She shrugged and sipped her tea. For a moment, she could have sworn his eyes flashed, but it was probably just a trick of the light. Thankfully, he didn’t dwell on the subject.
“Their daughter, Riley, is a spitfire just like her mom, and their son, Rory already has Jake’s scowl,” he grinned. “Then there’s Mick – Michael. He’s a doctor, but his real skill lies in biochemistry. He’s a genius. He’s married to Maggie, and they’ve got the farm that grows all the organic produce for the Goddess. They’ve got one little guy, Ryan, and another on the way.”
Faith nodded. She’d liked Maggie instantly, though she had a harder time recalling which one was Michael. They all looked very much alike, really.
“Ian – you’ve met him, too. He’s the one who offered to hook up a security system for you.”
Faith nodded past the look he gave her, the one that let her know he was still not pleased with her outright refusal to consider home security. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t need one; that was the kind of thing you got when you had something worth stealing. A good old-fashioned baseball bat took care of the rest. She and Matt each had one within reach of their beds.
“He’s married to Lex. Lex was my best friend in high school.”
Ah, yes, she knew Lexi Callaghan, remembering the day that Lexi had called her up to her office. Thankfully, she hadn’t done it since. The other women in Housekeeping Services shot curious glances her way for a week afterward. She hadn’t mentioned that visit to Kieran, and wondered if Lexi had. Somehow she thought not.
“Lexi is the master chef at the Goddess.”
“One and the same.” The pride in his voice unmistakable. “Of course, we knew she was destined for greatness when she started baking us chocolate chip cookies after school.”
“I thought she was from Georgia.”
Kieran shook his head. “No. She moved away in high school, but she grew up right here in Pine Ridge.”
Judging by the clouds that momentarily rolled through his eyes, Faith guessed there was more of a story there somewhere, but Kieran didn’t elaborate. She still had trouble picturing the down-to-earth, blue jean clad woman she’d met as the genius behind the Celtic Goddess cuisine. It was another reminder of how out of his league she was.
“Anyway, they’ve got two little ones - Patrick and baby Kate. Patrick started Kindergarten in the Fall – he’s the oldest of the nieces and nephews and loves having Laci as his teacher. There’s Shane – you know him, of course. And Sean, he and Shane are twins. Sean runs the garage in town. He’s married to Nicki.”
“Matt was quite taken with Nicki,” Faith said, remembering the way her son’s eyes had gone huge at her jet black hair and super-pale eyes. For as beautiful as she was, the woman held a distinctly mysterious, dangerous air.
“Yeah. I imagine most boys are,” he chuckled.
“And you’re the baby.” Faith smiled.
“Guilty. And you already know everything interesting there is to know about me.”
Faith didn’t believe that for a moment. She suspected Kieran Callaghan was a man who could keep her interest indefinitely. Then she shut those thoughts down right away before she started daydreaming the impossible again.
“Your turn,” Kieran said. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours,” he said with a wicked grin.
“If I had what you do, I’d want to show it off too,” she teased, surprised at her own boldness.
“You are beautiful, Faith.” The depth of emotion in his voice stirred something inside, but he didn’t allow her to dwell on it. “Enough stalling. I have ways of making you talk, you know.”
The deep, suggestive tone of his voice made her body grow warm, and it had nothing to do with her lingering low-grade fever. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Not a chance. I want to know you, Faith.”
“You do know me,” she murmured, knowing it was a lie. He only saw what she allowed him to see. With each passing day it became increasingly difficult to convince herself that she could be happy this way, being nothing more than a friend to him. But even then, he deserved to know the truth. It had to come out eventually, and it was better that he find out now, before she lost any more of her heart to him.
Faith blew out a breath. The time had come to be honest with Kieran, at least a little. He had earned that much. He looked at her with so much intensity in those beautiful blue eyes. And each time he did, it made her feel more and more like a fraud.
“What do you want to know?” she asked resignedly.
His eyes widened slightly as if he was expecting more resistance. “Let’s start simply. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Yes.”
Kieran waited expectantly for her to expound on that, but she didn’t. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
Her brows furrowed. It had been so long since she’d spoken of her family to anyone, it took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I have three brothers and two sisters.”
Kieran laughed. “Like the Brady Bunch? Three girls and three boys?”
“Exactly like the Brady Bunch,” she said half-mockingly, “if Mike and Carole were Bible thumping zealots.”
Kieran raised an eyebrow, pulling Faith’s foot into his lap and beginning a slow massage. “Tell me.”
“That’s so not fair,” she moaned. On top of everything else, the man had purely magical hands. “You didn’t strike me as the type to play dirty.”
“I gave you fair warning,” he smirked. “There are definite benefits to knowing every muscle and tendon in the human body.” He did some kind of squeeze/massage thing that she was pretty sure might lead to an orgasm if she’d let it. Her head dropped back against the pillows and her tongue loosened. Clearly there was a link from that spot in the middle of her foot and the part of her brain that controlled her mouth.
“I’m the oldest. Then there’s Mark, Luke, Grace, John, and Hope.”
Kieran’s hands paused for a moment along her arch and looked at her in disbelief. “Gospels and Virtues?”
