BY NOON WEDNESDAY, Annie was back in Ann Arbor with a couple less vacation days to her name. The interviews had gone well enough, and New York had been incredible, if a little overwhelming. Maybe, in time, she’d work up a veneer of sophistication and not be so excited by every corner vendor, shop window or celebrity she thought she might have spotted. Or maybe not. That’s what was making this choice a total bugger—her lack of certainty. There was one thing she was sure of, though. She had missed her Irishman.
Annie walked up the steps to Daniel’s front door. She’d called the office on the way from the airport, and Mrs. D. had told her that he was home tying up a few things. He appeared at the door only moments after she rang the bell.
“Hey,” she said. Not quite as up-front as the “I’m so totally in love with you” she was thinking, but there was no point in sending the man screaming into a sunny Michigan day.
Daniel smiled, yet it wasn’t quite the full Flynn smile of guaranteed seduction.
“Hey,” he said in return.
Annie slipped into worry mode. “Is everything okay? You know I meant it last night on the phone when I apologized for going off the deep end over Hal, right?”
“I know.”
He’d felt distant last night, too, but Annie had put it down to projecting her case of nerves onto Daniel. She’d told herself that it wasn’t as though she could see his face from New York City or judge what was going on with him. But maybe it was time to start trusting her instincts.
“Would you like to come in?” he asked.
“Sure.” She stepped inside after him and nearly fell over a suitcase to the left of the door.
“Business trip?”
“Not exactly. Why don’t we have a talk?”
“Sure.” She kept her voice level, no easy task when her heart was plummeting to her stomach.
Annie followed Daniel to the kitchen, a telling choice on his part, when his bed would have been the other seating option.
She pulled out a chair, sat, then asked, “So what’s up?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“For how long?”
He gave the answer she’d been dreading since that evil talk word had cropped up. “For good.”
Annie scrambled for a way around his announcement. Finally, she resorted to legalities. “But your contract isn’t up for another two weeks.”
He took his time answering. “Hal understands there’s no more I can do.”
What she considered a pretty justifiable case of anger began to spill over. “You mean there’s no more you choose to do.”
“Annie, you’ve got the perfect team assembled to get the pub up and running. You don’t need me here.”
This wasn’t about the pub, and it killed her that he’d choose to play it that way. She was no good at this, no good at acting as though he hadn’t ripped her heart out.
“So where are you going?” she managed to ask.
“Home for a while, then maybe Belize.”
“Why Belize?” The question had been automatic, but suddenly Annie realized something. She just didn’t care. She held up her right hand, palm out. “Wait, don’t answer that. It really doesn’t matter why. Belize is just a symptom.”
“A symptom?”
“Yes, of your moving-on disease. You can’t help yourself, can you?”
Something that might have been either anger or humor briefly sparked in his eyes. “Someone’s been reading Psychology Today, haven’t they?”
He was a master at baiting her, but she’d developed some skills, too. She’d also been watching Daniel Flynn in action for weeks. “Nope, you’re not throwing me off this time. I think I finally have you figured.”
“Do you now?”
Annie was growing more certain of it by the minute. “You’re a regular renaissance man, Daniel. You play the fiddle, write and seem to have some skill in common with nearly everyone you meet. It’s all very cool stuff, but it’s also finally hit me…. You’re good at so many things because you never stick with one long enough to become great. And you know why? Because you’re afraid.”
He laughed. “That’s mad.”
“Is it?” She parked her pride curbside and gave him the truth. “And here’s the thing…though I’m really, really angry at you right now, I love you, and I think you probably love me, too.”
He looked down at the table, then back at her. “Annie—”
“Hang on, I’m not done. I figure the odds are pretty slim on my ever finding anyone else I love this much who loves me back. Daniel, if this is it for me, I want it to be great. I deserve great.”
“You do,” he said.
She had one question to ask before she picked up her pride and moved on. “So what would you say if I asked you stay here in the States with me?”
“You know I can’t,” he fired back.
“Or won’t.”
