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He looked up at the top of the statue. If he didn’t focus on something else he was afraid he’d kiss her again. She looked so adorable in her confusion. “My father brought my sisters and me here when we were kids. It was an experience to remember. Every year my father let us take turns picking some place in the city that we would like to go. This was mine. I wasn’t nearly as happy with one of my sister’s picks.”
“What was that?”
“She wanted to go to the Met.”
Lucy’s laughter made him feel good deep down inside. “You don’t like art?”
“I do. But as a twelve-year-old it was a punishment.”
She giggled some more.
“Dad’s rule was that we were to go as a family. I went but I wasn’t happy about it.”
“Those memories must be fun to share now.” Her voice had taken on a melancholy sound.
He took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “The holidays are something when we all get together. Loud and lots of fun.” He stopped abruptly. His father wouldn’t be here this year. That’s the first time he’d allowed a thought like that to enter his mind.
This time Lucy returned his comfort. “You’ll miss him.”
She’d known without asking what was bothering him. He recognized her counseling voice and found it comforting. “I will.” This was supposed to be a fun day for them both, and he wasn’t going to let sad memories overshadow the day. “Hey, you interested in seeing Ellis Island?”
“Sure. If we have time.”
“Then come on. I’ll show you the name of the first O’Doherty to come to America. We can look and see if any of your family members came through too.”
* * *
Lucy wasn’t as confident that they would find any of her family noted as being on Ellis Island as Ryan was. Edwards was such a common name that if they did, there would be hundreds or thousands. It didn’t matter. She was having such a good time that she’d go along with any idea he had.
Ryan’s view of family was so different from hers. Her family life was so fractured that she could hardly remember the last time they’d all been in the same room. Could they do that now and be civil? No one had tried to get them together in a long time. Maybe it was time someone did. Yeah, right, she couldn’t even face her sister.
She and Ryan stood atop the ferry taking them from Liberty Island over to Ellis Island. No other tourist braved the chilly air. The wind was cold but Ryan wrapped his arm around her shoulder and she burrowed into his warmth. He gave her a history lesson on the two islands and the museum over the roar of the engines. After he finished one story, she looked up at him and said, “You’re a great tour guide but...”
Ryan raised a brow as if she’d dared to question his skills.
“Sometimes you talk so fast I only understand the first and last words.” She grinned at him.
“Let me see if this is slow enough for you.” His lips brushed hers, teased and tasted.
She was falling for the guy. Falling hard.
Was it that he’d offered her the first real happiness she’d had in months or was she just so desperate to be noticed for who she was that she’d fall for anybody who gave her attention? She’d always been the youngest, had stood in Alexis’s shadow as the quieter one, had been the baby carrier, and now she wanted to be the one who stood out.
Ryan made her feel special. She was going to go with that feeling, revel in it, experience it, grasp it and hold it tight for as long as she could.
CHAPTER SIX (#u460ad609-b476-5fb6-8cb9-6ba089870f95)
LUCY HELD RYAN’S hand as they exited the boat and entered the Ellis Island National Monument. The warehouse-type building had housed immigrants who had funneled through on their way to gaining freedom and new citizenship. Still hand in hand, Ryan showed her around the different levels, wandering past black and white pictures of people who had stayed on the island.
She probably should have removed her hand but didn’t want to. His friendly but secure clasp gave her a feeling of belonging. What would it mean to truly belong to Ryan O’Doherty?
“I often wonder what it must have been like to leave everything you know and love behind and pick up and move somewhere else,” Ryan commented as they looked at a picture of a man holding a child in his arms. “I don’t know if I could do that.”
Hadn’t she done that very same thing? Just not on as grand a scale as leaving the country where she had been born. In many ways, she was no different. She was struggling to find her place in the world.
“They had to work to rebuild their lives.”
She was doing that also. The job was there but she floundered with the other aspects. Today had been the first day that she’d felt like her old self in a long time. She liked it.
“Let’s go have a look at that book.” Ryan directed her toward the center of the large building. He stopped before a glass case. Inside lay an old register with names written in faded ink.
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and gently pulled her towards a computer screen on a wall nearby. He sounded as excited as a kid wanting to show off a toy. “All you do is type your last name in and see what comes up.”
“You do yours first.” She didn’t know much about her family tree. That hadn’t been a priority when her parents had been together. Certainly hadn’t been mentioned after their divorce. Even her grandparents had deserted her.
“All right.” Ryan tapped the keys.
A list came up on the screen of all the O’Dohertys who had passed through Ellis Island.
“See, this is my grandfather.” Ryan pointed with his index finger. “He was just a baby then. These are his siblings. All nine of them.” He ran his fingertip down the list of names. “I can’t imagine having nine children,” he said in wonder.
“That does seem excessive.” Her heart caught. She’d given birth to a child.
“A couple sounds like plenty to me,” he said offhandedly.
Pain filled her. She’d already had a baby. “That sounds about right,” she said dryly.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She shrugged. “It’s okay. I have to learn to live with it. Move on. It’s a fact and I can’t change it.”
He gave her a quick hug. “I think you’re doing a great job.” He kissed the top of her head and let her go.
She appreciated his show of support. If she wasn’t careful she could get too used to it. “Tell me about this grandfather or great-grandfather who picked up and moved his whole family.”
“Well, he was pretty much like everybody else who came through here. He was Irish and wanted a better life. Settled in Brooklyn, worked hard but had little other than family. And family is everything.”
“And your dad and mom?”
He looked away as if he wouldn’t answer then he turned back to her. “Mom was the local girl who married the big Irish policeman who came into the café where she worked. Mother used to say she fell in love with his Irish brogue and the rest of him just came with it.”
