Haunting Beauty (4 page)

“Well, people don’t disappear without a reason.”

“No, I don’t suppose they do.”

She stared at him, sensing somehow that there was more to his response than the simple words.

“Nothing was ever proven?” she pressed.

“All of Ballyfionúir was in an uproar looking for blood. They went for the easiest target—some poor wanker who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He offed himself before they could beat a confession out of him. Good riddance they all said.”

“But you don’t think he was guilty?”

“What does it matter what I think?” he asked. “Guilty, innocent—it’s all relative isn’t it? Last month, I would have said of course he did it, the bollocks. But today . . . well, here you are, obviously alive. Who’s to say he did anything to be guilty of, now?”

“You have a point,” she said, looking troubled.

“When was the last time you saw your mother, Danni?” he asked, leaning forward. “When did she leave you?”

The teakettle let out a shriek, startling them both. Danni rose, moving gracefully as she poured the boiling water over tea bags and set a tray with cups and saucers. He noticed she used dainty china that looked very old and fragile. It was mismatched, as if each piece had been selected for its unique pattern rather than its status as one of a set. He suspected that, like her dog, she’d rescued the pieces from junk stores or sales tables, assembling them into a new family.

She returned to the table and poured in silence while he waited impatiently for her to answer his question. When had she last seen her mother, Fia MacGrath?

With effort, he held his tongue, sitting placidly while she laid out the tea, performing the task like an elegant ritual. She had slender fingers with short nails, unadorned but for a silver ring on the middle one with the entwined symbol for yin and yang at its center. Her wrists were small and feminine, her ivory skin smooth and creamy. Her hair hung to her shoulders in a thick, glossy veil of what seemed a thousand shades of gold and amber, russet and toffee. Like the sunrise, it defied description.

She looked up suddenly and caught him staring. At her feet, the dog growled.

“It was Wednesday, October twenty-fifth, 1989. I was four or five,” she said, answering his question as she took her seat. “I don’t know which. When my mother didn’t come back, it was discovered that the papers she’d filled out for the day care center were all false. The address, the name, everything on it. They assumed my birth date was incorrect as well.” She looked at the announcement again. “If this is real, I was five.”

“October twenty-fifth,” he repeated. Was there some significance to the date?

“I don’t know why she picked that day,” Danni said, reading his mind. “If there’s a reason, twenty years of thinking about it hasn’t made it any clearer to me. When did she disappear from Ireland?”

“About three weeks before that.”

“Three weeks? What was she doing all that time?”

He shook his head, feeling her frustration, her hurt, that such a painful event should happen on such a random timeline. He wanted to reach out and offer her comfort, but the hypocrisy of it was too much for him to manage.

“I know even less than you do,” he said. “I expected you to answer that for me. You and your brother,” he murmured, almost to himself.

Her eyes glistened and she lowered her lashes to hide them from him. “I didn’t remember that I had a brother,” she said. “I think I used to talk about him, when I was little. But everyone assumed I’d made him up. After a while, I guess I thought they were right.”

Bloody hell.
Where was Rory? What had Fia done with Danni’s brother? Had both children made the journey to the U.S. with her? Or didn’t Rory make it out of Ireland alive? Had
they
gotten to him first?

“How can you be so sure?” she asked suddenly. “What makes you so certain that this is my mother? That this is my family?”

“Aside from the resemblance?”

“It could be a coincidence, nothing more.”

She said it earnestly and yet she didn’t believe it. He could hear it in her voice, in the way it wavered between hunger and hurt. There was too much mystery and darkness about his story—too much of the same about her own—for her to be joyous over the news of a lost family suddenly found. But he could see the longing there inside her, knew instinctively that she’d waited her whole life for someone to walk through the door and tell her she wasn’t alone.

“It’s no coincidence, Danni,” he said, forcing the words past his guilt. “It’s the truth I’m telling you. Have you not a birthmark, right here?”

He took her left hand in his, turning it as he gently pushed the sleeve of her sweater up to reveal the pale skin on the other side. There, just below the crook, was the faint pink rose-shaped pattern he sought. His grandmother had said it would be there, but some part of him had doubted it. He was a fool, to be certain.

