Pursued by the Rogue (The Fairy Tales of New York Book 1) (14 page)

He looked to the long bar and smiled at who he saw there. Faith and his father were doing the tending, and Ronan was there too for some reason, happily at rest between Mercy and Zel. Dawn’s mother was there. Dawn’s encouraging aunt.

“Gang’s all here,” he murmured as Dawn slid her hand inside his.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“I am.”

“I’ll have you know that I got at least half those people offside with me last night. Maybe all of them. Deliberately.”

“They love you.”

“I love them too.”

Faith saw them first and her smile split her face as she started cheering and hefted a bottle of champagne and let the cork fly. A row of champagne glasses sat atop the gleaming old bar and in a showy display his sister ran liquid into the lot of them without ever breaking the flow. That brought on another round of cheers, although maybe it was just that they’d spotted Dawn. Faith then reached down and brought another two champagne glasses full of ice and lime and mint and something fizzy and set one in front of Zel and one in front of Dawn’s mom.

Drinks clearly had been sorted but before they could get to them, Mercy and Zel had to hug Dawn, and then Ronan had to hug her too and introduce himself while he was doing it, much to Finn’s narrow-eyed amusement. Dawn’s aunt had to hug her. And then it was just Dawn standing in front of her mom.

“Hey, Mom.” Dawn’s voice held only the slightest wobble. “No more fifty-fifty. I don’t have it.”

Her mother nodded but didn’t seem to be able to speak.

“Did you—did someone tell Dad?” Dawn asked next.

Dawn’s mother nodded again, and then her eyes filled with tears as she gave a heaving sob that she seemed to have been saving up for years. “Oh, Dawn, he cried. I cried. I haven’t stopped crying.” Finn glanced at his father who nodded in confirmation. “It’s such a burden gone. I am so, so glad.”

And then Dawn was in her mother’s arms and crying too.

Finn’s father brought forth a box of tissues from behind the bar and gallantly offered them around, and Finn was never more grateful to the old man when the next thing he did was raise a frosted glass of Guinness and press a glass of champagne into Dawn’s hand.

“A toast,” his father said and made sure everyone else had a glass of something to go with it. He held his beer out at arm’s length and Finn, Faith and Ronan stretched so that their glasses almost touched his. They knew this toasting circle of old. It was a Sullivan tradition.

“C’mon,” Faith urged Mercy and Zel. “The glasses have to almost touch, that’s the rule and no spilling. Then when the toast is said, we clink.”

“I love being Irish by association,” said Zel.

“You’re not alone, lassie.” His father had put on his thickest Irish brogue. “Sláinte Mhaith.”

Sláinte Mhaith.

A chorus in reply and the clinking of glasses for percussion.

To good health.

“So has everybody met each other?” asked Dawn and got a round of yesses in reply. “Mom, Meg, this is Finn.”

“We’ve met,” said Meg. “Of course, if you want to help us out a little more here, you might tell us the status of your relationship.”

“Oh.” Dawn blushed beautifully. “Of course. He’s my, ah …”

Finn smiled at her and nodded encouragingly.

Dawn cleared her throat and started again. “He’s my beloved.”

Damn right he was.

“Oh, word of the
day
,” said Mercy admiringly. “Bee-lov-ed. Love it.”

“Hey, Finn.” Zel grinned at him. “JP’s been telling us all about you as a kid. Tales of great valor and bad haircuts. Pictures and everything.”

“I’ve told them nothing about your tiara,” Faith offered solemnly. “And I never will. Come here so I can kiss you. You too, Dawn.”

Faith did a damn fine job of hugging them, the bar in between notwithstanding.

His father did the same. “I’ve been singing your praises to Vivian and Meg at full volume. Thought you might need a little help in that direction.” Pop grinned. “You intending to play for us again this evening? Something cheerful?”

He could.

Call it duty or respect for his family but Finn had never once refused to play in this bar when asked to. Tonight though, he hesitated. “There’s a song in my heart and in my head, but I don’t have the notes for it yet,” he said, trying his best to explain where he was at with the music. For the first time in forever he wanted to focus his attention elsewhere. “I don’t want to perform for a crowd tonight. I will in the future, you know that, Pop. But tonight I just want to ask Dawn to dance.”

