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  “You’re a happily married woman,” Nell chided. “What interest could you have in a bachelor auction?”

  “None of us is dead,” Bree pointed out. “There’s no shame in looking, even if we can’t bid.”

  “Well, I’m not even going to consider a bachelor auction, so you can just settle down,” Nell said. “It’s not suitable for a church event.”

  “You disapproved of the kissing booth, too, at first,” Heather pointed out, “but you have to admit it was a huge success.”

  “It was,” Nell agreed. “And despite my reservations, it will be back this year.”

  “Your change of heart isn’t because it was successful, Gram. It’s mostly because it irritated Father Clarence,” Luke suggested.

  Nell’s flushed face proved his point. “Well, he needs to move into the current century,” Nell murmured. “But I’ll deny it if you tell him I said that.”

  “And haven’t you told him that to his face more than once?” Luke teased.

  Nell frowned at him. “We’re getting off topic.”

  Bree’s expression turned thoughtful. “There is one idea that came to me last night, so I did a little bit of research. I think it would fit quite nicely into the fall festival if the setup wouldn’t be too complicated.”

  “Tell us,” Nell said eagerly.

  “It seems there are quite a few of those cooking shows on TV that draw huge audiences,” she began, only to be interrupted by Heather.

  “I watch Top Chef myself,” Heather chimed in. “And The Chew and a couple of others. Giada De Laurentiis is my absolute favorite. I’ve even tried some of the recipes. Of course, those are usually the nights Connor and I end up eating at the pub.”

  “See,” Bree said triumphantly. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. What if we were to have a cooking competition?” Her expectant gaze went around the room, then landed on Kiera as she added, “Amateurs and professional chefs alike can compete.”

  “Interesting,” Nell said, as if mulling it over. She looked at Heather and Shanna. “What do you think?”

  “I think it sounds fantastic,” Heather said at once.

  An innocent smile spread across Shanna’s face as she turned her gaze on Kiera. “Perhaps we can put to rest once and for all whether Bryan’s or Kiera’s Irish stew is the best. I’ve heard that’s come up at the pub a time or two.”

  The room erupted into laughter. The others seemed to be blissfully oblivious to Bryan’s suddenly stony expression and Kiera’s panic. Whatever peace they’d managed to achieve was about to be tested in some very public forum. Perhaps that was a good thing. Their truce had led to a couple of emotionally risky encounters.

  “Gram, I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Luke protested. “The kitchen wars behind the scenes at O’Brien’s are bad enough. We’ve no need to take them public.”

  “Not even if we can raise a lot of money at a dollar a taste with the winner being the one who gets the most tokens at the end of the day?” Nell inquired as if she were still exploring all the angles. “We can charge a small entry fee to go toward prize money and open the competition to anyone else with an Irish stew recipe they’d like to enter. Or maybe we should have multiple categories with amateurs competing against a chef in each one. Luke, you could assemble a team of judges, too.”

  “Why do we need judges if everyone in town is going to cast a vote?” Luke asked reasonably, apparently abandoning any hope of trying to win an argument with his grandmother.

  “Then assemble the team of participating chefs,” Nell said readily. “Then we can determine what specialty each of them will prepare, and invite challengers.”

  “I like that,” Bree said. “The more entries we have, the more excitement we can generate.”

  “I like it,” Shanna said.

  Nell nodded in satisfaction. “Okay, then. All in favor?”

  Kiera had listened silently up till now, but after one glance in Bryan’s direction and catching his increasingly horrified expression, the competitor in her roared to life.

  “I’m game,” she said, obviously startling them all. If this had been Nell’s trap, Kiera couldn’t seem to find fault with it. “It’s for a good cause, after all. And I imagine Bryan won’t want me showing him up. He’ll agree.” She turned a challenging gaze on him. “Won’t you, Bryan?”

  “I’m pretty sure I was doomed from the minute I walked in the door,” he muttered, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  Luke groaned. “And just when the two of you were starting to get along so well.”

