“Because she’s special,” Luke said. “While you two are nothing but nuisances. Go away, and don’t try sneaking a look when I open the door.”
Connor laughed. “Don’t you know we go by every night and peer in the window to see what’s been accomplished? Dad’s crew has performed miracles in record time, it seems to me. It already looks nothing like the French bistro that was there before.”
Moira chuckled at Luke’s stunned reaction. “You didn’t think to cover the window from all the prying eyes? Even I would have known to do that.”
“I asked them to stay away and I trusted them to do it,” Luke said, scowling fiercely at Connor and his wife. “Believe me, I’ll correct that the minute we get inside. In fact, I’m going to Ethel’s this minute to see if she has some rolls of brown paper I can use.”
Heather beamed. “Good, then that will give Moira time to come to Sally’s with me. You can join us there, or I’ll walk her over to the pub when we’re through.” She winked at Moira. “Okay with you? I think Luke needs time to come to grips with more evidence of his family’s sneakiness.”
“I would love coffee,” Moira admitted, though what she wanted even more was to get to know another woman who’d had to learn to cope with the tight-knit O’Briens.
“I’ll join you,” Connor said at once.
“No, you won’t,” Heather said. “Not that I wouldn’t love another few minutes with you, but you’re due in court in half an hour. Weren’t you already grumbling about how late we were when we dropped little Mick off at day care?”
Connor glanced at his watch, muttered a curse, then dropped a kiss on his wife’s cheek. “Love you. See you later.”
Connor took off and, after casting a suspicious look at Heather, Luke left them at the door of Ethel’s Emporium. “If you don’t have her at the pub in a half hour, I’m coming to look for you,” he warned.
Heather grinned at him. “Don’t you think I’m perfectly capable of running through all your secrets in half an hour? I can probably do the condensed version in fifteen minutes and scare her off forever.”
Luke sighed. “Please don’t.”
Heather patted his cheek. “Okay, since you asked so nicely.”
It was only a few steps to reach Sally’s, but by then they’d passed both Shanna’s bookstore and Bree’s flower shop and caught their attention. The next thing Moira knew, they were tagging along, so there were four of them tucked into a booth at the small café, coffee and croissants in front of them. The three O’Brien women wore expectant expressions.
“Am I supposed to entertain you now?” Moira asked dryly.
“It must seem that way,” Bree said, laughing. “Sorry. Having been born into this family, I never thought how intimidating it must be to be an outsider.”
“Trust me, it’s terrifying,” Shanna said.
“Amen to that,” Heather added. “But once you’ve been accepted, Moira, it’s like being in some kind of giant coed secret society. For someone like me, who was an only child, it’s been pretty amazing.”
“All you need to know,” Bree told her, “is that while O’Briens in general stick together against the outside world, the women stick together against the men. I was the quiet one in my family, and with a father like Mick, I can’t tell you what it meant to me to have Abby and Jess as backup.”
Moira looked from one woman to another and wondered if they could be friends. They were so different from the girls she’d known back home. These were confident, successful women in their own right. They’d not only found, but established, careers they loved, while she was still terrified to hope that she might have found her own sense of direction with just a handful of praised photos on a pub wall and a few jobs lined up for her return to Dublin.
“How did you all turn out this way?” she blurted without thinking how it might sound.
Heather regarded her curiously. “What way?”
“Strong. Sure of yourselves. Oh, I can hold my own in an argument. Some have even called me a pain in the butt or worse.” She gave them a knowing grin, perfectly aware of the terrible first impression she’d made on them in Ireland. Without waiting for them to fumble around trying to deny it, she added, “But that’s not the same as knowing who you are and what you’re meant to be.”
All three of them startled her by laughing.
“Oh, Moira, is that how we seem to you?” Bree asked. “You should have been around when I came home from Chicago with my tail between my legs, having failed at being a playwright, which was, I thought, my dream. I opened Flowers on Main because flowers were absolutely the only other thing I knew anything about, thanks to Gram and her gardening.”
“But you have a theater of your own here in town now,” Moira recalled.
Bree nodded. “I got my legs back under me, in part thanks to Jake believing in me even more than I believed in myself.”
“And the bookstore wasn’t my first career,” Shanna said. “Only after I’d failed abysmally at my first marriage did I leave both a boring job and my old life and come here to do this. I met Kevin before I even got the doors open. Talk about the ultimate unexpected bonus!”
Heather glanced from Bree to Shanna. “I’d forgotten how much we all have in common. I was teaching and hated it. When I got pregnant with little Mick, I quit and was living with Connor. I left him when it seemed unlikely he’d ever want to get married, but his mother encouraged me to come to Chesapeake Shores and settle here. It was even her idea
