Free Haunting Warrior by Erin Quinn Page B

wanted him to even try and he was never shy about making it known. He’d treated Niall like a disease to be overcome only through great suffering. The shame of it rose up in Rory now, but he fought it back. He was not here to revisit his childhood or analyze his failures as a man. He was here to bury his grandmother and, for better or worse, find the Book of Fennore.
    “Jaysus, I knew you’d be a man, but didn’t a part of me expect to see the boy in you?” Niall exclaimed happily. “And isn’t it a movie star I thought you were?”
    Rory wanted to squirm under the scrutiny. He’d been gone a long time. Not long enough to forget he was Irish, but long enough to become Americanized. His hair had been bleached by hours in the sun, his skin browned by the same. He probably looked every bit the California boy they’d all thought he’d become. Either they didn’t know he’d spent more time running from trouble than he had chasing the waves, or they were pretending he was a normal kid come home to the bosom of his family. His money would be on the latter. They were all good pretenders.
    Niall gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. “Mr. Hollywood is what you look like. Isn’t that right, Sean?”
    Niall turned to the younger man who’d come to stand beside him. Rory and Sean were stepbrothers as well as brothers-in-law. No blood relation of course, but they’d lived in the same house for a time before Sean had gone off to university and Rory to California. Sean was as big a man as Rory, hard with muscle and steady of gaze. His smile was welcoming, though, and Rory shook his hand.
    Niall beamed at them before wrapping his fingers around the solid muscle of Rory’s bicep.
    “Are you doing the steroids, then?” he asked.
    “What?” Rory demanded. “No.”
    “Don’t get your fecking knickers in a twist,” Niall said, laughing. “We hear about those Americans and how they like their steroids. What about that baseball player?” He looked at Sean with a frown.
    “Which one?” Sean asked.
    “I can’t remember his name, but they say he liked the steroids more than he did breakfast.”
    What happened to the good old days when everyone thought that all Americans drove Mustangs and wore aviator sunglasses?
    “I don—” Rory began, but Niall wasn’t finished.
    “And doesn’t he look big enough to heft a building, Sean?”
    Sean grinned, enjoying Rory’s discomfort, though not with malice. “That he does. Don’t pick a fight with him, Dad. He’ll mash you like a potato.”
    Rory didn’t know whether to smile or frown. He settled somewhere in the middle and said nothing.
    Danni moved to stand beside her husband, Raegan in her arms and Clodaugh wrapped around a leg. Sean scooped up his daughter and held her high until she giggled.
    “Ah, well, it’s good to see you and have my family together again,” Niall said. “Come on now. Your mother’s waiting.”
    His mother. Rory sighed as he imagined the meeting with his mother. He’d hurt her the worst by staying away, and he dreaded seeing that in her eyes. Aunt Edel had accused him of punishing them—maybe he had. Maybe he’d just been punishing himself for not being one of them. For never wanting to belong to a world where fathers could disappear like smoke in a windstorm and sisters could read your mind. A world he feared, and like a coward, because he feared it, he’d taught himself to hate it.
    Feeling like a man condemned, he followed Niall into the keep through the same little door he’d used earlier. As he entered, Rory realized the door only looked small, set as it was in the towering side of the castle. In truth, it was easily ten feet tall. It opened onto a mud-room, where benches ran along two sides, boots tucked underneath and raincoats hanging on hooks above. A counter lined the wall by the door, filled with pots and gardening tools. At the end of it was a sink for washing off mud and muck.
    Rory trailed Niall to a hall that opened onto