He grins and lightly touches the spot he bit on my neck.
“Sorry,” he says. “This is probably going to turn into a pretty gnarly hickey.”
My skin is sensitive—I bruise easily. Kieran had felt terrible the first time he’d seen the marks he’d left from one of our fevered encounters. I’d been terrified he’d treat me like a porcelain doll after that, but I’d assured him that it didn’t hurt and I didn’t want him to hold back.
Besides, that’s what concealer and tasteful scarves are for.
I run my fingertips over his shoulders, admiring the lines my nails had dragged into his skin.
“Looks like I got you pretty good too.”
His eyes flash and he licks his lips. “I love it when you get wild like that, Siobhan.” He dips his head and kisses me gently. “You have no idea what watching your beautiful refinement melt into wild desire does to me.”
I can’t hide what I’m feeling from him even if I wanted to. My skin flushes at his words.
“You’re so goddamn perfect.”
We clean up and lock up, and head back to my place.
I need to tell him about my father. I don’t want to break this spell—don’t want to lose whatever magic this summer has offered us. But I can’t keep this from Kieran.
“I have some news.”
He’s holding my hand and gives it a little squeeze.
“What’s that?”
“My father’s coming here.”
He stops and looks at our hands.
No. I don’t want this to be about us. About how angry he’d be to see us together.
“I think it has to do with your uncle’s house. I’m sorry, Kieran.”
Kieran’s body is rigid, and I shiver despite the warm night air.
“Thank you for telling me. I don’t want you in the middle of anything.” He sighs. “I don’t love what your father does, Siobhan, but I respect that he’s your father.”
“You’d like him if you got to know him.” It sounds stupid even to my own ears. My relationship with my father is complicated. We’re blood. I love him, but he doesn’t make it easy.
“I don’t know about that.” There’s an edge to his voice. “I don’t understand how he can gobble up people’s livelihoods, people’s homes like it’s nothing. Like they’re nothing.”
I want to argue, but I’d overheard my father talking about some small businesses he was ‘relocating’ for the betterment of the city.
Better for who, Kieran had said back in his family’s bar. And now he’s grabbing for Danny Fitzgerald’s place too.
But why? It doesn’t make sense in the grand scheme of things.
My father doesn’t spend much time in Oak Bluffs. Why does he want that house so badly? Just to prove a point to the Doyles?
Maybe that’s enough.
“I’m sorry.” I rest my head on his arm.
“Sweetheart, you have nothing to be sorry about.”
We’re at my cottage. I step on the front stairs and smile at him.
“Stay with me?”
There are a million reasons why he shouldn’t, but for some reason, tonight, he does.
18
Kieran
It takes a force of will to pull myself from Siobhan’s bed.
But my phone’s buzzing non-stop.
Sliding on my pants, I kiss her softly, grab the phone, and pad to the balcony so I don’t disturb her. She’s shifting lazily in the bed.
Vinny’s voice.
“Kieran, you need to get here now.”
My reflexes snap into automatic. I’m back in her little, airy loft and dressed in seconds. Looking down at Siobhan, I feel a pull of regret that I’m being pulled into life with such a harsh transition.
Siobhan’s face melts from relaxed to concerned in an instant. “What’s wrong?”
“Not sure,” I admit, bending down to kiss her once, hard. “But I need to get going. Something’s up at my uncle’s.”
Her father, possibly.
She moves as if to go with me, and for some reason, it’s like a kick to my gut.
All I was thinking about was how to get out of here, fast and efficiently.
And all she was thinking about was how to get ready fast enough so we could go check on it together.
There is no we. That I need to get very clear, very fast in my own head. There might be unforgettable, stolen nights here that will be the thing that keeps me saying ‘what if’ when this summer fling is over but for now, I can’t lose sight of that.
Yet for some reason, I find myself slowing down enough to press my lips to hers. “Just something I need to take care of. You stay here.”
She fixes me with those wide green eyes, and I’m about to say something I regret when someone pushes open the bedroom door.
“Siobhan, are you still in bed?”
Fear blazes in her eyes, and I instinctively step in front of her. To protect her.
It’s Finn. He stares at me, shock holding him in place for just a second.
The briefest second.
“You son of a bitch,” he yells, launching himself at me. “Did you hurt her? I’ll fucking kill you.”
God, what?
In this one instance, I can’t blame Finn for his reaction.
Seeing his sworn enemy in his sister’s place, her face a mask of fear?
What else could he be thinking in this moment?
He telegraphs his every move in his rage, swinging wildly at me. Normally I’d be happy to knock him on his ass, but it’d be wrong to do that here.
Siobhan screams, and finally I get Finn into an arm lock.
A trick I learned from Owen.
Finn is big, but I’m bigger.
“He didn’t hurt me.” Siobhan cries. “Finn, calm down. I’m fine. And don’t just barge into my space like this.”
I’ve never been so grateful to have clothes on.
“God did you invite him here?” Finn hisses. “Siobhan, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Watch your tone,” I say, increasing the pressure on his shoulder joints.
He grunts in pain.