“So that’s where you get the hint of an inflection intermingled with your Brooklyn clip.”
He chuckled. “That’s a nice way of putting it. Mostly the Brooklyn has taken over but every once in a while the Irish really shows through.”
“How old were you when your mother died?”
“Thirteen.”
She didn’t miss the hitch of pain in the word. “Your sisters?”
“My sisters were a number of years younger. Dad became both parents.”
“That must have been tough, on all of you.”
“It was, but I think it was toughest on Dad. He’d lost the love of his life. He wasn’t only the breadwinner but he had to be the stable factor in our lives when his was crumbling.”
“Crumbling?”
He hesitated as if he didn’t want to say more. “He got sick. He developed motor neuron disease.”
“You had said he’d died but not that he’d died so slowly. That must have been horrible for him. You and your sisters.” She grasped one of his biceps and squeezed, hoping to relay her sympathy.
As if he’d gone off into the past, he continued, “I saw him struggle to keep his job for as long as he could. Then be forced to give up one more thing he loved.”
He needed to talk. She knew not only from her experience as a counselor but because she’d been in the same place when her parents had divorced and again when she’d left Alexis and Emily. Ryan and she had both known loss.
“I had to watch this rock of a man slowly die. He had to be put into a nursing home. I thought it might kill him to go but I was the one it almost killed. I hated it that he needed to be there.”
Ryan was pouring out his pain like water that had been dammed and needed a place to go. How long had he been keeping all this pain to himself? No wonder he’d isolated himself from the families of his patients. She felt troubled. She’d pushed him to be more open.
“You carried the responsibility, didn’t you? For everything. Him, your sisters. For holding things together.”
He looked at her as if amazed. As if for the first time he recognized that someone understood.
“Yeah. I visited him as often as I could. Took care of my sisters.”
Ryan’s reaction to what she’d told him about Emily suddenly made sense. He’d supported others’ emotions for so long that he didn’t want to carry hers. She hadn’t once heard anyone at the hospital talk about his father having just died. She bet he’d never let on to anyone what he was going through. He’d just shared a part of himself that few saw. She was honored to be one of those people.
“You’re a good man, Ryan O’Doherty.” She would have hugged him but she didn’t think he would appreciate that much pity. He was also a proud man.
“Are you through?” a man with a wife and couple of kids standing nearby asked.
“Yes,” Ryan said, stepping away from the computer.
He took her hand again and she gave his a squeeze. She didn’t want him to close himself off like he’d done before.
As they walked toward the entrance, Ryan said, “We didn’t look up your family name.” He turned as if to go back.
She tugged on his hand. “We’ll do it next time.” Would there be a next time? It would be nice if there was. She was enjoying her day with Ryan.
They boarded the ferry that would take them back to Manhattan and found a spot inside, out of the late afternoon wind.
“Are you hungry?”
Lucy found to her surprise she was, in more ways than one. “I’m getting that way.”
“If we have another hot chocolate, will that hold you over for an hour or so?”
“I think I can survive that long.”
“Do you like Chinese?”
“I do.”
“Then Chinese it is.” He pulled out his phone and made a call before he left to order their hot drinks.
They said little as they sipped their hot chocolate. Lucy was surprised how quickly she’d become comfortable in Ryan’s presence. They had bonded in a way she’d never expected they would or could. After their first meeting she would have said it was impossible for them to find common ground.
“Look here,” Ryan said.
“What’s wrong?”
He leaned over and kissed her, his tongue lightly brushing her upper lip. It was quick and warm and, oh, so short.
When he pulled away she said, “Why did you do that? You could have told me and I would have used a napkin.”
His blue eyes danced with mischief. “If I’d done that I wouldn’t have gotten that last extra sweet taste of chocolate.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t have.”
She was having fun. She looked into the eyes of the big, sensitive, caring and highly intelligent man beside her with the devilish sense of humor and knew she’d lost her ability to be rational about him. She had real feelings for the guy. It was an intoxicating while at the same time disturbing reality. Would there be more heartache in her future?
* * *
Ryan licked his lips as if getting every last drop of chocolate from them and grinned at her. “You have any more to share?”
“I do not.” She looked so indignant that he laughed. She grinned at him.
He couldn’t believe that he’d told Lucy so much about his father. He’d never confided to anyone outside his family and for the most part he’d not even done that. His father had been an intensely proud man and Ryan had been gifted with that same propensity, good or bad. It was an issue of pride for Ryan that he could handle his own problems. He’d never shared his innermost feelings with anyone before but Lucy made him feel secure enough to do so.
Why had he? He should feel naked and vulnerable now that she knew so much about him. Instead, relief had washed over him at being able to tell someone about the burden of loss and pain he carried. He found it rather liberating.
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you where you learned to speak Spanish so well. I don’t think of Georgia as the go-to place.”
“I learned it from my father’s Mexican housekeeper at his home in LA. Alexis and I spent a lot of time with her. I just picked it up.”
He pulled her to him and smiled down at her. “And it came in handy a few times.”
“Just a few?” She smiled shyly back at him.
He wanted to kiss her, not a quick peck or a teasing brush but a real kiss right there in front of everybody. He brought her against him. His lips met her soft warm ones that tasted faintly of chocolate.
She grabbed his coat and pulled, going up on her toes. Her acceptance fed his desire. He requested admission with the end of his tongue, and she granted it. Entering, he found a heated cavern of pleasure. This was a kiss.
“Hey, buddy. Get a room,” someone called.
Lucy jerked away, but she still had handfuls of his coat. Her eyes were large and awestruck, her lips cherry red from his kiss.