  But, of course, that was precisely the reason Kiera was willing to give it a try. She and Bryan were getting along a little too well these days. It scared her to death. And this was a surefire way to guarantee there would be some nice, safe distance between them once more.

  *

  Deanna was sitting in the break room in the research center trying to make a decision about what she might do for the upcoming Fourth of July holiday. It was only a few days away, and it seemed everyone she knew had already made plans.

  The Baltimore newspaper that someone had left lying open to an upcoming events page seemed to offer a surprising number of alternatives. Any one of them might be fun and might delay the oft-postponed trip she’d been meaning to take to Chesapeake Shores.

  Then, as if fate were stepping in to taunt her, she spotted the headline on a sidebar article touting the charm of the holiday in the beachside town of Chesapeake Shores. A picture of the very shops she’d noticed on her drive through town decorated with red, white and blue bunting made it look like the quintessential small-town celebration. There was a band playing in the gazebo on the town green and a sea of children waving American flags and eating ice-cream cones.

  One of her coworkers, another intern here for the summer, leaned over her shoulder. “That looks like fun,” Milos Yanich commented. Though he’d been born in Ukraine and grown up in Europe, his English was flawless with only an occasional hint of an accent to give away his roots. He pushed his dark-rimmed glasses back into place, then gave her a hopeful look.

  “I’ve never been to an all-American Fourth of July celebration,” he said wistfully. “Are you thinking of going?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Is this town is close by?”

  “Not too far,” she said.

  “Have you been there before?”

  “I passed through once, but I’ve never spent any time there,” she told him.

  Now there was no mistaking the hopeful look that spread across his face. “Then why don’t we go? We need a day away from the lab to clear our heads. Sitting inside on a holiday would be a terrible waste, I think.”

  Deanna hesitated. There were a dozen reasons she should stay away from Chesapeake Shores and two compelling reasons for going. One of them was standing right before her. The other was the man she’d spent weeks now avoiding.

  Milos clearly misread her silence. “Not as a date,” he said quickly. “I have a girlfriend back home. She keeps asking what I’m doing besides work and I have nothing to tell her. You would be doing me a favor. I don’t want her to start thinking that I’m boring. We could go as friends, unless there is someone in your life who might object.”

  “No one,” she admitted. She could hardly explain that she would be tempting fate by going to the very town in which her father lived. What if they accidentally crossed paths? Would he recognize her? That would be highly unlikely since she’d been less than a year old the last time he’d seen her. She would recognize him only because of that photo in the well-worn article she kept in her purse.

  Maybe this was what she needed to do, spend a little time in Chesapeake Shores, in his world. If she started to feel more comfortable there it would prepare her for the next time, for the day when she’d go to confront him, to ask why he’d let her go so easily.

  “Let’s do it,” she said, meeting Milos’s gaze with a smile. “I definitely don’t want your girlfriend to think
that your life in America is boring. You should experience an American Fourth of July celebration, and the newspaper says this is the best sort of place to do that.”

  “Will they have a parade?”

  “I imagine so.” She glanced at the article again and confirmed it. “Yes, there’s a parade at noon.”

  “And fireworks at night?”

  She laughed at his eagerness. He was usually such a somber young man, dedicated to the science that had drawn them both here for the summer. “I think fireworks are probably a requirement for any self-respecting Fourth of July celebration.”

  “I will buy you hot dogs and ice cream,” he promised. “Those are traditional, too, are they not?”

  “Very traditional,” she agreed, catching just a bit of his enthusiasm. She suddenly realized it had been years since she’d been to any kind of Fourth of July celebration herself. As a child there had been backyard barbecues and neighborhood fireworks in the park, but the Chesapeake Shores celebration promised to be in a class by itself.

  Somehow, too, Milos’s exuberance steadied her nerves. If she concentrated on showing this young man a good time, making sure he experienced this most American of holidays as it should be experienced, she’d forget that at any moment she might come face-to-face with her biological father.

