DAMIEN (Slater Brothers Book 5)

by L. A. Casey

  Damien was already on his feet with his hand extended in my da’s direction.

  “It’s great to finally meet you, sir.”

  Da shook Damien’s hand firmly. “And you, son.”

  Son. That one word made my heart melt.

  “Bronagh, love.” Da smiled at my friend. “You’re lookin’ as lovely as ever.”

  She snorted as she gave him a hug in greeting since she hadn’t done so when she entered the hospital because he was pacing back and forth the entire time. Coming over to talk to me was the first time he took a break from his routine.

  “Where were you to tell me that this mornin’ when I was stuck with me head in the toilet vomitin’?”

  Da grinned. “I’m sure that lad of yours had it covered.”

  Bronagh snorted.

  “Congratulations on your pregnancy,” Da continued. “I still can’t believe you have Georgie, and now you’ll have another little one.”

  “I’ll have a tribe by the time I’m thirty if Dominic gets his way.”

  “He will,” Damien and I said in chorus.

  “Well—” Bronagh’s lips twitched “—maybe.”

  I moved to Damien’s side, and I watched as my da’s eyes fell to my side. When I felt Damien’s fingers thread through mine, my heart leaped when a smile tugged at the corner of my da’s mouth. I had never thought of what my parents would think of Damien, but knowing that my ma practically loved him and my da’s first encounter with him went well really relaxed me. I couldn’t imagine staying with someone long term if he and my parents didn’t get along, not with how family orientated I was.

  “Alannah,” Bronagh suddenly said. “That’s your ma.”

  My attention was pulled to the doors of the operating theatre, and when I recognised the nurse who brought my ma in for her operation that walking by a bed that a man pushed, I knew Bronagh was right. It was my ma. My da and I quickly moved over to the bed, and we relaxed when we saw that my ma was sleeping, but she looked perfectly fine.

  “She’s okay,” the nurse said, gaining our attention as we mutely walked. “You can come up to ’er room with us, but she may remain sleepin’ for a few hours.”

  I didn’t want to mention that we were going up to her room with her no matter what, so with a bob of our heads, we all followed the nurse and the man who pushed my ma on her hospital bed. I grabbed Damien’s hand when he came to my side, and I squeezed it. My heart was pounding against my chest, and I was sweating.

  “Hey,” Damien said, gaining my attention. “She’s okay.”

  I repeated that over and over in my mind until we were in my ma’s private room, and we were sat around her bed, just staring at her. I kept looking at her chest, watching it rise and fall, before I’d switch my eyes to the heart monitor that she was hooked up to, keeping an eye on her heartbeat. I wanted her to wake up, just so I could ask for myself if she was okay, but I knew I had to be patient even though it was hard.

  “She looks like she could be your older sister, Alannah,” Bronagh said as she stared at my ma with her head tilted. “I hope I look half as good as ’er when I’m fifty.”

  “It’s all the laughin’ she does.” Da smiled, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand that he had held from the moment we entered the room. “It keeps ’er young, bein’ happy.”

  “If that’s the case, Alec Slater will never die,” I commented. “He’s always happy.”

  Bronagh and my da chuckled, but Damien remained quiet, and that drew my attention.

  “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. “Just thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Where I’m goin’ to take you on our first date.”

  I paused. “Can it be somethin’ simple?”

  “Simple?”

  “Yeah, like goin’ to the cinema, to dinner, a trail hike when it’s pretty outside. Ye’know, simple.”

  Damien considered this. “That seems a little too simple.”

  “I’m a simple girl.” I shrugged. “I don’t like things that are over the top.”

  “I’d listen to ’er if I were you,” Da chimed in. “When me and ’er mother threw ’er a twenty-first birthday party, she was so mad that we spent money on ’er that we had to listen to ’er lecturin’ us about it for weeks.”

  “That’s true.” I nodded. “I did do that.”

  Damien’s lips twitched. “A dinner and movie date it is.”

  “Oh, can we go and see The Greatest Showman?”

  I had looked it up when Morgan mentioned bringing his girlfriend to see a Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron musical and had been itching to go see it ever since.

  “And that would be?”

  “A musical with Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron.”

  Damien rolled his eyes; Bronagh gasped.

  “Shut up,” she said. “I love Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron.”

  I snorted. “Who doesn’t?”

  “I’m sitting right here, woman.”

  I looked at Damien and grinned.

  “It’s Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron. Like I have a chance.”

  “If they saw you, you would.”

  I laughed. “I wish.”

  Bronagh snickered over Damien’s scowl, but all our attention was turned to the door when a light knock sounded and in stepped the head doctor on my ma’s team, the one who had just performed surgery on her.

  “We’ll go and get some tea,” Bronagh said, getting to her feet at the same time as Damien. “Excuse us.”

  When they left the room, myself and my da got to our feet, and after we greeted the doctor with a handshake and nod of our heads, we waited.

  “The surgery went beautifully,” the doctor said in a thick accent that I couldn’t detect, folding his arms across his chest. “I removed the tumour and very little breast tissue. Once she is all healed up, a small scar is all that will be left behind.”

