Follow the spirited Reilly clan back to the middle of the 19th century, when a legendary family "blessing" forces its sons and daughters to question destiny...and fight for love.
Young Irishman Devin Reilly had just arrived in America seeking riches to bolster the family business, Reilly Ship Works. But his fortune was about to change. After rescuing fiery Maggie Brownley from a runaway carriage and gazing into her stormy brown eyes, he knew that "Reilly's Blessing" bound them together. Then Maggie made a bold promise: if Devin escorted her to Maine, where she planned to flee an unwanted engagement, she would give him the money he needed to reach California. But the trip north would teach Devin that in Maggie's embrace he found a love more precious than gold.
The hero's family has always known they had the Blessing; which comes to them instantly and lets them know that they've found the woman destined to be theirs. But when the hero lands in America and saves the heroine from a runaway carriage, he less than pleased to be receiving the blessing when it takes him away from his goals.
He's got a great deal of Irish pride and, in a world where Irish are thought of as little more than animals, he's lost and unwanted. But he reluctantly agrees to help the heroine bring her injured coachman home and then is sucked into the heroine's life. He simply is too good a person to let her struggle with her evil parents alone. Although he's more than rude to her in the beginning, it's clear that it just gruff, manly stubbornness that makes him act like that. He's far too attracted to his Blessing's woman than he deems healthy.
When the heroine's grandmother grows ill and her parents refuse to allow her to visit, he helps her sneak off in the middle of the night. In result, she ruins all hope of marriage and the freedom she gains from it, she seduces the hero one night by the river. From there everything changes.
The hero is swallowed up by his love for the heroine but he's still plagued by the fact that he still needs money to help his family. The heroine is so kindhearted and selfless that though it tears her apart into, she doesn't fight him when he makes plans to travel to California.
This book is just barely a paranormal but I feel confidant in categorizing it as such because The Blessing is such a predominate part of the story and a very real thing. He does know instantly and powerfully that the heroine is meet to be his and though he fights it for most of the book, he doesn't deny that it's the truth. I did find myself bored with the first half of the story but the second half really picked up and became interesting after they sleep together. I did find it a tad unbelievable that the heroine, a well born lady, would just into bed with a ' servant' but I do suppose she figures she'll never find a husband after running away from her betrothed. I loved the hero's term of endearment which is a Gaelic for My Heart. Overall it was a simple but nice story.