“Jared,” I mocked as I grabbed my suitcase from the backseat, “didn’t you say you’d come by and bring in my mail?”
“Yes, well, you also said you’d make sure to pack enough clothes for the girls.”
Walking toward the front door, I froze. “I did!”
“No, Emma. You didn’t. You packed enough for one week, not two weeks, which was what we agreed on. God, I asked you to do one thing, and you couldn’t do it.”
There were so many reasons why Jared and I hadn’t worked and this was one of them. Always reminding me of how imperfect I was. Always making me feel bad, making me feel worse.
My mouth twisted with bitter resentment. “Well, I’m sorry,” I snapped. “So, what did you do? Buy them new clothes?”
He grunted a condescending chuckle. “No. I went to your place last week and grabbed some stuff.”
Eyeing the overflowing mailbox, my hand tightened around the phone, ready to snap it in half. “Oh, so you were here and let my mail pile up? You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
“Yep. I know.” His answer was sharp, short and harsh. “Do you want to speak to your children, or can we get back to—”
“Put them on,” I cut him off as I dropped the handle of my suitcase and pulled the mail from the box.
With my arms full and the phone pinned between my ear and shoulder, I dragged my bag to the door and fumbled with the keys. I listened as Jared passed the phone off to one of our daughters and at the sound of my eldest’s voice, I finally smiled.
“Hey Mom,” Hailey said in her usual monotone. She’d always been a moody kid, but these teen years were killing us all.
“Hey kiddo,” I replied, smiling despite her attitude, and opened the door. “How has your week been?”
“Fine,” she muttered. “Dad wouldn’t let me go to the movies on Thursday.”
“Well, it was a school night,” I reminded her, proceeding with caution.
“Yeah, well, everybody else was going!” she predictably snapped back, and I shook my head with a silent chuckle.
“I’m sure they were,” I said gently. “But otherwise, everything’s been good?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good.”
I flipped on the lights and surveyed my living room. The flowers on the tables were wilting and the room needed a good dusting, but otherwise everything was exactly as I’d left it. I breathed out a sigh of relief, unsure of what I had expected. Nobody else lived there, I didn’t have pets and the girls had been with Jared.
“How’s Sarah?” I asked, climbing the stairs and dragging the suitcase behind me.
“Annoying,” Hailey groaned, and I could picture her eye roll. I heard the protests from her younger sister in the background, and I laughed. “She wants to talk to you.”
Still laughing, I rolled the suitcase into my bedroom. “Okay, put her on.”
Lifting the bag onto my bed, I opened it and pulled my book out. The picture of the cover model instantly reminded me of my flight, and the obnoxious commentary from the Irishman I had shared it with. Quick, witty and painfully pessimistic, but God, he’d been easy on the eyes. To be honest, most men were these days, after years of being on my own, but this guy … He really was. Tall, ginger, gorgeous accent and—
“Mommy!” Sarah squealed into my ear, ripping me from the memory of the crabby and broken Malachy Shevlin.
“Hey, babe!” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “How are you doing?”
“Good!”
“Oh yeah?” I smiled, unloading my dirty laundry and throwing it into the hamper. “What have you been up to?”
“Daddy took us to a haunted house last night,” she informed me cheerfully.
I smiled warmly, thanking God that my ex-husband was at the very least, a good father to our daughters. I could fault him for a lot of things, but not loving our daughters to pieces was never one of them. “That’s awesome, honey. Was it scary?”
“Hailey screamed,” she tattled in her annoying little sister voice. “I didn’t though.”
“Well,” I kicked off my shoes and sighed, wiggling my toes, “I’m glad you guys are having a good time with your dad.”
“Yeah. He made pancakes for dinner tonight and he wants us to go eat now, so I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
I sighed, hoping she couldn’t hear the instant loneliness that bogged down my voice as I said, “Okay, sweetie. Have a good night.”
“Yep! Love you, Mommy.”
“Love you too, Sarah,” and the line went silent.