  I deflated with relief. “Thank you so much.”

  “My pleasure.” The doctor bowed his head a little. “Now, she will be a little sore when she wakes up, and her breast, as well as some of the surrounding area, will be swollen, but that is all perfectly normal.”

  “When can she come home?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” the doctor answered. “She’ll be kept overnight just for observation.”

  I frowned. “That soon?”

  “While your mother’s surgery was important for her treatment plan, it was minor. Tomorrow, she will only feel discomfort and tenderness, and in a few days, she will be feeling much better.”

  I nodded in understanding.

  “So.” Da cleared his throat. “What now?”

  “She is booked in to start her first radiation treatment four weeks from tomorrow, and she’ll have that for five to six weeks starting at five times a week.”

  Again, I nodded.

  “Don’t look so worried.” The doctor smiled at me and my da. “This is a good day; the tumour was removed with no complications. Your mother and wife’s future is much brighter than it was this morning.”

  Until I heard the words “no evidence of disease”, I didn’t think I’d stop worrying about my ma. Hell, I think I’d still worry about her even after I heard those all-important words. That was what you did when it came to people you loved. You worried about them just as hard as you loved them. That’s how you knew how important they were to you. If you couldn’t imagine your life without them, they were part of the pieces that made up your heart, and I was confident that my ma made up a whole half of mine.

  Five days later …

  “I thought you’d be in a better mood after seeing Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron singing and dancing their hearts out on the big screen.”

  I looked up from my plate of food to Damien when he spoke, and I frowned.

  “Dame, I’m sorry, I’m ruinin’ our first date.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “I am.” I sighed. “I keep thinkin’ about me ma.”

  “Call her again if it will
make you feel better.”

  “I can’t,” I grumbled. “She said she’d reach through the phone and strangle me if I phoned ’er again.”

  “Sounds to me like she’s perfectly okay if she’s threatening you with bodily harm.”

  My lips twitched.

  “It’s the overbearin’ protector in me,” I said with a small shrug. “It makes me a pain in the arse.”

  “Really?” Damien grinned. “I had no idea.”

  “Smartarse.”

  He chuckled. “It’s been five days since her surgery, and when we saw her yesterday, you can’t say she didn’t look great because she did.”

  “She did,” I agreed, “but she wouldn’t tell me if she was feelin’ shitty just to keep me from worryin’.”

  “Alannah, your mom knows you worry either way, so she wouldn’t lie to you, babe.”

  “I guess.”

  I ate some more of my food then and glanced around the restaurant.

  “I like it ’ere,” I said happily. “I’ve passed by it a million times but never came inside to eat.”

  “I plan on bringing you here and many other places more often, so get used to it.”

  I turned my attention back to Damien.

  “I’d be just as happy eatin’ at home with you.”

  “Speaking of your apartment, I have to get all my laundry together to bring back to Ryder and Branna’s to get it—”

  “I already washed and dried it all.”

  Damien blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I did all the washin’ this mornin’.” I shrugged. “It was really windy out today, so I hung your clothes out to dry on the line I have on the balcony in me bedroom. Windy weather is great dryin’ weather. Me ma always says that.”

  Damien continued to stare at me, and I blushed under his gaze.

  “Why’re you lookin’ at me like that?”

  “You did my laundry?”

  “Yeah, so?” I raised a brow. “I did mine, too. They were dirty so I washed them … it’s not a big deal.”

  When Damien smiled, I couldn’t understand why.

  “You’re bein’ really weird about me doin’ your washin’.”

  He chuckled. “It just feels a little odd. Branna usually does it for me.”

  “Branna is like your mammy,” I teased. “I’m your girlfriend, so I’ve inherited the task from ’er. You’re slowly becomin’ me man-child.”

  Damien playfully rolled his eyes.

  “I do it myself, too. I’m not lazy. Branna just does it before I have a chance.”

  “She’s like me.” I shrugged. “We don’t let it build up. Line dryin’ is a huge thing ’ere, in case you haven’t noticed. When it’s a nice, windy day, all the washin’ is done.”

  “Ryder used to dry our clothes in the tumble dryer until Branna went crazy at him about how much that would cost on the bills.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “I have no idea people didn’t dry their clothes on a washin’ line out their back until a few years ago when Nico said you’d put soppin’ wet clothes into a dryer and just press start. That blew me mind. I put me clothes in the dryer for, like, ten minutes to soften them, and that’s it.”

  Damien was watching with that weird look again.

  “What?”

  “We’re on our first date, and we’re talking about laundry, and the best method of drying said laundry.”

  “The best method is line dryin’,” I pressed. “Don’t argue with me on this, buddy.”

  Damien laughed good heartedly, and it drew attention from the group of women who were sitting a few tables over. I watched as they stared at my boyfriend and, not so discreetly, giggled and spoke to one another. Some of them looked at me. I watched as they looked me up and down and laughed, and I knew they had decided I wasn’t good enough to be at dinner with Damien. I narrowed my eyes, knowing exactly what was going through their minds when they turned their gazes back to him, because it went through mine whenever I looked at Damien.

