Always and Forever (5 page)

“I was remembering
how I loved that laugh when I first saw you.”

His hand, attuned to the body he knew so well, trailed down and teased her waist. She was so feminine, small. But supple. And womanly. Just the feel of her skin made his whole body tighten. “I thought I’d swallow my tongue when I first saw you. All that hair.” He brushed his hand down the now shorter locks.

“Do you miss it?”

“Nah. I like
it this way. You’ve grown into it, like everything else.”

She didn’t want the feeling to come, but it surfaced against her wishes. Sometimes she thought he didn’t
like
her as much as he had then. He loved her, but…

Instead of voicing the notion, she plastered her body to his, sending shock waves through both of them.

He lowered his lips to her mouth. Then he kissed his way down her
chest to suckle a breast. Brie’s head began to spin. She forgot about their differences, about the truth of her earlier misgivings and let herself be filled with the scent and weight of her husband.

Pat followed her into the oblivion they always created together.

Brie fell asleep fast, but Pat couldn’t doze off. Even after the intimacy he’d just shared with his wife, he
was plagued by memories. So he got up, threw on a robe and went downstairs. He made his way through the house in the dark, then stepped out onto the patio. In the wee hours of the morning, night sounds of crickets and cicadas greeted him. The moon was huge and white. By its light, he crossed to the bar he’d built at one end and fished out a pack of cigarettes he kept hidden here. He’d smoked in
his twenties but had stopped when they had the kids. Lately, though, he had one once in a while to calm himself down. Sitting in the shadows, he lit up and inhaled. It tasted like shit, but he didn’t care.

He tried to think good thoughts, of C.J. and Aidan, of his parents, so happy with the new baby. But that made him remember when Sinead was on the way. He could still see Brie in that tiny
apartment around the corner from Fordham…

“We have to talk, Pat.” She sat in a chair across from him, her fingers twisting a thick lock of her waist-long hair.

Not expecting something bad, he lazed happily on a couch, which was small but fit the space. “What about?”

“I’m…um…I’m…hell.” She looked up to the ceiling. “I’m pregnant.”

“What?
” They’d used protection every single time.

“I’m having your baby.”

He’d shocked the hell out of her—and himself—by bolting off the couch to kneel in front of her. “Brie, that’s wonderful.”

She’d scowled, marring her unlined brow. At nineteen, she was so young. At twenty-six, he felt the weight of adulthood. “No, Pat, it’s not. I have plans for my life.”

“Me, too. But they include you.” He studied her and drew back some.
“You don’t feel the same about me?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Even though we’ve only been together six months, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”

They’d never said the words. “Ah, lass, I love you, too.” He put his hand on her belly. “So, see? This is good news.”

“It’s not. I have to finish school and I want to start my own business.” Which had always been her dream.

He sank
back on his haunches but didn’t let go of her hand. “Those things are both doable after we get married.”

“I didn’t want this now. Someday…”

“Life has a way of interrupting our plans, sweetheart. We have to roll with the punches.” Suddenly, a horrible thought struck him. “You aren’t thinkin’ about…getting rid of the child, are you?”

She shook her head vehemently.

“Thank God. We’ll
have to get married right away.” His grin had been huge. He’d trusted life so much then.

“I can’t marry you. It’ll be too much. I can probably have a baby and finish school. But marriage…with its responsibilities…I don’t think I can handle all that.”

“I’ll help. My whole family will.”

Again she shook her head. He knew she had a streak of independence, but this?

His gaze narrowed
on her, as if she were a puzzle that wouldn’t quite come together. “What exactly would you do?”

“Stay here. Hire help. You could still see the baby.”

“I can’t believe you’d go to those lengths when this can be solved so easy.” His voice got hoarse. “When you say you love me.”

“I want to do it this way. I told my parents the same thing.”

His blood pressure spiked. “You told your
parents before me?”

“Yes. I need their help financially and otherwise.”

He jerked to his feet, jammed his hands into his pockets. “Seems like you got this all figured out. Without my input. You’re treatin’ me like a sperm donor.”

She stood, too, and looped her arms around his neck. “No, no, Patrick. You can see the baby anytime you want. We can still be together, too.”

“You gotta
be shittin’ me.”

Surprised, she stepped back from him. “What do you mean?”

“You think you can make these decisions about our lives and expect me to heel to them.”

“I’m making decisions about
my
life.”

“And mine. And our kid’s.”

“I didn’t think you’d be mad about this.”

“Did you discuss that with your parents, too?”

Her guilty expression said she had.

“Fuck it, Brie,
I thought we were on the same page about family.”

“We were. Are. I…” She ran a hand through her hair. “I guess I should have approached this differently.”

“And plan to marry me?”

“No, ask your opinion. Talk it out. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry you’re sabotaging us before we even got a chance to start.”

Anger sparked in her eyes. “I’m not doing that and you shouldn’t, either.”

“Let me get this straight. You want me to just pretend nothing’s different. Act like we’re on the same track as we were before.”

Her chin rose. Sometimes when cornered, Brie attacked. “Maybe.”

“Then you don’t know me at all.” He moved farther away. “Here’s
my
plan, darlin’. I love you. I wanna marry you, and I’ll cherish you and the baby all my life. But if you do this—go it alone—we’re
through.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“I do. I’ll sue for parental rights, if I have to in order to raise the kid with you, but I’m not gonna wait around like some lapdog for you to throw me some bones.” With that, he turned and walked out…

At the time, Pat had had no idea the far-reaching effects that her decision and his ultimatum would have on him. It had been the beginning a deeply
rooted insecurity in him that he’d never quite gotten over. Because, despite the fact that she’d eventually married him, he’d never recovered from that first brutal rejection.

