Lilac Lane (Chesapeake Shores #14)(72)

She lifted troubled eyes to meet his. “And when I come back, we’ll talk,” she promised.

“I told you to take as long as you need. I know I presented you with a complicated situation. There’s no rush for you to make a decision.”

“It’s certainly a situation I never envisioned finding myself in, and that’s the truth,” she said. “If I’d been asked about something like this, I would have considered the answer to be obvious, but it’s you and me, Bryan. There’s nothing simple about it.”

“We can go on as we have been,” he told her. “We can remain friends and forget the rest.”

She looked startled. “You could do that?”

“I wouldn’t want to, but if that was the only choice you gave me, I could manage it.” He held her gaze. “Or I could sit with Connor, tell him the story and have him do whatever it takes to clarify the situation legally. That would probably be the sensible thing to do.”

“You’d be willing to do that? To tell him so much of your personal story?”

“Perhaps it’s time. Past time, more likely. It’s something I should have resolved years ago, but I clung to hope for a long time, then just pushed the whole marriage issue aside and tried to forget about it altogether. The only thing I pursued was finding my daughter, and you already know how that turned out. Dead end after dead end. I couldn’t bring myself to give up, even though the very detectives I went to kept telling me it was a waste of my money. I thought each new one I hired would see something that the others had missed.”

“It seems you have some thinking to do while I’m gone as well, then,” Kiera said. “Perhaps it is a good thing that I’ll be away for a few days.”

“Don’t waste a minute of your trip on any of this, Kiera. Just enjoy yourself. Come back with a hundred photographs on your cell phone and as many stories to tell. I’ll be eager to hear them all.”

She laughed, the sound far more lighthearted than their conversation up till now. “With my daughter a famous photographer, you think there will only be a hundred photos? I’m counting on her filling albums with pictures from this trip. I’ll be wanting to show all my friends back in Dublin.”

At the careless mention of Dublin, Bryan felt his heart still. Perhaps all the talk and worry about what the future might hold for the two of them was to be wasted time. It was entirely possible that her mind was set on returning to Ireland and that would end the matter.

Now was not the time for that discussion, though. There would be time to explore all of the difficult questions hanging in the air between them when she returned from San Francisco. And that uncertainty gave him just the excuse he needed to postpone that long-overdue conversation with Connor just a little longer.





Chapter 17



Bryan couldn’t seem to shake off his impulsive offer to Kiera to speak to Connor O’Brien about his situation, even though he’d decided the conversation could be postponed. Whether things between him and Kiera moved forward or not, he recognized that something had changed inside him. He was finally ready to put that part of his past behind him. He would never give up looking for his daughter, but the marriage was long dead and he needed to let go of whatever legal ties might still bind him to Melody. He still had a future to live, if only he were free to seize it. If he’d learned nothing else from this time with Kiera, he had learned that. Life didn’t end after a tragedy. It was right there, waiting for you to grab it.

A couple nights later when he spotted Connor at the bar in the pub with Mick, Bryan came out of the kitchen and joined them. “Connor, I was wondering if I might have a word with you when you have the time. I’d come by your office, but I’m pretty much chained to this place until Luke gets back to town.”

“How about your office, then?” Connor suggested, gesturing toward the kitchen. “Would that work, or is it too busy in there for you to talk?”

“It’s mostly quiet tonight,” Bryan said. “I can keep up with the orders while we talk, if you don’t mind a few interruptions.”

“Heather drops the kids off in my office every now and then just to challenge my ability to concentrate,” Connor told him. “It’ll be fine.”

Back in the kitchen, Bryan made quick work of a couple of orders, then turned to Connor. “This is strictly confidential, right?”

“Of course, though if you want to give me a dollar to retain my services, that will make it official that lawyer-client confidentiality is firmly in place.” He shook his head. “I’ve never entirely understood why that dollar makes people feel more comfortable, but it seems to be reassuring.”

Bryan handed over the dollar. “I think I get it. It’s symbolic, if nothing else.”

“So’s a handshake, according to my father,” Connor said. “I’ve seen him make multimillion-dollar development deals on that alone.”

“And fifty-cent deals with his grandchildren,” Bryan added, laughing. “Okay, here’s the situation. I’ll give you the short version, and you can ask all the relevant questions about whatever I’ve skipped over.”

“That works for me.”

Bryan drew in a deep breath, then summarized the history of his marriage, the birth of his daughter, his wife’s abrupt departure and his subsequent futile efforts to find them.