Beyond Grace's Rainbow: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance Read online

  Beyond Grace's Rainbow

  Carmel Harrington

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Contents

  Carmel Harrington

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  Chapter Forty Four

  Chapter Forty Five

  Chapter Forty Six

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty One

  Epilogue

  Love Romance?

  About HarperImpulse

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Carmel Harrington

  With my husband Roger and two beautiful children Amelia and Nate, I live a pretty idyllic and sometimes chaotic life in Ireland, full of stories, songs, hide and seek, Mickey Mouse, walks on the beach, tickles, kisses, chocolate treats and most of all abundant love. To make life even more perfect, I have now fulfilled a lifetime ambition to be a writer as I am both a published author with HarperImpulse and a playwright. I believe in Happily Ever After’s because that’s what happened to me.

  For more about me, please drop by http://carmelharrington.com/.

  I would like to thank Tracy Brennan, my agent, and the team at HarperImpulse, in particular Charlotte Ledger and Kimberley Young for their belief in both me and Beyond Grace's Rainbow. I feel privileged to have you on my team. I would also like to thank my talented fellow authors at HarperImpulse for the wonderful welcome and for reminding me how much I love to read.

  Thank you to my family both O’Gradys and Harringtons for every word of encouragement you have given me since I began this writing journey - my parents Tina and Michael, my siblings and inlaws Fiona & Michael, Michelle & Anthony, John & Fiona, Adrienne & George, Evelyn & Seamus, Leah and my mother-in-law Evelyn Harrington and all the nieces and nephews.

  I’d also like to thank my aunt & uncle and wonderful godparents, Ann & Nigel Payne, who might live a long way away from me, but have always been there for me whenever I needed them.

  To all my friends both old and new, thank you for the gossipy chats and giggles, cups of coffees, glasses of wine and unrelenting support with a special thank you to Ann Murphy (my person).

  To every reader, fan, book reviewer and friend who has ever shared, tweeted, liked or reviewed Beyond Grace's Rainbow, I will always be grateful. You all played a role in helping me go from self published to published author. Tanya Farrell, my writing confidante, you officially rock and to the gang in my writers' group, Imagine, Write, Inspire - keep dreaming.

  Lastly thank you to all my H’s, my beloved children Amelia and Nate and my stepdaughter Eva, you guys are my everything, my Happy Ever After. Roger, aka Mr H, know this - without your unfaltering love and belief in me, I could not do this, would not want to do this. So this is for you.

  Carmel

  x

  Prologue

  Friday 13th February 2012

  Grace felt like she was floating up on the ceiling. Down below on the ground, she could see Dr Kennedy sitting in a battered old brown leather chair. He was leaning forward, earnestly, looking at somebody who looked very much like herself.

  ‘That reminds me, I must get my roots done,’ Grace thought as she looked down critically at herself. Sitting beside Grace was Sean, her friend. She knew that it was not possible to be in two places at once – she hadn’t lost her marbles – yet. But at this very moment here she was up on the ceiling, watching the scene below. Grace knew it had to be her sitting below because she could actually feel Sean’s hand gripping hers tightly. So the only logical explanation she could come up with was that she was having one of those ‘out of body’ experiences. The other possibility was that the shock of the news that had just been delivered stopped her heart and she had actually died.

  Oh feck, that couldn’t be true. Surely you wouldn’t think about the state of your roots just after dying?

  ‘Do you understand what I’ve just told you Grace?’ Dr Kennedy’s voice jolted Grace back to reality with a bump and a crash. She felt like she’d fallen from the ceiling and landed unceremoniously into the uncomfortable chair. So she was not dead then, Grace thought wryly. For a second she felt like complaining about the terrible chairs the patients had to sit on, while doctors had lovely comfortable leather ones. The injustice of it seemed unbearable. But maybe this wasn’t the time.

  ‘I want to go back up there.’ Grace said instead, pointing to the ceiling.

  ‘Grace, honey, you’re not making any sense.’ Sean said to her, he looked really worried. She knew he was probably thinking she’d gone mad. Maybe she had.

  ‘Grace?’ Dr Kennedy said gently. ‘Do you understand what I’ve just told you?’

  No more floating on the ceiling. No more analysis on the state of the chairs. She knew she had to answer him. She decided she’d have one more stab at dodging the truth.