Color had begun to show along his cheekbones. “Let’s try it another way, Annie. What if I were to ask you to travel with me?”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
But she did, unfortunately. “Until you find another distraction. This is what I mean. You won’t hang in to find great. I love you, but I can’t pack up everything I own and just wander the planet with you. I need goals, a purpose.
“Pick something, Daniel, I don’t care what. Pick it because you love it and then pursue it with all your heart. Maybe you don’t owe me great, but you owe it to yourself.”
He ran his hand through his dark hair, which was already disheveled. “We both knew I’d be leaving sometime. Don’t make this so difficult.”
“But some things in life are difficult, okay? Some things really stink and we have to fight to get through them. But once we do, we end up smarter and better.” At least Annie hoped so, because she’d never felt more rotten.
She pushed away from the table and stood. “And sometimes we even find love. You know, Daniel, I think we really could have been amazing.” Since she could no longer hold back her tears, she left.
Silence reigned after Annie’s departure. Silence and fury. Daniel had never heard such a pile of stinking garbage as her accusations. He was no dabbler, and no coward, either. He grabbed on to all life had to offer because he could. And he would also leave right now instead of tomorrow. Somewhere was a place free of Ms. Annie’s razor-blade pyschocrap.
Half an hour later, as Daniel’s cab rolled past Annie’s town house, he told himself never mind how it felt at that moment, he wasn’t running away. Dammit, he wasn’t.
HAL CALLED A MEETING of senior management on Friday. Since Daniel had been true to his word and left town, Annie walked to the boardroom heart heavy and alone. She’d done little over the past forty-eight hours but mourn. She was right about Daniel, and knew that she deserved better, but that didn’t make her current situation any more bearable.
“Good morning,” she said as she entered the room.
Instead of just Hal and Mrs. D. responding, the Donovan sons returned her greeting, too. Shocked, Annie sat. Maybe she’d somehow wandered into a parallel and happier universe. Her surprise grew as, for the first time in recorded history, a gathering of the Donovans began without the boys sniping at one another.
“First item on the list is the State Street location,” Hal said. “Thanks to the hard work of the team that Annie assembled, I’ve been told that we should be ready to reopen effective August fifth. That date right, Annie?”
She checked her time line. “It is.”
“That date will also mark the day that I step a few chairs to the side at this table. You’ll notice I didn’t say stepping down, Richard,” he added with a glare at his eldest son from over the tops of his reading glasses.
“My hospital visit shook me up. Life’s short, and I’m getting tired of doing the same thing every day. Still, you can’t expect me to give this place up. What you can expect is to start seeing a little less of me. That means you, Duane, are going to have to see a little less of the golf course, and that the rest of you are going to have to learn to get along better.”
He turned and nodded to Mrs. D. She placed a sheet of paper in front of each of the meeting’s participants.
“What you see here,” Hal said, “is my proposal for a new division of power.”
Annie scanned the organizational chart. It seemed fair, with Hal as Chairman, and Richard moving up to CEO. With the exception of Duane, who remained General Counsel, the others had been promoted. Sasha even remained as Honorary Community Liaison, which suited her perfectly.
Annie looked down another level and found her name. She sifted through her emotions to see how she felt about the possibility of remaining with the Donovans, as a direct report to Richard.
Just as she felt about New York, it seemed…totally uncertain.
Maybe Richard would mellow now that he had the power he craved. And perhaps wedded bliss with Evil Queen Rachel, who Annie knew from Sasha would be retiring to start a family as soon as possible, would be enough to allow Richard to age with grace, too. But did she care?
From Annie’s perspective, security and a chunky income were good, but they just weren’t great. She frowned at Hal’s chart as though it was the source of her confusion. She knew better, though. The source was across the Atlantic Ocean and still messing with her mind.
“These are just some thoughts I’ve been batting around,” Hal said. “If anyone has any objections or better ideas, let me know.”
He had just announced himself open to compromise! Annie was tempted to dash to the window and see whether a flock of pigs might be flying by.
“I know that, to a person, everyone at this table thought I’d lost my mind when I announced the pub chain.” He laughed, a sound Annie hadn’t heard in weeks. “It turns out that you were half-right. I don’t want a chain and probably never did, except that I don’t believe in thinking small.
