Sheer Luck

By Kelly Moran

Best Indie Book Award Finalist!

Bestselling & Award-Winning author Kelly Moran brings you two steamy novellas in one set about two sexy Irish brothers. Are you feeling lucky?

LUCKY ME: I'm Declan O’Leary, and my family is cursed. For the past one-hundred years, bad things happen if we fall in love. So I live my life one woman at a time. Until I meet Lily Durand and I find myself wishing for a forever that can never be. Yet our fate encounter and one week of bliss just might be enough to turn my luck around.

BLIND LUCK: I'm Aiden O'Leary, and after losing my wife to the dreaded family curse, I've sworn off love. But now that my brother has claimed to turn the family luck around, I'm starting to wonder if I might not be able to try again. Sierra Reif, my best friend and son’s nanny, has always been there for me. And I want her. But just when it seems I might get a shot at normal, something happens to prove not everyone is destined for an ever-after.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kelly Moran
• Release date: Jun 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311083562

Kelly Moran

Kelly Moran is an international best-selling & award-winning romance author of enchanting ever-afters. She is a RITA Finalist, RONE Award-Winner, Catherine Award-Winner, a Readers' Choice Finalist, an Award of Excellence Finalist, and a Holt Medallion Finalist, plus she earned one of the "10 Best Reads" and "Must Reads" by USA TODAY. She has foreign translation rights in Germany (where she is a Spiegel bestseller), the Czech Republic, Romania, and the Netherlands. She's been known to say she gets her ideas from everyone and everything around her and there's always a book playing out in her head. No one who knows her bats an eyelash when she talks to herself. Her interests include: scary movies, all kinds of art, driving others insane, and sleeping when she can. She is a closet coffee junkie and chocoholic, but don't tell anyone. She's originally from Wisconsin, but resides in South Carolina with her significant other, her three sons, a cat, and a dog. She loves connecting with her readers.

Book preview

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.

Copyright © 2016 by Kelly Moran

Author Kelly Moran, LLC

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

*Warning: Not intended for persons under the age of 18. May contain coarse language, open love scenes, and mature content that may disturb some readers.

Smashwords eBook Edition

ISBN: 9781311083562

Cover Art by Kelly Moran

Images courtesy of Dollar Photo Club

Published in the United States of America

Praise for Kelly Moran’s Books:

Breathes life into an appealing story.

Publishers Weekly

Readers will fall in love.

Romantic Times

Great escape reading.

Library Journal

Touching & gratifying.

Kirkus Reviews

Sexy, heart-tugging fun.

USA Today HEA

Emotional & totally engaging.

Carla Neggers

A gem of a writer.

Sharon Sala

I read in one sitting.

Carly Phillips

Compelling characters.

Roxanne St. Claire

A sexy, emotional romance.

Kim Karr

An emotionally raw story. A compelling read.

Katie Ashley

Lucky Me

Kelly Moran

About the Book:

Declan O’Leary’s family is cursed. For the past one-hundred years, bad things happen if they fall in love. So Declan lives his life one woman at a time. Until he meets Lily Durand and he finds himself wishing for a forever that can never be. Yet their fate encounter and one week of bliss just might be enough to turn his luck around.

Day One

The first time I saw her was in late summer. St. Louis had been at the tail end of a blistering heat wave, so hot the asphalt radiated like a cast iron skillet and merely blinking was enough to land you in the hospital from too much exertion. She was sitting on a bench in the park next to the library, a book in her hand and back to me. I’d had my eight-year-old nephew Liam with me. I’d thought to let him run through the wading pool before we headed back to my apartment after our lunch. One look at her and she’d stopped me dead in my tracks.

I’m still not entirely sure if it had been her dark hair trying to break free of the orderly knot at the back of her head, the pencil skirt and white blouse that had made her seem so sophisticated, or the shamrock tattoo on her elegant nape that had first drawn my attention. Probably the ink. Clovers had been a bone of contention in my family since my great-grandfather had thrust us into our one-hundred year curse. Irish or not, myth or not, the shamrock was not a lucky charm in the O’Leary clan.

