Haunting Beauty Read Online Free Page A

rule.”
    “Grand,” he said, putting on the smile again.
    Having made the decision to open the door, she now stepped back and bid him enter. Sean forced himself forward and into her home.
    He followed her through a sunny sitting room with a wall of bookshelves, a comfortable-looking sofa and chair, and a small television tucked in the corner. She went through an arched opening and stopped in a bright, tiled kitchen. She paused, looking momentarily unsure before regaining her composure and indicating the table and chairs.
    “Have a seat. Would you like some tea?”
    He nodded, still eyeing the beast in her arms. She set Bean down with a stern command and went about putting water on to boil. The dog perched at her feet, moving every time she did and then resettling, all the while keeping Sean under surveillance. Had Sean meant Danni physical harm, the dog’s hostile stare would have made him reconsider. Finished, Danni took the seat opposite him and reached for the photograph.
    Sean studied her face as she stared at the picture, tracing the outline of first her mother’s image, then her father’s with a slender, trembling finger. What did she remember?
    “I can’t believe this is my family,” she murmured.
    She spoke with a hesitancy that made him think she expected him to snatch the photo away and laugh.
    “It is, I swear it.”
    He pointed to the little girl standing in front of her mother. “That’s you,” he said. “And that’s your brother beside you.”
    Her gray eyes shimmered with a strange mixture of emotions. Hope and hurt, anger and joy. A grief that seemed to anchor all other feelings around it.
    “My brother,” she said, her voice thick. She shook her head. “All these years . . .”
    “We’ve been looking for you for a long time.” He cleared his throat and glanced at the picture. “Your family name is MacGrath,” he told her. “You were born in Ireland. Ballyfionúir to be exact.”
    “Bally ...”
    “Bally- fyun -oor. It’s on the Isle of Fennore, just south of Ireland main.”
    He pulled another item from the envelope he’d brought and set it down in front of her. This was a copy of a birth announcement from a newspaper. It named two babies: a girl, Dáirinn Edel and a boy, Rory Finnegan. They’d been born to Cathán and Fiona MacGrath on October 1, 1984.
    “The girl’s name is pronounced Dawr- in. And yes, it’s your name,” Sean said when she didn’t ask.
    “I can’t believe this,” she murmured again.
    “And yet it is the truth.”
    That brought her eyes up and round, filled with anguish and confusion. He’d imagined a hundred reactions that his visit might elicit. They’d ranged from skepticism to elation. But he’d not anticipated this raw pain he saw now. It filled him with shame.
    “Mr. Ballagh—”
    “Call me Sean. We’re family, of sorts.”
    Those eyes grew larger and took on a look of dismay. “We’re family? You’re not my brother, are you?”
    “No,” he said quickly, finding the idea just as abhorrent as she seemed to. He didn’t stop to analyze why. “Nothing like that. Distant relations. Too distant to trace.”
    “Good.” And then, realizing what she’d said, she blushed a furious red.
    Sean watched the rising color stain her slender throat, her smooth cheeks, the fragile shell of her ear. She looked very small in her big blue sweater, vulnerable. Inside him, something deeply male and protective awoke and responded. He hadn’t expected that either. But he was very glad not to be her brother.
    She lifted the picture and looked at it again. “This doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If this is my family, why have I been alone for the past twenty years? Where have they been?”
    “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.”
    She made a sound like a laugh, but there was no humor. “Sorry to disappoint you. All I know is one day my mother dropped me off at preschool and she never picked me up again. No one ever came forward to claim