by Dorien Kelly
And she did owe Daniel an enormous debt. Since he’d come into her life, she’d started to see her attributes, not just her faults. The struggles of the past weeks had made her less hungry to satisfy others, yet starved to please herself. Seeking change wasn’t wrong. Settling for less than her personal bliss, however, was.
Annie’s office door flew open and Sasha dashed in. “Okay, so what’s the big mystery?”
Annie slid the notes across the desk. “These came from Daniel. They were kind of a game we played together, and now he’s sent them back to me. No letter…no nothing…just these.”
Sasha thumbed through the notes, then gave Annie a smile. “I like the games you guys played.”
“They were great while they lasted,” Annie agreed. “So what do you think this means? Do you think he’s just cleaning up loose ends?”
Her friend handed back the notes. “He could have done that by throwing these out.”
Annie’s heart beat faster. “True. I suppose I could call him.”
Sasha shook her head. “That’s the chicken’s way out. Live big, Annie. You’ve sat in Ann Arbor long enough. Get back out and see the world.”
Excitement and the certainty she’d been lacking for so long began to bubble up inside Annie. She could do this. She knew she could. She smiled at her friend. “I’ve heard Ireland’s nice this time of year….”
Clifden, County Galway, Ireland
“WHAT’S IT GOING to be, Dan? Do we have to come up there and drag you down?” James Flynn bellowed up the stairway that led from the pub to Daniel’s rooms.
Daniel supposed at least there would be some sport in being dragged down. He knew that Seán and James together could eventually take him, but then it would be his teenage years all over again, with Mam fussing about how they were going to break everything the family owned and could they not just love each other for one day? He shut down his computer and steeled himself for some well-intended badgering, for Da had called a family meeting.
“I’ll be right there,” he shouted to the inquisition waiting below.
Daniel left his self-chosen prison and walked downstairs to not four, but five worried faces.
“You’ve fallen in with an evil lot,” he said to Aislinn, who was sitting just close enough to Seán that Daniel’s suspicions about their feelings for each other were confirmed.
“I’m worried about you, is all,” she replied.
“There’s nothing wrong with me that a decade or so of forgetting won’t cure.”
“And that,” Da said, “is why we’re all here. It’s time for you to quit brooding and do something.”
Daniel pulled out a chair and sat. “Look, I know I’ve been rough to live around since I got home, but I’m pulling out of it.”
His mother slid an envelope across the table to him. Daniel opened it and found airline reservations back to Michigan.
“You need to finish this, son,” she said.
He tucked the paper into its envelope. “Ah, but it’s not that simple. Annie won’t have me. She says I’m too afraid to grab what I want, and she doesn’t mean just her.”
“Smart girl,” James said. “I’m thinking she has a point.”
He’d have told his brother to shut his fat gob, except James was right. As Annie had been.
Daniel had concluded early this morning that he didn’t like the down and mournful world of a sad Irishman. He was sick of sitting alone at night, contemplating his navel and his general arse-headedness. And he was dead sick of not being able to write. He knew the time had come to leave the cave, take a risk and get on with life. He even had an idea or two on where this life would lead him. Of course he still needed detail sufficient to persuade a vice president of long-range planning to fall in with his scheme.
Daniel pushed back from the table.
“Not so damn fast,” said Seán. “We’re not through with you.”
“But I’m through with doing nothing.”
He rounded the bar and pulled open the jumbled supply drawer beneath the phone. There waited a note-pad, the same kind as Annie had once used to brilliant success. Daniel dug a bit more and pulled out a pencil.
“Quick,” he said to his family, “give me all the jobs you remember me having.”
As they called out the likes of “bartender,” “tour guide” and “restaurant critic,” Daniel jotted each one on the back of a square yellow slip of paper.
He was feeling in the mood for a game of darts.
On the road to Clifden
WAS SHE DOING the right thing in coming to Daniel, or was she making it too easy on him? After hours of travel, did she look as if she’d been wrestling with a goat? Annie sure felt that way. She glanced in the rearview mirror, then quickly looked back as a car’s horn sounded.
