Read Online Flowers on Main by Sherryl Woods - Free Book Online Page A

lighting the pipe that he only rarely smoked these days. The scent of the tobacco still carried him back to the days when his father would take him along to a pub on one of their trips to Ireland to visit distant relatives. In those noisy, crowded neighborhood pubs, before Ireland’s laws changed, thick smoke filled the air, which usually made him cough, but he could always pick out the slightly sweet scent of his father’s pipe. Tonight he found the aroma oddly comforting.
    “Dad, you know perfectly well you shouldn’t be smoking, not even a pipe,” Bree said as she climbed the steps and settledinto the rocking chair next to his. “You only do it when you’re upset or trying to recapture old memories. Which is it tonight?”
    He gave her a wry look. “Do you really need to ask?”
    “If you’re waiting for me to apologize for running off, I won’t,” she said.
    “I’m not expecting you to. I would like it, though, if you’d tell me what’s going on. I’m your father. I’d like to fix things, if I can.”
    She laughed at that. “When have you ever been around to fix things?” she asked, then regarded him apologetically. “Sorry, that’s not fair. You were here when we were little, but this isn’t a scraped knee that needs a bandage and a kiss.”
    Mick felt a sharp stab of guilt at the accuracy of her assessment. He felt awkward and out of his element, but he’d resolved not long ago to try to fix things not just with Megan but with his entire family. He’d made strides with Abby and Jess, though there was still a long way to go. Now was as good a time as any to start with Bree.
    He puffed on his pipe, then met her gaze. “Fair enough,” he told her. “But I’d like to make up for all the times I wasn’t around, put the two of us on a new footing. At the very least I can listen. I’ll offer advice, if you want to hear it. You can always ignore it if you don’t like it. That would fit the family pattern. O’Briens seem to be genetically predisposed to carving out their own path in the world, regardless of the wisdom of those who’ve gone before. I respect that.”
    He waited for a response. She seemed to be weighing his offer, perhaps trying to decide if she could trust his promise to respect her decision.
    Maybe because he’d never been a patient man or maybe because he needed her to see that he had some insight that she might not be crediting him with, he finally cut into the silence.
    “You’ve left Demming, haven’t you?”
    Her eyes widened. “How did you know that? Did Abby tell you?”
    “Abby refused to say a word after she came back from the beach. And it wasn’t so much that I knew anything. I suppose I was just hoping that was the case.”
    She frowned at his statement. “You didn’t like him?”
    “Hated him, as a matter of fact.”
    She looked startled. “But you never said a word.”
    “You’re a grown woman. Some mistakes are yours to make.”
    “And you thought Marty was a mistake,” she said, still sounding just a little stunned. “Why?”
    “He was condescending to you,” he said simply. “No man has a right to talk to anyone the way he spoke to you. The only thing I found more offensive was that you took it as long as you did.”
    She sucked in a breath at the gentle scolding. “I admired him,” she admitted in a small, humiliated voice that made Mick want to draw her into his arms and tell her she was worth a thousand Martin Demmings. “And he wasn’t always like that. He taught me so much, Dad. He really did. And when he wanted to be charming, no one could possibly resist, least of all me. I suppose I craved the kind of attention he lavished on me at the beginning.”
    “And now you’ve seen him for what he is,” he told her. “Good for you.”
    She smiled then, and she was his little girl again, basking in his praise. Seeing the way her eyes lit up, he had to ask himself what the hell he’d been thinking by staying away so much that any of his