Lilac Lane Read online

  “There’s no reason traditional Irish pub food can’t be blended satisfactorily with regional dishes,” he told her. “It makes us unique.”

  “I would think the Irish menu, the selection of ales and music would do that quite nicely all on their own,” she retorted. “Is there another such restaurant in the vicinity that I’ve not yet seen? In Ireland there’s a pub around every corner and they see no need to deviate from the traditional. It’s the individual atmosphere and the collection of regulars that provide the draw.”

  “From a much larger pool of customers,” Bryan argued. “Believe it or not, Kiera, Luke and I were making a success of this pub with the input from Nell and Moira.”

  She paled at that. “So I’m not needed at all, is that it?”

  He saw the flicker of pain in her eyes and felt a momentary pang. He knew Luke wanted her to feel welcome, and that Moira, Dillon and Nell were hoping she’d find a permanent home in Chesapeake Shores. Her place at the pub was a critical element of that dream.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said, even though the words didn’t come easily. For a man who’d uttered few apologies in a lifetime, he seemed to be making a habit of it since Kiera had come around. “I just meant that not every single thing needs to be changed. I’m sure you have some innovative ideas to make us even more successful and authentic. Maybe you could put some on paper and we could talk about them before we open one day, not when I’m in the middle of trying to feed a crowd of people and my temper’s already short.”

  She seemed genuinely startled. “You’re actually willing to listen to my ideas?”

  “Sure. Why not? I’m as eager to try new things as the next person.” At one time he would have been chomping at the bit to make his own innovations. He’d left culinary school eager to make his mark. He’d wanted to impress the food critics and earn raves from his customers. Somehow he’d lost that enthusiasm along the way. He could pinpoint the precise moment, but he’d stopped dwelling on it.

  He glanced over and caught Kiera studying him intently, her expression filled with skepticism. Eventually she nodded.

  “I’ll take you at your word, then,” she conceded. “And perhaps we can give that truce of yours a try, as well.”

  Bryan pulled into a parking space behind the pub, shut off the engine and turned to her. He was surprised to see a faint spark of excitement in her blue eyes. It gave them the brightness of sapphires, he decided, then shook off the thought as another of those unexpected and inappropriate digressions he should be avoiding.

  He did not need to be noticing Kiera Malone’s bright eyes or her lush hips or the creaminess of her skin. He didn’t need to start thinking of her as a woman at all, he reminded himself fiercely.

  Because in his past experience, females did little beyond driving a man crazy and then leaving him with a broken heart. He’d had enough of that to last a lifetime. In fact, years later, he was still recovering from the last time.

  Chapter 7

  Deanna Lane sat in the doctor’s office at the University of Virginia campus health center, her nails biting into the palms of her hands. She’d been feeling lousy for over a week. Her energy level, which usually kept her going from dawn till midnight, had fallen to a new low. She could barely force herself to crawl out of bed in the morning.

  With finals coming up in another week and the semester due to end, she normally would have waited to see her family doctor back home in Richmond, but she was afraid whatever she’d caught would play havoc with her ability to study and keep her grades up. Her roommate had noticed her pale complexion and lack of energy and asked point-blank if she was pregnant, but that wasn’t even remotely possible. She was dating, but not seriously enough for there to be any chance of that.

  In her premed courses, she’d learned just enough to be terrified that she might have some sort of blood disorder or cancer. That was the danger of all those courses, she’d been told. They could make even the healthiest student susceptible to hypochondria. Before they knew it, they’d start imagining they had a dozen fatal illnesses by the time the semester ended. Surely that’s all this was, her imagination working overtime. Mononucleosis would be a much more logical explanation. A light case of an energy-sapping flu even more likely.

  When Dr. Robbins, who was not only one of the physicians, but a professor and Deanna’s adviser and mentor, came into the room her expression gave away nothing.

  “Well,” Deanna prodded. “What’s the verdict? What do the blood tests show?”

  “That you’re perfectly healthy,” the doctor said, giving her a reassuring smile. “Deanna, your blood work is absolutely normal in every respect.”

  The reply should have reassured her, but Deanna wanted answers. She needed solutions, not a pep talk. “Should we be doing other tests of some kind?”

  “I honestly don’t feel they’re necessary right now.”

  “Then why am I feeling so crummy?” She mentally flipped the pages of various textbooks. When nothing obvious jumped out at her, she seized on her psychology course. “Am I depressed?”

  Dr. Robbins fought a smile. “Do you think you’re depressed?”

  “No, but there must be some explanation. You looked for mono, right?”

  “You’re a college student. Of course I did,” she replied patiently, “though we haven’t seen many cases on campus this year.”

  “Help me out here. I need to figure out what’s going on and fix it,” she said in the goal-oriented way that had driven her all her life.

  “Okay,” Dr. Robbins said. “While I can’t find anything specific in your test results to go on, my educated hunch is that you’re staying up way too late studying, panicking a bit over finals in your premed classes and already thinking ahead to that summer job you’re planning to take back home working for your stepfather.”