Mercy sighed. So did Dawn’s Aunt Meg.

“That does it,” said Faith. “I’m calling Case and I’ll try and get hold of Ty. I am officially declaring tonight a Sullivan
event
.”

*

Three hours later,
Dawn sat with her friends in the last booth at Sully’s, a booth that now had another table butting neatly against it, and half a dozen chairs scattered around it. A jug of virgin mojitos and a jug of water sat on the two tables amidst the debris of plates, cutlery, napkins and condiments that went with a pub supper.

At some point the two tables had been laden with mini burgers and skinny fries, steak and Guinness pies, garden salad, Caesar salad, baby back pork ribs, and to top it all off, an entire baked cheesecake with a wild berry topping.

The main meals had been eaten and so had half the cheesecake. No one appeared to be in any hurry to leave. Her mother and aunt looked as flushed and happy as Dawn had ever seen them. JP, Faith’s father, sat with them, and Faith, in the interests of singing Finn’s praises to Dawn’s family, had brought out the ‘Finbar-Sullivan-poster-collection’. The first one she unrolled was a glossy picture of Finn playing on the steps of some famous concert hall in Europe.

“Berlin,” said Zel when she saw it. “Classy.”

The next one was of Finn and three others in a room, and he was younger then.

“Juilliard Quartet,” said Faith with the snap of her fingers. “I remember that one. This is Josef. Gil’s dad.”

Out the posters rolled, and with them Finn’s bemusement. He hadn’t been expecting this, Dawn could tell.

He wasn’t used to it.

Faith taped them all to the wall, and then JP carefully pulled out his wallet and withdrew a photo of his beloved Kathleen and taped it smack bang in the middle of all of them.

Because,
“Kathleen, she’d want to see this for herself.”

Finn’s other brother, Casey, had arrived, along with a raggedy array of musician friends. Ty hadn’t been sighted yet – getting hold of him when he was in court was akin to winning the lottery, Faith told them.

He was missing out, was all Dawn thought. On family. On this night bursting with joy. And maybe most of the joy was hers but sharing had never come easier.

Dawn loved and was loved, and her future stretched out like a glorious, glittering road. No telling what it held, but not Huntington’s.

Not Huntington’s.

Finn’s father had been taking photos and sending them through to one of the nurses at the nursing home where her father was. How he’d gotten hold of the nurse’s number was anyone’s guess, but Dawn figured it involved the Blarney Stone.

Apparently the nurse was showing them to Dawn’s father as they came in.

A father who could no longer talk but he could still recognize loved ones and there was no one he loved more than his wife and daughter.

Every time JP sent the photo through, Dawn’s mother laughed and cried and hugged Dawn some more.

“This is crazy,” said Dawn as she extricated herself from the latest round of hugs. Casey had wanted to hug her too, and had, until Finn had chased him and Ronan to the stage and followed in their wake.

“If he plays, we’re all going to cry again,” said Mercy. “Stop that man!”

But Finn didn’t take the stage with his brothers. Instead, he approached the nearest table, and moments later the people sitting at it were standing and dragging the table back a foot or so. He repeated the process with a different table and then another, and then a smiling Ronan stepped up to the microphone.

“So welcome to Sully’s and if you don’t already know us, I’m Ronan Sullivan and this is my brother, Case. Our other brother, who’s making you shift the furniture, that’s Finbar. You might have heard of him. He plays the violin.” Ronan began tuning his guitar and Casey did likewise with his banjo. “Our father, JP, is up the back and so’s our sister, Faith. They run the place. We’ve one other brother who can’t get here right now, and we’re going to kick his arse for that later. His name’s Ty, just in case you see him first.”

“Hey, Mercy. Remember Ty?” murmured Zel. “I do. All the way from my punishment chair to Mother Superior’s office.”

And then Ronan began speaking again.

