Padraig

by Mia Malone

  “Man.”

  She turned so slowly toward Cal if felt like slow-motion and the way she raised her brows actually made the boy cringe.

  “Callum. I am still quite capable of boxing your ears. You are a boy to me, and you will always be a damned boy to me, is that clear?”

  “Yes’m,” Cal said immediately, and wisely.

  “This young man,” she conceded, “Gives another layer of safety.”

  Paddy saw on her face that she expected him to say something and he grunted since she was right, but she was also fucking wrong.

  “Annie,” Jenny said, and her voice was softer, but just barely. “Your father fucked his way more than a couple of laps around this county. This is also a fact, but it's not something you get to bring up. And especially not in the way you did. It wasn’t fair to him, and you know it.”

  “Yes, Jenny,” Annie said, and to Paddy's surprise, it looked like she was about to start laughing. “Sorry, dad,” she mumbled and winced when their eyes met. “That was pretty dumb.”

  “Okay,” Jenny sighed. “Let’s –”

  The punch came from nowhere and hit Paddy right in the eye. His head flew back, and he heard people shifting around, but all he saw were a few stars and then Gibson’s face right in front of him.

  “Just checking if I’m gnarly yet,” Gibson said calmly. “Guess I’m not.”

  Paddy poked his eye with two fingers and heard Joke's laughter. Then he got a bag of frozen peas in his hand and another laugh in his face.

  “Okay. Let’s try again and see if we can all act like grown-ups,” Jenny said calmly. “Annie and I will stay here in the kitchen for a while, and everyone else will clear out. And Paddy, if you act like a goddamned Victorian father from a cheesy romance novel, you should know that it’ll just make you look ridiculous.” She paused and added with a tight smile. “Although you already do with that bag of friggin’ peas on your face at this time of the day.”

  “We'll be out back,” Gibson said and pushed his son with a steady hand toward the back door.

  “Good. Annie will make another pot of coffee, and I will call Lee.”

  Cal and Joke were already outside, and Gibson was moving, but Paddy walked over to Jenny. She had her back toward him, and he curled an arm around her belly.

  “You were right, baby-girl. It was getting out of hand, so thank you for not letting it escalate. You still earned yourself a good number of swats on your behind, and as soon as this whole mess is sorted out… believe me, you’ll get them.”

  Her lips twitched, but she turned in his arms and poked his cheek.

  “He didn’t hit too hard, Padraig,” she murmured. “You won’t get a shiner.”

  “Paddy,” Gibson called out. “Get.”

  He caressed her cheek and walked over to Gibson who was waiting at the back door.

  “You know I have to,” he said.

  “Better you than me,” Gibson said. “Don’t want to kill the boy.”

  Paddy snorted out laughter and moved but was stopped by Gibson’s hand on his shoulder.

  “You know I love Annie like a daughter, and I’m not too happy with my boy, Pad. But he’s a good man. He’s not the worst thing that could happen to her.”

  Fuck it to hell and back, Paddy thought. He probably wasn’t.

  Chapter Nine

  Jenny

  Annie and I stood in silence in the kitchen and watched the men walk outside. There was a bit of shouting going on, and then Paddy hit Callum in the face.

  “What the –” Annie breathed, and I was prepared to stop her from rushing out there, but she didn’t move.

  “He’s not really angry, Annie,” I murmured.

  “How do you know?”

  I turned slowly to look at her. She didn’t see her dad’s tell either? Was I really the only one?

  “It was just a half-hearted punch. He's mostly upset about you sneaking around behind our backs, and Annie-girl, quite frankly; so am I. It makes it look dirty and cheap, and I don't like it.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, so I pulled out a chair and nudged her toward it. Then I grabbed a roll of tissue paper and sat down too.

  “I just wanted it to be easy. I knew it would be like this,” she murmured and twitched her head to indicate the men outside. “And I thought we’d see how it went and then tell everyone. I didn’t want him to get hurt if it turned out to be nothing.”

  They were talking, and some arm waving and posturing were going on, but no one was hitting anyone.

