Aisling Chapter 1

Another year had come and gone, and I wondered what this year would bring my family. Last year was a momentous one with three weddings. I enjoyed seeing both of my cousins and my oldest brother find their comhghleacaithe anam , soulmates. The happiness those women brought to them and the rest of our family was unbelievable. They were already like sisters, and they weren’t the only ones we added to our family.

Alexis, Ashlynn’s little sister, had been adopted as everyone’s baby sister. She left her unfeeling, cold, and judgmental parents and now resided at the compound with all of us. Rather than live with Darragh and Ashlynn, even though they asked her to, she settled after a while at the main house. Lord knows it had more than enough room. She could wander around and never see anyone if she didn’t want to. She had her own private quarters and was spoiled by all our parents as well as our mamó, granny.

Alexis was attending college and getting her life back on track after her horrible ordeal with the illegal underage porn makers who had trapped her, then forced her to work for them or risk them killing her family. It was Ashlynn’s desire to free her sister and to stop those predators, which led her to come to us seeking assistance when the police weren’t able to help her. One look at her and Darragh was a goner. It was hard to believe it had just been a year since they met. Now they are not only married but expecting their first baby, a son, next month. We couldn’t wait to meet him.

Cian and Miranda had met not long after Darragh and Ashlynn. We loved to tease him about how he was actually working for once, and going to the bank himself was what brought him Randi. She was the right person to balance him. Of course, it hadn’t been smooth sailing for them with her crazy admirers and her father. Only Cian would fall for the daughter of St. Augustine’s police chief. A guy who’d disliked all of us and wanted nothing more than to see us put in prison for the rest of our lives. Thankfully, he changed his tune and now saw us in a different light. He wasn’t na?ve. He knew we weren’t squeaky clean, but he could live with why we got our hands dirty or the part he knew. Cian and Miranda’s wedding was three months ago, and they were due to have their first baby in June. They hadn’t told anyone what they were having. They said they wanted it to be a surprise.

The last one to fall was my brother Aidan. His fall wasn’t exactly perfect. The knucklehead jumped to the wrong conclusions about the new bartender at Sirens, our nightclub, and he fired her. When he found out he was wrong, and before he could make it right, she was hurt in a mugging. Somehow, he worked his charm on her and gained her forgiveness. It made me wonder who would find their one and only this year. Karizma brought even more than herself to our family. Her five-year-old daughter, Khloe, was an angel we all adored. She had everyone twisted around her little finger, especially my brother.

In addition, Karizma’s mom, Carmen, and her boyfriend, Bax, came along with those two. They hadn’t trusted Aidan not to hurt Riza and Khloe at first, and it caused hard feelings between mother and daughter. But since their wedding, those feelings had mostly been repaired. Helping it along, I believed, was the fact Riza and Aidan were giving Carmen another grandchild. Their baby was due two months after Cian and Randi’s. Three babies in seven months had to be a record.

With all the love in the air and new family members, you’d think I’d be over the moon about this new year, and on one level, I was. I was happy for them and wanted to get my hands on those babies. I wanted my other siblings and cousins to find their forever love. On the other hand, it only showed me what I didn’t have and would never have. Everyone else who was single saw these three as the beginning of us all finding our anamchara , soulmate. And I thought it was too, for them. As for me, I already knew who mine was and he and I would never be together.

Hence, I was taking this extended trip to California, to Temecula, where our winery, Maeve’s Cellars, was located in the States. No one thought anything of it since I was the one who managed the winery business for our family. We had one there and one in Italy, which was a new venture. This trip was for more than work. I needed to escape. Watching them all so happy and then seeing him was too much. I felt raw inside. There were times I would look down, swearing my heart was ripped out of my chest. I couldn’t take it any longer.

As much as I loved my family, I was considering the possibility of doing two things that they wouldn’t understand or support. One was to move away from the compound in Florida, where we all lived, and move to California. Even though I oversaw Maeve’s and the work could be done remotely, I liked being more hands-on. The second thing they would object to strenuously was my marriage, a marriage of convenience. This would disappoint and probably infuriate them. They’d object loudly and long if I chose to do it.

In our family, the stance was we would only marry for love and when we met our anamchara . Our grandparents and parents had done it and now three of the current generation had. For the guys, they’d been waiting longer than us girls. Darragh was forty before meeting Ashlynn. Cian was thirty-nine, and Aidan was thirty-seven. I would be twenty-seven in two months, and many would say I had plenty of time. The reality was time didn’t matter. My anamchara didn’t want me and if I couldn’t have him, it didn’t matter who I married. So why wait?

This was why I was considering a marriage of convenience with someone I liked and would at least not want to kill. I would never lie and tell him I loved him when I didn’t. He would know from the start what I was able to give and not give him. It would be a real marriage with expected fidelity on both sides and children. I had no doubt I would grow to feel affection for him, just never love.

If my family knew I was considering this, they would’ve never let me leave Florida. I’d be locked up at the compound with them trying to talk me out of it night and day. So, the trip here was for more than work. It was to escape my pain, too. It was to decide if I would go down this path, and if I did, who would I marry? I had a possible candidate in mind. I just needed to see if we got along in the long term and then if he’d agree.

That was enough thinking about the depressing part of my life. I was expected at the winery. And I enjoyed my job as a vintner. I’d studied hard to learn the craft. One of my favorite parts was working with the viticulturists, the scientists who knew everything about cultivating and harvesting grapes. Make no mistake, winemaking was a science, and competition was steep. You had to know what you were doing. Grabbing my purse and briefcase, I went to the door. When I opened it, Creed was standing there waiting for me.

I smiled at him as he escorted me to the waiting car. Creed was my bodyguard, and he went just about everywhere with me. The family wouldn’t have it any other way. We all had bodyguards, even though we were well-versed in personal protection. It was an unavoidable cost of being who we were. As we pulled away, I opened my briefcase to make one final review of the report I was sent on the new wines we were working on. I wanted to be prepared inside and out for my meeting. My dismal love life could wait.