A Battle of Wills Read online

  A Battle Of Wills

  The Gallagher Brothers Book One

  Lana Riley

  Creek Bound Books

  Copyright © 2022 by Lana Riley

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  ISBN 978-1-959387-02-2

  Contents

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  More Gallagher Brothers

  1

  “Gretchen! He did what?” I held the phone back while my best friend, Suzanne, screamed.

  “You heard me.” I hated recounting the story once. Twice was unbearable.

  “I don’t think I did. There’s no way…” Her voice was quieter as she no doubt remembered how late it was.

  I sighed and settled back into the couch, pulling a sherpa blanket more tightly around myself to create a cocoon from the outside world.

  “George had barely finished when he told me he wanted to ‘start seeing other people’. He hadn’t even dismounted me yet.” I spat each word out, hoping to disassociate them from the horrendous scene replaying in my mind.

  “The nerve of him! I bet he’s been trying to find someone else and couldn’t so he figured he’d have one last hurrah with a guaranteed lay—oh, sorry! That didn’t come out right.”

  “No, I get it.” George and I had been together for five years. Our sex life had become a predictable routine. I’m sure he had planned on breaking up with me long before that moment and knew that it was a date night, so postponing it a little wouldn’t hurt, at least in his mind. Suzanne was right.

  I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or outright disgusted.

  I was leaning towards disgusted because what wasn’t predictable, and what did hurt, was hastily moving back into my mom’s house at ten o’clock that night. George, being the gentleman he is, informed me I was being silly, and that I was perfectly welcome to stay in his apartment until morning.

  “Be sensible,” he had said to me while I was in the bathroom cleaning myself up. When I went to hop into our shower, I realized it was his shower and promptly dressed instead.

  When you no longer care about the memories attached to certain items, five years can be packed up quickly. Two hours later, I called my mom from the car and put George in the rearview mirror.

  My mom welcomed me home with open arms, made one comment about how much of a scumbag George was, and then said that was the end of it until I was ready to talk more about him. My grandma welcomed me with equally open arms, but with a few more snide comments about George and no promises of stopping.

  After she and my grandma went to sleep, I found myself wholly unable to lie still, so I snuck out into the family room, and that was when I called Suzanne.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I haven’t even caught my bearings.” There was a loose thread on the edge of the blanket that I couldn’t help but pick at. “At least it’s a Friday night. If I had to go to work tomorrow, it wouldn’t be good.”

  “Considerate of him,” Suzanne snorted.

  “I guess I’m just going to bum around my mom’s house and figure out life.” I accidentally tugged the string all the way out of the blanket and inspected the seam for any weakness. It was a cozy blanket and its demise would definitely add insult to injury. It looked good, so I smoothed it back out and ignored the urge to pick at it anymore.

  “Do you need me to come over?”

  “No, it’s after one. I know you need to get up in the morning, so don’t worry about me. Even if she didn’t say it outright, I can tell my mom is thrilled that George is gone. She’ll make sure I’m well-taken care of.”

  “Okay, well, don’t lose any more sleep over him.”

  We got off the phone with promises to meet up when she woke up in the morning and I flipped the TV on, letting the background noise quiet my mind enough to lull me to sleep.

  “Morning, sunshine!” My grandmother sang as she threw open the curtains before the sun had hit the horizon.

  “Don’t you know I’m nursing a broken heart?” I pulled a throw pillow over my face and groaned.

  “Nope. The women in this family have wasted too many years breaking their hearts, pining over men who couldn’t care less. No more.”

  “What a way to talk about grandpa,” I muttered.

  “Oh, no. Don’t bring your grandfather into this. He was a god amongst men. I’m talking about the decade of men that came before him.”

  “Okay, so you and I pick the wrong men at first?” I sat up, feeling some hope. “So my right guy is out there just waiting for me to find him?”

  “Oh, the chances of that aren’t looking good. I was watching the news, and it said men today—”

  “Mother! I told you to leave her alone this morning.” My mom rushed into the room and closed the front curtain.

  “I promised I wouldn’t open her bedroom door.” She put her arms out wide as if to make it painfully obvious she was in the family room and nowhere near my room.

  “Way to find a loophole.” My mom rolled her eyes and sat on the edge of the couch, pulling my foot onto her lap to rub it.

  “She’s going to waste her life away,” my grandma scoffed.

  “It hasn’t even been twelve hours since George showed his true colors.” My mom’s face matched the visceral tone of her voice.

  “You never liked him, did you?”

  “Honestly? No. But your grandma is right about the women in this family. We have a hard time finding good men.”

  “Listen to your mother. She knows what she’s talking about. She’s forty-five and a spinster.”

  “Can spinsters have children?” My mom enjoyed poking holes in my grandma’s theories about life, and this one seemed to perplex her to a satisfactory level.