“It turns out that what I really want is the same thing Daniel Flynn’s father has in Ireland—a place to work when I want and to play the rest of the time. Donovan’s State Street Pub is a one-of-a-kind item, and I plan to take a personal hand in it. Probably even check on it daily,” he added.
He looked at Richard. “You can sit down with your lawyers and decide if what I’m offering is enough to keep you happy. But I’m telling you now, son, it’s my final offer.”
Richard looked at the paper a moment longer, then back at his father. “I don’t need to talk to anyone else. This is fine, Dad. Thank you.”
Annie had to glance away from Hal’s fleeting expression of relief. Her tears had been far too close to the surface over the past several days and she damn well refused to cry in the boardroom.
“Good,” Hal said. “Now, on to the next piece of business….”
Clifden, County Galway, Ireland
DANIEL KEPT LITTLE from his travels other than memories and notes. No souvenirs, few photos…nothing that might draw him back. Why, then, couldn’t he let go of these?
He shuffled through the square yellow notes he’d pulled from his pocket, each bearing the same message—my bed—in Annie’s round printing. He’d picked them up then put them back aside countless times since coming home, as though by reading them, he could understand the hold the notes—and Annie—continued to have over him nearly two weeks after he’d left.
“Enough,” he muttered, then tossed the notes into the small trash bin behind the pub’s bar. Less than a second later, he dredged them out. Fool that he was, he could neither keep nor throw them away.
Just then, his mam popped her head in the front door. “I’m off to run a few errands,” she called. “Is there anything you’re needing?”
“An exorcism.”
She stepped all the way inside and came to the bar. “My hearing must be going, just like your da’s. Did you say exorcism?”
He should know better than to jest about matters of faith with his mam. “Sorry, just a joke.”
“And not in the least funny,” she sniffed. “Now, is there anything you really need?”
“There is,” Daniel said. “Can you hang on just a sec?”
Without waiting for her answer, he went to the drawer beneath the pub’s phone and rummaged through the papers, cards and other bits of semibusiness stuff kept there. Finally, he dug out an envelope. It was crumpled and of indeterminate age, but still fit for the role of exorcist. He addressed it to Annie, took the notes from his pocket and tucked them inside. He didn’t plan to think so very hard on why he might be doing this. His mind was too swampy a place to wander these days.
“Would you mind buying some stamps and putting this in the post for me?” he asked his mother.
She took the offered envelope. After she’d read the address, she looked back at him, and Daniel felt again a child under her gaze.
“You won’t be delivering this yourself?” she asked.
“I won’t.”
His mother sighed. “I worry about you, son.”
Which was fitting, as Daniel was worried, too. He’d done nothing but occasionally tend bar and consistently turn down friends’ offers of a night out since he’d been home. And as for his writing? At this point, he was well suited to write dark, knotted bits of dirgelike poetry, which would please neither his publisher nor himself.
In sum, Daniel Flynn was well and truly blue.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
ANNIE SHUFFLED through her mail and froze at the sight of an envelope bearing foreign postage—Irish postage. Still clutching the envelope, she walked to her office door and closed it.
“Get a grip,” she told herself, realizing that her palms had gone from warm to cold and clammy in three seconds flat. Again seated, she opened the envelope and pulled out its contents.
She gazed down at yellow notes identical to those inside her desk drawer. Annie peeked inside the envelope to see if some message had been included, but there was none. She also checked each of the notes to see if anything had been added, and found nothing.
Annie wasn’t the witty, wordy type, like Daniel. She’d hated her college lit courses, agonizing over the meaning behind each word in a poem. She figured that authors should just say whatever it was they were trying to say, and get over themselves.
So what the hell had Daniel been trying to say?
Annie lifted her phone and dialed Sasha’s extension. “Would you mind coming to see me? Something strange came in the mail.”
“So what is it?”
“Just get over here.”
“Cool, a mystery,” her friend said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
While Annie waited for Sasha, she weeded through some old files. Yesterday, she’d given Hal notice. Her boss had been understanding, and even told her that there would always be a place for her at Donovan’s. Annie appreciated the sentiment, but given the change in management, she doubted she’d ever take him up on the offer.