In another part of town, another man wondered how he’d ever get through these days without her. Sometimes, he didn’t want to. Finally, there was relief on the horizon. Perhaps this was meant to be. Perhaps
he would become happy again. He’d been praying for an opportunity and God had sent one.

Bumping his elbow against the window frame—they’d had to buzz the glass down because it got so steamy in the car--Sinead pulled his T-shirt over his head then zipped up his jeans. He
glanced at Laurie, who had just finished buttoning up her white blouse. Her dark hair, now in a messy tangle, was one of the prettiest things he’d ever seen.

She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Next year, one of us has to get an apartment and keep it through summer.” She waved her hand to encompass the car. “This is crazy. And I don’t like letting our parents think we broke up.”

Sinead
was getting tired of the ruse, too. For one thing, talking to his dad about Laurie helped him understand her better. “I couldn’t take the pressure anymore. Neither could you,
lass.
”

She smiled at his mimicking of his father. “I know you love your parents and I love mine, but they’re being hypocritical, don’t you think? Both sets were in their teens when they got
married
and we don’t even want
to do that now.”

“My mom was twenty. Dad was twenty-seven.”

She leaned back against the seat cushion. “Still.”

For a minute, he stared out the window and listened to the crickets chirp away in the trees by their favorite parking space. He hadn’t told Laurie about his father and mother’s history. About the circumstances around his birth. He respected that his dad had told him the story
but didn’t feel right sharing that with anybody else.

“Sinead, you always clam up when we talk about your parents. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Something that’s their business, not mine.”

“But I love you. I wouldn’t be doing this”—she gestured between them—“with you unless I did.” She took his hand and kissed it. He melted inside when she did that.

Okay, he’d tell her about this.
“They met when Mom was at Fordham. After they dated for six months, she got pregnant with me. She was only nineteen.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Dad wanted to get married, but she didn’t. For a whole year.”

“Holy cow!”

“After she found out Dad told me the story, Mom and I talked. She said that she loved my dad from day one but wasn’t ready to get married. She wanted to finish school first.”

Laurie frowned. “I can understand that.”

“Not me. She could have finished and been married. I think there’s more, but I didn’t want TMI.”

“How come he told you? I can’t imagine my dad unloading on me like that.”

“It was when he gave me the box of condoms before the junior prom.” His and Laurie’s first time. “He said he knew all about proms and after proms.”

Leaning over, she
hugged him around the neck, then nuzzled into him. He held her there, loving the new perfume she said she’d bought just to drive him crazy.

“He wanted me to know what could happen if we weren’t careful. Besides, three out of four of my uncles got their girls pregnant before they got married.”

“Yeah, but they were really old.”

“I guess. Anyway, that’s not gonna happen to us. I knew
they worried, so I dreamed up the idea of saying we split. Admit it, your parents laid off, too.”

“But I hate lying.” She kissed his neck, a big sloppy one. “I want everybody to know we’re in love.”

Man, she got him excited. Again. “I know. Me, too. But right now we should stay the course we set. And I’ll try to see if I can get an apartment near school for next year.”

“Okay.”

He kissed her head. Except for keeping a big secret from his dad, Sinead was really happy with how his life was going.

All four brothers showed up to train the new people they’d hired at the O’Neil pub. The orientation had to be done in real time because they couldn’t afford to close the pub during a meal—they’d have a tourist riot on their hands—but they had a few hours between
breakfast and lunch to start the process.

The pub was quiet and the sweet scents of the cinnamon rolls Liam had baked for breakfast hung in the air. The windows were open, too, bringing in the warm June air. Hot sunlight poured in along with it.

Before the new employees arrived, the guys put a laptop on the bar and called Bailey through Skype. Now they could no longer contact her until
the Secret Service okayed the transmission. But Bailey had insisted on the contact, and soon, their sister appeared on-screen.

“We’re callin’ you, lass, to tell you you’re not pullin’ your weight here.”

She giggled, warming Pat, making Dylan chuckle and Aidan grunt. Of course, Liam said, “Yeah, like we expect that.”

“So, what’s new?” she asked them.

“We hired people to work at
the pub, in addition to Bridget and Sweeney. One’s his son Joey, who used to work with him. He’ll be another bartender.”

She sank down in a chair at the desk. “Tell me about the others.”

“I hired Gale Sullivan, a guy of about forty,” Liam told her. “He’s a college professor who wanted some part-time work to fill his days after a divorce.”

“Is he nice?”

“Yeah. A good Irish male.”
This from Aidan.

Bailey practically snorted. “Just what we needed.”

“I hired a younger woman to waitress.” Pat looked forward to Jamie starting today. “She’s a single mother, tryin’ to make ends meet.”

“I hope she’s tough enough to handle you guys.”

“I think she is. All of them will be on a trial period to see if they like it here and if we like them.”

“Good business strategy,
Pat,” she commented.

“Tell us about you,” Dylan put in. “Rachel did a segment on the state dinner.”

The corners of her mouth turned up. “You know, it was kind of fun. The ambassador to Turkey was enthusiastic about the orphanage Rachel and I are working on in Syria.”

“She’ll like knowing that.” Dylan smiled at his sister.

Pat studied Bailey. Her face looked more lined than it had
at the Inauguration. “You handlin’ everything there?”

“Yeah. It’s tough, being in even more of a fishbowl, but we’re good. Though Rory balks. He’s in the same school, but he hates the need for more Secret Service coverage.”

“I still don’t know how you do it, girl.”