  Chapter 14

  “So now, thanks to Gram, the whole town will be taking sides,” Luke grumbled to his uncle Mick O’Brien later that evening at the pub. Though the room was crowded and noisy, only Mick was seated at the bar and he was the only O’Brien who’d arrived, giving Luke the perfect opportunity to vent.

  Clearly unsympathetic, Mick chuckled. “Which means you finally understand that your sainted grandmother’s got a devious streak. Something tells me this is about far more than Irish stew. The topic alone is not exactly newsworthy, even among the regulars who’ve overheard a few of the squabbles between Bryan and Kiera.”

  Though Luke thought he already knew the answer, he asked for Mick’s perspective, hoping he’d gotten it wrong. “Such as?”

  “She’s stirring the pot,” Mick said as he sipped his pint of Guinness. “And I’m not referring to the stew that’s always simmering on the stove in your kitchen here.”

  “You’re suggesting she sees some sort of future for Bryan and Kiera,” Luke concluded. “And that she’s decided to meddle.”

  The prospect was disconcerting. It was one thing for him or Moira to do a bit of scheming here and there, but Gram’s involvement would take it to a whole other level.

  “You’ve said it yourself,” Mick confirmed. “There’s a spark between those two. I’ve seen it for myself, as you know. You’ve assumed it was mostly a test of wills over control of the kitchen. Ma sees something else entirely. She’s just doing her part to fan those particular flames. I imagine Dillon’s put her up to it, not that she’d need much encouragement to meddle in a possible romance. The goal was never to simply get Kiera here for a visit. They both believe family belongs together. They’re looking for a way to make sure Kiera stays. Her work visa will come to an end eventually.”

  “This fall,” Luke confirmed, then sighed as the pieces fell into place. “Not long after the fall festival, in fact.”

  “And there you have it,” Mick said, lifting his pint of ale. “Quite the coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Was Gram this devious when you, Thomas and my dad were growing up?”

  “I’d like to think we were always one step ahead of her,” Mick said, then gave him a rueful grin. “But the truth is, we never stood a chance. When it comes to getting her way, there’s no one on this earth more talented than Nell O’Brien. And I say that as someone who knows quite a bit about controlling things so they’ll turn out the way I want them to.”

  Moira picked precisely that moment to join them, a scowl on her face. “Are you by any chance referring to this crazy idea of Nell’s to have Bryan and my mother competing on a stage at the fall festival?” she asked, her tone making clear what she thought of the plan.

  Luke sighed. “That’s exactly what we were discussing. I don’t think Gram had any idea of what sort of strain it could put on their relationship or the tension it could create here in the pub.”

  “Oh, she knew,” Moira said. “Nell doesn’t miss a thing. And we’ve talked about the need for some harmony between them. I thought we were close to achieving that, but have you been in the kitchen tonight? The tension’s so thick we could carve it with one of those knives Bryan’s always sharpening.”

  Luke studied his wife. “I thought you were growing used to the idea of some sort of romance developing between your mother and Bryan. Are you opposed now?”

  “Not opposed. I just think this is the wrong way to go about it,” Moira said. “Things were moving along at a nice, slow, steady pace, giving them both time to get used to the idea.”

  “And you?” Luke suggested.

  She scowled at him. “Okay, yes, I need time to adapt, as well. It wasn’t that long ago that she was engaged to a man I’d loved and admired for years. I don’t like to think of her heart as being quite so fickle.”

  “So it’s not Bryan you object to?” Mick asked. “Just that Ma’s trying to move things along too fast?”

  “Something like that,” Moira agreed.

  “Or is it that you wanted to be in charge of the matchmaking?” Luke asked carefully. “And now my grandmother’s taken charge?”

  Moira scowled, then sighed. “Okay, maybe that, too.”

  “And it goes back to your wanting to be the one to save Kiera and give her a new life,” Luke added, risking his own marital harmony by pointing out the obvious.