Two days ago, she had also received an offer from the New York brokerage house. Because she wasn’t certain, she’d asked to have until the end of the week to think about it. If all else failed, she could be doing research and analysis in Manhattan. Granted, it wasn’t her dream consultant’s job, but it would do in a pinch.
Though it ate at her to admit it, her father had been right. New York wouldn’t make her happy. The urge to hole up there and never move again was as much a symptom of her unsettled state as Daniel’s constant traveling was of his.
And she did owe Daniel an enormous debt. Since he’d come into her life, she’d started to see her attributes, not just her faults. The struggles of the past weeks had made her less hungry to satisfy others, yet starved to please herself. Seeking change wasn’t wrong. Settling for less than her personal bliss, however, was.
Annie’s office door flew open and Sasha dashed in. “Okay, so what’s the big mystery?”
Annie slid the notes across the desk. “These came from Daniel. They were kind of a game we played together, and now he’s sent them back to me. No letter…no nothing…just these.”
Sasha thumbed through the notes, then gave Annie a smile. “I like the games you guys played.”
“They were great while they lasted,” Annie agreed. “So what do you think this means? Do you think he’s just cleaning up loose ends?”
Her friend handed back the notes. “He could have done that by throwing these out.”
Annie’s heart beat faster. “True. I suppose I could call him.”
Sasha shook her head. “That’s the chicken’s way out. Live big, Annie. You’ve sat in Ann Arbor long enough. Get back out and see the world.”
Excitement and the certainty she’d been lacking for so long began to bubble up inside Annie. She could do this. She knew she could. She smiled at her friend. “I’ve heard Ireland’s nice this time of year….”
Clifden, County Galway, Ireland
“WHAT’S IT GOING to be, Dan? Do we have to come up there and drag you down?” James Flynn bellowed up the stairway that led from the pub to Daniel’s rooms.
Daniel supposed at least there would be some sport in being dragged down. He knew that Seán and James together could eventually take him, but then it would be his teenage years all over again, with Mam fussing about how they were going to break everything the family owned and could they not just love each other for one day? He shut down his computer and steeled himself for some well-intended badgering, for Da had called a family meeting.
“I’ll be right there,” he shouted to the inquisition waiting below.
Daniel left his self-chosen prison and walked downstairs to not four, but five worried faces.
“You’ve fallen in with an evil lot,” he said to Aislinn, who was sitting just close enough to Seán that Daniel’s suspicions about their feelings for each other were confirmed.
“I’m worried about you, is all,” she replied.
“There’s nothing wrong with me that a decade or so of forgetting won’t cure.”
“And that,” Da said, “is why we’re all here. It’s time for you to quit brooding and do something.”
Daniel pulled out a chair and sat. “Look, I know I’ve been rough to live around since I got home, but I’m pulling out of it.”
His mother slid an envelope across the table to him. Daniel opened it and found airline reservations back to Michigan.
“You need to finish this, son,” she said.
He tucked the paper into its envelope. “Ah, but it’s not that simple. Annie won’t have me. She says I’m too afraid to grab what I want, and she doesn’t mean just her.”
“Smart girl,” James said. “I’m thinking she has a point.”
He’d have told his brother to shut his fat gob, except James was right. As Annie had been.
Daniel had concluded early this morning that he didn’t like the down and mournful world of a sad Irishman. He was sick of sitting alone at night, contemplating his navel and his general arse-headedness. And he was dead sick of not being able to write. He knew the time had come to leave the cave, take a risk and get on with life. He even had an idea or two on where this life would lead him. Of course he still needed detail sufficient to persuade a vice president of long-range planning to fall in with his scheme.
Daniel pushed back from the table.
“Not so damn fast,” said Seán. “We’re not through with you.”
“But I’m through with doing nothing.”
He rounded the bar and pulled open the jumbled supply drawer beneath the phone. There waited a note-pad, the same kind as Annie had once used to brilliant success. Daniel dug a bit more and pulled out a pencil.
“Quick,” he said to his family, “give me all the jobs you remember me having.”