I dropped to my bed, feeling all at once grateful to be home and miserable for having nobody to come home to. The kilted Highlander on the cover of my book taunted me with lean thighs and rippled abs, and I wondered if Malachy Shevlin had had a successful meeting with his long-lost family.
I hoped so.
CHAPTER FOUR |
NEW TOWNS & FALSE BRAVERY
MALACHY
River Canyon was about what I expected from the pictures I had Googled. Small, sweet. It looked like a postcard tourists might collect for their memory albums, and the tiny shops that formed the center of town made me smile as Paddy pulled into a carpark.
From the backseat, Ryan groaned. “Why are we stopping?”
“Because Kinsey isn’t gonna make it to dinner tonight, and I wanted to introduce her to Mal,” Paddy told him, glancing toward the backseat.
Shaking his head, Ryan pulled forward, leaning his arm against my headrest. “Here’s all ya need to know about Paddy, Mal, okay? One, he thinks he’s perfect. Two, he says he’s a cop, but we’re not sure he actually does any work. And three, nobody will ever come close to being as important to him as Kinsey, not even his own kids.”
“Kinsey’s your wife?” I asked and then shook my head. “Ah, shite, Collin told me that. I’m a bleedin’ eejit.”
“There’s a lot of us to remember,” Paddy said with a smile. “Come on. We’ll be two seconds, Ry.”
“No, ya won’t,” he groused with an eye roll, and tipped his head against the back of his seat.
With a deep breath, I climbed out of the truck and followed Paddy around the corner to enter McKenna’s Delicatessen. It was a little place with a glass cabinet stuffed with dishes, while just opposite was a refrigerator case full of various bottled drinks. I stopped to look at the different labels—Barq’s Root Beer, Crush Orange Soda, so many feckin’ flavored waters—while Paddy walked to the end of the long glass cabinet and around a small counter.
“Kins?” he called, disappearing into the back.
“Hey, babe,” a woman’s voice replied. “You’re back from the airport already?”
“Yeah, there wasn’t much traffic,” he explained, and I continued to listen as he said, “So, there’s someone here I want you to meet …”
A hushed gasp came from the backroom. “He’s here?”
No other words were spoken as Paddy emerged, now with a brown-haired woman towed along by his hand. I turned to face them, and when she got a good look at me, her eyes widened.
“Oh, great,” she teased dryly, her eyes sparkling with excitement, “there’s two of you now.”
Paddy chuckled as he released her to stand beside me. “Right?” he exclaimed. “It’s feckin’ uncanny. I mean, Mal, all you gotta do is dye your hair blonde and we’d look more alike than Ryan and Sean.”
I laughed comfortably. “Or, you could dye your hair red.”
He shook his head adamantly. “No way. Absolutely not. That’s never gonna happen.”
“Why not?” I asked, looking from him to Kinsey. “What’s wrong with red hair?”
Kinsey, a gorgeous thing with a smile that could light up the world, relaxed her features and crossed her arms over her chest. “Patrick’s daughter Meghan has been begging him to let her dye her hair pink for years, and Patrick isn’t letting her until she’s sixteen. If he went and dyed his hair, she’d just hang it over his head until he finally gave in,” she explained with a playful ro
ll of her eyes. “It’s nice to finally meet you, by the way.”
She said the word finally as though they had known of me for years, and I thought it impossible that every one of these people could be so kind and accepting. I was ready for the bubble to burst, for one of them to instantly despise me, but I was grateful it hadn’t happened yet.
“It’s bad enough ya have a dog,” Paddy said, glowering at me. “That’s been the new thing. Meg needs a dog, and her mother won’t let her have one. She’ll just die if I don’t get her one apparently, and when she gets a load of Padraig, I’m never gonna hear the end of it.”
I didn’t want to ask, but the question was barking—pun absolutely intended—at my tongue. “Ehm, is Meghan not …” I looked between Kinsey and Paddy, and Kinsey shook her head.
“Meghan is Patrick’s daughter from his first marriage,” she responded without batting an eye, and I nodded.