  ‘No I don’t understand, Dr Kennedy. There’s been some kind of stupid mistake and I’ll be honest with you, it’s not on. I’ll be writing a strong letter to complain. I have a cold or maybe even proper flu. That’s why I’ve had this bad pain in my back. You always get aches and pains when you have proper flu.’ She turned triumphantly to Sean. As a GP himself he was always complaining about his patients coming in with the common cold saying they were in bits with the flu. As he often said, when you have the flu, you know it, you can’t move, your body is aching so much. Unfortunately Sean just looked away from her. He couldn’t look her in the eye. That wasn’t good.

  Grace looked at both of them with growing desperation. She knew that at this stage she was clutching at straws.

  Dr Kennedy tried again, this time his tone sharper. ‘Grace, you have a form of leukaemia, commonly known as AML – Acute Myelogenous Leukaemia. I know that it’s a lot to take in and you must have many questions for me. I’ll do my best to answer them as honestly as I can. But there’s no doubt I’m afraid.’

  Grace felt a tear run down her cheek. She felt like a truck had literally smashed into her body and she could hardly breathe. Her son’s beautiful face popped into her head. His little voice was saying in his beauti
ful sing-song voice, ‘Mommy, I love you!’

  And with that she knew she had to pull herself together. She knew she had to fight this with every core of her being, for Jack’s sake. So yes Dr Kennedy, she sure did have questions to ask. Thousands of questions started jumping into her head, so much so she thought it was going to explode.

  But the only question she wasn’t aware she was even thinking was the one that she whispered to them.

  ‘Dr Kennedy, am I going to die?’

  Chapter One

  Grace Devlin was standing in the sitting room of her apartment in Swords, a large town in Co. Dublin. It was Valentine’s Day and she was awaiting the arrival of her five closest friends. Tom reckoned she fancied herself as a bit of a domestic goddess in the kitchen. Whenever he called for dinner, he always joked ‘Watch your back Rachel Allen, Grace Devlin’s in town!’ But as much as Grace usually loved having her friends over, today she was watching the clock with trepidation. How the hell do you tell the people you love that you have cancer? Grace thought. Walking over to the large black marble fireplace in her sitting room, Grace looked into the gilt mirror hanging above it. She stared critically at the image reflected. Long, wavy, strawberry blonde hair fell down her back, framing a pretty face that as yet was unlined. Large green eyes, her best feature, or at least so she’d been told, were shiny with unshed tears. Grace hadn’t cried at all since she’d learnt she had cancer. This surprised her, as in the past she’d never had any trouble having a good cry. When her parents died, she cried for a month solid and now, years later, she still cried for them, the loss at times unbearable to deal with. When Liam and she broke up, she felt like she cried non-stop for a full year. So as a self-confessed crier, she was surprised that since she’d left the doctor’s office she’d been quite calm about it all. Maybe it was the shock of hearing she had cancer. Grace had never even considered that she would test positive. That sort of thing happened to friends of friends or elderly relatives.

  Will they guess when they see me? Grace wondered. Is it obvious to everyone that I’ve got cancer? Grace looked down at the array of framed photographs lining her mantelpiece, her photo gallery of family and friends. Centre stage, and quite rightly, was Jack, Grace’s three year-old son. The photograph was taken at Christmas, snapped just as he walked into their sitting room to see all the gifts under the tree. Grace had zoomed in with her digital camera, capturing his delight and amazement at Santa’s handiwork. He too had strawberry blonde hair and big green eyes, but apart from the colouring similarity, he was the image of his father Liam. Sitting next to Jack’s photograph was a smaller picture of Liam. Her friends had asked if it was difficult looking at his face every day, and sometimes it was. But the fact of the matter was that he was Jack’s father and for Jack’s sake, she wanted him to at least have one photograph to look at, even if Liam wasn’t actually in either of their lives. Grace and Liam had split up three years ago. He was the love of her life and they had five wonderful years together. But then Liam started to drink, or rather he started to drink heavily. Grace believed that Liam had always loved her, but over the last couple of years they were together this was totally destroyed by his affair with something she couldn’t compete with – alcohol. It was a tough mistress to compete with, and in Grace’s case, she wasn’t strong enough, and lost not just the battle but the war too. She often thought that if it had been another woman, she might have had a chance at holding them together.