  My grandma pulled the curtains back open and sat down in a chair, giving my mom a look that dared her to think about shutting them again.

  My mom gave her a knowing look and then patted my leg. “What do you want for breakfast?”

  “I can make my own breakfast.”

  “I know you can. But I want to make it for you. I’ll make Grandma Maeve’s white pudding. That’s an excellent remedy for most broken things.”

  My grandma nodded. “My mother knew how to fix anything. I ate many a white pudding at her kitchen table.”

  “Her and grandpa were married a long time, weren’t they? She’d be one to get some good advice from if we could.”

  My great-grandma, Maeve, died before I was born. I grew up hearing stories about how incredible she was and how my green eyes and red hair looked just like hers. It always felt like an unfair travesty that I never got to know her.

  “Where do I start?” My mom stopped in the doorway, contemplating my question.

  My grandma waved her away. “I’ve got this. You go get breakfast made. I won’t complain about you making mine.”

  “Of course you won’t. Make sure you stick to the facts. Don’t add you own opinion into the story. It’s tragic enough as it is.”

  My grandma sat up straighter, smoothing down her collar, and looking at my mom with indignation on her face that she would ever do something so ridiculous as add her own spin to a story.

  She waited until my mom was out of earshot—a sure sign this story would be filled with Mary Meddlings, a phrase my mom coined for whenever my grandma embellished a story a little more than necessary.

  “I think the beginning is a good place to start my mother’s story.” Her eyes sparkled with memories and I settled back into the couch, certain we’d be there for a while.

  “Your great-grandmother, Maeve O’Broin, came to America with her family when she was a lass of fifteen-years old. That’s when they changed our family’s last name to Byrne. Back in Ireland, in a little town called Briarside Creek, she left a young man named Seamus Gallagher.”

  “The same Seamus you’ve told me stories about?”

  “The very same one. I believe the picture of him is around here somewhere.”

  She got up and rummaged through a box in the entertainment center. “Ah, yes. Here it is.”

  She handed me a faded black-and-white photograph of a teenage boy smiling mischievously at the camera. “He was a cutie. I see why my mother lamented over him for the rest of her life.”

  “The rest of her life? I thought you said she and great grandpa were happily married.”

  “Oh, sure they were. But part of her heart was always back in Ireland.”

  “Did she ever try to contact him?”

  “No. I tried to get her to, but it was before the time of the internet. If she were alive now, I’d look him up myself and contact him for her.”

  “That would be incredible.”

  “What would?”“To find him now.”
I looked down at the picture and wondered if his eyes held that same level of playfulness after Grandma Maeve left Ireland.

  “It’s too late. He’d be ninety-five now if he was still alive. It is nice to think about, though, isn’t it?”

  I flipped over the photo and held it close to my face to read the faded writing.

  To my Maeve,

  I’ll wait for you as long as it takes. I’ll be here waiting for you until the stars fall to the earth. You hold my heart.

  Yours,

  Seamus

  “Pretty poetic for a fifteen-year-old boy.” I tapped the back of the picture. “Briarside Creek is a cute name. It sounds so hopeful and full of life. I think I’m going to look up what I can about the place after breakfast.”

  “Have at it. I’ve looked it up before and it’s a beautiful town. It’ll make you want to go there.”

  “That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, would it?”

  “No, I suppose not. I would be jealous of you, though. I won’t hide that fact.”

  “So why did Grandma Maeve never go back?”

  “She created a life here and at a certain point, she was in too deep to go back. I think even the thought of Seamus became too painful for her. As I got older, she shared bits of stories with me about him and how they had planned an entire future together when my grandparents informed her she’d be moving to America.”

  “How heartbreaking. No wonder we’ve been unlucky in love. What a devastation we were all born from!”

  “Sounds like you might be just as poetic as Seamus,” my grandma said, trying to hide the tear that slipped from her eye with a weak smile.

  “Awe, Grandma! Are you crying?” I playfully tossed a throw pillow at her and she caught it with a fierce look.

  “Never! But it is a tragedy knowing they were separated by thousands of miles and never found their way back to each other.”

  “It really is a tragedy. But she still seems to have been luckier in love than you, mom, and me.”

  “That she was. Two men who adored her? I can’t imagine.” My grandma laughed and slapped her knee. “Alright, I’m going to go see if your mom needs help with breakfast.”

  Briarside Creek.

  The name stuck in my mind and I couldn’t wait until after breakfast to look it up. It was like I was pulled by other-worldly forces to the old desktop in the corner.

  Briarside Creek was easy to find. They had an outdated website set up with dancing GIFs and music coming from the background somewhere, making it a little slow and clunky. The site looked charming, and no doubt reflected the town it was representing.

  I scrolled through a section detailing things to do and stopped when I came across the name Gallagher Farms. It didn’t seem to be a big town, so what were the chances it was a different family?