Faith smiled wryly. He resumed his rhythmic kneading, taking up the other foot.
“Are you close?” She was just about to moan an emphatic “yes” when she realized he wasn’t talking about the effect his foot massage was having on her personal regions.
“No. I haven’t spoken to any of them since before Matt was born.” Even Kieran’s magical touch couldn’t completely erase the sense of disappointment, of failure. “I think about them often, though. Wonder where they are now, what they’re doing. Did they marry? Go to college? Move away? Do I have nieces and nephews I don’t even know about?”
She only allowed herself to think about those kinds of things late at night, when she was alone in her bed and there was no one to see the tears that inevitably fell when she remembered her family, and she never spoke of them out loud. Now here she was, spilling her secrets to Kieran in the light of day.
It was difficult. Moisture began to accumulate in her eyes and that cold, empty feeling started seeping into her chest again. Not wanting him to see her like this, Faith tried to pull her foot away, but Kieran wouldn’t allow it.
“Talk to me, Faith. Why don’t you keep in touch with your family?”
Kieran kept a firm but gentle grip on her ankle, and even had she not been sick, she didn’t have a prayer of getting away from him if he didn’t allow it. And, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t want him to. His hands, his presence, felt good.
Faith took a deep breath and blew it out. She knew it would come to this eventually. He might as well know the truth. Maybe it might even be cathartic. “They disowned me.”
“What?” His hands paused again.
“It’s scripture. ‘If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.’ Matthew 8:18 – one of my father’s personal favorites.
I brought sin into the family, so they cut me off.”
The words were laced with a sadness and pain she’d thought she’d come to terms with long ago. But now that she had started, she was determined to get it all out. “I was the minister’s daughter, Kieran, and my dad was a very outspoken pillar of the community. To have his fourteen year old daughter come home pregnant and unwed was like a slap in his face.”
“You are his daughter,” Kieran said.
She took some measure of comfort in Kieran’s simmering outrage. The fact that he couldn’t understand her father’s rationale confirmed what she had already guessed – that Kieran Callaghan was a good man all the way through.
“Was. I don’t exist to them anymore.”
“Because you got pregnant?”
“That’s part of it. To be honest, my father never seemed very happy with me, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He and my mother wanted me to stand up in church every week, to use myself as an example of what happens when you stray from the Word and yield to the temptations of the flesh.”
“That wasn’t the worst part, though,” she added quietly. “They wanted me to give Matt up for adoption so that a ‘good God-fearing couple’ might raise him.”
Kieran released her foot and pulled Faith into his arms. “Ah, Faith. I’m so sorry.”
She knew she should resist him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. Kieran felt so strong and warm and solid. She couldn’t ever remember feeling like this, so ... safe. She knew he was a wonderfully sweet and caring man, and that it meant nothing beyond friendship, but at the moment she didn’t care.
“I’m not,” she said finally, sniffing a little. “They thought of Matt as a mistake, but he’s not. He’s a Blessing, a Gift. If they can’t see that, it’s their problem. And if they hadn’t thrown me out, we wouldn’t have found our way here. And here is good.”
Kieran’s big hand stroked the length of her back, the gentle pressure keeping her tucked and sheltered against him. She curled her legs up, wanting to hide in the protection of his arms for a while longer.
“Fourteen and pregnant. What did you do?”
“Well, being the oldest of six, I already knew a lot about babies and kids and how to take care of them, just not how to do it alone and without food, money, or shelter. Thankfully, I found this great organization that took in girls like me. Pregnant girls who had been cast out by their families and had nowhere else to go. We all lived together in this big house. It was hard, but it was good, too. We had to hold down jobs, share the chores, and every one of us had to work on our GED. Matt and I stayed there till I turned eighteen, but then I aged-out and we had to leave.”
“What about Matt’s father?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to talk about Nathan. “What about him?”
“Didn’t he try to help?”
Faith laughed, but it came out sounding more like a choking sound. “God, no.” She recalled the night she’d gone to Nathan Longstreet’s house in tears. She’d knocked on the door and asked to speak with him, only to see him emerge from the kitchen hand-in-hand with Carla Martin. How his eyes had widened in outright shock and fear, as if he sensed why she had come.
“Nathan refused to believe me, even though he knew I’d been a virgin.” He’d been seventeen to her fourteen, and her first real crush. So tall and handsome, a promising quarterback for their high school football team. Going into his senior year, he already had several scholarship offers. She couldn’t believe it when he actually smiled at her. And when he offered to walk her home one night after Bible study? She thought she’d died and gone to heaven.
“He’d just broken up with his girlfriend,” Faith said quietly, lost in her own memories. “He said I was a good listener. That when he was with me, he felt... different. That I was unlike anyone he’d ever met.”
Being so close to Kieran gave her the strength she needed. As much as she didn’t want to tell him, she had to. “It started off innocently enough. He held my hand as we took the long way home. We had a secret spot where we’d sit and talk, a small clearing in the woods...” She wasn’t even aware of the tears filling her eyes. “He told me how much he needed me, how I made him feel better, how I could make his pain go away.”