“We’re going to play a little tune for you that Finn’s requested. I tried to talk him out of it because we haven’t played this one since we were teenagers. I told him I couldn’t remember the words and therefore couldn’t play it. Truth is I know them by heart and so will many of you. Little banjo riff to start off with. Little song about a young lad who sees a girl on a village green when she’s sweet sixteen. And falls in love with her.” Ronan glanced at his brother who nodded and stopped tuning. “This one’s for Finn and Dawn and we wish them nothing but love.”

The first notes of an old, old ballad drifted on the air as Finn walked towards her.

“Oh, wow,” said Mercy. “JP, where are the tissues? I’m going to need them.”

“Use a napkin,” Faith murmured, with a smile that lit her from the inside. “We’ve run out of tissues.”

And then Dawn only had eyes for Finn as he stopped in front of her chair and held out his hand. Love stamped his face and his mossy, forest green gaze was just for her.

“I have déjà vu,” said Mercy. “Didn’t this happen ten years ago too?”

“Speak for yourself,” said Zel. “I wasn’t here. How could I have
missed
this?”

“Will you dance with me, Dawn?” Finn asked quietly and she nodded and took his hand and he led her to the tiny open space he’d cleared between tables and the stage.

He turned when they got there and she stepped seamlessly into his arms as if they’d done this before, a thousand times or more.

In her dreams they had.

“Not exactly the beach in the moonlight,” he murmured.

No, it wasn’t. “This is perfect.”

Ronan sang of love and Finn echoed him. “I love you, Dawn.”

“I love you too.”

“Will you be with me? Live with me, walk through life at my side, no matter what?”

“I will.” Never had she been more certain. “I’ll dance with you anywhere.”

The End

Tempting the Knight

by Heidi Rice

Copyright © 2015

Brooklyn.

T
yrone Sullivan cracked
open an eyelid as the jaunty jingle of Irish pan pipes and fiddles blasted him out of a dream starring Mila Kunis and a quart of Rocky Road ice cream. Darkness and the gentle sway of the Brooklyn Bay registered alongside the throbbing in his groin, before the fiddles and pipes returned.

What the hell was his brothers’ band doing playing on his house barge in the middle of the freaking night?

The fiddle and pipes stared up again. And memory flashed, flushing out the last images of Mila dripping ice cream.

Son of a bitch, his youngest brother Finn had loaded the band’s signature tune onto his iPhone as the ringtone yesterday when he’d gone ‘round to Finn’s new place to share a beer after work.

Ty bolted upright. And pain exploded across his left eyebrow at the exact same moment he remembered he’d zoned out on the house barge’s cramped front bunk while reviewing his latest case—a single mom battling an eviction notice in Bensonhurst—instead of making it to the bed in the back.

He groped for the phone, his boner deflating as all thoughts of Mila vanished in a puff of agony.

“This better be good,” he growled into the phone as he rubbed his now throbbing brow and swung his bare feet to the floor.

“Is this Tyrone Sullivan? Faith’s brother? The attorney?” The woman’s voice sounded clipped and tense.

“Sure, who is this?” The cut-glass accent seemed to originate from the Upper East Side by way of Buckingham Palace, so whoever the woman was, she sure as hell wasn’t a potential client. And why the heck was she calling at, he checked the phone’s clock—two o’clock in the goddamn morning?

‘It’s Zel.’

Huh?
‘I don’t know anyone called Zel.’

She cleared her throat. “Sorry, Zelda Madison, I’m a friend of your sister Faith’s. We met once at St. John the Apostle Academy. You probably don’t remember me, but I…”

“I remember you.” He cut off the hurried explanation as shock was edged out by temper, and the weird pulse of heat in his crotch—which had to be a layover from Mila and the Rocky Road.

Even if he could have forgotten how this woman had nearly got Faith expelled from the boarding school his old man had saved every penny to pay for, he could hardly have missed how her antics had been plastered over the tabloids, not to mention every scandal sheet and glossy magazine in the country, ever since her misspent youth. Not that he read that shit himself. But the woman was legendary, or rather notorious, for her bad choices and her even worse behavior.