Regardless of what had drawn me to her, the sizzle in my gut and pull on my balls had been something akin to impact. Sending my nephew ahead to the playground within sight, I’d rounded the bench and said something brilliant like, Hot one outside today.

Which was interesting because beauty didn’t typically strike me stupid. I’d had women before, had basked in their loveliness, had taken many to bed. All had been left satisfied—screaming my name, mewing their post-coital pleasure, panting for breath...and wishing for more. That’s not arrogance, it’s fact. Due to my family’s...bad luck, picket fences and ever afters would never be in the cards. So, I’d learned long ago to take—and give—pleasure and happiness where I could. Practice made perfect. I was a master at foreplay, verbal or otherwise. I did not get tongue-tied or flustered in a female’s presence.

She’d glanced up from her book and had struck me blind with a pair of cerulean blue eyes. Framed by thick black lashes, they were the kind of eyes that made a man notice that particular feature before all others. Even an ass like myself had been trapped by them for what seemed a good hundred years before I’d taken in her slight curves, full breasts, and long holy-hell legs. Fantasy after fantasy had pummeled my brain as I devoured her.

I said I was an ass.

With a tilt of her head, those bow-shaped lips of hers had started moving. It had taken concentration, but I’d focused on what she’d said. And that had proved fruitless because whatever wonderful insight had drifted from her perfect mouth had been spoken in another language. French, I believe.

My gaze had dipped to the book in her lap. Wuthering Heights. I should’ve lost interest at that point. Any woman who read Bronte for fun was dangerous. Alas, it had only peaked my curiosity. The edition had been in English. Which meant she’d been trying to brush me off by responding in French.

With a dip of my chin and smile tugging my mouth, I’d said, "Have it your way, a mo rún." Irish Translation: my secret. I hadn’t planned on giving up. I’d figured I’d let Liam cool down in the pool and swing back that way to see her again. Much to my errant discontent, she’d been gone when we’d returned.

To say she’d crossed my mind in the ensuing months would be like saying the Atlantic Ocean was a puddle. I’d drifted to the same park countless times and had never spotted her there again.

One week before Christmas, however, I’d just stepped out of the office building where I worked after a staff meeting I’d wished I’d called in sick for, and there she’d been. Across the street from the newspaper headquarters, she’d worn a red peacoat, white scarf, and black pants as she walked with purpose on the sidewalk. Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders and trailed halfway down her back. In her hand had been a to-go cup of coffee from an independent bean house I loved. I’d done a double—and then a triple—take, not believing it had been her. Frozen in my spot, I’d stared as she’d gotten farther and farther away.

Then, she’d turned her head, as if someone had called her name. Her blue gaze scanned the area, landed on me, and stalled. The breath left my lungs in a whoosh, expelling frost before my face that had been carried away by a bitter wind. She’d tilted her head, much like she’d done a few months prior, and smiled.

Then, she was gone. Again.

Kicked into gear, I’d crossed the busy street, nearly gotten myself killed in traffic, and chased after her for several blocks. With no sign of her, I’d ventured into the coffee house to ask around and had received not one stitch of information. I’d even visited the shop every day for a week at the same time each morning, and nothing.

A few weeks later, while attending the mayor’s annual New Year’s Eve party at the St. Louis Art Museum on Fine Arts Drive, champagne halfway to my mouth and five minutes until midnight, I’d glanced across the crowded room. And saw her. Alone in a corner, she had on a strapless emerald dress that enhanced her hourglass curves and dipped low enough in the front to draw my attention from her eyes to the creamy white swell of her breasts. Her hair had been loosely pinned off her neck in some elaborate feminine style.

Champagne flute in her hand, a wistful, distant smile on her lips, her gaze drifted from the people dancing to the caterer’s table and, finally, to me. For a moment, her brows arched, as if she’d realized running into each other had become an epidemic, too. Slowly, her mouth widened into a grin that had me dizzy and grappling for stable ground.

One of the men I’d been chatting with tapped my shoulder to say his goodbyes, and I’d reluctantly torn my gaze from her to extend courtesy. I’d shaken the banker’s hand as the crowd started counting down the new year.

Ten, nine...

I’d turned, ready to head to my mystery woman’s corner to, at the very least, get her name. Are you seeing the pattern? Can you guess what happened next?

