Read Meet Me Under The Mistletoe (O'Rourke Family 5) for Free Online

dinner, but knowing that didn’t make him happy.
    He cleared his throat. “I’m surprised you don’t have a gas fire. It’s more convenient.”
    She turned and smiled. “I prefer the light and warmth of a real fire.”
    “Gas puts off heat and light.”
    “Not like this.” Shannon gazed into the new flames licking across the wood, a dreamy expression on her face. “Every year I visit Ireland with my mother. The cottage she grew up in has a fireplace that fills most of a wall in the kitchen. The light bounces off the polished copper pots and kettles, and it feels so safe and secure, as if nothing will ever change.”
    “Everything changes.” The words came out sharper than Alex had intended, but it was the truth. Things changed, no matter how much he disliked the process.
    The corners of Shannon’s mouth turned down, and the soft light of memory faded from her eyes. “I know. That’s a lesson I received when I wasn’t many years older than Jeremy. Anyway, my grandparents still live in the cottage, though Kane wants to build them a modern house with modern conveniences, either in Ireland or here in Washington.”
    Alex found himself moving closer, drawn partly by the warmth in his lower extremities, and partly by the unguarded emotions he’d seen in her face. “They refused?”
    “Yes. Generations of Scanlons have grown up there, and they’re not ones to be goin’ anywhere that God didn’t put them.” She said the last in a distinct brogue, and he knew she was repeating something she must have heard often from her faraway grandparents.
    “I take it your grandparents didn’t approve of your mother going to America.”
    “It was my father they didn’t approve of. That is…” Her voice trailed, and to Alex’s surprise, Shannon looked shy, as if she’d revealed something she thought should have stayed private. “They’re good people, but my father was wild before he married my mother, and then he took her thousands of miles away.”
    Wild?
    “You take after your father, don’t you?” he asked before he could think better of the question. He didn’t need to know those kinds of things about Shannon; they weren’t even friends, much less lovers.
    “Yes, though my third-oldest brother is the most like Dad. Of course, Patrick is settling down now, too. He got married a couple of months after Kane.”
    “Is marriage the answer for your family? Like a ship’s anchor for all that wildness?”
    “Maybe.” Shannon flipped a curling lock of auburn hair away from her face, and shrugged. “But probably not for me.”
    Once again there was a confusing emotion in her green eyes, quickly concealed. A man could get whiplash trying to figure her out, and for the hundredth time Alex’s head warned him to get out, now, before he got involved. Women like Shannon might be fascinating, but they were also too disturbing.
    Despite the warning, he leaned forward. “Why not you?”
    “Lots of reasons,” she said lightly. “I’m too independent and want things my own way. I enjoy working and keeping my own hours, that sort of stuff.”
    Once again he had the oddest sensation, as though she’d told him something that wasn’t entirely true.
    “Seeing how good you are with kids, I’d think you’d want a family of your own.”
    She lifted an eyebrow. “How do you know I’m good with kids? Maybe it’s just a fluke with Jeremy.”
    Alex laughed. “I don’t believe that. Why else would he respond to you?”
    “It’s…complicated.” Shannon’s smile trembled and she looked at Jeremy playing with the train set. Her voice lowered. “I think it’s because I understand what he’s going through. You see, my father died in an accident when I was eight. One minute I was a happy, carefree little girl, and the next…”
    Her eyes blinked rapidly, unnaturally bright, and he winced. “Don’t, Shannon.”
    She shook her head. “No, I want you to understand, because if there’s anything I can do to help