  “They want to have sex with you.”

  Damien choked on the bite of food in his mouth.

  “Who?” he rasped, before taking a huge gulp of his water. “What are you talking about, Alannah?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “That group of women is starin’ at you, and I can tell what they’re thinkin’ based on how they’re eye fuckin’ you.”

  “Eye fucking me?” Damien’s jaw dropped. “I’ve never heard you say that before.”

  I looked down at my plate of food and messed around with my steak.

  “Can we go?”

  “No.”

  I looked up at my boyfriend and frowned.

  “No,” he repeated. “Tell me why you want to leave.”

  I shook my head.

  “Then we’re staying right here.”

  I scowled. “I can leave if I want to.”

  “You can,” Damien agreed, “but you won’t, because it’s our first date.”

  I scowled harder at him, and he only raised a brow in question and waited.

  “They were givin’ me dirty looks,” I grumbled, looking out of the window and to the traffic on the road outside. “It’s female intuition. I know they know I’m not good enough to sit ’ere with you. Women like them are.”

  “Women like them?” Damien repeated.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Skinny women with a nice bum, a nice pair of boobs, and a gorgeous face. Ye’know, perfect.”

  “Is that your vision of what perfect is?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Alannah.”

  “I don’t know.” I grunted. “When I think of perfect, I think of the girls.”

  “But Bronagh, Keela, Branna, and Aideen all have completely different body types.”

  I hesitated. “So?”

  “So they don’t all look the same, yet you think they’re perfect.”

  “They’re perfect in their own individual way.”

  Damien smiled. “And so are you.”

  I remained mute.

  “I don’t know what has made you so insecure about your body, but we really need to work on it because you are perfect. And I’m making it my personal mission to make you see that.”

  I looked down at my plate as a big smile plastered itself on my face.

  “You’re such a pain in the arse.”

  “When we start having sex, I will be a pain in your ass. Literally.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath and darted my eyes up to Damien’s, and he laughed once more.

  “Never,” I stated. “We’re never doin’ that.”

  “What?”

  “That!”

  “What’s that?”

  I lowered my voice. “Anal sex.”

  “You might like it.”

  “And I might hate it,” I countered. “That hole is an exit, not an entrance.”

  Damien was thoroughly amused by me, and he didn’t stop smiling until we finished dinner and made our way back to my car. After we buckled ourselves in and began the drive back to my apartment, I turned my head and stared at Damien’s side profile.

  “Tell me something about yourself from when you were little that no one else knows.”

  He thought on this for a moment.

  “I always wanted to be a ninja when I was a kid. A real crime fighting one.”

  That drew a snort from me.

  “You could never be a ninja.”

  “I could be if I wanted to.”

  “No, you couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You forgot to tie your shoelaces yesterday, and you fell on your face.”

  Damien considered this. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  My lips twitched. “I’m always right.”

  “You are indeed.”

  He replied way too fast for that to be an honest answer.

  I glanced at him as he drove. “Man Bible?”

  “Chapter three, page nineteen, line seven,” Damien answered with a nod. “Always agre
e with a woman no matter what. The ‘no matter what’ part is in bold and underlined.”

  I laughed. “You make it sound like you have actual Man Bible copies.”

  “We do,” Damien answered. “In paperback.”

  I blinked. “Paperback?”

  “Yup, Dominic asked Keela about it since she knows everything about self-publishing, and she helped him write out the Man Bible. He got five copies, one for each brother.”

  I stared at Damien in disbelief. “Are you jokin’?”

  “No,” he answered. “Why would I lie?”

  “Because that is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard.”

  “It’s Dominic.” Damien shrugged. “Nothing is impossible with that idiot.”

  “Do any of the other girls know about this?”

  Damien hesitated. “No, but you can’t tell them.”

  “Oh, I’m tellin’ them.”

  “Alannah,” Damien groaned. “My brothers will kick my ass. We agreed not to tell you or the other girls because you’d want to read the Man Bible, and it’s not for women’s eyes. It’s sacred to men.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said with a shake of my head. “You spend way too much time with Alec. That was him that just came out of your mouth just then.”

  Damien grinned as we neared my apartment.

  “He’s my big brother, so I guess I’m more like him than I thought.”

  “I’m still tellin’ the girls.”

  Damien growled. “I’ll have to punish you if you do.”

  “If you even consider spankin’ me, I’ll knock your teeth out.”

  A lower rumbling chuckle filled the car. “You and what army?”

  “Bronagh Murphy.”

  “That’s not fair,” Damien huffed. “She is feral when she is mad.”

  “Exactly, so don’t mess with me or me arse, buddy.”

  “No promises.”

  I grinned like a fool.

  “Do you think a lot about when we’re gonna have sex?”

  “At least one hundred times a day.”

  I cracked up laughing, and Damien simply smiled and shook his head. I loved how he made me feel. Carefree, beautiful, and most of all, happy. I didn’t think of sex with him anywhere close to one hundred times a day, but I found myself thinking of it all the way home, and I decided we had both waited long enough to come together.