by Mimi Riser
KISS MY BLARNEY STONE
Part 1:
War Games
MIMI RISER
www.mimiriser.com
Kiss My Blarney Stone is now released as a serial, which means it has been divided into separate parts that are offered individually. This is the first of three parts.
Serial Copyright 2014 by Mimi Riser
All rights reserved.
[Disclaimer: This novel is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.]
Kiss My Blarney Stone
Prologue
A grand old gal, Kathleen Kelly O’Shaughnessy. Everyone said so. Small of stature she was, but huge of heart. An Irish leprechaun—well, Irish anyway—Celtic to the core, with a smile for all and a generous endowment of good-natured blarney.
She’d immigrated to the States with Danny O’Shaughnessy, the love of her life and a champion racehorse trainer. Together they’d traveled the length and breadth of the country. After his death Kathleen had continued her husband’s business, moving from job to job, first with her and Danny’s son, then with a fairy-faced waif in tow. Her orphaned granddaughter, Sharon—gold curls and blue-gray eyes like the magical mists of Galway—her sunshine and her shadow. The girl followed her everywhere, and Kathleen adored her.
But children needed a stable home, didn’t she know, not an endless round of stables. Kathleen had learned that lesson the hard way—bitter hard—with Sharon’s father, God rest his soul. He’d run too free, her wild boy, run into a bad marriage that drove him to a bad end. Her fault, her mistake, but one she’d never make again. She’d failed her son, but she’d not fail his daughter.
The year Sharon turned fourteen Kathleen bet her life’s savings on one big race, and won enough to retire on. Enough to keep Sharon safe until she could see her wed, and happily so, like the girl’s grandparents had been—and her luckless parents hadn’t. That pair had never understood happiness at all. Kathleen hoped she’d taught Sharon better. She certainly knew the sort of man she wanted for her—knew the very man, in fact.
The trick would be arranging the matter.
To that end—without a hint to Sharon, who never guessed the plan and would’ve been mortified if she had—Kathleen sent a letter and photograph to Ireland, proposing a proposal, so to speak. A bold move, for the one she wrote to was none other than Deirdre Kelly Egan herself, the grandmother of the young man in question—“grandmother” by marriage at least, if not by blood—and the twin sister Kathleen had left behind decades ago.
They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, and hadn’t spoken since. Blame Danny O’Shaughnessy, the darling devil, for choosing one twin over the other. Deirdre felt Kathleen had stolen her beau. But since she’d ended up with a good husband regardless, a handsome widower with a fine little boy, surely now she could let bygones be bygones.
Or not.
“Over my dead body!” Deirdre wrote back.
And wouldn’t you know that’s exactly what happened?
Still, it all worked out. Eventually. Some called it ironic the way things went. Others dubbed it divine destiny. But perhaps it was just the “luck of the Irish” rising to the fore—with a bit of blarney behind it, of course, doing the shoving.