

“I suppose,” he said eventually.

She seemed to sense she’d pushed him far enough. “So how’s the search going for Michael?” she asked.

He shrugged, as uncomfortable with this topic as he had been with the one before. Despite how well the reunion with Ryan had gone, he had mixed feelings about the search for Michael. Most of the time he pushed it completely out of his mind. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “I haven’t heard from Ryan lately.”

Deanna regarded him with obvious surprise. “You could always call him or stop by to see him, couldn’t you? Didn’t you say he owns a pub?”

“Yes, but…” He really didn’t have a good explanation for why he’d been avoiding his brother. He was pretty sure it had something to do with the overwhelming feeling of happiness that had swamped him when Ryan had first come back into his life. He didn’t trust that kind of emotion. It never lasted. He supposed a part of him was waiting for his brother to keep reaching out to him. Maybe he needed proof that Ryan was back in his life to stay.

Or maybe it was flat-out jealousy that Ryan had found something with Maggie that Sean wouldn’t allow himself to feel.

“I’d like to go sometime,” Deanna said.

He stared at her. “Go where?”

“To your brother’s pub. I love Irish music. I imagine they have it there.”

“On weekends,” he admitted, still struggling with the fact that she’d actually initiated the idea of getting together with him.

She kept her unflinching gaze leveled on him. “Will you take me sometime?”

“What are you trying to do, Deanna?”

“Ask you on a date,” she said, her expression innocent. “Wasn’t I clear enough?”

He studied her suspiciously. “What if I said I’d take you to some other pub in the city?”

“Then I’d say you’re avoiding your brother,” she responded. “And you certainly wouldn’t want me to get an idea like that, would you?”

He chuckled at the tidy trap she’d sprung. Until he’d met Deanna, he’d had no idea how many traces of cowardice lurked inside him. “No, I suppose not. I imagine you can be a real nag when you set your mind to it.”

“I can,” she agreed proudly. “I learned from Ruby.”

Sean held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “We’ll go the first weekend I’m off,” he said.

To his surprise, instead of feeling trapped, he felt a faint stirring of genuine anticipation. Maybe Ryan didn’t have to be first to reach out. He’d been the one who’d searched for and found Sean, after all. And he had asked Sean to be the best man at his wedding. Maybe it was Sean’s turn to take a risk and keep the lines of communication open.

He met Deanna’s penetrating gaze, saw the warm approval in her eyes and realized that there could be yet another benefit to taking a tiny chink out of the wall around his heart. Eventually there just might be enough room for a woman like