Eight, seven...

Yeah, luck had never been on my side and, combine that with the family curse, I’d been screwed from the first blink of her baby blues. She was destined to be an elusive, intangible blip in my life—a cock and mind tease to the nth degree.

Six, five...

I’d set my glass on a passing waiter’s tray and strode to where I’d last seen her. Pissed off, I’d turned three-hundred and sixty degrees.

Four, three...

I’d woven through the bodies. Checked the hallway and front foyer.

Two, one...

Gone, baby, gone.

Happy New Year it was not. I’d searched the grounds, the street, asked the doormen. She had dissolved into the night like she had vanished the last two times I’d encountered her.

Three plus months had passed since then. Little more than a week before the dreaded St. Patrick’s Day holiday, and I sat in my brother’s pub, at a high top table with two of my best former college buddies, scaling the joint for my next conquest. My heart wasn’t in it. Truth be told, I hadn’t had a woman since the second time I’d encountered her right before Christmas. Hell of a dry spell for me.

Heath was married and had kid number one on the way. He was ensnared in Josh’s tale of Valentine’s gone wrong. A perpetual bachelor, like myself, Josh relayed his credence to never date on Cupid’s day. I pretty much chalked the hearts-and-shit holiday to an excuse for Hallmark to sell more cards.

I sipped my whiskey, half-listening to my mates. The place was pretty busy for a Friday night. It was ladies night and there were plenty of them. Only a few open tables remained, coupled with a handful of bar stools. Desperation clung to the air. Ice clanked in glasses. Laugher rose over the Celtic music playing through the speakers.

My brother knew how to run a great pub, that was for sure. Gleaming, polished wood, green leather seats, a stone hearth in the corner. Brass fixtures reflected the old-world lanterns. Irish Eyes had been quite the success in the ten years since Aiden had opened.

The familiar jangle of the door, followed by a brisk, cold blast of air, barely registered in my head. I swirled the ice in my glass, ready to call it a night, despite the early hour and me not needing to work in the morning. I’d turned in a few articles at the newspaper this morning, so I was good for a couple weeks.

Serious potential, nine o’clock, Josh said.

Sighing, I lifted my head, glanced at the door, and stilled. No goddamn way. Son of a bitch. It’s her.

Her who? Heath asked, following my gaze.

The woman from the park. Edging forward, I watched as she stripped out of a blue raincoat and set it on the back of a stool. Leaning over the bar, she kissed my brother on the cheek and took a seat. Tonight she had on a red T-shirt and a pair of skinny jeans that did fan-fucking-tastic things for her legs. I couldn’t make out what the shirt said from here. Her hair was in a high ponytail, little wisps floating around her face.

Are you serious?

Unwilling to lose sight of her again, lest she disappear, I nodded for Josh’s benefit.

Something strange took a hold of me, made me unable to move. Everything inside my head screamed to stay right where I was, not to engage. My strange fascination for her was unlike me and not healthy. Despite my mind’s two cents, my body wasn’t listening to direct orders. She was pulling me into her orbit without her even knowing I was in the pub. She hadn’t looked my way.

Damn. Does that mean she’s off limits?

I growled. Fuck, yes. Apparently, she made me territorial, too. My buddies and I had an unspoken rule. We didn’t sleep with the same women and we didn’t step in when the others were interested. Period. I trusted Josh to get the hint, yet... The thought of someone else touching her had red-hot flames licking under my skin and my temples pounding. Standing, I grabbed my glass. Dibs, I said, like we were back at the University of Missouri at a frat party.

Blood roaring, body vibrating, I made my way across the hardwood floor. With every step closer to her, my heart pounded. I was finally going to talk to her. Learn her name. More...

Three, two, one.

Leaning an elbow on the bar, I faced her. Of all the gin joints in all the world, you walk into mine. Cheesy? A little. I didn’t use lines to pick up women, didn’t need to, but part of me wanted to test her. At twenty-eight years old, most of my generation had not seen the movie Casablanca. In the barest glances I’ve had of her, I noticed she had a world-weary way about her, a grace rarely seen nowadays. I was more curious than anything whether she recognized the film. Besides, it broke the ice.

She turned to me, those shocking