Luck of the Irish (Holiday Heartbeats #3)

Chapter 1 (Nhu & Jack)

Nhu was tired. It wasn't the sleep-it-off-and-tomorrow-you'll-feel-better kind of exhaustion; it was the bone-deep weariness accompanied by an incapacitating numbness that comes when your dreams and your heart are crushed at the same time. Yeah, it was that kind of tired.

The way she saw it, she could either accept failure gracefully and quickly devise a strategy for moving forward, or she could throw the most epic tantrum that would rival any cranky toddler minutes away from bedtime.

She chose the latter.

After a good, ugly cry and a couple of punches into a blameless, but convenient pillow, Nhu stared at the computer screen, her Canh Cua Tôm soup tasting even more sour in the back of her throat. Surely there must have been a mistake. This couldn't be happening. Sure enough, though, the computer screen proved otherwise.

Nhu Trieu Hoang. Her name was nowhere to be found on the California State Bar Exam Results roster. Among the list of newly minted lawyers, she saw the names of her best friend, Marisol Aguilar, and about a dozen other former classmates. Only her name was missing.

In all honesty, Nhu wasn't entirely surprised. The day before she took the exam was the exact moment her then-boyfriend Jack decided to drop the biggest bombshell on her. How the hell was she supposed to concentrate on theoretical justice when the man she loved had just thrown her under the bus?

Staring at the glowing computer screen in front of her was just a blaring reminder of the fact that she simply wasn't enough. She was attractive, but not stunning enough to model full-time. She was intelligent, but apparently not capable of pushing her emotions aside and passing her bar exam following the worst day of her life. She was lovable, but obviously not desirable enough for Jack Smith's family to even learn of Nhu's existence.

She'd tolerated Jack's reluctance for nearly two long years, all the while convincing herself that she understood why he never introduced her to his family. In truth, she'd never brought him to her parents' house either, but that was more out of reciprocation than anything else. Naïvely, Nhu convinced herself that one day soon, Jack would come around, man up, stand up to his influential parents, and publicly declare his love for her. Emboldened by his bravery, Nhu would also find the courage to tell her equally affluent and influential parents — albeit in different social circles from Jack's family — that she had found the love of her life... and he wasn't of Vietnamese descent.

In all of her 26 years, Nhu had never been openly defiant of her parents' wishes. Having a secret boyfriend never felt right to her, but the idea of coming home with a half-Irish white boy felt even worse. Because she was an only child, and a female at that, Nhu's parents had always afforded her many more freedoms and indulgences than many of her cousins and friends had experienced. When they moved from her family's hometown of San Jose down to San Diego, twelve-year-old Nhu was confident and headstrong. Her doting parents supported her interest in photography, and somehow, the following year she ended up standing in front of the camera instead of behind it, modeling and winning pageants like a young pro.

She didn't resent her hard work, especially because her parents had carefully invested her earnings for her over the years. Thanks to them, her scholarships, and steady gigs with flexible hours, Nhu was able to put herself through college and law school debt-free. At least that was one silver lining, considering that she decided she would only re-take the failed exam once she felt completely ready to redeem herself.

A piercing wail and frantic vibration on her bed let her know that her best friend Marisol had just received the news. Nhu wasn't in the mood to force her swollen throat to produce words, especially when a fresh deluge of tears would inevitably crest and fall during their conversation. She reached over and rejected the call, deciding to text instead. Her finger hovered over a row of emojis, unsure of how to start the conversation. Finally, she began to type.