A Chesapeake Shores Christmas. Sherryl Woods

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СКАЧАТЬ caught his younger son’s eye and saw a surprising amount of barely banked anger in his gaze.

      “Connor? You’ve been awfully quiet,” Mick said, giving him a warning look. “Isn’t there something you want to say?”

      Connor stood and cast a sour look at everyone else in the room before turning the brunt of his anger on Mick. “Are you all out of your flipping minds?” he demanded heatedly. “Have you forgotten that Mom ditched us all, Dad included? And now you’re going to welcome her back so she can break all of our hearts again? Well, not me.”

      “Connor O’Brien!” Mick said, his voice booming in warning. “Keep a civil tongue in your head.”

      “Save the lecture, Dad,” Connor retorted. “I’m out of here.”

      As he tore out of the room, Mick turned to Kevin. “Go after him,” he ordered.

      “No,” Megan said, standing. She looked shaken, but determined. “I’ll go.”

      “Mom, maybe that’s not such a good idea,” Abby protested.

      “I’m the one he’s unhappy with,” Megan said. “It’s up to me to fix it.”

      “She’s right,” Nell said, speaking for the first time. “Let her go.”

      Mick wanted to stop Megan, to do whatever was necessary to protect her from more hurtful accusations, but he knew better than to try. “If that boy says one disrespectful word to you, if he—”

      She gave him a chiding look. “I’ll handle it. The rest of you enjoy this wonderful meal Nell fixed for us.” She gave Nell’s shoulder a squeeze before leaving the room.

      Filled with regret, Mick watched her go. Abby returned to her seat beside him and patted his hand.

      “It’s going to be okay, Dad,” she said, setting aside whatever reservations she’d had. “Mom will get through to Connor. She has with the rest of us.”

      Mick wanted to believe Abby was right, but he knew what the others might not understand. Connor’s whole reason for becoming an attorney, the drive behind his success, was a grim determination to help other men get even for their wives’ betrayals. He already had a reputation in his young career as the kind of attorney any man would want in his corner during a particularly acrimonious divorce. Mick couldn’t help but be proud of his success, but he worried about the embittered motivation behind it.

      On the surface, Connor had seemed like a typically carefree teen, taking Megan’s departure in stride, but it had affected him deeply. It had left him jaded about marriage in general, and especially about Mick’s marriage to Megan. During the divorce, when Mick had acquiesced to most of Megan’s requests, when he’d supported her lifestyle in New York until she’d been able to pay her own way, Connor had viewed it as a sign of weakness. When Mick had told him he intended to do right by the mother of his children, Connor had told him he was a fool, then stormed from the house. Even as a young teen, he’d had a temper and a tendency to speak his mind. To this day he and Mick had an uneasy relationship because of his ill-considered remarks back then. Usually, though, he disguised his hostility behind a jovial facade that the others rarely saw through.

      So, while it wasn’t surprising that Connor wasn’t happy about Mick’s announcement, it was a shock to see the facade slip. Mick had hoped for a different reaction, but with Connor resentments ran deep. Since Mick had been carrying his own deep-seated grudges against his brothers for years, he understood how difficult it was to let go of the past. He’d just hoped for better from his son, for Megan’s sake, if not his own.

      One way or another, though, he wouldn’t let Connor ruin what should be the happiest time of his life—the chance to finally get it right with Megan and bring his family back together. If Megan couldn’t get Connor to listen to reason, Mick would. One way or another, the O’Briens were going to celebrate the new year with a wedding. He’d see to it.

       2

      Megan caught up with Connor as he was trying to start his car. She slid into the passenger side of the expensive two-seater sports car and closed the door, then gave him a defiant look.

      “Wherever you’re headed, you’re stuck with me,” she told him.

      He scowled at her, but when she didn’t budge, he shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

      He threw the car into gear and shot out of the driveway and along the coastal road at a pace Megan knew was designed to terrify her. She clung to the door and kept silent until they reached town, where he was forced to slow down. He pulled to a stop in a parking space on Shore Road facing the bay, his jaw set, his scowl firmly in place.

      “Feel better?” she inquired. “You do know that getting us killed probably won’t solve anything.”

      “At least you wouldn’t get to marry Dad and ruin his life again,” he said, his tone petulant.

      “Does your father seem as if his life’s ruined?”

      “Maybe not, but only because he’s living in a dreamworld right now. Just wait till you take off again.”

      “Maybe what we really need to talk about is how I ruined your life,” she suggested. “That’s what this is actually about.”

      “You’re irrelevant to my life. You have been for years.”

      Megan blinked back tears at the deliberately cruel words. “If I truly meant nothing to you, you wouldn’t sound so bitter,” she said quietly. She tilted her head and studied him. “You’ve fooled us all, you know. You have this easy, lighthearted way about you, but I think hurts run even more deeply. You’re like your father that way.”

      “Don’t try analyzing me, Mother. You don’t know anything about me.”

      “Is that so?” she countered. “Let’s see. I know you graduated at the top of your class from college, that you could have played pro baseball, but chose to go to law school. I know that you won a highly coveted job as a law clerk with a top Baltimore firm. I know when one of the senior partners was getting a divorce, he chose you to represent him and bragged that he’d never seen anyone fight harder for a client.” She gave Connor an assessing look. “I assume that was because you saw me in his wife and your father in him. Obviously my divorce from your father was good for something.”

      Connor looked faintly surprised by her recitation. “What, did you hire a private detective to dig up all that information when you started seeing Dad again? You must have figured you’d need a way to worm your way back into all our lives.”

      Megan sighed. “I didn’t need to hire anybody, Connor. I’ve kept tabs on each of you. Abby and I grew close again after she moved to New York. I went to Chicago to see Bree’s plays. I even came to a few of your college ball games.”

      He snorted with disbelief.

      “Remember the game against Carolina?” she said. “You hit an inside-the-park home run, and when you slid into home base, you broke your wrist.” She shuddered at the memory of his face contorted with pain. “It took everything in me not to run to you on the field.”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