“I’m going to let you go. Siobhan, do you want me to stay or leave?”
Her eyes flash between me and her brother.
“You can go, Kieran.” Her voice is quiet. “I’ll talk to Finn.”
“You won’t hurt her, right?” I tighten my grip a little more.
“She’s my sister, you dumb fucking thug. I wouldn’t lay a hand on her. You, I’m going to destroy, Doyle.”
I shoot a look at Siobhan. She looks nervous but resigned.
“You okay?” I ask.
Finn struggles against my grip.
“I’m fine,” she says, flashing a weary smile.
I let Finn go, and as I leave, I hear him screaming at her. I want to go back in and beat his ass, but that’ll make it worse for Siobhan. I’ll have to beat his ass at a later date. I make a mental note of that IOU and rush back to my uncle’s place.
When I get there, Vinny and Boru are on the front porch. Vinny looks concerned.
“It’s Danny,” he says.
I look around wildly, thinking the worst. But Vinny claps her hand on my shoulder.
“Some guys came by here this morning. James Carney was with them.”
I’m on my feet before he’s done talking.
“Where’s my uncle?”
Vinny looks resigned. “He’s upstairs. But Kieran, they got into it pretty bad and I think he’s just going to sell.”
His dark eyes look around sadly and for some reason, I feel the impact of what could have been here so strongly that it almost knocks me back.
I’m in the house, taking the stairs up to the second floor two at a time. From behind the door where my uncle spends most of his time, I hear old music playing. Something jazzy that sounds like it’s from another time.
I knock softly and wait. I take a sound for ascent and swing open the door.
I haven�
�t been into my uncle’s rooms. But for some reason, I expect them to be luxurious. I’d expected the rest of the house to be in disarray before the renovation, but for him to have still kept his own space moderately comfortable.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
While Vinny and I have been working to restore the house to its former glory, this room is utilitarian. A bed, a couch, a couple of tables. Bottles littered around the place that suggest he’s been losing his battle against the demons at the bottom of the bottle.
The same demons that took his wife.
And yet, that’s not what stops me in my tracks.
It’s the pictures.
Everywhere there are photographs. Pictures of his wedding day. Casual snapshots of his dead wife. Endless photographs of his son from birth until he died. Pictures of my mother. Poker nights with my dad – I didn’t even know they played poker together – and pictures of my brothers and me. Our cousins, including Sia who spent a lot of time here as a child and was close with Drew. His other siblings. People I can’t even identify.
Endless arrays of pictures.
So many of them gone or far away.
It’s an aching parade of visual losses.
“I miss them.”
His voice is so desolate, so empty that I don’t know what to say.
“It makes it feel like they’re close you know?”
I’m not even sure he’s talking to me.
“I kept thinking that holding onto this house was a way of holding onto them. That eventually, someday, something would happen and breathe life back into the place.”
My heart wrenches for this man. It wrenches for all the times I was too busy caught up in my own life, caught up in business, all those chances I missed to make things better.
I start to say but we’re fixing it. We’re fixing things.
But it’s like he anticipates what I’m going to say. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate everything you’re doing around here, Kieran. I do.”
He waves his hand.
“But today James Carney came by. He offered me a lot of money for this place, and he made it clear that he’s going to fight me every step of the way.”
My fists are balled. Fighting is something I understand. It’s something I can do.
He shakes his head.
“You know what he asked me? He asked me what happens after I win, after this place is all fixed up, and after everybody leaves for the winter.”
There’s an ache in my chest that I can’t seem to fix.
“I realized I’d just be alone again. Just alone here with all my ghosts and I don’t want that anymore.”
What am I going to say? It’s not like my life is my own, or like I could stay here even if I wanted to.
Do I want to?
I like Martha’s Vineyard. I’ve really enjoyed fixing this place up. I really enjoyed spending time with Vinny and my uncle. But I’m not sure I could make my home here year-round. My life is back in Boston. My brothers are back in Boston. My business is back in Boston.
Another voice creeps in: Siobhan is back in Boston, or will be at the end of the summer.
I shut that down hard.
“Look, Danny, there’s something I want to say.”
He turns rheumy, red eyes up toward me.
“I think somewhere along the line we all missed how lonely you got. We thought what you wanted was to be here, enjoying your privacy and your peace and quiet. But I’m starting to get that that wasn’t a choice.”
He makes a sound that’s more like a wounded animal that human. But I press on.
“If I could go back in time, I’d change that. I’d have my brothers here, my father here. As much as we could be. Have you with us in Boston. I would never let you go through all this alone.”
There’s something both redeeming and awful about saying exactly the words a person needs to hear. Grateful in moment you could deliver them, but also knowing you’ll forever live with the reality of how long they went unsaid.
Another weight to carry for another time.
“If you want to sell this place, if that’s what you really want, then I’ll support you. I’ll stay here as long as you need me to and make that happen. But you do that on your terms. To get what you deserve for the place and also have a say in its future. This home has a lot of memories and it’s got a lot of meaning. You don’t just have to sell out to James Carney because he’s a bully, because he told you that you had to, or because he used your past tragedies against you.”
