Irish Eyes (Stolen Hearts Romance) Read Online Free

don’t hurry this along, ma’am, we’re going to be standing in a rain storm.” Officer Shaughnessy shuffled a step closer to them.
    “I’ll be coming along with you...sir.” The boy turned and walked away from Julia, his shoulders hunched, his feet kicking at the grass as he went.
    As the patrol car drove away, Craig clapped his hands together. “Another good deed done in record time. Now if we could just—”
    “Not yet.” Julia moved to the back of her car to unlock the trunk.
    “If you’re doing what I think you’re doing,” Craig warned her, “you better realize I’m not going to be a party to it. I have…”
    “You have work to do,” she cut him off. Turning to rifle through the piles of blankets and extra clothes, spare batteries, flashlights, and first aid kits she finally found her sorry excuse for a shovel. She thrust the splintered handle into Craig’s hand. “Faith can move mountains, but sometimes it has to do it one shovelful of dirt at a time. And somebody has to hold that shovel.” Julia trudged back up toward the billboard, motioning for her assistant to follow. “That shovel, my friend, is an instrument of faith in human kind in action.”
    “Pardon me if I point out it’s also used to dig graves.” Craig hoisted it onto his shoulder and slunk along behind her.
    Julia drew in the smell of the impending storm, let it refresh her then let it out in a sigh. “Not today, my friend. Today, we’re digging for treasure.”

     
     
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
     
     
    Julia shuddered.
    Her hands fisted on the top of her scarred army surplus desk. She stole a sidelong glance at the ominous cadet-blue safe, glinting at her through the half open closet door in her office on the second floor of the shelter.
    Last night she and Craig had gone beneath the billboard expecting to unearth a cache of sports cards, a ball cap, perhaps a piece of jewelry, some memento a boy might call treasure. Instead they’d found… trouble .
    A great big, black pot o’ trouble, to be exact. A leprechaun’s treasure unlike anything she’d been prepared for, honest-to-goodness, heavy, gleaming handfuls of very old gold coins.
    She pushed her heavy hair off her shoulders and folded herself into her red cardigan. Her shoulders tightened and anxiety roiled in the pit of her stomach. She could still smell the fresh dirt clinging like chocolate cake crumbs to the cast iron kettle and lid as she unearthed the boy’s secret stash from the damp, dark ground.
    Craig had wanted to go with her to take the find to the shelter and call the police to see what to do next but she hadn’t seen the sense of making him miss out on his dinner plans. She’d be find, she’d insisted, with the protectiveness of her staff around her and the gold tucked inside the shelter safe, she would calmly wait for the police to arrive and be done with it.
    That’s what she’d intended to do. But this morning she sat in her office haunted by knowledge that she still had a fortune in gold sitting just a few feet away.
    “Well? What did the police say? Were the coins reported stolen? Is there a reward?” Craig slipped into her office as silently as his not so sneaky sneakers allowed.
    “I don’t know,” she said softly
    “You don’t know what?” Craig sat in donated wing-back chair beside her desk, eyes studying her behind his hipster glasses, his elbows and knees poking out at sharp angles from the swayed seat. “About the reward or if the stuff was stolen?”
    “I don’t know,” she said with more conviction, almost snapping at her assistant. She looked toward the open office door then cast her gaze around the room, finally coming back to Craig’s expectant expression. She wet her lips. “I don’t know about the police.”
    “The—” His brows clashed above his eyes. “Julia, what are you talking about?”
    She glanced at the door again and the empty hallway beyond. They were alone. The night staff and evening’s residents