  “Okay, yes. I’m selfish,” Moira admitted with a huff. “I wanted to be the one responsible for giving her a happier life, for introducing her to Bryan and nudging that along at a nice even pace, so she’d be in too deep before she even realized what was happening.”

  “But, Moira, you brought your mother to Chesapeake Shores. It’s because of you that these possibilities for her future exist at all,” Mick said. “If your thought is for your mother’s future, what does it matter who else helps her to reach that end?”

  Luke glanced at his uncle. “You say it as if it’s a rational thing,” he said.

  “Which it’s not,” Moira admitted. “Her happiness is what matters. Of course it is. If Nell’s scheme works, God bless her for it. I just hope it doesn’t backfire in the short run and make things around here unbearable. We don’t dare fire either one of them.”

  Just then the door to the kitchen slammed open and Kiera stepped into view.

  “Out of my kitchen!” Bryan’s shout echoed throughout the pub, drawing suddenly fascinated glances and a flurry of whispers. “I won’t have you in here trying to steal my recipes.”

  “Stealing, is it? There’s not a one worth having. The ones locked in my head are far superior.”

  “Get out!” he repeated.

  “My pleasure,” Kiera retorted. “I’ve no need to be around your temper.”

  The door snapped closed.

  Luke sighed. “Too late,” he commented. “Moira? Which one will you be trying to calm?”

  “I’ll talk to my mother,” she said, sounding resigned. “You tackle Bryan and see what it might take to improve his mood. I’m thinking it might require more than a pint of ale and a sounding board to calm him tonight.”

  Mick laughed at the evidence of the turmoil his mother had stirred up. “I’ll leave you to it. I don’t have any wish to be caught in the cross fire.”

  “If you happen to cross paths with Gram tonight, give her my thanks for this,” Luke said.

  “I think she’d probably tell you that it indicates that her mission is on its way toward success,” Mick said, walking away to leave Moira and Luke to deal with the latest fallout from one of his mother’s clever plans.

  *

  “First of all, the competition wasn’t Nell’s idea. It was Bree’s,” Kiera told Moira, when her
daughter practically pushed her onto a stool at the end of the bar and demanded to know how she’d allowed herself to be drawn into the whole festival cooking battle.

  “If you think Nell wasn’t right in the thick of it, you’re delusional,” Moira said impatiently. “Things in the O’Brien family tend to go exactly the way she wants them to because she knows how to set them into motion. Nell’s a clever one, and most people underestimate her. They think she’s far too honorable to be so sneaky.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say about a woman who’s been nothing but kind to you and your grandfather,” Kiera scolded.

  “You’re taking her side, when I’m trying to point out that she’s set you up?” Moira asked indignantly.

  “Assuming you’re right, I’m not sure I see that it matters. This whole thing came about to benefit the fall festival.”

  “Again, you’re missing the big picture,” Moira insisted. “What happened just now with you and Bryan, that’s the real goal. She wants the fireworks between you to be so loud and so noisy that the entire town and most of the surrounding counties will show up for the cooking competition at the fall festival to watch you compete with your Irish stew. All the other participants are pure window dressing. You two are the main event. It’s not a position I thought you’d care for.”

  “It’s all to benefit the festival,” Kiera repeated, stubbornly refusing to concede her daughter’s point.

  “Fireworks,” Moira repeated, then explained patiently, “Between you and Bryan. Fireworks leading to romance. That’s the end result Nell is going for.”

  As her daughter’s words sank in, Kiera felt her heart lurch. Wasn’t that exactly the opposite of what she’d thought to achieve when she’d agreed to this competition? She’d wanted the distance back, the safety of having the man barely speaking to her.

  She thought back to what had happened in the kitchen just moments ago. It hadn’t felt all that safe, if she were being totally honest about it. It had felt exhilarating. The sparks hadn’t pushed them apart. Instead, they had drawn her toward the flame…exactly as Moira seemed to believe Nell had intended.