A Christmas Miracle for Daisy (Taming of the Sheenans Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

been trapped in the limo in the fire.
    Cormac stretched his forearm over his face, shielding his eyes.
    Remembering the accident still made him sick. Whenever he remembered Las Vegas he wanted to throw up.
    And now he had Daisy, and even though he loved her, and even though he tried to be everything for her, he wasn’t enough. He’d never be enough.
    He was hard. Ruthless. Selfish.
    He hadn’t always been this way, though. His mother used to say that of all her boys, he was the sweetest. Cormac was her sugar and cinnamon spice. He’d blocked out a lot of memories of his childhood but he remembered loving to cuddle with her when he was small. He could still see himself nestled on her lap as she rocked him in the chair she kept in her sewing room.
    He’d loved his mother so much that it had made his older brothers tease him. If they found him on Mom’s lap, they’d pull him off her lap and throw him down, wrestling him into submission. His brothers were rough. His dad was rough. He’d been born into a rugged ranching family in Paradise Valley, and as one of the younger brothers in a family of five boys, Cormac didn’t remember a time where he didn’t have to fight, or compete.
    He was maybe six or seven when it finally dawned on him that if he didn’t want to keep getting beat up, he needed to toughen up. He needed to stop going to Mom, and he needed to stop hiding with his books. He had to become strong like his brothers. So Cormac Monroe Sheenan decided he’d learn to fight, and he’d earn their respect.
    It’d taken a long time—years—but by using his brain and his muscle he learned to hold his own. He discovered that his strength was strategy. Strategy allowed him to outwit the older brothers now and then, but that was enough. It gave him confidence. It also taught him that setting goals and working towards those goals—even if others mocked his goals—would pay off.
    Over the years he carved out an identity for himself, an identity apart from the family name. In high school, people would say he was different from his brothers. Teachers said the same thing, too.
    It didn’t hurt that he was the only fair Sheenan in the bunch. In fact, he was the first blonde Sheenan in four generations. As a kid, he’d hated being a towhead. His older brothers used to tell him he was the mailman’s kid, or that traveling preacher’s that Mom used to go listen to every summer when he came to town for his big revivals, but he never took the ribbing seriously. How could he? He looked exactly like his brothers—the same chiseled jaw, the same high cheekbones, the same big frame—except for the blonde hair.
    It was somewhere in his early teens that he learned girls liked his blonde hair, and how it got extra gold highlights in summer. The girls were forever running their fingers through it, combing it back from his face as one leaned in for a kiss, or idly tugging on strands while deep in conversation.
    And so he’d let them talk, and kiss, and it had all worked out. Up until they got serious. Eventually they all wanted to get serious. He didn’t.
    There was no way in Hell he was going to settle down…marry a girl…have kids.
    No way in Hell he’d get trapped, the way his mom and dad were trapped. The fighting. The tension. The sadness.
    His mom had had her sadness.
    His dad had had his anger.
    Cormac’s most vivid memory of his father was his dad staring out the window towards the land, and the river that divided the Carrigan property from the Sheenan ranch. No love lost there, between the two families.
    So Cormac loved girls as long as it was fun, and light, and easy. But the moment it changed, the moment his girl wanted more , he ended things. Better to end things immediately than let the relationship drag on, with her hoping and waiting and praying for more. Because there wasn’t going to be more. Not from him. Not ever.
    And Cormac had managed to escape serious relationships and entanglement until Daisy