Free Miles Before I Sleep by M. Donice Byrd Page B

was sure it was not her.
    “I’m sorry, Shamus,” Rory said as they started down the street towards the H & O office.
    “Now, don’t get down on yourself, Rory. Just because you made a bad impression on her five years ago, is no reason to blame yourself. She undoubtedly would have felt the same way if she had known that I’m Shamus. The fact that she didn’t like you was only a small portion of that letter her parents showed us.”
    “It’s a bit disheartening to think I made that bad of an impression on her.”
    “You were eighteen,” Miles said, kindly. “Everyone’s a bit awkward at that age. If she met you for the first time today, I bet her impression would have been entirely different. Look at yourself now compared to the way you were five years ago.”
    It was true. Rory had grown up into adulthood. He was three inches taller, the thickness in his waist had disappeared and his chest and shoulders had widened with muscles thanks to the heavy lifting he did at his father’s warehouses. Socially, he had grown up also. Much of the credit belonged to his older cousin. Once Miles had finished at Yale, he and Rory had reestablished their childhood friendship and Miles had insisted that Rory accompany him wherever he went socially.
    Rory chuckled. “Poor girl. After an hour of listening to me yap about warehouses, it’s a wonder she didn’t just walk away.”
    “Well, if you hadn’t been monopolizing her time, Mrs. Kincaid and her mother would have never sent me to rescue her and I might have never met her.”
    “Ah ha! The real reason you asked me to be your best man comes out.”
    Miles smiled and nudged Rory with his elbow. “You’ve been my best friend since Richard married my mother and you stood up with me against the Harrowing twins.”
    Harold and Harry O’Shea had nearly come to blows with Miles at the wedding reception. Ten-year-old Miles mistakenly thought when his mother married Richard that he automatically became an O’Shea. The older boys, although correct, had relentlessly taunted Miles. Only Rory had taken Miles’s side in the dispute. It was then that Richard and Rory’s father, Chester, decided if Miles couldn’t be an official O’Shea, he could be an honorary one. Chester tipsily slurred, “It’s a shame he’s not one of us. Let’s call him Shamus.” And it had stuck.
    They walked another half block in companionable silence before Rory spoke again. “So what now? Do you still want to marry her?”
    It was still incredible to Rory that Miles wanted to marry someone with whom he had spent less than fifteen minutes. But in many ways, that was Miles. Just as Miles had unwaveringly been his best friend, he had no doubt that Miles’s feelings for Andrea were just as loyal. It was almost as if Miles had an innate sense about people. Rory had little doubt that if Miles said he was in love with Andrea James, he was. If he married her, he would never regret it. Rory suspected her rejection, even if the person Andrea thought she rejected was Rory, had cut Miles to the quick.
    “Yes,” he said quietly. “I’m only leaving so she can feel safe enough to go home. I intend to leave a letter for her with her parents. Furthermore, I plan to write to her once I get home.”
    “You’re still going to pursue her even after her outright rejection of you?”
    “She didn’t reject me, cousin, she rejected you. She will marry me—one way or the other.”
    ~*~
    Andrea felt self-conscious in her new costume but she had little choice in the matter. All of London it seemed was looking for her to fatten their purses, making it all the more imperative, that for her own safety, she leave as soon as possible. The H & O line was the first place she tried since the others she had been to previously either didn’t go to New York or didn’t have any cabins available.
    “I’m sorry,” said the same clerk she had spoken with before. “But there are no more private quarters available. We have a