Crimson Summer

By Cecilia Farrell

What Carrick County’s powerful Phelan family want, they usually get, whether that’s land like the Fitzgerald farm, or women, like the Fitzgerald girls. Handsome Liam can’t tempt Ranalt, whose heart belongs to neighbour Colin Sweeney. But his older brother Rory attracts her sister Lacey like a magnet draws steel.When the boys and their father Patrick visit Joe and Sheila Fitzgerald with a mysterious offer, all hell breaks loose. A furious Joe orders the Phelans off his property and away from his daughters, warning he knows what to do about ‘their kind’. Soon afterwards, Fitzgerald fences are slashed and cattle lie torn apart. Coincidence or cause for fear?There are secrets in Carrick County people don’t dare reveal. But Ranalt will risk everything to protect her family, the man she loves and the little girl she adores. Each turn of the summer moon brings danger and in the shadows, something waits...

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Oct 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781628305647

Book preview

Inc.

Crimson Summer

by

Cecilia Farrell

Halloween Anthology 2014

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Crimson Summer

COPYRIGHT © 2014 by C. J. Farrell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by RJ Morris

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Black Rose Edition, 2014

Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-564-7

Halloween Anthology 2014

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

For my mother. I miss you.

He said, I’m here to help. To listen to your story. You understand that, don’t you?

She laughed harshly. You won’t believe my story.

Don’t you think it will help to talk about it?

No. She looked at the wide mahogany desk, the diplomas on the wall, the faded (but genuine) Persian rug on the floor. The chairs they both sat in were smooth black leather. The bookcase held expensive reference books, a big conch shell, and a nineteenth-century clipper in a bottle. The walls were painted a pale butter yellow with a few soothing watercolours hung for effect.

He knew what she saw and it pleased him to display his good taste. Redecorating had been pricey but worth it, in his opinion. The ambience seemed to calm some of his more agitated patients too.

This is a very nice office. I’ve never been in one half so nice.

He smiled. Thank you.

She fell silent, rubbing the heart-shaped locket around her neck. A nervous gesture. She’d been doing it since she arrived. Besides the necklace, she wore two silver chain bracelets on her fragile-looking wrists and a claddagh ring on her left hand ring finger. Diamond-cut silver hoops sparkled in her ears.

You like silver jewelry, he observed.

She nodded in agreement.

From the little he knew, he thought her an interesting case. Certainly far more interesting than his usual clientele of bitter first wives dumped for trophy spouses by middle-aged husbands who then ran to him fearing the loss of potency in the bedroom as well as the boardroom. They were closely followed by the spoiled resentful offspring of the bitter first wives and their executive exes, kids dabbling in drugs and sex, wondering why designer clothes and Lake Louise ski trips didn’t fulfill them like the glossy ads promised.

Well, that’s what you get when you’re in private practice, he thought, mentally shrugging off his well-heeled clients.

But she’d be an interesting addition to the book he was writing on delusions and mind-over-matter. He wondered if she might be an entire book herself. For a moment the doctor drifted off in a pleasant fantasy… The Globe and Mail’s bestseller list, an Oprah appearance. Then he returned to reality.

He tried another tactic, speaking soft but brisk. I understand two people are missing, one of them your own sister. I would think that you would want to help find them.

She hung her head for a moment then defiantly raised it. Telling you what happened won’t change anything. It won’t help anyone.

It’ll help you.

She sighed. I don’t know where to begin.

Begin at the beginning.

What, like David Copperfield? I was born, I was raised?

If you like.

But that will take ages. It’s Halloween. You’ll miss all the little trick-or-treaters tonight. She smiled a little. It was the first time she did that since she entered the office.

And I’ve got a lot of candy to give out. He smiled back. Just begin where you think your story really starts. He leaned back in his leather chair, making himself more comfortable. She was his last client of the day and he knew she’d have a long story to tell.

If she told the truth.

****

Well, you know my name, Ranalt Fitzgerald. I know, it’s an unusual name. Ranalt was a 12th century princess of Conmacne who married the last king of Connacht so there’s some