Daniel's Desire Read Online Free PDF

Seeing them for the first time is bound to be hard. It’ll get easier after that. Tell Ryan, Sean and Michael that, too. Ask them when they’re coming.”
    “I’m not going to push them,” Patrick said.
    “But you are in touch with them?”
    “Why not?” he said defensively, as if Daniel had implied disapproval. “I like them. They feel like, oh, I don’t know, family, maybe.”
    Daniel ignored the sarcasm. “I’m your family, too,” he said quietly. “Maybe it’s time you remembered that.”
    Patrick sighed again. “Okay, you’re right. I am theone who’s being a hard-ass, but you don’t make it easy, Daniel, not when you insist on acting as if the folks did nothing wrong.”
    “Dammit, I know what they did was wrong. So do they, if you get down to it. People make mistakes.”
    “This was a helluva lot more than a mistake,” Patrick countered heatedly. “They didn’t just forget to bring in the morning paper or leave an umbrella behind at the office. They forgot three sons and left them to fend for themselves in another state.”
    Daniel frowned. “Don’t you think I know that?”
    Patrick held up his hands. “Okay, let’s not go down this path again. Why are you here? I assume you didn’t come just to hassle me.”
    “Business.” When Patrick regarded him with blatant disbelief, Daniel explained about the runaway he believed was working for Molly. “Have you seen her?”
    Patrick’s expression remained perfectly neutral. “As far as I know, Molly waits on all the customers herself. Always has.”
    “And you wouldn’t tell me if that had changed, would you?” Daniel said.
    Patrick didn’t have to respond. It was clear that Daniel wasn’t going to get any more information from his brother than he had from Molly or Retta. It was as if they’d formed this tight little circle to keep him in the dark. He dropped the subject. An uneasy silence fell again, the kind that had driven him to stay away in the first place. It had been too painful after all the years when he and Patrick had shared everything.
    He regarded Patrick wearily. “When is this going to stop?”
    “What?”
    “The tension between us. I didn’t abandon anyone. The folks did, and we both know they regret it, that they’ve regretted it every day of their lives.”
    “I’ve told you this a million times, but I’ll say it once more. You’re not going to get me to feel sorry for them,” Patrick said bitterly. “They made a choice, dammit. It could just as easily have been us they left behind. Would you be so blasted forgiving if that had been the case?”
    “But it wasn’t the case,” Daniel reminded him. “They gave us a home and their love.”
    “At the expense of three other sons,” Patrick argued. “Have they bothered explaining why yet? Or have you even asked?” At Daniel’s silence, Patrick shook his head in apparent disgust. “Obviously not.”
    “Any explanations they have are owed to Ryan, Sean and Michael, assuming they even care at this late date.”
    “Oh, they care.”
    “Then why haven’t they set up a meeting? I thought they’d want to see the folks when they came up for your wedding, but when I suggested it after the ceremony, they backed off.”
    “Maybe because it’s not so easy working up the courage to confront the parents who abandoned you. Maybe because they’re afraid of what they’ll do when they see the sorry excuses for human beings who walked out on them.”
    Daniel understood his brother’s pain, but he wouldn’t listen to him bad-mouth two people who’d done their best for them, if not for their brothers. Kathleen and Connor Devaney were flawed. They weren’t monsters.
    “Watch it, Patrick. Those two people gave you lifeand their love for eighteen years. I won’t listen to you talk about them as if they’re the scum of the earth. They deserve more respect than that from you.”
    “Yeah, they gave us everything, all right,” Patrick said, his tone scathing. “But