Blaecleah
Brothers 7
Release
Date: December 25, 2014
Blurb:
Life has settled down for each of the Blaecleahs.
They’ve all found their legends and are living a life filled with love and
happiness. But anything worth having is worth fighting for and not even the
luck of the Irish can keep the Blaecleahs from having to fight to keep what
they have when the past comes back to haunt them all.
In order to save Ma and Da, they may have to
decide who they want to keep in their family, and who they don’t before that
choice is taken away from them by someone they never expected.
When violence threatens them, aid comes from an
unusual source but will it be enough to keep the Blaecleahs in Cade Creek or
will the life they have built for themselves disappear before their eyes?
Excerpt:
"That’s the last of
them."
Alani Blaecleah turned to see her
husband setting another green rubber tub down on the hardwood floor of the
living room. She chuckled softly when Da grunted and rubbed his lower back with
his hands as he stood.
"You’ll live, old man."
"Not if I keep lugging your
holiday boxes around."
Miffed, Ma planted her hands on her
hips and sent her husband her best ‘don’t
make fun of me’ glare. "Now, you know it wouldn’t be Christmas without
all my decorations, Donnell Blaecleah."
"Woman, I’ve been married to
you for almost forty years. You could make Christmas happen with a shoebox and
a ball of twine, and have." Da waved his hands toward the stack of tubs
that held all of the Christmas decorations Ma had collected over the years.
"You don’t need all this fancy stuff to make a holiday."
Ma smiled despite Da's
flustering. "They hold our memories." She reached into the small box
in front of her and pulled out a folded piece of faded paper. Ma set it on the
table and smoothed it open with care. There was a lace doily that lay snuggled
inside. "You gave me this on our first Christmas together," she said
as she held the small piece of lace lovingly in her hands.
It was one of her most prized
possessions.
"I remember." Da’s soft
chuckle was as warm and light as summer's breeze. "We had nothing that
year, barely a roof over our heads or potatoes in the root cellar."
"And yet you found a way to
buy this for me." Ma still remembered how blessed she had felt when Da
gave her the small piece of white lace interwoven with intricate purple
flowers. "Lachlan was still in diapers and Neason was just a couple of
weeks old. We put every spare penny into making their Christmas special and yet
you made mine even better."
Ma felt tears prickle her eyes
when weathered but strong hands settled on her shoulders, giving her a gentle
squeeze. The warm body of the man that had stood by her side for so many years
pressed gently into her back.
"It’s just an old piece of
cloth, woman." There was a suspicious sheen in Da’s pale green eyes as he
turned Ma and wiped his thumbs over her cheeks right under her eyelashes.
"Didn’t cost me more than a couple of hours chopping wood for old man
Walker."
"That man had two sons that
could have chopped wood for him." Ma pointed a finger at Da, not in an
angry manner, but just to make her point. Her Donnell had a soft spot whether
he wanted to admit it or not. "He didn’t need you to do it."
"No, maybe not." Da’s
smile was a beautiful as a sunrise. His eyes twinkled and were so full of love
and affection that Ma felt like she could drown in them. "But he also had
a wife. He knew exactly why I needed to earn a little extra money."
When Donnell looked at her like
that, Ma felt like her husband's universe. He had been looking at her like that
for nearly forty years. It had been the main deciding factor in her giving up a
life of luxury back in Ireland and coming to the new world with barely a penny
to their name.
"No one looks at me the way
you do, Donnell Blaecleah." Ma’s voice hitched, emotion tightening her
throat. "No one has ever looked at me the way you do."
Da let out a bark of rich
laughter, a joyous sound that Ma had grown to adore over the years. "I
fought the whole of Ireland to have you, Alani, me love. I would be very upset
if someone else thought they could take you away from me."
Ma closed her eyes as she leaned
her head back against Da’s solid chest, savoring the moment for what it was—a
slice of time when everything in her world was perfect. Her soul mate held her
in his arms, her sons were happy with their own partners, and the next
generation was alive and well and adored by everyone.
A shiver of awareness slid
through Ma when Da’s fingers threaded through her graying hair. She was
grateful that Da was one of those men that was not afraid to show his
affections. She, as well as all of their sons, knew that Da loved them, in word
and in deed.
"Do you miss Ireland,
Alani?" The words were whispered almost as if Da was afraid of the answer
although he had asked the same question a hundred times over the years. Ma
always gave the same answer.
Maybe this time, she should tell
him the honest truth.
"I miss my Ma, Donnell. I
always do around this time of year. Christmas was her favorite holiday. I miss
watching her decorate the house, the smells that filled every room, the food,
the sense of something bigger than us that seemed to take a hold of
everyone."
Ma leaned her head back so that
she could look up into the pale green eyes she had fallen for as a young girl
of barely nineteen. "What I don’t miss is the way my father tried to run
my life, to dictate my every move, right down to who I was to marry. I don’t
miss feeling like I was a disappointment because I failed at something my
father believed I should have mastered just because of the family I was born
into. I don’t miss feeling like anything I did was never good enough or that
everyone in my family felt they were better than everyone else because we had
money and a family name that went back centuries."
Ma drew in a quick breath so that
she could continue before Da said anything. "The Blaecleah name is an old
and proud one, just as old and proud as my maiden name. But I’d much rather be
a Blaecleah than the name I was born with."
The beginnings of a small smile
curved up one corner of Ma’s lips as she smoothed her hands down Da’s chest.
"There are things that I miss, Donnell, but I think the question you need
to ask is if I regret coming to America with you and the answer is a resounding
no. It will always be no. Marrying you was the best decision I ever made, one I
have never regretted."
As his thumb gently traced
Alani’s lip, Da smiled that sweet gentle smile he gave her when it was just the
two of them. "You are the one good thing that has happened to me in my
life."
Ma cocked an eyebrow. "What
about your sons?"
"Without you, I would have
no sons."
Ma chuckled lightly. "Touché."
"Because of you, I have six
beautiful sons, all of whom have found that one person meant just for
them." Da’s head cocked to one side, a funny little frown on his face.
"Well, except for Seamus. He found two people. But the point is—"
"The point is that we are
lucky."
Da chuckled. "We are Irish,
Alani. We’re genetically predisposed to be lucky."
Author
Bio:
After 25 years of bankrupting my family with my
reading obsession, I decided to try my hand at writing my own novels. It still
amazes me to this day that people are actually interested in the stuff that
comes out of my imagination. It can be a real mess up there.
I live in the great Northwest region of the USA,
with my gorgeous husband and soul mate, six very active teenagers, two
boxer/collie puppies, one old biddy cats, and three fish. When I'm not being a
mother to my six teenagers or cleaning up after my two 70 pound lap puppies,
you can usually find me cuddled in bed with a book in my hand and a puppy in my
lap. Or on my laptop, creating the next sexy man for one of my stories.
Find
Stormy Here