Dammit! She’d drifted to her usual side of the road, which made her total accident bait in Ireland. Annie swerved back to the “wrong” side and mouthed a truly contrite sorry to the driver of the car she’d nearly run off the road. And it wasn’t as though there was much of a side to the road here. It slipped off from low, jagged rock into boggy green.
At least there was little risk of getting lost on this part of her journey. Exactly one major route led from Galway City to Clifden, unlike her circuitous drive from Shannon Airport to Galway. She should have just sucked it up and taken the extra commuter flight, as her travel agent had suggested. But no, she’d taken the chicken’s land route.
Of course, she had no idea what she was going to do once she found Flynn’s Pub. Looking like a total boob was a recurring theme in all possible scenarios. She’d never chased a guy ten feet, let alone across an ocean.
She drove past the fairy-tale beauty of Kylemore Abbey, which, she’d read in a travel guide, was once a home built by a man for the woman he loved. Now it was a convent, tea room and private girls’ school. Maybe nothing in life turned out exactly as planned, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Far before Annie was ready, Clifden appeared. She knew from Daniel that the pub was on the far reaches of the town, nearly to something called Sky Road. Sitting on the edge of the Atlantic, Clifden was larger than just the smattering of houses and shops she’d somehow expected. It was pastel-pretty, too.
Annie could almost picture herself living here one day in the far-off future. She’d have a house on the hillside, with the mountains behind her and a view of the water. Never mind that, given her current semi-unemployed state, she’d have to hit the lotto to afford this life of leisure. Or that she wasn’t too sure about her welcome from Daniel.
Trusting herself to fate, she slipped into an open spot along the narrow road and parked. Scrutiny of her reflection in the rearview mirror confirmed that she looked like an inductee into the undead. Annie dug through her purse and dredged out a hairbrush, mascara and a freebie lipstick sample that had been floating around down there forever. When she was satisfied that she’d done about as much good as possible, she exited the car.
A warm and humid breeze kissed her skin. The sun peeked from between postcard-perfect fluffy white clouds. It was in all ways an idyllic day, except she didn’t know where she was going.
“Excuse me,” she said to a woman walking with a baby in a stroller. Or pram. Or whatever the heck they called them in Ireland. “I’m looking for Flynn’s Pub?”
“Head straightaway to the next block, then turn right.” The woman hesitated, then added, “They won’t be open for another hour at least, you know?”
Annie nodded. “Okay, thanks.”
Since she had nothing else to do in the coming hour except question her sanity, she walked to the pub and tugged at its red front door, fully expecting it to be locked. Instead, it flew open, leaving Annie staggering. Once she’d collected herself, she stepped inside. The light was a little dim to her adjusting eyes, but she still saw Daniel lined up in front of a dartboard. Nearby was a group of people, some of whom looked very much like him.
Everyone turned and looked at her.
Okay, maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea. She took a step toward the door, but then recalled that she’d promised herself to live big, as Sasha had decreed. And that involved grabbing the one thing in life she was one hundred percent sure about.
Annie drew in a nervous breath, then announced, “I, Annie Rutherford, am wise, witty and beautiful. I’m also hoping you’ve figured out that you can’t live without me, Daniel Flynn.”
Her voice had enough tremor to it to set off an earthquake, but she was pretty sure she’d gotten the message across. So why wasn’t he moving?
Daniel looked like he was trying to form words, but none seemed to be coming out. In that instant, she silently filled in the blank with “What the holy hell are you doing here?” and “You look familiar. Have we met?”
Finally, he spoke. “You took a plane all the way here by yourself? That’s hours and hours, Annie.”
She nodded, then wiped the tears that seemed to be messing with her hastily applied makeup. “I noticed. It went pretty well, too, except for the guy next to me asking the flight attendant to take away my pen because I was making him crazy.”
Daniel tossed the darts he held in one hand to the closest table, not even noticing when they rolled to the floor. Then she was in his arms, sweet warmth washing through her as she rediscovered that sense of being home.
