Love Like This (The Romance Chronicles-Book #1)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When Keira's penultimate day in Lisdoonvarna arrived, she awoke with a heavy heart. It was hard to believe that her plane was tomorrow, that the month was almost over, and that she would soon be returning to New York City. She wasn't sure how well she would cope with all the high-rises and queues of taxis after the quaint quietness of Ireland.

As she showered and dressed for her final full day, William's story about the happily married couple replayed in her mind. Maybe if she could track down Simon and Sylvia somehow, and hear their side of the story, she'd have the last bits of information needed for her article. Because there just had to be more to it than love at first sight and fifty years of wedded bliss. She refused to believe it worked that way, that it could really be that easy.

The problem was, Keira only had her memory of a photo taken fifty years earlier to rely on in finding them.

She checked all the usual haunts, the pubs, the corner shops. Everyone she spoke to either knew Simon and Sylvia personally or knew of them. But no one seemed to know whether they'd come this year. And whenever she asked for their contact details she was met with suspicion.

The woman in the pub next door to Orin's seemed to know Simon and Sylvia well. But she wouldn't help Keira.

"You're the reporter, aren't you? The American?" she asked, accusingly, folding her arms.

"Yes," Keira admitted with a sigh. She was getting used to people distrusting her now. Word had spread quickly about the piece she'd written and how she'd bashed them all in it. Friendly faces were much harder to come by these days.

"Then I'm not telling you anything. I know what you're like. You'll twist it for your piece."

Keira left the pub with a heavy heart.

Despite her failure, she didn't much feel like returning to the St. Paddy's Inn. Orin was still barely saying two words to her. So instead she found herself wandering along the street without direction.

Right on the outskirts of town she found a small patch of grass she'd not noticed before. There was a sign proclaiming that it was a park, the smallest in Ireland, which Keira could believe because it was only about as long and wide as a bus. There was a solitary tree, a bench, and a statue of the Virgin Mary. Keira sunk down into the bench. As she did so, her eyes skimmed over the little gold plaque affixed to it.

Simon & Sylvia.

She couldn't believe it. The Lovers of Lisdoonvarna had built their own park with their own bench and own tree. It was absurdly romantic.

Keira decided that all she had to do then was stay here on the bench and wait for the two of them to arrive. They were certain to do so at some point. She just had to be patient. It wasn't like she had anywhere else to be.

She waited and waited, at times feeling foolish, at others Zenlike in her ability to remain patient. The air grew cooler as the daylight began to fade. Soon people were streaming along the road, filing out of their hotels and B&Bs for the night of festivities. But Keira stayed put. She'd heard enough of their stories. It was Simon and Sylvia's she wanted now, so certain was she that theirs would be the one she needed to finally finish her piece.

She must have fallen asleep at some point because Keira suddenly became aware of two faces peering down at her. She startled up to sitting, her back twinging. How long had she been lying on the hard bench snoozing?

Keira realized then that the two people looking at her—an old man and woman—were familiar. They were the elderly couple she'd seen at the horse and cart race, back when she and Shane had still been on good terms, before she'd ruined everything with him, forcing herself to receive yet another bruise to her heart, so close to the one Zach had caused.