  “If you think Callum can’t handle it then you don’t know him.”

  “I know Cal can handle Dad,” Annie protested. “He's really strong, and Dad doesn't know how to fight.”

  I blinked. Okay. Annie was his daughter, and it would perhaps be hard for her to see him in a fight when he’d been the one helping her dress her Barbies and make oatmeal for breakfast.

  “We were at one of the Wolves MC's parties this weekend,” I shared calmly. “He broke someone's nose.” She stared at me, and I shrugged. “If you weren't worried about Paddy, then what –”

  I realized what she’d worried about, and good Lord, I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing.

  “Jenny,” she said sourly.

  “You thought Gibson would rough up his boy?”

  “Jen.”

  I kept laughing, so hard I had to hold on to the breakfast bar in front of me, and I wished Lee had been there. She’d get it, and she’d love it too.

  “Okay, Annie,” I said. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed. I know the guys so well, but you might not get how hilarious that was.”

  When I saw her confusion, I decided that if she was indeed serious about Callum Ward, then I needed to make sure she understood what she was getting herself into.

  “Right, honey. Let me tell you a few things. First of all, Paddy is just like the other four. You don't see it because he used to wipe your bottom and because he puts a layer of charm on top of it. But he is.” I waited until she nodded, and I could see she did it to humor me, but she'd taken the words in, at least. “Gibson, yeah, you’re right. He’s on a different level, but if you don’t know that he’d rather die than hurt the people he cares about, then you don’t know Gib.” I paused. “And if you don’t know Gibson, then you don’t know Callum.”

  “I know that,” she protested.

  “They’re just the same,” I went on. “Look at Gib and if you stay with Cal then thirty years from now, that’s what you’ll have.”

  She turned slowly toward the men and looked at them for a while, and to my surprise, she blushed.

  “Oh, wow,” she breathed, turned back to me and her lips curled in a small smile that told me she’d taken in what I’d said, and liked what she saw. “I can do that,” she murmured.

  Well shit. It wasn’t unlikely that Cal was like his father in all aspects, and if he was, I could probably guess more about Annie’s sex-life than either of us were comfortable with.

  “He’s a good man,” I said instead.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cal’s a good man too, but Annie-girl… Is he good to you?”

  “Yes,” she replied instantly.

  “All I need to know,” I said. “We’ll sort out the rest.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, sweetie.”

  “I saw you and Dad in his bed this morning.”

  ***

  Padraig

  Well, fuck it. He'd just punched the damned boy in the face, and he hadn't put much strength behind it, but it'd still have hurt some. The idiot just straightened, put his hands behind his back and stared at him.

  “You’re just gonna stand there and let me hit you, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It wasn’t about what you did, Cal. I don’t want to fucking think about it, but you’re old enough. But you should have told me.”

  “Annie should have told you,” Cal said and damn it, the boy was right.

  “Why didn�
��t she?”

  “Nu-huh. You’ll have to ask her.”

  Fuck it. The boy was right again. He wasn’t going to share that, so he stared at Cal instead.

  “I love her,” Cal murmured suddenly. “Long as I can remember, Paddy. Every summer, I was here, and she was too, and I watched her. Knew she was yours, and that we were too young. She had school and was going to Paris. I knew I shouldn’t. But I was in New York with some buddies a while back. Wasn’t gonna call her but there she was, walking down the street with some friends. She saw me, and she smiled, and I just thought… Fuck it all. She's mine, and that’s just how it is. So, yeah. If a few sorry-ass punches from her father is what it takes, then I’ll take it.”

  Before Paddy could get a word out, and he seriously had no clue what to say, Gibson took a step forward to stand by his side. Cal’s face hardened, but he didn’t back down.

  “I know, Dad,” he growled in a voice that suddenly was a lot harder. A lot more like his dad’s. “You see her as your pseudo-daughter. I always knew, but I’m twenty-eight years old, she's not my sister, and if you wanna hit me then I’ll take that too.”

  There was a long silence, and then Paddy turned to the side.