As they called out the likes of “bartender,” “tour guide” and “restaurant critic,” Daniel jotted each one on the back of a square yellow slip of paper.
He was feeling in the mood for a game of darts.
WAS SHE DOING the right thing in coming to Daniel, or was she making it too easy on him? After hours of travel, did she look as if she’d been wrestling with a goat? Annie sure felt that way. She glanced in the rearview mirror, then quickly looked back as a car’s horn sounded.
Dammit! She’d drifted to her usual side of the road, which made her total accident bait in Ireland. Annie swerved back to the “wrong” side and mouthed a truly contrite sorry to the driver of the car she’d nearly run off the road. And it wasn’t as though there was much of a side to the road here. It slipped off from low, jagged rock into boggy green.
At least there was little risk of getting lost on this part of her journey. Exactly one major route led from Galway City to Clifden, unlike her circuitous drive from Shannon Airport to Galway. She should have just sucked it up and taken the extra commuter flight, as her travel agent had suggested. But no, she’d taken the chicken’s land route.
Of course, she had no idea what she was going to do once she found Flynn’s Pub. Looking like a total boob was a recurring theme in all possible scenarios. She’d never chased a guy ten feet, let alone across an ocean.
She drove past the fairy-tale beauty of Kylemore Abbey, which, she’d read in a travel guide, was once a home built by a man for the woman he loved. Now it was a convent, tea room and private girls’ school. Maybe nothing in life turned out exactly as planned, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Far before Annie was ready, Clifden appeared. She knew from Daniel that the pub was on the far reaches of the town, nearly to something called Sky Road. Sitting on the edge of the Atlantic, Clifden was larger than just the smattering of houses and shops she’d somehow expected. It was pastel-pretty, too.
Annie could almost picture herself living here one day in the far-off future. She’d have a house on the hillside, with the mountains behind her and a view of the water. Never mind that, given her current semi-unemployed state, she’d have to hit the lotto to afford this life of leisure. Or that she wasn’t too sure about her welcome from Daniel.
Trusting herself to fate, she slipped into an open spot along the narrow road and parked. Scrutiny of her reflection in the rearview mirror confirmed that she looked like an inductee into the undead. Annie dug through her purse and dredged out a hairbrush, mascara and a freebie lipstick sample that had been floating around down there forever. When she was satisfied that she’d done about as much good as possible, she exited the car.
A warm and humid breeze kissed her skin. The sun peeked from between postcard-perfect fluffy white clouds. It was in all ways an idyllic day, except she didn’t know where she was going.
“Excuse me,” she said to a woman walking with a baby in a stroller. Or pram. Or whatever the heck they called them in Ireland. “I’m looking for Flynn’s Pub?”
“Head straightaway to the next block, then turn right.” The woman hesitated, then added, “They won’t be open for another hour at least, you know?”
Annie nodded. “Okay, thanks.”
Since she had nothing else to do in the coming hour except question her sanity, she walked to the pub and tugged at its red front door, fully expecting it to be locked. Instead, it flew open, leaving Annie staggering. Once she’d collected herself, she stepped inside. The light was a little dim to her adjusting eyes, but she still saw Daniel lined up in front of a dartboard. Nearby was a group of people, some of whom looked very much like him.
Everyone turned and looked at her. Okay, maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea. She took a step toward the door, but then recalled that she’d promised herself to live big, as Sasha had decreed. And that involved grabbing the one thing in life she was one hundred percent sure about.
Annie drew in a nervous breath, then announced, “I, Annie Rutherford, am wise, witty and beautiful. I’m also hoping you’ve figured out that you can’t live without me, Daniel Flynn.”
Her voice had enough tremor to it to set off an earthquake, but she was pretty sure she’d gotten the message across. So why wasn’t he moving?
Daniel looked like he was trying to form words, but none seemed to be coming out. In that instant, she silently filled in the blank with “What the holy hell are you doing here?” and “You look familiar. Have we met?”
Finally, he spoke. “You took a plane all the way here by yourself? That’s hours and hours, Annie.”