Paddy held up a hand. “Hold up, since you’re family, I feel the need to tell you that I wouldn’t have been married to her mother, if this one hadn’t broken up with me in college.”
There was that word family again.
Kinsey rolled her eyes. “He’s just always going to blame me for his lapse of judgement,” she said bitterly, but she continued to smile, looking up at her husband in a way that made me envious. “And he’ll act like that kid isn’t the light of his life.”
“No, that would be you and you know it,” he told her, and I tried desperately to fight off my chuckle but failed. Paddy turned to me with questioning eyes, and I shook my head.
“Sorry. I just didn’t expect Ryan to be right.” I looked down at Kinsey and met her curious gaze. “He said that nobody comes close to being as important as you in Paddy’s life.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “Anyway, Mal, it was so nice meeting you, but I have to get back to cleaning up before I head over to my sister Kate’s place to babysit her boys tonight. I’m sorry I can’t be there for dinner, but I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot more of you—right?” She looked up at me expectantly, and I felt a warmth in the cold depths of my heart.
Nodding, I said, “Aye. I’m sure of it.”
“Great,” she replied with a smile, and she stood on her toes as Paddy bent to kiss her. “I’ll see you at home. Erin’s with your parents. Can you get her to bed by yourself, or do you need me to be home?”
“I always need you. But, yeah, I think I can manage.” He nodded confidently before wavering a bit. “Alannah’s gonna be another story though.”
“Kate picked her up from your mom earlier, so I’d have her tonight,” Kinsey said, turning to head back to work.
“God, you’re the perfect woman. Always thinkin’ of me.”
“Don’t you forget it,” she chided, wagging a finger over her shoulder.
“Never,” Paddy replied, chuckling lightly.
We turned to leave the store, with Paddy explaining to me that his daughter Erin was nearly two and a dream to handle, while his youngest, the two-month-old Alannah, was a bit of a handful.
“It’s that feckin’ breastfeeding,” he grumbled. “You’re useless to them at that point.”
I shrugged my response, because I didn’t know from experience and I suspected I never would.
We got back to the truck to find a sleeping Padraig and a snoring Ryan, and Paddy rolled his eyes as we climbed in. “We couldn’t have been more than five minutes,” he muttered, starting the engine.
The drive to the house Collin shared with his wife Helen took all of two minutes, including the time it took to start the truck and park. I looked out the window, to the house where my biological father had lived for the past thirty-one years, since leaving Ireland, completely unaware that I was even alive.
Paddy placed a hand over my shoulder. “Hey,” he said, and I turned to him. “Don’t be gettin’ all emotional on me right now.” He was teasing, and I forced a chuckle through my clotted throat.
“Where do you live?” I asked, desperate for a distraction.
He darted his gaze behind us, toward another house a couple lots down. “That one right there.”
“Wow. Ya live so close to each other.” And there was that little stroke of envy again. The same unfamiliar pang that hit me, watching his wife look at him with adoration and devotion. “Must be nice.”
“Yeah, it is,” he agreed, not even bothering to deny it for the sake of my jealous feelings. “We all live in River Canyon. Sean lives above the diner and Ryan lives in Granny’s basement.” I looked to him with wild-eyed hope that there were even more unexpected family members to meet and he quirked his mouth with apology. “Our mother’s mother.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding with a disappointed sigh.
“But hey,” he added with a shrug, “she wouldn’t mind having someone else to torment, if you’re interested. Anyway, you ready?”
It was a stupid question. Of course I wasn’t ready. I was never going to be ready. My life, as I knew it, had changed beyond all recognition at thirty-four, when I learned that everything I thought I knew, had been a lie. But I could pretend, and I did. I’d already proved I could live comfortably in blissful ignorance, as I’d floated through the last six years of my life, and as I took care of my mother in the last two years of her life.
But I’d had to stop pretending the moment I’d realized I was alone and didn’t want to be, and now, I was sitting in front of his house. All my questions about what he was like were going to be answered, and he would be real. Really real.
I was never going to be ready for that.
“Yeah,” I lied with a steady nod.