  “The irony is not lost on me, Gib,” he said.

  “What irony?” Joke grunted.

  It was time, Paddy decided. Day hadn’t understood he was serious about Jenny, and maybe Joke didn’t either. If Cal could stand there and say what he just said, then it was high fucking time he told Jenny’s brother.

  “Hold that thought,” Paddy said, and turned to Cal. “I get what you’re saying a whole lot more than you think I do, boy. Don’t like how you played it, and I’m still very much on the fence about this whole thing, so I’m gonna punch you in the face one more time because it’s what a father does. But you’re fighting for your girl in a way I didn’t for mine, so you need to know that when I do, there will also be a lot of respect behind that punch.”

  He didn’t put a lot of strength behind his fist this time either, and he heard Gibson snort out something that sounded like the word gnarly, but he ignored it and sent Callum inside. Jenny and Annie were watching them, and they both smiled.

  “What irony?” Joke repeated.

  “I need to tell you a little story,” he started, and sighed.

  “A story.”

  “A story about an idiot boy, who grew into an idiot man. A boy who fell in love with his girl the second he lay eyes on her and didn’t know it. Watched her grow up and still didn’t get it, not until one day when she turned and just smiled at me. I knew then, but she was too young, Joke. Way too fucking young and she needed to live life a little. I wanted to give her that, and I wasn’t ready to settle down either so I waited, but I waited too long, and it all went to hell.”

  Joke made a throaty sound, but Paddy wanted to get it all out, so he put a hand on his friend's shoulder and squeezed.

  “I lived that hell for years. Let too many years just slide by, but it’s still there, Joke. Every damned feeling is still there, and this time, I’m not letting her go.”

  “Ah, Paddy…” Joke sighed.

  “I love her, man. Always did. Always will.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It all got messed up, and I thought it was messed up forever, but it wasn’t. It isn’t. I’m with her now, and it took me way too long to get to this point, but I'm not stepping back, so you need to deal.”

  Joke suddenly slapped his hand away and stepped back to glare at him.

  “For fuck’s sake, Paddy, don’t be such a bloody melodramatic moron. I’ll deal. I would have dealt with it back then too, and I get that there’s a lot more to this than what you’re telling me, but whatever it is… You have to know I would have dealt. Jesus, man. Over the damned moon, if that were what had happened. You got to know that?”

  “Yeah,” Paddy sighed. “I know, and I knew then. Used it as part of a long, sorry fucking string of excuses when it was all about me not manning up.”

  “Paddy,” Gibson said quietly. “Not true. Shit happened that wasn't yours, and Jen did some pretty dumb things too. It wasn't all you.”

  ***

  Jenny

  Oh. Okay, I hadn’t been prepared for Annie finding out about Paddy and me so soon and got up to start fiddling with the coffeemaker, mostly to hide the fact that I wasn’t sure what to tell her. I wasn’t sure what to tell myself either. We’d been, what? A couple? Whatever, for a week. Slept together two nights. It was too new, and I didn’t know where we’d end up, so I made coffee.

  “I didn't have a mother,” she said quietly, and I turned, but she just kept talking, “She was here but not really. Spent her days whining with her friends, or holed up in her bed, or by the fireplace in her room. Doing goddamned embroidery or some other shit. I don't know why she stayed.”

  “I don’t know either, honey.”

  “I don’t know why she never wanted me, but she didn’t, and you can’t tell Dad –”

  “Stop,” I interrupted. “Before you share something you might regret, you have to know that I will always tell your dad what I think your dad needs to know.”

  Her eyes softened, and she nodded.

  “When I visited her in the summers, at my grandparents' place in South Carolina? She wasn't even there every time. Most of the time, she wasn't. Most of the time, it was just the staff and me.” she whispered.

  I would fucking kill Marybeth. If she ever came to Wilhelmine, I'd find a tree branch, and I'd stab it through her heart. I'd rip off all her hair, stomp on her feet in my spiky high-heeled sandals and I would rip her nose off and shove it up her goddamned ass. I did not share this, and felt my mouth tighten, but managed to stay calm.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I won’t tell your dad.”