  Her pregnancy came as a shock to them both. She had finally finished with Liam and he had moved to London. At first she didn’t notice that her period was late. She was so upset that they had split up that she put it down to the break-up. But eventually she realised that the nausea she felt and the extreme tiredness might just be down to something other than a broken heart. So she picked up half a dozen tests in the chemist’s and with Tara and Abby patiently waiting on her, sat down and did the pee on a stick dance. To her horror a big fat positive came back. She remembered how terrified she was at the time. But as her bump grew and she felt new life stir within her, so did her excitement to meet her little baby. And nine months later, Grace had a beautiful, perfect, glorious baby boy. The start of the most amazing love affair began.

  Until Jack came along, Grace believed she was only treading water. But when Jack came into her life, she felt complete at last. This child was like the missing part of Grace and life looked so much more vibrant and colourful having him by her side.

  Looking at the picture of Annie and Mick smiling into the camera was always bittersweet. Grace was adopted as a young baby and had always felt a little bit alone, a little bit different to everyone else. Her adoptive parents, though, were amazing and they couldn’t have loved her any more than they did and she knew she had lucked out when Annie and Mick Devlin adopted her. They only let her down once, and to be fair, that wasn’t even their fault. They were killed in a car crash, when she was nineteen. Seeing their happy faces in the photo made Grace smile, but then a sharp pain would stab her heart as she realised once again that they were gone. She never stopped missing them and a day didn’t go by that she wished they had lived long enough to meet Jack. They would have adored him.

  Grace walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured herself a brandy and ginger. She’d never usually drink during the day, but this was not a normal day and she felt she was excused. She knew she was getting maudlin, but couldn’t help herself. Smiling, she then picked up the picture of Tara on her wedding day. They’d known each other since they were babies, with only a couple of weeks between them. They were destined to be friends from the moment Grace’s parents brought her home following the adoption. Tara’s mother, Molly, was Annie’s sister, as they’d grown up as cousins. Living on the same road in Drumcondra they had done everything together, from taking their first steps to holding hands on their first day of school. To have gone through thirty two years together, including adolescence, and still be best friends was pretty cool. Tara looked so gorgeous – tall, dark and beautiful. Many people thought she was Italian, until she opened her mouth – then there was no mistaking she was a Dubliner through and through.

  Standing beside Tara in her beautiful wedding gown, was Sean, her husband. Grace smiled as she remembered the day she introduced them. Grace loved to sing, and in the nineties karaoke-fever-hit Dublin, she used to go to all the competitions and it was at one of these that she met Sean. He was in the final singing against Grace – her choice was Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ and Sean had chosen Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon. Grace couldn’t believe it when she won, something she never let Sean forget. However, she did share her winnings of €50 with him by buying him drinks for the night. There was never any attraction between them, which always surprised Grace as Sean was quite the handsome doctor. But Sean and Grace did decide to become karaoke buddies and while singing their little hearts out, became firm friends.

  Sean was everything a doctor should be, calm and friendly, with a really great way of connecting with his patients. Grace didn’t know how he did it, but within five minutes of a consultation, he had an uncanny knack of always allaying any fears or anxieties patients had. Grace always teased him that there were a few broken hearts out there when his female clientele found out he was spoken for! The friends had nicknamed him their very own Dr McDreamy, which Tara said he secretly loved!

  For some reason, Sean didn’t meet the rest of her friends for a couple of years. They kind of had this private karaoke hobby going on and the gang had long since got bored listening to Grace belt out her tunes. So Sean and Grace would go out themselves. But then, on Grace’s 25th birthday, she threw a house party and Sean was invited. She couldn’t have been happier when Tara and he hooked up. She’d never thought of them together until that night, but when she introduced them, Grace couldn’t believe she hadn’t engineered a meeting previously. They were perfect together. Two years later, they were married and Grace was bridesmaid. They were quite a cliché too, as Tara was a n
urse. She’d always sworn she’d never date a doctor, never mind marry one, yet despite herself she’d done both!

  Standing beside Grace in the photo, in a matching cerise pink bridesmaid dress, was their best friend, Abby. They had met her at college, and soon Tara, Abby and Grace were best friends. They’d got up to some serious clubbing and partying in their college years. Abby looked so tiny and fragile beside everyone else in the photograph. She was only 5’ 4 and really petite. Tara said she felt like the jolly green giant whenever she stood beside her. Abby had short blonde hair with really pale porcelain skin. She almost looked like a china doll. A china doll with an astonishing talent though – Abby was a brilliant artist. If you go to the top level in Stephen’s Green shopping centre you can feast your eyes on an array of colourful and quite frankly amazing works of modern art sketched by the equally amazing Abby Nolan.