CHAPTER FIVE |
INTRODUCTIONS & FEAR
MALACHY
With Padraig on his lead, Patrick and Ryan led the way up the porch steps. They took them so casually, and I had to remind myself how they had grown up in this house. They had taken those steps thousands of times in their lives while this was only my first and maybe even my last, and all of those jitters from the plane ride came barreling back through the knots in my gut.
Except this time, I didn’t have Emma Bryan to talk me down from my panic.
“Oh, bejesus,” I blurted, and they turned to look down at me, still frozen at the bottom of the steps, with Padraig sitting at my side.
“He’s gonna puke,” Ryan mentioned to Paddy, as though I weren’t there, and Paddy shoved against his shoulder.
“Leave him alone, Ry,” he snapped at his brother as he came back to the first step. “Hey. Mal. Ya wanna go back to my place, have a pint and come back later? Dinner can wait.”
I felt like a feckin’ faerie, scared and needing to be coddled like a child. Still, I was grateful for his sympathies, and I smiled weakly. “I’m okay. I just need a minute.”
And I would’ve gotten it, had the door not opened to another blonde man. He stepped onto the porch, wearing black-framed glasses, and had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.
“Wow,” he uttered with a shake of his head and a smile. “You’re actually here.”
Paddy gestured up the steps. “Malachy, this is Sean.”
Sean came down the steps, taking them slowly as he took me in. When he came to stand in front of me, he uttered on a breath, “Ya look just like Da.” Then, he did something that forced the breath from my lungs.
He hugged me.
“Seanie’s a little sensitive,” Ryan told me, as Sean pat his hand against my back.
“Ah, yep, I see that,” I joked, but my arms were wrapping around him, reciprocating in a strange way that left my eyes burning and my throat tightening.
Mam had been the last person to hug me, and feck me if both the memory and the hug from Sean didn’t leave me wanting to cry.
Desperate to let go and even more desperate to hold on, I nodded my head, giving him one last pat as I unwound my arms and initiated the breaking of our bond. He took a step back to smile and shake his head again, in total disbelief of my exi
stence in front of his parents’ house. I ignored the flaring of my nostrils as I rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Thanks for findin’ me,” I said gently, and his eyes softened.
“Jesus, dude,” he muttered, shifting his jaw. “Don’t say that shite. I’m not allowed to get emotional in front of them, especially Ryan. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
I laughed, turning to Ryan and Paddy, and announced, “All right, let’s get this over with.”
❧
The house was nothing like I had imagined in the month since they’d found me. But had I really been able to imagine anything beyond what he looked like, sounded like, smelled like? Not really.
I was sitting on the sofa with Padraig at my feet. He panted as I worked my hands over his head and muzzle in some pathetic attempt to calm my nerves, grateful that he was there.
Paddy told me to wait as he went up the stairs to tell Collin and Helen I was there. Ryan and Sean wandered into the kitchen to retrieve their significant others, and I was alone, with my dog, in a strange house.
“We’re in over our heads, Pad,” I whispered quietly into his ear, and he responded with the lolling of his enormous wet tongue, sliding it over my bristled chin.
A tiny woman led the way out of the kitchen. Dressed head to toe in black, and with tattoos decorating every visible square inch of skin save for her face. I knew immediately that she had to be Ryan’s wife. He followed closely behind her with a baby resting in the crook of his arm, and … bloody hell, there was that pang again.
“Mal, Snow. Snow, Mal.” He dropped into a chair with the sleeping baby. “And this is my spawn, Axel.”
Snow smiled brightly at me, a contradiction to her dark exterior, and she leaned over to press a kiss to my cheek. “Nice to meet you, Mal. And this,” she ruffled her hand over Padraig’s ears, “must be, um, Pod-rick. Is that right?”
Ryan laughed, and I smiled. “Close enough. Ya can call him Pad, or Paddy, if it’s easier.”
She grinned, pressing her hands to her chest. “Oh, Ireland, I think someone else is more deserving of that nickname than you. Wow.”
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