"She sure does lads. That's why I'm going to marry her."

A hushed awe met his announcement, which might have been due to the surprise of the news in general, or the wrathful look on his face. But before anything more inflammatory could be said, Declan opened Anna's door and hustled her into the passenger seat.

As he walked around to the driver's side he could feel her eyes on him. Anna could endure a good amount of personal ridicule he well knew, but public ridicule was a whole other matter.

"See ya lads." He wrenched open his door, and with a impressive attempt at a cheerful wave he pulled out of the parking lot.

They were barely around the corner before Anna rounded on him.

"I can't believe you!"

He put his hand soothingly on her thigh. "Now darling. It was just a bit of fun."

"Fun?" She knocked his hand away. "Is that what it was?" "The sparkle in her azure coloured eyes faded to dull gunmetal grey as she looked at him. "From my end it feels a bit mean-spirited."

"I'm sorry sweetheart. It was meant in good humour. And to be fair-" He began, using a soothing tone of voice that only seemed to make her angrier, "There are an awful lot of redheads in Ireland. It might just as easily have been anyone."

"Really?" Anna's eyes flared in disbelief. "Do you expect me to believe your family and friends don't see the huge coincidence of a strange redhead showing up on your doorstep only a few short weeks after you crucified a red haired dummy at your fundraiser?"

Declan winced. She'd clearly picked up on the loaded comments. "If it makes you feel any better, my entire family is going to enjoy raking me over the coals."

"No, it doesn't make me feel better actually." Her face crumpled momentarily, "It makes me feel worse because I'm sure that very shortly everyone in the whole village will know about this too. Isn't that right?"

He saw the sheen of humiliated tears in her blue eyes, and his heart ached knowing she was right. He really was a ruddy idiot at times. The truth was, he'd been so caught off guard by her sudden appearance in his restaurant, so preoccupied by recent developments that he hadn't stopped to consider the repercussion of the events of the last month and how they would be perceived by everyone.

He tried to place a soothing hand on her knee, "In retrospect, a cardiologist dummy would have been the better choice."

Her eyes flared, "Don't you dare try and joke your way out of this."

He turned instantly serious, and gathered his thoughts before he spoke, "The whole thing was an unintentional-"

"-Unintentional?" She laughed harshly, "So the whole thing was an 'accident'?" "-Kind of." He paused, his eyes scanned the countryside as if searching for the answer himself. "Well in a way it was accidental. I owed a good deal of money to Lenny O'Donnell for the kitchen reno and he was demanding full payment-"

"So you sold me out for a kitchen reno?"

"It's not that simple-"

"Sounds simple."

He tried again, "Look. I was disappointed with the way the trip ended-"

"Disappointed?" Her face plummeted. "So was I," she argued, "But I didn't create a voodo doll to look like you or put a hex on your name to deal with it!" she added.

"No one said anything about a hex." Declan exclaimed, wide-eyed, "Or a voodoo doll!"

"No. You just turned me into a carnival dummy! How could you let me meet everyone, your family even, not knowing about this?" she asked in a voice of deadly quiet.

His eyes left the road to look pleadingly into hers, "C'mon sweetheart. It's not as bad as you're making it sound."

"You created a dummy to represent me!" Anna glared, "And then you invited all your family and friends to stick it with darts and drown it for money!"

Declan finally realized that the conversation was going to require all of his attention and he pulled over onto the side of the road in order to avoid an accident.

He turned in his seat, elbow on the steering wheel. "It wasn't supposed to represent you! Well what I mean is, I didn't set out to make a dummy in your honour. I actually didn't make it at all, truth be told. Emile was left in charge, and I guess he'd heard, like everybody else, about the car trouble I had on the way to Dublin with the bossy, red-headed American."

"So Emile is going to be your scapegoat?"

"He was the one who put it together, donned the red wig and trotted it out to the dunk tank-"

"-You never stopped him."

"How could I stop him? He bought the bloody wig in Cardigan!" Anna just stared. "It's a two hour drive!" Declan explained, "I didn't want to appear unappreciative of his efforts! Besides, my pride was hurt. I was the broke and lowly innkeeper who'd lost out to the rich, successful jerk. It was pretty obvious Anna, that Jeremy's biggest attraction for you was the fact that he was a cardiologist. How was I supposed to compete with that?"

It turned out to be the wrong thing to say and he recognized it immediately. The diminutive creature in front of him was already quivering with schoolgirl outrage even before he'd accused her of being mercenary.

She sprung out of the Renault 4 with surprising sprightness, Declan thought, given the height of her heels. He watched her begin the march down the side of the road and felt the irony in repeating this familiar scenario again, before getting out and following her.