“Did he rape you, Faith?” Kieran asked, his voice low and deadly.
She pulled back enough to look in his eyes. This was the part she had been dreading the most. If she could have laid all the blame on Nathan, it might have been easier. But she couldn’t.
Her face had to reflect the absolute shame she felt down to her core. “No,” she whispered. “I knew what we were doing was wrong, but I let him. I didn’t say no.”
“Oh, baby,” Kieran said, pulling her close again.
“God, it hurt so much,” she sniffed, the tears flowing freely. “He was so rough, and all I could think of was how it was nothing like I thought it would be. And then, suddenly, it was over. I barely remember him walking me to my door, smiling at my dad when he actually thanked him for walking me home.”
“He avoided me like the plague after that. I was hurt at first, but I still had stars in my eyes and believed he’d come around. Right up until the time I saw him back with Carla. Then I knew.”
“You didn’t tell anyone who the father was?”
“No. But his dad knew. Nathan must have told him. Once word got out about me being pregnant, he went out of his way to be kind to me. I think he was grateful that I didn’t ruin Nathan’s chance for a scholarship by publicly naming him as the father.”
“What about you, Faith? What about your chances?”
“I was a nobody, Kieran. And I don’t think anyone believed my family would react the way they did. People of God and all that.” She smiled sadly. “Unfortunately for me, my father was more of an Old Testament kind of guy than New Testament. Fire and brimstone over turn-the-other-cheek, if you know what I mean.”
“I’d get envelopes with money sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes they made the difference in whether or not we ate or had a warm bed to sleep in. There was never a name or a note, but I knew it was from Nathan’s father. Sometimes he’d come by and ask to take Matt fishing, or to teach him how to shoot. I couldn’t say no. He never told Matt who he really was, though. Neither did I.”
They were silent for a long time. Faith kept her head against Kieran’s chest, feeling the strong, steady beat of his heart beneath her cheek. His shirt was wet from where she had been crying against it.
“Does Matt ever ask about his father?”
“He used to. Not so much anymore. It’s hard to explain what happened without hurting him or making him feel unwanted. I never lied, but I didn’t provide details, either. I think he kind of figured things out for himself as he got older.”
“He’s an amazing kid.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“And you are an amazing woman, Faith.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry you had such a hard time of it, but it brought you here, to me, and I can’t say I’m sorry about that.”
The strangest sensation rippled through Faith, a kind of humming that was centered deep in her chest and radiated outward. It was soothing and pleasant, just like the way Kieran’s hand rubbed up and down her back. It felt so good to be in his arms, to soak up the warmth from his body and feel the rise and fall of his chest. Suddenly exhausted, she let her eyes drift closed.
* * *
Kieran knew by the heavy, even sound of her breathing that she had finally fallen asleep. He held her tenderly in his arms.
“No one will ever hurt you or Matt again, Faith.” Kieran whispered the promise.
Chapter Fourteen
Faith awoke feeling comfortably cozy and unusually rested, not to mention hungry. It was only when she attempted to stretch that she realized she was not on her bed at all, but sprawled across an expanse of warm male flesh. Kieran lay beneath her, his arms protectively at her waist, sound asleep.
She to
ok the rare opportunity to study him closely. There was a dark shadow of stubble gracing his cheeks and the underside of his jaw; his hair was splayed like wild black silk over the arm of the sofa. In sleep, his youthful face looked even more so, so peaceful and angelic.
So impossibly good.
As if he sensed her watching him, he opened his eyes without giving any other indication that he was awake. Faith sucked in a breath. She didn’t know if she’d ever get used to the power in those eyes.
“Comfortable?” she asked with a little smirk.
Kieran’s fingers flexed at her waist. “Very.”
She propped herself up on his chest. “You’re still here.”
* * *
Fighting to withhold his sigh, he studied her face. How could she not see it? She was such a beautiful, intelligent, caring woman, yet she seemed either unwilling or incapable of believing that he wanted nothing more than to be with her. Damn those that ever made her view herself as anything less than the gift she was.
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?”
Her eyes clouded. “I thought once you knew, you might feel differently.”
Kieran pulled her up and over his body until she was nose to nose with him. “Well, you’re right about that,” he breathed. His hand cupped the back of her head, bringing her to him for a searing kiss. He was beyond trying to explain it to her with words alone. He would just have to show her.
“I’m sick,” she protested weakly when he allowed her a short break to breathe.
“I don’t care,” he mumbled, nibbling her lower lip.
“I’ll get you sick, too.”
There was no hesitation. “Then you can take care of me.”
Her eyes softened, and her body melted into his. “I can do that.”
“I’m in love with you, Faith O’Connell,” he said. He hadn’t meant to just blurt it out like that, but apparently parts of his brain had had more than enough of his ‘be-a-good-friend-until-she-realizes-what-she-is-to-me plan’. They decided to conspire against him and get on with it already. His cock, feeling impossibly thick and hard beneath all her soft female heat, was totally on board with that. His heart and lungs froze, no doubt waiting to see what would happen next.
Having Faith: Callaghan Brothers, Book 7 Page 14