  That all made perfect sense, but Deanna wasn’t entirely convinced. “This isn’t all in my head, Dr. Robbins. It can’t be.”

  “Oh, the symptoms are real enough,” she said. “But trust me, they’ll go away once you get some rest and put your exams behind you. One of these days you’ll grasp the significance of the mind-body connection. I believe it’s possible to make yourself sick and to make yourself well,” she said, then added, “though an educated diagnostician and physician certainly can play an important role.”

  She leveled a somber look into Deanna’s eyes. “There’s another thing that might be at work here, something we’ve talked about before. Perhaps you need to admit to your stepfather that you really don’t want to work in his construction business, not only for this summer, but definitely not forever. I know that decision you made has been weighing on you.”

  Deanna winced, almost regretting that she’d confided in this woman she’d come to trust. “It’s not that I don’t want to work with him,” she insisted. “It’s just that…” Her voice trailed off.

  “It’s just that your heart is in medicine. Don’t you think he’ll understand that, especially given how much time the two of you spent in hospitals when your mother was ill? From everything you’ve told me, he’s a reasonable man. And you are taking premed courses.”

  “Of course he’s reasonable,” Deanna responded defensively. She hesitated before admitting, “But I haven’t exactly mentioned the courses I’m taking.”

  Dr. Robbins was clearly startled. “Why on earth not?”

  “It’s just that he’s been a little lost since my mom died last year,” Deanna explained, wondering if perhaps she hadn’t been making excuses just to keep from disappointing him. “When I came back to school last fall, he asked what I needed for tuition and room and board and then he wrote the check. I didn’t want to upset him by telling him I was changing my major from business to premed.”

  “I’ll bet he’d be more upset if he found out you’re going along with this job for the summer just to please him and giving up the chance to volunteer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which is what you really want to do. You told me that money
for school isn’t the issue, and volunteering will give you all sorts of practical experience. My alma mater is eager to have you there.”

  “I know you’re right,” Deanna conceded, sighing heavily. “But I dread having that conversation with him. He’s really looking forward to my being home for the summer. It’s just the two of us now.”

  “And there it is,” the doctor said, a note of triumph unmistakable in her voice. “There’s the guilt that convinces me all the more that we’re dealing with anxiety. Believe me, I see this a lot. I’m certain it’s the primary reason you’re feeling so lousy right now.”

  “I suppose,” Deanna conceded reluctantly. If it was the explanation, it came attached to a whole lot of emotional baggage she wasn’t ready to deal with.

  The doctor leveled a hard look at her that had her squirming. She could guess what was coming.

  “There’s one more subject you need to speak to your stepfather about,” Dr. Robbins reminded her. “We’ve discussed this before, too. You need to find out more about your family medical history. You know your mother’s, but you know nothing at all about your biological father’s. Your stepfather may have those answers or, at the very least, he may be able to tell you how to find them.”

  It was, indeed, another conversation Deanna had been avoiding, another layer of that emotional baggage that kept piling up. “I feel as if asking him anything about my biological father will seem like a betrayal. Ash has been the only father I really remember.”

  “You’re injecting emotion into it,” the doctor chided. “And there is some of that, to be sure, but Deanna, really, this is a medical necessity. You’ve had enough premed courses already to understand that. Genetics is a critical component of understanding what medical risks you might be facing. Will you promise to sit down with him and discuss it? Surely you must have other questions, too, especially since your mother never told you much about your father or what happened between them.”

  “She left him,” Deanna said flatly. “That’s enough for me. She must have had her reasons.” Even as she spoke, though, she couldn’t help wondering if blind loyalty to her mother—and to Ash—hadn’t been misguided. She knew plenty of stepchildren and adoptees who craved information about their biological parents, and no one thought less of them for not being happy with the family they had. Had she been afraid of the answers she’d find? She had no idea.

  “Well, I’m not going to force the issue. However, the medical questions could loom large one of these days. Think about that.”

  Deanna nodded. She knew the doctor was right. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had questions of her own over the years about the man she barely remembered, but none had seemed urgent enough or important enough to upset her mother by asking. And Ashton Lane had been all the father she’d ever needed. Rocking the boat hadn’t been in her nature.

  Dr. Robbins looked satisfied. “Okay, then. Let me know soon if you decide you want that chance to work at Johns Hopkins this summer. I’ll make the arrangements. As for the way you’re feeling these days, I recommend you put everything else on hold for at least twenty-four hours and get some sleep and something besides pizza and caffeine into your system. I think rest and good food will do wonders. I know you think you don’t dare take any time off right now, but your studying will be far more effective if you’re rested and relaxed. Stop by again in a couple of days if you’re not feeling better.”

  “Thank you.” Amazingly, she felt better already as she left the office. Perhaps it was just being reassured that she didn’t have anything dire or maybe it was simply talking to someone who understood the dilemmas in her life.

  That improvement in her outlook lasted for the rest of the afternoon, right until she looked at her caller ID and saw that her stepfather was calling. Then all of the panic washed over her again.

  When Deanna answered the call, she forced a cheerful note into her voice. “How are you?”

