were inextricably twined, past and present. What he wanted, standing in front of him . . . and what he’d left behind. A year ago, he’d gotten life-altering news. About the diary. About his real heritage. All the pain, the hurt ... and the rage, that he’d felt were so far behind him had come roaring back. All those years, his grandmother had listened to the mocking and the sneers. From inside the family and out. From his own father, who hadn’t even been her natural-born son, but whom she’d loved, perhaps to an unhealthy degree for the fear of losing him.
They’d all taunted him mercilessly, about how he looked so different from the rest. And how ridiculous he was with all his fancy ideas of what they could make of themselves if they’d only listen to him. They’d thought he had no pride in his family, that his ideas were meant to denigrate their achievements. But they couldn’t have been more wrong.
His grandmother had watched it all, and never told him. Never saved him by giving him the one thing he needed: a real family who understood and loved him for who he truly was.
Griffin had her diary, knew she’d been unable to conceive, and that having a child had been the cornerstone of her every desire. When she’d heard about the babe being given up, she and his grandfather had stepped forward, then fled back to Ireland, due to her irrational fear the Havershams would take the baby back. She’d never told a soul, claiming the baby as her natural-born son, for fear he’d be shunned by the family if they knew. Griffin’s father had enough of the Gallagher look about him to get by, and no one had ever learned who his parents had truly been. But apparently Griffin had the look of Trudy’s family, fairer of hair and lighter of eye. He’d borne the brunt of being the outcast, not only because of his different looks but because of his different demeanor and way of thinking. If he had only known ... it would have explained so much. Saved him from so much.
But what was done was done. Whatever his last name was, or what blood coursed through his veins ... didn’t matter. He knew who he was and what he wanted. If Lionel Hamilton could get him one step closer to fulfilling his dreams, then he’d take that as the first stroke of honest-to-God luck he’d ever had, and build on it. It was the kind of foundation he understood. He knew how to grow that, nurture it.
Looking at Melody Duncastle he was filled with ... want. Want of all those things he’d shut himself off from. Want of things that scared the ever-loving hell out of him. He looked at her, and he wanted what those dreamy, content, confident eyes could bring to his life. He wanted her to look at him and feel all those same things. He wanted her to look at him . . . and glow.
Bloody Christ, I never should have come in here this morning.
“I’m a very lucky woman,” she said, as she continued the task at hand, bending down to begin a cluster of amazingly intricate roses. “To have literally stumbled into something that has been such a good fit for me. I do know that.”
A lucky woman, he thought. No. Of the two of them, he was the lucky one. To have met her, been beguiled by her, compelled to open up to her. In the span of a single day, she’d turned his head completely around, and his thoughts to things he’d never contemplated before. If that had been the first day, what would a lifetime of days with her be like?
Not that he’d ever know. He was no prize, that was for certain. She might have had the luck of the Irish in finding her true life’s calling. But she’d never consider him a lucky catch.
What did he have to offer? Money? Yes, he had a pile of it, but she’d likely made plenty of that on her own as a lawyer. She’d walked away from that success to live over a shop where she put in far more hours than at any law firm, and all to live in a town that didn’t even boast a single traffic light. Clearly, the one thing he had was the last thing that would impress her.
There was chemistry. Explosive levels of it. That, and not his fortune,