Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) Read Free Page B

now and…”
    “… and so happy to be among family again?” he asked, knowing that that wasn’t the answer I was going to give.
    “Right. Back in their loving arms.”
    “Do they do anything here but weddings?” he asked.
    “Not really. Just my luck,” I said.
    “Why?” he asked.
    “Not sure. I guess they like weddings,” I said. Sure, we had the odd bar mitzvah and one or two christenings, but weddings were Mom and Dad’s stock-in-trade.
    “Not that,” he said. “Why just your luck that they only do weddings?”
    “You really want to know?” I asked.
    He smiled. “Sure, I do.”
    “Broken engagement,” I said. I held his gaze, waiting for his reaction. People always had one, I had found.
    Declan studied my face in turn. “Well, that stinks.”
    “It’s not so bad,” I said when, in reality, it was too painful to acknowledge. The thought of the wedding dress I had left hanging in my apartment’s closet, available now to the super, the landlord, or the next tenant, was something I had tried to banish from my mind. I focused, instead, on my lost career, the thought of never being in a New York City restaurant kitchen again. That was easier to think about, though difficult in its own way. It was a broken heart, but of a different sort.
    “What have you been doing since you got home?” Declan asked, changing the subject in the nick of time.
    “The first month, I hid,” I said. “And the second month, I got up and decided that my life was better than that.” I had also come to the conclusion that it was possible that no one in Foster’s Landing really gave a hoot about a formerly engaged, disgraced chef. They had their own concerns. I probably wasn’t even worthy of their gossip.
    “Are you happy now?” he asked. “Is not being in hiding working out for you?”
    Guy was a regular Dr. Phil. Caleigh’s third cousin once removed and wedding therapist. I could get behind that kind of guy. Or under, as the case may be.
    “It’s as good as it’s going to get for right now,” I said, and that was the truth. I was living in an apartment over Dad’s art studio behind Shamrock Manor, feeding a cat that I didn’t own but who showed up every night for a bowl of milk and a saucer of Friskies, and stalking my former fiancé on the Internet, where I had come to find that he was dating a Victoria’s Secret model. Already. And likely starving to death if the photos of his newly trimmed physique were any indication. It had only been two months and he looked as if he had lost thirty pounds. He was on his way to becoming the celebrity chef now, sought after and desired. And I was the maid of honor at my cheating cousin’s wedding. Maybe it wasn’t as good as it gets and it could get better. Time would tell.
    “Fair enough,” he said.
    Realizing I had finished my beer, Declan went to the bar and came back with two more. “Thanks,” I said. “So are you that close to Caleigh that you made the trek from Ireland?” I asked. “She and I are pretty close. Kind of like sisters. How come this is the first time we’re meeting?”
    “First time I’ve been here,” he said. “Caleigh came to Ireland a few times and that’s how we know each other. And her ma and my ma were very close.”
    Being as her ma was my ma’s sister and I had never heard of this guy, I wondered about that. But he had a quick smile and a very unassuming air and there was no reason for me not to believe that there was a McHugh cousin from Ireland I had never met. That and he seemed to know my dad pretty well. Then again, the whole crew—Mom, Aunt Helen, Dad, Uncle Eugene—all came from the same little village in the north and stayed together like a tight-knit circle of friends, coming to America, settling in the Landing. I wondered if Dad knew Declan’s ma, too, and that’s why they were talking at the bar. After Caleigh and Mark had said their “I dos” I had noticed Dad and Declan at the bar, deep in conversation, my