AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTERONE
She was being paranoid.
Taylor McGowan wanted to be swept away by the Irish countryside as she drove to her new job in charming Caisleán. The artist in her wanted to swoon at the endless verdant green fields, the wild yellow gorse blooming along the road, and the cerulean sky filled with puffy, dragon-shaped clouds.
Only…she was sure she was being followed.
“Didn’t I tell you not to drive alone?”
She cried out sharply as the bane of her existence materialized in the passenger seat. Since being offered this job, she’d been stalked by the ghost of the woman whose name graced the new arts center where she’d be working as the media director.
The legends had gotten at least one thing right. Irelanddidhave ghosts, and somehow she’d been assigned one. Lucky her.
“Dammit, Sorcha!” She glanced over sharply at the “woman” decked out in a flowy white summer dress and bare feet. Her beautiful oval face was creased with a potent frown, a constant since Taylor had done her best to ignore her since she’d shown up in her Manhattan studio apartment. She’d had a harder time ignoring what Sorcha had told her: her soulmate was waiting for her in Ireland in the person of Liam O’Hanlon, the son of the arts center’s founder.
Drop. The. Mike.
“Excited to meet Liam, aren’t you?” Sorcha asked in her melodious lilt, flicking her flowing brown hair over her shoulder.
Know-it-all.For a month, this ghost had been popping up in Taylor’s apartment, making smug comments as she researched everything she could on Liam O’Hanlon—because hey, shewasa journalist. Considering the number of unexpected visits she’d gotten, they should have stopped surprising her, but when Sorcha popped up next to her while she was packing her last suitcase, preparing for the move, she’d nearly fainted.
“I’m so not talking to you,” she ground out, clenching her hands on the wheel to keep herself grounded as she braked for another wild turn in the narrow road.
“Youarebeing followed.” Sorcha jerked her thumb toward the white truck keeping a fair distance behind her. “Since you left Dublin airport. Everyone knew you were coming today, so it wouldn’t take much to put two and two together. JFK to Dublin flight. Your picture is online with your art and culture articles as well as your social media accounts. You should have let Bets and Linc pick you up.”
Except Betsy O’Hanlon was Liam’s mother!
She wasn’t admitting this ghost knew anything about soulmates. Okay, sure, he looked like a hot pirate. Taylor’s friend Sophie had sent her his picture from Caisleán. But he also unnerved her. According to Sophie, he had “the gift,” and apparently he’d gotten a super psychic message with Taylor’s name from the beyond while he was meditating. It had freaked Sophie out a little, and Taylor twice as much.
She didn’t have a clue what to do with all of that, so she figured she’d prefer not to spend several hours in a car with his mother. That’s why she’d told the founder of the Sorcha Fitzgerald Arts Center, Bets O’Hanlon, and her now partner in everything, billionaire Linc Buchanan, that she preferred to drive alone from Dublin and settle before meeting with them tomorrow.
Taylor looked in the rearview mirror again. Same white Berlingo. Same shrouded man with dark shades in the front seat. “Why would someone be following me?”
“Seriously?After everything you know about what my arts center has faced and who our enemies are?” Sorcha gestured in the air dramatically, which was really weird since she didn’t technically have a body. To Taylor, she looked a little like the woman called the Blue Fairy in Walt Disney’sPinocchio. Her body glowed. Somehow. In a painting, Taylor would find it charmingly Madonna-like and beautiful. Only this ghost was no Madonna.
She was a soulmate-pushing pest.
But she had a point. Sophie had told her about all of the arts center’s troubles, and so had Sorcha for that matter.
“So you’re saying Malcolm Coveney, the corrupt politician from Watertown, sent one of his goons to follow me?” she asked.
“Intimidate you, more like.” She pointed to Taylor’s phone resting on the console so she could follow the online directions. “Call Linc. He has a new security officer for just such things. You can pull over at the next pub, have a pint, and wait for them to accompany you the rest of the way to Caisleán.”
And look like some chump girl who couldn’t handle herself on her first day? She was starting an important new job. She was not going to be a problem they needed to solve on a Saturday. “I’m here to handle things like this—”
“In the media,” Sorcha broke in. “This is different. I respect independence in a woman, but you need help this time.”
“I’ll be fine.” Taylor waved her off. “You don’t know some of the spots I’ve been in doing my work.”
Sure, the work she was referring to was hardly official—more of a Fort Knox secret she kept to herself—but that didn’t mean she hadn’t learned skills along the way to keep herself safe in dangerous situations.
Sorcha uttered a heartfelt shriek. “You leave me no choice.”
With that eerie statement, she vanished.
Taylor took a deep breath and reviewed her plan. She would keep driving, obeying every traffic law in sight, and head straight to Caisleán. She eyed her navigation app. She only had another hour to go. The guy following her hadn’t done anything for the past two hours. If he worked for the corrupt bully she’d researched, Malcolm Coveney, then they’d want her to be intimidated. Well, good luck with that. She’d been dealing with intimidation tactics since high school.
Cranking up her music seemed a good plan, so she flipped to her Jay-Z playlist and sang her heart out when “99 Problems” came on. She didn’t even have close to that many problems. And some jerk in an ugly truck didn’t warrant a place on the list.