  “Super,” he said at once, his tone almost bright enough to fool her. “I was wondering if you might be able to get home this weekend. I know you must be stressed out over finals and that you’ll be home in a couple of weeks, but—”

  Thinking of her conversation with Dr. Robbins, Deanna cut him off. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  He seemed taken aback by her quick agreement. “Are you sure you can spare the time?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll make the time.” Richmond was practically around the corner from Charlottesville. She could attend classes tomorrow and be home by dinnertime. Maybe she could kill two birds with one stone, get some of the rest she so desperately needed and get a few things off her chest, as well.

  *

  Deanna stared at the magazine clipping that her stepfather had handed her as they sat in their favorite restaurant on Friday night. It was a review in a regional publication about an Irish pub in Chesapeake Shores, Maryland, that was earning raves for its atmosphere and authentic cuisine. The chef was Bryan Laramie, a name she knew all too well, even if her other memories were blurry.

  Tears gathered in her eyes as she read through the clipping again. Surely it wasn’t possible that her father had been this close by, just over a hundred miles away, for all these years.

  “It can’t be the same person,” she said, but when she looked into Ashton Lane’s familiar brown eyes, she saw the truth. “How can this be? I thought he was in New York.”

  “That’s where he was when your mother first left. I have no idea how he ended up in a small town on the Chesapeake Bay. I saw the article a couple of days ago, though, and checked it out. This is your biological father, Dee. Since he’s this close, I thought you needed to know. I knew I was taking a chance of upsetting you this close to finals, but I was afraid if I waited, I’d come up with a dozen reasons not to tell you at all. We’ve never really talked about your father, and a part of me wanted to keep it that way.” He searched her face. “Should I have waited?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Confused, though, she lifted her gaze to his. “What should I do now?”

  All of her life, Ash had been there to guide her decisions. It felt natural to turn to him now, but she could see the discomfort in his eyes.

  “That’s not up to me,” he said gently. “What you do with this information is up to you.”

  Deanna could barely make sense of any of it. Talk about timing. She’d gone for months at a time, even years, without a single thought of her biological father coming into her head, and now he seemed to be ever-present in her thoughts and in her conversations.

  She studied Ash, wondering how he must be feeling about this. His expression gave away nothing. He’d spent his life running a small, but successful family construction business in Richmond, where he’d grown up. He and her mother had met when Deanna was still a toddler. She wasn’t entirely sure of the circumstances, though somehow he’d ended up giving her mother a job and then, a couple of years later, they’d moved in together. He’d adopted Deanna when she started school and wanted to know why they didn’t have the same last name. Her mom and Ash had never had children of their own, and Ash had doted on Deanna as if she were his flesh and blood. In so many ways she’d had an ideal, happy childhood.

  “You know you’re the only father who matters to me, don’t you?” she asked him urgently. “Knowing that Bryan Laramie lives close by doesn’t change that.”

  “You’ve been the best daughter any man could ask for,” he assured her. “But you must have questions. If you need to have them answered, now you know where to look. I’ll support whatever you want to do. I’ll go with you, if you want to see him and need me there. Whatever you want.”

  That was Ash, Deanna thought. He’d been endlessly devoted during her mom’s battle with cancer, by her side in the hospital, providing round-the-clock care toward the end, never once complaining about the sacrifices he made to be with her. “This is where I belong,” he’d told Deanna when she’d asked about the impact his absence must be having on the business. “The company will
get by.”

  Now he was ready to put his own feelings aside to support her.

  “I need to think about all this,” she told him, desperate for some time alone to sort through all the emotions raging through her. How could her father have been so close and never come looking for her? What sort of man did that? Not the kind she could imagine inviting into her life at this late date.

  Perhaps, though, she should see Bryan Laramie at least once, get the answers about her medical history that Dr. Robbins had told her she should have, answers that might come into play even years from now in some medical crisis or another or when she was thinking of having children of her own. Perhaps that one contact would be enough. It wasn’t as if there’d been this huge void in her life all these years. Ash had filled that. He’d been there, strong and understanding and always ready with a bit of wisdom or a laugh.

  No, this was strictly a practical decision, she told herself. And in the morning, she would explain all of that to her stepfather, along with how she was feeling about the job at his company and the allure of the chance to spend the summer at one of the country’s premier medical centers. Ironically, that job would put her in even closer proximity to Chesapeake Shores and her father. Maybe that was exactly the sign she’d been needing to guide the decision she’d dreaded making about her future.

  “God works in mysterious ways,” her mother would often tell her when speaking of the day she’d met Ashton Lane. Now Deanna had her own example as proof of that.

  *

  Bryan had tossed restlessly all night long. Some of that could be blamed on Kiera and that new look she’d gotten a couple of weeks ago at the spa, a feminine look that had caught him off guard and made his breath hitch in a way he’d been avoiding for a long time now.

  Over the years he’d dated any number of women, many of them attractive, but not a one had gotten to him as Kiera Malone did. That made her dangerous and made these dreams that stirred him in the night even more disturbing.