Declan's Cross. Carla Neggers
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me. You just live your life and be happy. I’m fine here on my own.”
“I know you are.”
As Julianne started to grab her suitcase, her grandmother tucked a twenty-dollar bill in her hand. “Buy yourself a Guinness or two while you’re over there.”
Julianne beamed her a smile. “Thanks, Granny. You’re a love.”
“Ireland’s the best place to heal a broken heart.”
Franny Maroney had never stepped foot in her ancestral homeland, either, but Julianne appreciated the sentiment. Everyone in Rock Point knew she had a broken heart, because that’s what Andy Donovan was. A heartbreaker.
She carried her tote bag and suitcase—no wheels—outside and down the front walk to the street. Her brother would be here any minute. Ryan was thirty, the same age as Andy, four years older than she was, and tight with all the Donovans. More proof she’d been dumb to get involved with one of them.
But it wasn’t Ryan’s black truck that pulled in next to her. It was Andy’s rust-colored truck. He had the passenger window rolled down and patted the seat next to him. “Hop in, Jules. I’m driving you to the airport. Ryan can’t make it and I volunteered.”
It was a conspiracy. No doubt in Julianne’s mind, but she had no choice—which Andy would know. She needed to leave now in order to get to Logan Airport the requested three hours ahead of her flight’s departure time. She was following all the rules and guidelines. She’d provided the requested preflight boarding information, checked in online at the appropriate time and printed out her boarding pass. She had any liquids she wanted on board with her in a clear plastic bag. She’d read about what exercises to do on the plane and would fill her empty water bottle after she cleared security. Andy wouldn’t have bothered with any of it. He’d have said, “Use common sense,” and shown up at the airport in the nick of time.
Julianne shoved her suitcase behind the passenger seat and climbed in next to him. She wanted to think it was his rules-breaking nature that had nearly gotten him killed a few weeks ago, but it really wasn’t. He’d been blindsided, attacked by thugs. She’d found him unconscious, drowning in the harbor. As mad as she’d been at him, she’d done all she could to save him. She couldn’t let him just die.
The thugs had been related to one of Colin’s FBI cases.
Obviously he didn’t just work at a desk at FBI headquarters in Washington, as he’d tried to get everyone in Rock Point to believe.
Emma had been involved in the case, too.
Complicated, those two.
“All set?” Andy asked.
Julianne nodded. “Yes. Thanks.”
He had on a thick deep red flannel shirt over jeans. No coat, despite the November cold. She’d debated and debated until finally deciding to wear a long, shawl-like sweater that would keep her warm enough on the way to the airport and once in Ireland but wouldn’t be too bulky and awkward on the plane. She’d packed layers in her suitcase to accommodate whatever conditions she was likely to encounter once she arrived in Declan’s Cross.
She adjusted her sweater. She still had her hair in a ponytail. Back when he’d noticed such things, Andy had told her he’d liked her hair that way. She put that thought right out of her mind and gave him a calm, neutral smile. As if he were a cabdriver. “Did you get out to check your traps this morning?”
“Nope. Not back on the water yet after my mishap. Couple more days.”
His “mishap.” Only a Donovan would regard attempted murder as a mishap. Julianne angled him a look. “You’re following doctor’s orders, aren’t you?”
“More or less.”
“What’s the ‘less’?”
He grinned over at her. “Beer.”
She didn’t know if he was kidding. “If you’re not back on the water yet, is it too much for you to drive me to the airport?”
“Driving to Boston is different from hauling lobster traps, and I wouldn’t be doing it if it was too much.”
Julianne looked out her window without responding. They hadn’t parted as friends when they’d broken up over Columbus Day weekend. She hadn’t, anyway. She’d parted angry, hurt, wanting to smother him in his sleep. No high road for her. As much as anything, it was his obliviousness to her feelings that had gotten to her. He’d been so matter-of-fact in dumping her. “Hey, Jules, we’ve had a good run, but you need to focus on your thesis and finish up your degree. I’m just distracting you.”
He didn’t get it that she’d actually fallen in love with him, never mind that she’d told him so. Another dumb move on her part.
When he’d been attacked by those thugs, she’d wondered if on some level she’d helped make it happen. If all that negative energy she’d lasered at him in her mind had put him in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It wasn’t healthy, that kind of thinking. It wasn’t a sin, though, was it? She hadn’t told Father Bracken because she knew, deep down, that she hadn’t wanted Andy hurt. Not really.
No. She really had wanted him hurt. Or thought she had.
“What’s on your mind, Jules?”
“My trip. I’m excited.” It wasn’t an outright lie since for most of the past few days, since she’d first considered an early trip to Ireland, it was all she’d thought about. “Do you want to go to Ireland someday?”
“I guess. I don’t know. Maybe I could pick up an Irish accent. That could be good. You should hear my mother go on about Finian’s Irish accent.”
“Granny, too. She loves it. You call Father Bracken by his first name? I can’t. It feels... I don’t know. Too familiar.”
“I’m not that much of a churchgoer. Mostly he and I just have the occasional shot of whiskey together.”
“But if something happened to you, you’d want—” Julianne gulped in a breath at what she’d been about to say. “Never mind.”
Andy cast her an amused look. “I’d want him to bury me, you mean?”
“Visit you in the hospital is what I was thinking.”
His grin broadened. “No, it wasn’t. Finian did visit me when I was recuperating.”
“Right. Of course.”
She remembered the terror she’d felt when she’d spotted Andy unconscious in the water. She’d jumped off the dock, tried to save him as his brothers had come running in response to her screams for help. They’d leaped into the water and dragged him out to safety.
Suddenly she was desperate to change the subject. “Aer Lingus is in Terminal E.”
“You’ll be in Ireland two weeks?”
“That’s right.”
“Renting a car?”
She shook her head.
He eased his truck into the right lane, traffic picking up as they got closer to the city. “Driving on the left makes you nervous?”
It did, but she wasn’t admitting as much to him, in part because it wasn’t the main reason she wasn’t renting a car. “Renting a car is expensive, and I won’t need one.”
“Is someone picking you up at the airport, or are you taking a bus or something?”
“Lindsey Hargreaves is meeting me at the airport.”
“She’s American, right? Not Irish?”
Julianne nodded. “That’s right.”
“Another marine biologist?”
“She’s