derelict’s hair was a matted tangle obscuring his eyes, but even as she watched he wiped at it with a gloved hand. Across the crowd, his gaze met hers, and she felt the blood drain from her face.
His eyes were a clear, brilliant green. She’d only seen eyes like that on one man, and that man was dead.
Abruptly the derelict turned away, wrenching his shopping cart around on two wheels so quickly that a man in a business suit had to scramble to get out of his path. Hunched over the handles, he started pushing it down the street toward a nearby alleyway.
He was trying to disguise his height, Ainslie thought faintly. He was trying to cover his features with that appalling beard, trying to become just another invisible cast-off from society with his strange assortment of clothing.
Either that, or he was exactly what he appeared to be—a lost soul, a denizen of the streets, a man who had slipped through the cracks and who had stayed there.
But she had to know.
“What the hell’s going on, sis?” Speaking out of the corner of his mouth, Sully tugged at her elbow, a faint frown creasing his brow as she turned to him. “Are you getting cold feet, or what?”
“Did you see him?” She forced the urgent question out from between lips that felt coldly numb. “Did you see him, Sully? Was it him?”
“See who?” Frowning in earnest, Sullivan looked over his shoulder from where a knot of ushers and bridesmaids waited just inside the oak doors. “What are you talking about, Lee?”
“I’m sure it’s him. See—there, with the shopping cart!” It felt like a gigantic weight was pressing down on her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. Ainslie heard the high quaver in her own voice, and turned to her half brother. “Don’t you see him, Sully?”
There was more than concern on his features now, there was alarm, and beyond him Ainslie caught Tara’s dubious look. The good-looking teenager she was standing with broke off whatever he’d been saying to her.
She was causing a scene. She was causing a scene at her own wedding, and she didn’t care, Ainslie thought desperately. It couldn’t be him—but she had to know for sure. She wrenched her arm from Sully’s grip and ran to the edge of the top step, leaning out over the black iron railing that framed it.
“Malone!”
Her hoarse cry was more of a scream, and with part of her mind she realized that the crowd had fallen silent and was staring up at her with avid curiosity. But she wasn’t concentrating on anything or anyone but the shuffling figure in the greatcoat, now almost at the entrance to the alleyway.
“Malone!” Her voice cracked on his name, and she felt Sullivan’s strong hand wrap around the lace on her upper arm. “Dammit, Malone—look at me! It’s you, isn’t it?”
“For God’s sake, Lee!” Sullivan’s voice was almost as shaky as hers. He thrust his mouth close to her ear. “Malone’s dead, sweetheart. You know that. Let’s get you inside—”
She shut out Sully’s words. The veil blew across her face and she impatiently pushed it aside, feeling the headpiece finally let go. It fell from her hair and tumbled down the top two steps. It didn’t matter, she thought as she watched the man in the greatcoat turn back to look at her from the entrance to the alleyway. Even at this distance she could see the pain etching his features.
There was no way he could be Malone, Ainslie thought faintly, her knuckles white against the iron railing as his eyes met and held hers for a heartbeat. No way at all. As Sully had said, Malone was dead.
It was him.
“Malone,” she whispered incredulously, her hand going to her mouth. She felt the hot rush of tears behind her eyes and blinked. Joy, so sweet and sharp it felt like pain, lanced through her. Unheeded, warm tears slipped down her face.
Through her blurred vision, she caught his one last, agonized glance before he turned and pushed his cart swiftly down the alleyway, his head bowed. He disappeared around a corner and was gone.
“No,” Ainslie breathed disbelievingly. “No—I won’t lose you again. I can’t have lost you!”
Breaking free of Sullivan’s grasp, she whirled desperately away from him and ran down the steps into the crowd.
Chapter Two
“For the love of Mike, Ainslie—what were you thinking of, flying down the church steps like that?”
The little change room at the back of the church was packed with O’Connell females. Jackie O’Connell Byrne, once a flawless beauty and still sexy at fifty, raised an incredulous eyebrow at her niece.
“We’ve got a packed church, an organist who’s started the wedding march twice, and one extremely patient groom out there. What we don’t have is a bride walking down the aisle.”
“Would you like me to get Father Flynn in to talk to you, dear?” Her face flooding with color, Cissie glanced meaningfully at the yards of white ruffles and lace of her niece’s wedding dress. “Is there…is there something you’d like to confess before you go through with the ceremony, Ainslie?”
“For crying out loud, of course there’s nothing she needs to confess,” Jackie snapped. “Just because you’re still hanging on to your virginity for dear life at forty-nine doesn’t mean—”
“Shut up, the both of you!”
The gravelly roar that cut through the small room came from a wiry figure clad, like Jackie, in a silk suit. But instead of a skirt, the jacket was paired with trousers in the same sea-foam green that Tara, sitting wide-eyed a few feet away, had so vocally groused about earlier. Peeking out raffishly from under the cuffed silk pants was a pair of lime high-top sneakers.
A flicker of amusement briefly overlaid the chaos of Ainslie’s thoughts as she took in the pugnacious jut of her Aunt Kate’s jaw. Even as she stood there facing down her younger sisters, she seemed to bounce a little on the balls of her feet, as if she were getting ready to take on an opponent in the ring. Her boxing days long behind her, Ainslie mused, the woman once known as Kiss of Death Katie would never be anyone’s idea of a sweet little old lady.
The rest of the O’Connell women had fallen silent. Raking an impatient hand through her cropped steel-gray hair, Kate’s gimlet gaze fell on one of Ainslie’s cousins.
“Bridie, go out and tell Father Flynn that Ainslie’s just feeling a little faint from all the excitement. Say she needs a few minutes to compose herself before the ceremony.”
“Lie to a priest, Aunt Kate?” Bridie sounded shocked.
Her aunt’s jaw jutted out even farther. “It’s not a lie. Look at the poor girl, for God’s sake. Her face is like cheese.”
“Thanks, Aunt Kate,” Ainslie murmured dryly, then wished she’d kept quiet. As Bridie reluctantly left the room, the high-tops swivelled her way.
“Lying to Father Flynn’s going to buy us ten minutes, no more, so let’s hear it, Lee. Are we scrubbing this event or what? And what was that performance in front of the church all about?”
Performance