She nodded, then wiped the tears that seemed to be messing with her hastily applied makeup. “I noticed. It went pretty well, too, except for the guy next to me asking the flight attendant to take away my pen because I was making him crazy.”
Daniel tossed the darts he held in one hand to the closest table, not even noticing when they rolled to the floor. Then she was in his arms, sweet warmth washing through her as she rediscovered that sense of being home.
He kissed her long and hard.
“I love you, and how I’ve missed you, too,” he said low into her ear, which was enough to really make her sob.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Through her tears, Annie caught a hazy image of a pretty girl around her age with brown curly hair.
“Take these,” the girl said, pressing some tissues into her hand.
“Thanks.”
“Your manners, Daniel,” prompted a woman who could only be his mother.
Daniel introduced Annie to his family, who were warm and welcoming enough that she almost forgot what a nervous mess she was. Eyes cleared, Annie looked around a little.
“What’s on the dartboard?” she asked Daniel.
“I was, uh, making some career decisions.”
Annie’s joy expanded until she was forced to grin, just to let some of it go. “Interesting method.”
“One of my favorites,” he replied, then took her hands. “After leaving you, I had plenty of time to think, Annie. Much as it pains me, you were right. I’ve been pushing aside the one thing I do best. I’m going to be a writer, love, which means I’m nearly guaranteed to be poor.”
“But you’re a brilliant writer,” his brother James said. “And didn’t I see they gave Bertie Ahern’s daughter a fine advance for her work?”
Daniel glanced over at his family. “Can’t you go find something better to do than watch us?”
“Probably not,” said Seán, earning a smack on the shoulder and a “Don’t be a total fool” from Aislinn.
Mrs. Flynn managed to persuade the lot of them as far as the bar, leaving Annie and Daniel about twenty feet of privacy.
“If you want to live in New York, I’ll do it,” Daniel said. “In fact, on the backs of those bits of paper decorating the dartboard are all the day jobs I thought I might be able to stomach while writing at night.” He shook his head. “The oddest thing is, I’m finding I can stomach the thought of a lot, so long as you’re with me.”
She wanted to kiss him again, but knew if she did, she’d never stop. “It doesn’t look like I’ll be moving to New York. In fact, I think I’ve kind of decided to go into business for myself. I got my first client the other day.”
“Client?”
She nodded. “The brokerage house I interviewed with. I turned them down for a permanent job, but offered them a contract deal. I’ll be tracking franchise trends in the food and beverage industry.”
“No New York? Then where will you be?”
“Other than coming here, I haven’t thought that far ahead,” she admitted. “But so long as there’s Internet access, I’m golden.”
He grinned. “Then I’m guessing the world’s ours.”
Annie watched as Daniel walked to the dartboard and began pulling down the yellow notes.
“Grab a pencil,” he said. “Since we’re free to roam, let’s write down all the places we want to see together.”
“Slow down, Flynn. I’ll travel with you when you can’t hold still anymore, but my salt-shaker collection, not to mention my clocks, all have to live somewhere.”
“That’s the idea, love. Ann Arbor,” he said. “Or Amsterdam or Athens. Write down the places and three darts at a time, we’ll shop for a home.”
She nearly stopped him, but then accepted that he needed this. Change was a gradual thing. If it took some wandering for Daniel to see that he’d already found his way, she was game. Well, game as long as he held her hand on each flight and never once complained about the volume of luggage she required.
Paris she wrote on the first slip and Clifden on the next.
“Really?” Daniel said, reading her Irish choice.
“Could be.”
Once they were done writing, Daniel stuck the notes on the board.
“Come here,” he said. “Let’s do this together.”
Annie gathered the darts and walked into the circle of his arms.
“Over my shoulder, right?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Taking her with him, he turned away from the board. Daniel let the darts fly, and Annie watched as they landed. One seemed to be square in center of the board.
“Double bull, I’m guessing,” James opined.
“Only single, at best,” said Seán.
“Shall we?” Daniel asked her, nodding toward the dart.
She shook her head. “Later.”
The “where” of their future didn’t matter nearly as much as when it started. To the cheers of his family, she kissed her Irishman. Annie Rutherford was officially in like Flynn.