Wedding at King’s Convenience Read Online Free Page A

happened to be around to listen. Besides, he liked hearing that Maura had been talking about him.
    “There’s no harm in it, is there?” Cara was saying, with a glance at first her sister, then Jefferson. “Why shouldn’t you take a good look at each other?”
    “Pay no attention to my sister,” Maura told him with a shake of her head.
    “Why?” he asked. “She’s not wrong.”
    “Maybe not, but she doesn’t have to be so loud about it, does she?”
    “Ah Maura, you worry too much,” her sister told her and patted her arm.
    The music suddenly shifted, jumping into a wild, frenetic song with a beat that seemed to thrum against the walls and batter its way into a man’s soul. Jefferson found himself tapping his fingers on the tabletop in time with the quickening rhythm.
    “Oh, they’re playing ‘Whiskey in the Jar!’ Come on, Maura, dance with me.”
    She shook her head and resisted when Cara tried to pull her to her feet. “I’ve worked all day and I’m in no mood for step dancing. Most especially not with my big-mouthed sister.”
    “But you love me and you know it. Besides, it’ll do you good and you know you adore this song.” Cara grinned again and gave her sister’s arm a good yank.
    On her feet, Maura looked at him, almost embarrassed, Jefferson thought, then with a shrug she followed her sister into the cleared-away area in front of the tables. A few people applauded as Cara and Maura took their places beside each other, then, laughing together, the Donohue sisters leaped into action. Their backs were arrow straight, their arms pinned to their sides and their feet were flying.
    Jefferson, like most everyone else in the world, had seen the Broadway show with the Irish dancers and he’d come away impressed. But here, in this tiny pub in a small village on the coast of Ireland, he was swept into a kind of magic.
    Music thundered, people applauded and the two sisters danced as if they had wings on their feet. He couldn’t tear his eyes off Maura. She’d worked hard all day at a job that would have exhausted most of the men he knew. Yet there she was, dancing and laughing, as graceful as a leaf on the wind. She was tireless. And spirited. And so damned beautiful, he could hardly draw a breath for wanting her.
    Without warning, Jefferson’s mind turned instantlyto the stories he’d heard about his great-grandfather and how he’d fallen in love at first sight with an Irish girl in a pub just like this, on one magical night.
    For the first time in his life, he completely understood how it had happened.
    Cara left the pub soon after, claiming she was going to drive into Westport, a bustling harbor city not five miles from the village of Craic.
    “I’ll be at Mary Dooley’s place if you need me,” she said as she left, giving Jefferson a wink and her sister a kiss and a smile. “Otherwise, I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”
    When her sister was gone in a blur of motion, Maura looked at Jefferson and laughed shortly. “She’s a force of nature,” she said. “Always has been. The only thing that came close to slowing her down was our mother’s death four years ago.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I know what it’s like to lose your parents. It’s never easy no matter how old you are.”
    “No, it’s not,” Maura admitted, feeling the sting of remembrance and how hard it had been for her and her sister in those long silent weeks after their mother had passed away. Smiles had been hard to come by and they’d clung to each other to ease their pain.
    Eventually though, life had crowded in, insisting it be lived.
    “But my mother had been lonely for my father for years. Now that she’s joined him, she’s happy again, I know.”
    “You believe that.”
    A statement, not a question, she thought. “Aye, I do.”
    “Are you born with that kind of faith, I wonder, or do you have to work to earn it?”
    “It just…is,” Maura said simply. “Haven’t you ever sensed the