Danni bent her head to stare at the birthmark, and the soft, clean scent of her hair seemed to wrap him in a warm and unexpected intimacy. He brushed the small mark with his thumb, thinking her skin felt like heated satin. She jerked slightly, as if she, too, had felt the electricity in the touch. Her face was close to his, their heads bent together.

“It’s a family mark,” he murmured, looking into her eyes. She stared back, hesitant, as aware as he of the current that traveled through that small point of contact.

He had the sudden desire to lean closer still, to press his mouth to the erratic pulse beating at her throat. To let his hands skim up and under the blue sweater to the soft curves it hid. For a moment, he considered actually doing it and the idea started a fire burning deep inside him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so caught up in a woman. She was blushing again; no doubt his thoughts were there in the heat of his gaze. A part of him was glad. As wrong, as inconvenient as this attraction was, he wanted her to know. Needed her to feel it, too.

Flustered, she tugged her arm free and pulled down her sleeve, hiding the pink flower. “Ten percent of all babies are born with birthmarks,” she said coolly. But her breath hitched at the end, betraying her.

“Not that birthmark.”

He watched the play of emotion on her face. Hope, disbelief, and that heartbreaking anguish. She took a sip of her tea, shifting under his steady gaze.

“Is this for real? Are
you
for real?”

“I am.”

She gave a small nod of acceptance and then asked, “So my father . . . he’s still alive?”

“Aye,” he answered. “Living in Ballyfionúir.”

“And does he know you’ve found me?”

“Not yet. I wanted to be sure first.”

“And you are now?”

“Absolutely.”

He paused for a moment, pulling his thoughts away from the light scent of her skin back to the matter at hand. He was here for a reason that had nothing to do with the way the sun spilling through the window turned her hair into a flame of a thousand colors or his need to touch it.

“Is there anything at all you remember about your childhood?” he asked softly. “About Ireland or the night you left there?”

She shook her head. “Nothing before my mom disappeared.”

“Well, let me tell you a bit, then. You’re from a very old family, Danni. And from a place that’s filled with lore. It’s in the air, the water. Living here, you probably can’t grasp what that entails, but there are things that happen on the Isle of Fennore that happen nowhere else in the world.”

A bemused smile tilted the corners of her mouth. “I come from an old family?”

He nodded. “It’s thought that your ancestors—mine, too—were ancient Druids. Fearsome people. People who possessed powers uncommon to the ordinary man or woman.”

The smile widened a little. “My ancestors were superheroes?”

He smiled back, but knew it didn’t reach his eyes. “Have you never felt it, then? Never known something before it happened? Never felt that you were special?”

Her smile faltered and she dropped her gaze to her tea. “No. I’ve never felt special.” Standing, she took her cup to the sink and rinsed it. Her back was straight, her chin raised, but he could almost feel the old wounds inside her open up.

“Your island sounds like a magical place,” she said lightly, turning with a bright smile that cut him to the bone. He knew it cost her, that smile.

“You should come see it,” he said.

It was the opening he wanted, but still he felt reluctant as he reached in his envelope and pulled out the last item. It was a thick packet of papers secured by a rubber band. On the top sheet was an itinerary with a logo imprinted in the corner of a ship and airplane emerging from a bank of clouds. Written on the top was Danni’s name. Sean hadn’t wanted to buy the tickets before he met Danni, but his grandmother had purchased them already and insisted he bring them. She’d insisted on everything. So far she’d been right.

He pushed the packet across the table and waited for Danni to retrieve it. She lifted the papers curiously, staring with a frown for a moment before her eyes widened in surprise.

“Are these tickets? With my name on them? Tickets to Ireland? And . . . These are one-way, for heaven’s sake. For Friday.
This
Friday.”

“I thought you’d want to leave as soon as possible,” he told her. “And I wasn’t sure when you’d want to return. It seemed easier to book that part later. We don’t intend to keep you there. Unless, of course, that’s what you want.”