He’s looking at me now, something like interest in his eyes.
“Never said this, but when I was a kid, you are one of the people I looked up to the most. You’re a fighter, Uncle Danny, a different kind of fighter. Let’s show those Carney bastards what kind of a fighter you are.”
He nods at me, and I head back downstairs to finish wall papering the ballroom. This old place had a lot of life in it once, giant parties that petered out long before I was old enough to attend. I wonder if my mother had dances here. Maybe some kind of debutante ball? There’s so much I don’t know about her, and it strikes me that the people I can ask don’t have a lot of time left. I swallow the bile that rises in my throat.
There’s no time for that kind of panic.
No time to think about Siobhan.
I hope she’s doing okay. I hate to be a source of pain for her. I never should’ve let things go so far between us.
It’s late in the afternoon and I’m just about to take a break when there’s a pounding on the door.
I half expect to see Vinny with cold beers, just being a dick, or maybe one of the workers here that forgot something.
When I throw open the door, there’s a pale, doughy looking man with a paunch and a mint green golf shirt that’s tucked into khaki shorts pulled too high. Let’s not even mention the knee-high white socks.
“You’re not Danny Fitzgerald.”
“No shit,” something in his nasal whine of a voice and his posture has me immediately on guard. Ready to fight.
He gives me a long, pointed look before asking, “Where is Mr. Fitzgerald?”
“Hello, Harold,” Danny’s voice comes from behind me. “I see you’ve met my nephew, Kieran. Kieran, this is Harold Hooper, the town’s building inspector.”
I start to bristle, ready to say the permits are in order.
Knowing the trouble going on with the Carneys, Vinny and I did everything by the book.
“Would you like to come in, Harold?” Danny offers, but the man declines and holds out an official looking document printed on shitty quality paper.
I grab it.
Emergency Notice of a Hearing to Rezone.
I need to call Seamus, because this is out of my wheelhouse. Even as I look at the paper, the date strikes me.
It’s Thursday.
The hearing’s scheduled for next Saturday.
A week? Are you fucking kidding me? Now I know why James Carney is here.
“No, Danny,” Harold says regretfully. “But this zoning thing is coming to a head and I think you need to be prepared that you’re not going to win.”
He’s halfway down the stairs when he adds, “It’s too bad you waited this long to fix it up, Danny. Still, it’s not too late to sell and get a good price from someone who can put this lot to good use. There’s no sense in prime real estate going to waste for a fish shack. Think about it.”
Oh, we’ll think about it.
My uncle just looks defeated. “Kieran, I’m so grateful for all the work you’ve done here.”
Then he gives me a half shrug. “Maybe it’s for the best, son.”
It’s definitely not for the best. And we’re not going down without a fucking fight.
My phone’s already dialing Seamus. “Hey bro, I need a primer on zoning laws.”
Somewhere, back in Boston, I hear my brother crack his knuckles, throw me on speaker and gleefully say, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Nerd.
But I’m paying attention.
19
Siobhan
Finn gave me an hour to pack. I told him to go to hell. I’m almost done with my residency, but I don’t want to leave Oak Bluffs. Don’t want to leave Kieran?
Once he’d finished screaming at me for embarrassing the family by cavorting with the enemy, Finn looked at me dismissively and sighed. “I’m sorry, Shy. I shouldn’t have yelled. This isn’t your fault. You’ve always been too innocent for your own good, and I should’ve been here to look out for you. I’m not going to tell Dad.”
I wish I’d told Kieran to punch him.
“Honey, can’t you see that he’s using you to get back at us? I’ll make him pay for taking advantage of you, rest assured, but I need you to face reality here.”
What reality? That no one would be interested in me other than to use me as a tool?
It leaves me cold. My eyes well up at Finn’s brutal assessment of me.
“You have to be less trusting, Shy. I’ll have Mom come by.” His voice softens as he misreads the source of my sadness. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
I can’t look at him. I have no desire to see my mother, either. She’ll just scold me for being a dumb, slutty idiot.
Finn sends her anyway.
I’m showered and dressed by the time she gets here. Picture perfect, cool and reserved.
“Kieran Doyle?” My mother looks around the living room of the cottage, her lip curled like she’s smelled something decaying. She looks for somewhere suitable to sit and decides on the love seat. She sweeps her handkerchief over it before she sits. “Siobhan, what were you thinking? If JB hears about this, he won’t want to come near you.”
“I don’t want to date JB Stacy,” I say, coolly.
My mother sighs theatrically. “I should’ve had this talk with you. It’s my fault, really, but you always seemed so sensible. I guess I was wrong.”
I guess so.
“Siobhan, there are women that men sleep with and women that they marry. But it goes the other way too. There are men who are good investments, and it’s fine to have something on the side as long as you’re discrete. But Kieran Doyle is not a discrete option. He’s very attractive, I’ll give you that, but there’s nothing subtle about that man.”
Thug: The Doyles: A Boston Irish Mafia Romance Page 11