Free The Lost Sheenan's Bride (Taming of the Sheenans Book 6) by Jane Porter Page A

was the beautiful mother that used to visit him and then vanished so abruptly from his life?

Chapter Five
    S hane had waited outside the small, yellow house until Jet was safely inside. He’d watched the front door until the porch light was turned off and only then did he return to his truck, start the engine, and pull away from the curb.
    At the corner he flipped a U-turn and headed back down Bramble to pick up Highway 89 north of the high school.
    It’d take him at least twenty minutes to get to the Sheenan ranch, and he drove slowly, mindful of the black ice on the road. He was in no great hurry to return to the old two-story log cabin. The old Sheenan homestead wasn’t his home, and the longer he was there, the more uncomfortable he became.
    He did not belong.
    He wasn’t supposed to be there.
    His certainty had little to do with Cormac and the other Sheenan brothers, but the heaviness that filled him every time he entered the house.
    He hadn’t believed in spirits before he moved in. He did now.
    He was most definitely not alone in the house. His mother’s ghost—sad but benign—and another one, far more aggressive. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was his father’s spirit as it seemed to go out of its way to make him feel unwelcome, reminding Shane he didn’t belong. That he’d never belonged. And yet whenever he felt the hostile presence, the other one was there, too, as if trying to be a buffer, determined to protect Shane.
    God, he’d love to know the truth.
    Why was he given away? Why had his father’s name been stripped from the birth certificate—because Bill Sheenan was his father, the DNA test four years ago proved it—but Shane had waited too long to confront his father? Bill Sheenan was dead. The brothers had all abandoned the family homestead. And now Shane was here, still the outsider, still the interloper.
    Shane hadn’t expected a warm welcome from the Sheenan brothers, but he had thought maybe—and now he could see how silly he’d been—just maybe, they’d help him. He’d thought they’d be civil, possibly friendly. He’d thought he could get them to trust him and sit down and talk to him about what had happened leading up to the massacre on the Douglas property.
    Before signing the lease, he’d hoped he’d get to know these brothers, not as brothers, but as people. Men. There was no need for a big, bonding thing, and no need to become close as they’d never be a family, but he hadn’t anticipated the freeze-out.
    To be fair, Dillon had been friendly enough when Shane had talked to him about leasing the house. He’d enjoyed their lunch at the Graff. Dillon had been somewhat guarded and Shane hadn’t known if that was just Dillon’s personality or a family thing. Nine months later Shane knew it was a family thing.
    There was nothing soft about the Sheenans. They’d obviously been raised with a firm hand…taught from birth what it meant to be a Sheenan, and a man.
    More than once Shane had tried to imagine growing up in that house, as a Sheenan. In terms of the lineup, he would have been near the end, sandwiched between Cormac and Dillon.
    His birth date was less than a year after Cormac. He and Cormac were Irish twins, with Cormac’s birthday on April fifth, while Shane’s was fast approaching, February twenty-seventh. Cormac would have been just a couple months old when their mother conceived again.
    Shane had wondered if that might have been part of the problem, if there had just been too many babies too quickly. Perhaps the family had been having some kind of financial difficulty or his mother had been ill, necessitating the need for her mother to step in and help take care of the new baby.
    So odd to think of how it might have been, the lineup and pecking order—Brock, Troy, Trey, Cormac, Shane, and then Dillon.
    For the first two weeks of his life, he’d been a Sheenan, and then mid-March the birth certificate was amended and he became a Swan.
    Bill Sheenan was not