  It would kill Paddy to know he’d sent her off, hating to do it but doing it nevertheless, and sending her off to that.

  “It wasn’t bad, Jenny. I still go down and see the cook sometimes. She taught me a lot, and we're friends,” she said calmly. “Mom remarried,” she went on. “Sent me an invite to the wedding, but I didn't go. I sent the ugliest little vase I could find at the Dollar-store with a super-sweet note wishing her a happy marriage. Sent it to them both, but to his address, so I guess they have to have it on display because her daughter gave it to them.”

  I snorted out laughter. Vicious, but elegant. That was my girl.

  “He’s really old, and has a wart on his nose,” she shared with a smirk.

  “Rich?”

  “Yup.”

  “Honey, no money in the world can make up for a wart on an old man’s nose.”

  “I was going to sleep with Jimmy Tarp.”

  What?

  “What?”

  “I sat in the kitchen and gushed about him, and I didn’t tell you what I’d planned, but you knew anyway. And you put a hand on my shoulder and told me I didn’t have to love the first boy I slept with, but I had to respect him. And he had to respect me. So, when Jimmy told me about the motel room he wanted us to go to, and Jenny it was a really cheap motel, and how we’d sneak away to do it… It didn’t feel like respect to me, and I told him I’d changed my mind.”

  I smiled at her, not sharing that I’d known all of this, and had been prepared to call the owner of that motel and have him send her home. She smiled back at me, but her eyes suddenly filled with tears again.

  “So, Jenny… I didn’t have a mother, but I had one. And I saw Dad and you sleeping this morning, so I asked Gibson, and he said that you're doing it, and I just want you to know that I don't mind. Not one bit.”

  Holy shit. She'd asked Gib, and he'd said we were doing it? He’d be laughing for weeks about that one.

  “I don’t know where this thing with your dad and me will go, Annie. It might lead to nothing.”

  “Might lead to something,” she countered. “I won’t be in the way.”

  “What?”

  “If you want to… eat ice-cream again, then I’
ll go to the movies or something.”

  I decided to ignore the ice-cream comment and focus on what she’d really said.

  “You want to stay here for a while?”

  “I quit my job a month ago. Packed up my things and put them in storage. I loved New York, but I was done. It wasn’t because of the asshole, Jenny. I’d simply had enough, and I’ve known it for a while. The glitz and the lights and the sounds… It was fun, but it wore me down, and I’ve been thinking about it for over a year, so a few weeks after I broke it off with Cal, I just quit.”

  There was a small grin on her face, but I was too stunned to say a word. Paddy would be over the goddamned moon, and oh my God, was she saying what I hoped she was saying?

  “Do you need a waitress at the diner, Jenny?”

  Yes. Fucking yes, she was saying exactly that.

  “You need to look at a thing,” I said, grabbed Paddy's iPad, logged on to my website and turned it toward her. Showing her the ad for a cook at the diner I had planned to post later that week.

  She blinked.

  “Not posted yet. Was planning for it to go out on Thursday.”

  “Jen –”

  “The job's yours if you want it. I know it isn't fancy cooking, but I'm changing things, and I wanted to do more, but I don't have the time. It'll still be good home-cooked meals, but I want to add other options. And I want to change the old recipes into healthier versions without anyone noticing. Have started, but I don’t have the friggin’ time. So yeah, if you want the job, oh God, Annie, that job is yours in a heartbeat.”

  We stared at each other, and I wondered how that one horrible, godawful phone call the evening before had changed into something which suddenly looked bright, and shiny, and happy.

  “Are you okay?” I asked quietly. “He hurt you.”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Didn’t want his hand down my panties, but Lee said something, and it stuck. You just take a shower, she said. Take a shower, wash him right off you. He’ll go down the drain, and you’ll be here with us. So, I did.”

  I would buy Lee a damned Porsche. Hell, I’d even throw in a lifetime supply of tequila.