“What I want . . .” she trailed off, overwhelmed. Like a child reaching for a security blanket, she bent down and scooped up the strange dog, holding it close in her protective arms. The creature stared at her with adoration as she stroked its fur, looking somehow like a cornered animal herself, desperate to find a way out. He didn’t understand this response any more than he had her others.

“Have you a passport?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“But what? Is it not what you’ve wished for, Danni? To know who you are and where you come from?”

Those huge eyes lifted to stare into his, giving him the perfect view into her soul. It was a lovely thing, pure and hopeful and so very vulnerable. He cursed himself, but he didn’t look away. In his pocket, the jewelry box seemed to thrum, demanding he take it out and give it to her now. This was the time, he knew. But it felt too much like a betrayal and he couldn’t do it.

Swallowing his shame, he simply said, “It’s time for you to come home Dáirinn MacGrath. What’s left of your family needs you.”

Chapter Three

D
ANNI closed the front door behind Sean and then leaned against it, listening for the sound of an engine driving away to signal that he was gone, but it never came. Half expecting that she’d find him still standing on her porch, she cracked the blinds and peeked out. She didn’t see him, but felt the need to open the door and look again. Nothing but the rustling leaves in the trees and the frantic chirping of birds waited outside. Disconcerted by the lingering sense of him, she shut the door again and locked it.

He’d been real this time. She let out a shaky breath. Very real.

And even though a part of her had expected him, anticipated and dreaded his appearance with equal measures, she still couldn’t believe it.

In the flesh he’d been even more compelling than he was in the vision. She’d felt the pull of him, even as warning signals were going off in her head. Even as she questioned the fantastic tale he’d told. There was something that didn’t ring true about Sean Ballagh. A subtext to his message that she hadn’t been able to grasp. The sense that what he hadn’t said could be more important than what he had.

For a moment the sun dimmed and she thought of the vision, of the cavern where she’d seen her mother arguing with whoever had stood in the shadows. Was her vision from the night they’d disappeared? Is that why it had felt like a memory? And what about the grave, that gaping hole in the sea of green? Her own body crumpled inside it beside the adolescent boy’s? What could it mean?

Overwhelmed by her own knotted feelings and questions, she went back to the kitchen, shoving the picture, the newspaper clipping, and the tickets back into the envelope. It was nearly nine and she should have left for work already. It was her day to open the antique store she managed with Yvonne Hearne—foster mother, con fidant, friend, and employer all rolled into one.

Quickly she cleared Sean’s cup and saucer, adding it to the sink with her own. He hadn’t drunk any of his tea. Probably he would have preferred coffee. She’d remember that.

It was this thought—perhaps more than any other—that stopped her. She’d remember because she would see him again. She was going to Ireland with him. To meet her family . . . a family she had no recollection of.

How was it she could recall the feeling of flying she’d had as a child when the air would turn and a vision would come, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember her parents, her brother, her life before Arizona? She hadn’t even recognized her own mother at first when she’d seen her in the vision this morning. Danni had been five when she’d been dumped at preschool that day. Surely that was old enough to remember
something
of her life before. But she didn’t. Not any of it.

In the years after her mother had dropped her off and vanished, there’d been counseling and intensive therapy. For the first six months after she’d been abandoned, Danni hadn’t spoken at all. They chalked it up to the trauma of her circumstances. Decided she must have been abused before being deserted, presumed she was a victim of much more than rejection. Over the years she’d come to think they were right. What else would make a five-year-old kid shut up for half a year?

She’d never known anything about who she was. And the blank page of her ignorance had itself become her past. She’d learned to live with it. But the shadowy glimpse Sean had given her of who she might have been had cracked that illusion. She had history. A life before Cactus Wren Preschool.

She wouldn’t discount what she’d seen in the vision—the terror in the cavern or the bodies in the grave—but neither would she base her decisions on it, because she didn’t yet know what it all meant. Death was a metaphorical thing, wasn’t it? The precursor to rebirth in every myth she’d ever read. And besides, what Sean had said was true. Finding her family, knowing who she was—it was what she’d wished for her whole life. Nothing else really mattered.