  The name was hyperlinked, so I clicked through and was taken to an equally outdated website with GIFs of sheep dancing around in flashing primary colors. An arrow pointed towards a link that said “About Us” and I scrolled past grainy old photos taken from the earliest of digital cameras until I found a small write-up.

  Gallagher Farms has been around almost as long as Briarside Creek itself. We supply sheep’s milk to the surrounding areas in County Kerry and beyond, along with wool in our giftshop. Stop in and see John and his sons today!

  No mention of Seamus there. Another link said “Daily Operations” so I followed that path, hoping it would give me some sort of results, otherwise this probably was just another family with the same name.

  John Gallagher currently oversees all production at Gallagher Farms, along with his wife, Emma, and their three young sons. He took over a decade ago when his father, Seamus Gallagher, decided he was tired of telling his son what to do. He’d rather eat sheep’s milk cheese all day and grumble from his chair about what he could do better.

  They outlined John’s daily routine with touches of playfulness, and it was easy to get wrapped up in the place’s charm. A family of comedians. Whoever wrote the copy for their site had a great sense of humor.

  If John was already in charge over a decade before the pictures were taken, the pictures had to be at least twenty years old, if not more. It was hard to see Seamus’ eyes in the grainy, far away shots, but he seemed to still have the same mischievous smile on his face in most of them.

  He was no doubt gone from the world and the website wasn’t updated to reflect it. Still, it would be nice to go there and talk to John. I longed to learn more about the man who seemingly set our family on a path of cursed love lives.

  “Gretchen! Breakfast is ready!”

  I practically fell out of the chair when my grandma poked her head in the room.

  “Okay, be right in.”

  She peered over my shoulder and gasped. “You found him!” And then her face turned into a dark scowl. “Looks like he didn’t sit around pining for my mother.”

  “Do you blame him? It looks like he’s done pretty well for himself.”

  “Hmph,” she scoffed and looked closer. “I have to admit, his farm looks like a beautiful place to visit.”

  It really did.

  I felt a longing in my heart I hadn’t noticed until I started to close the website.

  “Wait, look.”

  I followed my grandma’s finger to see where she was pointing.

  “They have rooms to stay in. How quaint!”

  “That would be fun, wouldn’t it?” I shut down the computer and stood up. “Maybe in the next life, right?”

  My grandma followed me down the hallway, to the kitchen, where smells of white pudding drifted to my nostrils, making my stomach grumble.

  The doorbell rang and my grandma turned to me with wide eyes. “George wouldn’t show up, would he?”

  “No, he doesn’t have the balls. Suzanne said she was stopping by today. I bet it’s her.”

  “Oh good. You go eat. I’ll check just in case.” She patted my arm and disappeared back down the hallway.

  Soon, the sounds of toddler voices and baby babbles filled the house, followed by Suzanne’s voice calling after them, “Those are pretties! Hands on your hips!”

  I rushed out to greet her and swooped up the eldest, a little boy named Freddy. His younger sister, Bessie, stayed glued to her mother’s side, taking the hands-on-your-hips command seriously.

  “Hi Bessie!” I put my hand out and she happily high-fived me, returning her hand to her hip as quickly as possible.

  Then it was the baby’s turn. Little Kelsie babbled and smiled a big toothless grin when I leaned in to play peak-a-boo with her, using her brother’s hand as a cover for my eyes.

  “Grandma Kim made some white pudding. Are you guys hungry?”

  Suzanne shook her head. “No, we just ate.”

  Freddy wiggled in my arms and shook his head. “I’m famished.”

  “Oh, that’s a big word!”

  “Steve taught it to him a few days ago, and he’s used it at every opportunity. Let’s start out with a small bowl to see how famished you really are.”

  “Auntie Gretch, it means really, really hungry.”

  “Well, in that case, I’m famished too, so let’s go!”

  In the kitchen, my mom doted on the three kids who adored her as equally as she adored them. I was indebted to my best friend for providing proxy-grandchildren for my mother, especially now that my prospects were lower than ever.

  Freddy hadn’t exaggerated. He ate a large bowl of the hearty breakfast and asked for more.

  While my mom had the older two occupied, Suzanne and I went into the living room to talk more privately.

  She bounced Kelsie on her lap and leaned forward. “How are you doing?”

  “Surprisingly good. George is a dick and I’m glad to be rid of him.”

  “Wow, I was expecting to rescue you out from a pile of empty ice cream containers.”

  “I know. I can’t believe how well I’m handling it either. It might help that I’ve been looking at pictures of Ireland.”

  “Ireland?”

  “Yep. The town my great-grandma was from. Briarside Creek.” I let the name roll off my tongue and loved how it sounded.

  “Oh! That’s such a romantic name!”

  I laughed and held out my finger for Kelsie to grab onto. “Romance is the absolute last thing I need.”

  “That’s understandable. Are you going to stay with your mom and grandma for a while?”