Chapter 2
“Rose says a lot of things,” Aidan muttered, stabbing a piece of pot roast with unnecessary force.
“Shannon saw them too,” Sophie added, clearly enjoying herself. “Said he was very persistent. Kept pulling out documents, showing her things on his phone. Like he was trying to sell her something. Or recruit her.”
Aidan had spent Friday afternoon waiting for Dylan to return from lunch, but when she came back, she’d gone straight to work preparing the Barracuda for delivery.
He’d been stuck on a conference call with a parts supplier, and by the time he’d gotten free, Ralph mentioned that Dylan had borrowed his truck to deliver the car to the Morrisons—something about Mrs. Morrison wanting it in their driveway when her husband got home from his golf game.
By the time she’d returned and tossed Ralph his keys, Aidan had been pulled into another crisis with the father of a frat boy who didn’t know how to drive his new Porsche without grinding the gears, and Dylan had already walked home.
“Maybe it’s good for her,” Colt said reasonably, his doctor’s instincts reading the tension in Aidan’s shoulders. “She’s been here five years and never really connects with anyone. A woman like that shouldn’t be so isolated.”
“She’s not isolated,” Aidan said before he could stop himself. “She has the garage. The town. She has—” Me, he almost said, but caught himself.
“A job and an apartment above an antique shop?” Wyatt finished. “That’s not a life, that’s just existing.”
Anne O’Hara watched her middle son with the attention of a mother who recognized a crisis when she saw one. She rose from her chair with the grace of someone who’d been managing male emotions for forty years and disappeared into the butler’s pantry.
When she returned, she carried something that made every O’Hara at the table go still—a wooden box the color of aged whiskey, its surface carved with Celtic knots that had been worn smooth by generations of fingers tracing their endless paths.
“Now?” Duncan asked, straightening in his chair. “You’re doing this now?”
“Your grandfather left specific instructions,” Mick said from his throne at the table’s head, his blue eyes carrying that special gleam that meant tradition was about to assert itself. “This was to be given to Aidan on his thirty-fifth birthday.”
“Which was last week,” Hank pointed out.
Aidan stared at the box, his frustration about Dylan and the mysterious Seattle man temporarily forgotten. His grandfather’s treasure box—the one that had sat on the mantle like a guardian of secrets, unopened since Patrick O’Hara’s death three years ago.
“Whatever’s in there,” he said slowly, “it’s going to complicate my life, isn’t it?”
“When has anything from Grandda ever been simple?” Wyatt asked with the wisdom of the youngest son.
Anne set the box before Aidan with the ceremony it deserved. “Open it.”
Inside, nestled on velvet the color of old wine, lay a claddagh ring.
The silver caught the light like captured moonbeams, its surface polished, though well worn—two hands holding a crowned heart, the ancient symbol of love, loyalty, and friendship that had traveled from Ireland with the first O’Hara to seek his fortune in America.
“This ring,” Mick began, his voice taking on the cadence of inherited memory, “has been in our family for three hundred years. It came across during the famine years, survived everything America could throw at an Irish family, and now it comes to you—the last unmarried O’Hara son.”
“I’m perfectly happy being unmarried,” Aidan said, though even to his own ears it sounded hollow. Especially with the image of Dylan listening intently to whatever that Seattle man was selling burning in his mind.
“Are you?” Anne asked gently.
“There’s more,” Mick said, gesturing to the box.
Beneath the velvet was an envelope, sealed with wax the color of dried blood. Written across the front in their grandfather’s distinctive scrawl—To be opened only by the final bachelor O’Hara.
Aidan broke the seal and unfolded the letter, his grandfather’s words rising from the page like smoke from a peat fire.
“‘My dear boy—and I know it’s you, Aidan. You got my looks and my charm, which means you’ve got my weakness too. You think life’s a dance where you never have to pick a partner for more than one song.
“‘By now, they’ve shown you the ring. It’s a fine ring, and it’s served the family well. But here’s the truth of it, boy—that’s not the real ring.’”