"Anna? Where are you go'in? You can't walk all the way back to the inn. It's further than you think."

"So, you think I'm superficial? Fine. I'd rather walk then spend another moment in that heap you call a car!"

"Anna!"

She ignored him, calling over her shoulder with a slightly hysterical note in her voice. "Do you want to know what I was doing one month after I left Ireland?" She stopped, turned around and faced him squarely. "You'll laugh. It's absolutely ridiculous. I was feeling guilty at my engagement party! That's right, despite the fact that my fiance was a perfectly lovely cardiologist, I couldn't stop thinking about this stupid, infuriating Irishman I'd spent a harrowing forty eight hours with..." Declan searched her animated face for signs of forgiveness, but could detect nothing but self disgust.

"And it was harrowing, Declan O'Callahan. Don't for a minute think that your momentary kindnesses made up for all that... mockery in between." Her gaze faltered, "So while you were playing juvenile games acting out my demise," she continued chokingly, "I was fantasizing about what you were about to say before Jeremy interrupted us-" Considering what she'd just learned, it was all too humiliating. She spun around and kept walking, "Joke's on me, I guess. I have to be the stupidest woman on the planet."

It wasn't a good sign that she seemed just as angry with herself as she was with him, he knew that much.

"Anna." Declan caught up with her, trying to get her to stop walking away from him. "I thought about that moment too-"

She shook him off. She was not ready to talk of tenderness. "-Do you realize this is the second time you've embarrassed me in the last twenty-four hours?" Declan winced again. "Just yesterday you abandoned me in the dining room in front of all your customers-"

"-So that I could propose to you with the Claddagh ring. I wanted to do things properly."

"Properly would have been not leaving me standing there like an idiot in the first place!"

He tried taking her hand again. "You're right, but believe me, those same customers saw a very distraught man when I returned to find you gone."

"Good!" She glared up at him snatching back her hand. "I hope you felt as humiliated as I felt in the moment that you abandoned me." Her eyes teared up, "And as humiliated as I feel now, for that matter."

He took her by the shoulders before he could stop himself. "I'm very sorry, Anna. Please let me explain-"

"-You already did-" she retorted. She made a move to shake him off, but Declan held her firmly by the shoulders and looked pleadingly into her eyes.

"Please Anna... When I left you that day in the hotel lobby, I thought that was the end of it. I didn't think I'd ever see you again, darling. And after I got drunk, I decided that I had to put you out of my mind-"

"Congratulations, sounds like that was successful-"

"-It wasn't. Not even close because before you even went off with Jason-"

"-Jeremy-"

"-I'd already imagined you into my future-"

Anna stilled to hear this new admission.

"-All that day, on the bus into Dublin, I kept catching sight of our reflection in the bus window, thinking about what it would be like if we were together, if I was the guy you wanted to be with and had traveled across the ocean for. Because there were times during those three days when it felt like we were together, that we were the couple. And I started to really like that."

He could see her softening at his admission, so he owned up to more. "I convinced myself you had feelings for me despite the fact that the whole purpose of the trip was so you could go and propose to someone else." He shook his head, seemingly at his own stupidity. "And then he showed up." Declan continued, "Just like he was supposed to, but I didn't want you to leave. It slayed me, Sweetheart, seeing him propose to you like that, like it was an afterthought. You deserved better than that, and it made me angry to see that he didn't really appreciate you. I felt like I could love you better than him, but instead I was losing out all over again."

Anna was tearing up so Declan finished hurriedly, "I didn't want you to marry him, but I didn't have any right to say anything. This was a man you had a four year relationship with and I was the guy you just met. It didn't matter what my feelings were. We ran out of time, I lost my chance and I was bitter about it." He shrugged, "So yeah, when the idea of the Boston ginger took off, I let it gain some momentum. At least exercising my heartbreak was helping to pay back the money I owed."

She smiled through her tears, "Did it help?"

Her wobbly smile set off a flare in his heart. "Well. I won't lie. The money came in handy-" he paused, when she slapped his chest, "But the rest of it? Not really. If anything it just reminded me that the real Boston ginger didn't go down without a fight." He laced his fingers into her hair, "I really do love you Anna, and I'm sorry that I've done such a piss poor job of showing it."

"Well," she slipped her arms around his neck, "It hasn't been all bad."

He looked down into her upturned face aglow with forgiveness and exhaled with relief as he pulled her in closer. "I'm going to do my best to make sure you're never in doubt about how I feel about you ever again."

"Ever again?" she repeated.

"Ever again." he confirmed solemnly and kissed her for a long time on the side of the road as the traffic drove slowly by.