Celtic Evil: A Fitzgerald Brother Novel: Roarke Read Online Free Page A

tables with much more.
    Then there were the ones
who broke even when luck just couldn’t seem to make up her mind.
That was certainly how security consultant for the rich and famous,
Ryan Fitzgerald, was seeing the night.
    Finishing a security
upgrade job for a wealthy client in the small country, the
Irish-born native had decided to stick it out the weekend to see if
his luck would hold up in the casinos.
    Normally the 6’ Irishman
always seem to have the fabled Irish luck riding on his narrow
shoulders when he gambled. Ryan gambled as he liked to live, hard
and fast, and it usually paid off.
    While playing cards or
anything, he won both the pot and the women since he’d never had
trouble attracting attention from the opposite sex with his
slender, rangy build and chiseled upper body. Women were usually
flocking around but on this trip, he barely broke even and wasn’t
even remotely interested in the few females he noticed.
    “Well this night bloody well sucked.” He
muttered darkly as he walked through the casino parking lot to
where his car was waiting.
    A naturally cocky man who
seemed arrogant at most times, Ryan knew that was how others saw
him and accepted that easily. In fact, he usually played into it
with the cocky tone in his natural accent that came or went
depending on what he wanted. He didn’t care and hadn’t for many
years.
    He was a single man who often looked out for
himself, did his job well and played when he wanted to and how he
wanted without having to care what others thought.
    The warm breeze blew his thick long black
hair into his smoky gray-blue eyes and he shoved it out with a rare
show of bitter impatience.
    Ryan accepted his poor showing in cards may
have been due to his temper and impatience being higher than normal
but the recent days had left him rawer than he’d been in years and
he didn’t care for it or for the blasted dreams.
    Almost to his car, Ryan
stopped in the lot to look around. Having been in security for
awhile now and having had his time in learning the ins and out of
being a thief he knew when to accept that his sixth sense was
warning him and right then both his sixth and seventh senses were
screaming, and it was that last one that really irked
him.
    “Alright, we don’t really want to try this
crap on me.” He spoke clearly and firmly, all the arrogance he felt
coming out in the tone as his eyes shifted around him.
    “You always were impatient
weren’t you, luv?” the soft musically lilted tone from the edge of
the dark parking lot nearly brought the strong, stubborn man to his
knees. “Always knew what you wanted and went for it.”
    Ryan’s breath had caught in
his throat as the voice finally stepped into the mild light offered
by the bright moonlight. “Annie,” he breathed, his natural accent
coming back on instinct.
    Facing him was a lovely
girl with pale skin and nearly white blond hair that hung down to
her narrow waist. Dressed in a pale blue dress with a flowered
apron, she smiled serenely at Ryan.
    “Can ye recall all the
dreams we had, Ry?” she asked, stopping a few feet from him as her
soft tone took on sadness. “All the promises you made to me about
the future? How we’d wed and leave Clare behind us.”
    His heart still beating
wildly in his chest, Ryan’s eyes had looked away from the pale blue
eyes facing him. “Aye, I do,” he whispered, fighting both the pain
in his heart and the sudden pain in his head.
    “You said you loved me and
would love me until we died.” Anastasia Cleary spoke sadly, voice
hollow. “If you meant it why did you lie to me? Why didn’t we die
together?”
    “Just overplayed it, mate.”
Ryan’s smoky eyes started to grow darker as he lifted his head, the
muscles in his strong jaw tight. “You had it right until you played
that card ‘cause Annie never doubted my love for her and knew
bloody well if I could have saved her I would have. Now get the
hell out of my sight!”
    His temper had always been
a