Briarwood Cottage Read Online Free PDF

to Ireland had been to write about mothers involved in the priest molestation scandal. The last time had been for a delayed honeymoon. Although marriage had never been in her plans, after an AP reporter they’d both known had been killed on the road to Kabul, Duncan had convinced her that since life could often be cut unexpectedly and unfairly short, they should make the most of whatever time they were gifted with.
    The very next day, they’d been landing in Barbados where, two hours later, Duncan had slid a slender gold wedding band, bought from the resort’s jewelry shop, on her finger. After a single passionate night, assignments had taken them in different directions.
    With more than a little string-pulling on both their parts, a month later, they’d managed to meet up again in Dublin while covering an EU economic conference on the collapse of the Celtic Tiger.
    Once the conference had wrapped up, after that surfing day in Bonduran, they’d stolen time for a belated honeymoon on Ireland’s west coast. It had been in Galway that Duncan had replaced her initial band with a Claddagh ring. The jeweler who’d sold them the matched set had explained that the rings’ symbolic two hands holding a crowned heart had been created in the city since the 1700s.
    Growing up bouncing back and forth between her globe-trotting parents—who seemed determined to cure all the world’s ills through their work with Doctors Without Borders—and life on a commune with Sedona and her parents, then later working in countries where governments and borders seemed in constant flux, Cassandra had appreciated the rings’ history and sense of permanence.
    After ten days exploring the West from the Ring of Kerry to Galway Bay, most of their last night together had been spent arguing about her destination.
    “I’m not some damn submissive Stepford wife who bows to her husband’s every demand,” she’d insisted as they’d stood on opposite sides of the antique four-poster bed. “I’m an international journalist.”
    “And a damn good one,” he’d shot back. “But you also happen to be my wife, and I don’t want to end up a widower before my first damn anniversary.”
    “But it’s all right for me to end up a widow?” she’d countered, hands on her hips. “Last I looked, Syria is a helluva lot more dangerous than where I’m headed!”
    Although they’d argued before (they were, after all, both strong-willed people), that was the first time she’d ever seen his infamous temper in full DEFCON mode.
    Finally, as the pink light of dawn was filtering into the cottage, they’d called a truce and managed to make up. In bed.
    Later, the drive to Shannon Airport had been mostly silent, as if by unspoken agreement on both their parts not to break the delicate détente. Unfortunately, having left the issue unsettled, once they’d turned in the rental car and made their way to the passenger security checkpoint, the tension swirling between them had become so palpable Cassandra had been relieved when she was finally on the plane leaving the Emerald Isle that had, until that furious fight, been the closest thing to heaven she’d ever known.
    A mere three weeks later, while in Egypt to report on women engaged in the democracy movement, she’d gotten swept up in the action, knocked down, trampled, and might have died had it not been for three unknown men who’d lifted her above the crowd and rushed her to an emergency field hospital for wounded protestors.
    Where she’d learned that she’d lost the child she hadn’t even been aware she’d been carrying.
    Within hours Duncan had arrived in Cairo to take her home to the apartment they’d shared on the rare occasion both happened to be in New York City at the same time. He’d stayed for six excruciatingly long weeks, sleeping on the too-short couch so she could have the bedroom to herself, cooking for her, treating her as if she were some fragile piece of his mother’s prized crystal