The Mighty Quinns: Brendan. Kate Hoffmann

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      She turned toward the hatch, but Brendan grabbed her arm. He picked up his jacket and held it out to her. “Take this. It’s cold outside.”

      She shook her head, her pale hair tumbling around her face. “No, I’m fine.” She hesitated then gave him a quick smile, the only smile she’d cast his way since they’d met. “Thanks. For the jacket. And for coming to my rescue.”

      With that she was gone, disappearing into the cold December night and returning to a world to which she didn’t seem to belong. Brendan almost went after her, curious to know her name and her story, wondering what had brought her to work at the Longliner. Was she the girlfriend of a fisherman? Had she grown up in Gloucester? And why did her eyes remind him of the sky on a perfect spring day?

      He backed away from the hatch and shook his head. He’d had his doubts about carrying her out of the bar. That had been his first mistake. It would be stupid to compound the error by going after her. She was out of his life, no harm, no foul. He should be happy he’d gotten away so cleanly.

      Yet as he made himself a pot of coffee and settled down to work at his laptop computer, Brendan’s thoughts returned to her again and again, to that winsome smile and that spark of mischief in her eyes. To the curious air of mystery that seemed to surround her. And to the way he felt the instant he touched her, as if they’d made some strange, magnetic connection.

      Brendan shook his head and refocussed on his work. She was gone and he was better off for it. Though Conor and Dylan had fallen into lifelong commitment and everlasting love, Brendan was pragmatic enough to know that he wasn’t meant to do the same. His work required the freedom to come and go at will and he had to protect that freedom at all costs.

      Even if it meant walking away from the most intriguing woman he’d met in years.

      “YOU CAN’T FIRE ME! It wasn’t my fault.”

      Amelia Aldrich Sloane stood outside the Longliner, staring up at the second floor above the bar. The owner of the bar was silhouetted in the window of her tiny room. He tossed out a garbage bag stuffed with her belongings and it landed with a “whoof” at her feet.

      “I warned you the last time,” he said, leaning out the window. “One more fight and you were through. Do you know how much damage you caused?”

      “It’s not my fault,” Amy repeated.

      “The hell it isn’t,” he shouted back.

      “How is it my fault?” she demanded.

      “You’re too damn pretty,” he said tossing her suitcase out the window. “You’re like catnip to a bunch of tomcats. Men can’t seem to keep their hands off you and that starts fights. And fights cost me money, sweetheart. Much more than you’re worth as a waitress.”

      “But I need this job,” Amy cried, running to grab her suitcase as it hit the ground and burst open.

      “I hear Buddy’s House of Crabs is hiring. Get a job there.” With that he slammed the window shut, leaving Amy to stand on the silent street. She cursed softly then grabbed her jacket from the heap and slipped it on. “Well, I wanted adventure in my life,” she muttered, gathering her things. “I guess I should be careful what I wish for.”

      It was half past two in the morning and she’d just lost her room and her job all in one fell swoop. She should have known something was wrong when she had returned to the bar and the other waitresses had refused to talk to her. The owner had been summoned by the police and when he finally got the full story, he’d pulled Amy aside and told her to clear out.

      At first, she thought he was kidding. But when he climbed the stairs to her room and started tossing her belongings out onto the street, she had no choice. She’d raced outside to collect what she could before the bar patrons stumbling home after closing time were able to grab a souvenir or two. As it was, they all got a nice round of chuckles from her predicament.

      “Now what am I supposed to do?” she murmured. Working at the Longliner had been the perfect setup. She needed to stay below the radar and seeing as she worked for tips only, the owner had no need for proof of her identity or her social security number. But the wandering hands of a customer and her rather indignant response had put an end to what she’d hoped would be a long-term job.

      She hadn’t had much of a plan when she’d left her life back in Boston, only that she was determined to get as far away from her old life as possible—away from her dictatorial father and her socialite mother, away from their powerful influence over her life. And most of all, far away from her scheming fiancé, the man who’d grown to love the Aldrich money more than he loved Amy.

      Her life had been planned for her from the moment she was born, the only child of Avery Aldrich Sloane and his beautiful wife Dinah. And for most of her life, she’d dutifully followed the plan. But then one day, just a week before her big society wedding to Craig Atkinson Talbot, she’d come to the realization that if she stayed, she would never really live her own life.

      She had been on the run for nearly six months, lucky enough to keep just one step ahead of the private detectives her father had hired. She’d lived in Salem, in Worcester and in Cambridge, picking up odd waitressing jobs and calling on old friends to put her up on their sofas. She figured if she could just keep out of sight for another six months, then she was in the clear. The trust fund her grandmother had set up for her would be all hers, no strings attached. The day she turned twenty-six years old, she’d become a comfortably wealthy woman, a woman free to experience all the things she’d missed in life, free to search for adventure and excitement.

      As she arranged her belongings neatly on a bench in front of the bait shop, she thought about what the money would mean. She’d always rejected her parents’ obsession with financial matters, thinking their avaricious nature somehow unseemly. But since she’d been trying to live on her own, Amy had realized that money, at least a small amount of it, came in pretty handy.

      Though she’d been brought up in the lap of luxury, Amy had always wanted to test her parents’ boundaries. She’d argued for public school, but was forced to attend an exclusive private prep school. When she’d insisted on a public university, a big college where she could get lost in the crowd, her parents gave her a choice of Sarah Lawrence or Vassar. That time she won a small victory, choosing Columbia University in New York.

      It was at graduate school at Columbia where she’d met her fiancé, a wonderful man from a good Boston family who was studying law, hoping to open a community law office. When she’d first introduced him to her parents, they’d been pleased with his family connections but worried over his career prospects. He was the perfect man for her next rebellious step.

      But that soon changed once Craig fell under the spell of her father’s money and influence. It wasn’t long before he was working for Aldrich Industries as a corporate lawyer. A few months before their wedding, he was promoted to Executive Corporate Counsel, a powerful position that came with a six-figure salary and stock options. It was then that Amy realized his dream of a community law office had been put aside and that the man she’d fallen in love with was not the man she was about to marry.

      So she ran. Just a week before she was scheduled to walk down the aisle, she packed a bag in the middle of the night, drove her car to the train station and hopped the last train out of town. She’d cleaned out her checking account the day before, giving her enough cash to live on for three months. That cash was long gone.

      Amy reached into her pocket and withdrew СКАЧАТЬ