He kissed her long and hard.
“I love you, and how I’ve missed you, too,” he said low into her ear, which was enough to really make her sob.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Through her tears, Annie caught a hazy image of a pretty girl around her age with brown curly hair.
“Take these,” the girl said, pressing some tissues into her hand.
“Thanks.”
“Your manners, Daniel,” prompted a woman who could only be his mother.
Daniel introduced Annie to his family, who were warm and welcoming enough that she almost forgot what a nervous mess she was. Eyes cleared, Annie looked around a little.
“What’s on the dartboard?” she asked Daniel.
“I was, uh, making some career decisions.”
Annie’s joy expanded until she was forced to grin, just to let some of it go. “Interesting method.”
“One of my favorites,” he replied, then took her hands. “After leaving you, I had plenty of time to think, Annie. Much as it pains me, you were right. I’ve been pushing aside the one thing I do best. I’m going to be a writer, love, which means I’m nearly guaranteed to be poor.”
“But you’re a brilliant writer,” his brother James said. “And didn’t I see they gave Bertie Ahern’s daughter a fine advance for her work?”
Daniel glanced over at his family. “Can’t you go find something better to do than watch us?”
“Probably not,” said Seán, earning a smack on the shoulder and a “Don’t be a total fool” from Aislinn.
Mrs. Flynn managed to persuade the lot of them as far as the bar, leaving Annie and Daniel about twenty feet of privacy.
“If you want to live in New York, I’ll do it,” Daniel said. “In fact, on the backs of those bits of paper decorating the dartboard are all the day jobs I thought I might be able to stomach while writing at night.” He shook his head. “The oddest thing is, I’m finding I can stomach the thought of a lot, so long as you’re with me.”
She wanted to kiss him again, but knew if she did, she’d never stop. “It doesn’t look like I’ll be moving to New York. In fact, I think I’ve kind of decided to go into business for myself. I got my first client the other day.”
“Client?”
She nodded. “The brokerage house I interviewed with. I turned them down for a permanent job, but offered them a contract deal. I’ll be tracking franchise trends in the food and beverage industry.”
“No New York? Then where will you be?”
“Other than coming here, I haven’t thought that far ahead,” she admitted. “But so long as there’s Internet access, I’m golden.”
He grinned. “Then I’m guessing the world’s ours.”
Annie watched as Daniel walked to the dartboard and began pulling down the yellow notes.
“Grab a pencil,” he said. “Since we’re free to roam, let’s write down all the places we want to see together.”
“Slow down, Flynn. I’ll travel with you when you can’t hold still anymore, but my salt-shaker collection, not to mention my clocks, all have to live somewhere.”
“That’s the idea, love. Ann Arbor,” he said. “Or Amsterdam or Athens. Write down the places and three darts at a time, we’ll shop for a home.”
She nearly stopped him, but then accepted that he needed this. Change was a gradual thing. If it took some wandering for Daniel to see that he’d already found his way, she was game. Well, game as long as he held her hand on each flight and never once complained about the volume of luggage she required.
Paris she wrote on the first slip and Clifden on the next.
“Really?” Daniel said, reading her Irish choice.
“Could be.”
Once they were done writing, Daniel stuck the notes on the board.
“Come here,” he said. “Let’s do this together.”
Annie gathered the darts and walked into the circle of his arms.
“Over my shoulder, right?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Taking her with him, he turned away from the board. Daniel let the darts fly, and Annie watched as they landed. One seemed to be square in center of the board.
“Double bull, I’m guessing,” James opined.
“Only single, at best,” said Seán.
“Shall we?” Daniel asked her, nodding toward the dart.
She shook her head. “Later.”
The “where” of their future didn’t matter nearly as much as when it started. To the cheers of his family, she kissed her Irishman. Annie Rutherford was officially in like Flynn.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3441-3
IN LIKE FLYNN
Copyright © 2004 by Dorien Kelly.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with
® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit us at www.eHarlequin.com