THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (59 page)

Amelia

“They’re on their way over. They really wanted to meet you.”

I could hear the tension in Kyle’s voice. I didn’t know if it was because he was concerned for me, or if he was annoyed that his family was butting in. Or maybe he was afraid I wouldn’t live up to expectations.

I hoped it wasn’t that last one.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind the company.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I just…I wish you could be here.”

Kyle didn’t answer right away. He sighed. “I have to work. But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’ll be there when I can.”

He disconnected the call. It felt final in a weird sort of way. I found myself wondering what I’d done to upset him. This whole thing…I didn’t know enough about him to keep from upsetting him. And that was incredibly frustrating. Maybe his stepmother and half-sister could give me a little more insight.

I went upstairs and changed into a pair of jeans and a clean blouse. I was combing my hair when they rang the buzzer downstairs. I had to push a button on the security system to allow the elevator to bring them up from the garage, so I had a few seconds to stand there and allow the tension of this first meeting grow.

The doors slid open and a middle-aged woman with dark hair and blue eyes approached me, her hands outstretched.

“Amelia, I’m Cassidy, Brian’s wife.”

She pulled me in and gave me a hug. I was a little surprised that she would greet me so familiarly, but it was kind of nice. Then she turned and introduced me to her daughter—her flaming red hair so like Brian’s that it surprised me a little.

“This is Brianna.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” the girl said quite openly, her smile warm and welcoming.

“You, too.”

I led the way into the loft, gesturing for them to have a seat on the couch. We sat across from each other and stared at each other for a long moment. Neither of us really knew what to say.

“Kyle told us you’re from Oregon,” Brianna finally said. “What part?”

“Ashland.”

She smiled. “That’s a beautiful part of the state. I used to go up there with friends to camp for the weekend.”

I dragged my fingers through my hair as I nodded. “Yeah. It’s great there. Have you ever attended one of the art festivals?”

“Once. It was pretty crazy.”

I smiled. “That’s the world I grew up in. My mom took me to those festivals every year.”

“Was your mom an artist?”

“No. She was never that creative. But she did like the atmosphere.”

“Bohemian.”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

Cassidy watched us talk, a small smile on her lips. “You said was. Has your mother passed?”

“No. As far as I know, she’s still around somewhere.”

Cassidy and Brianna exchanged a glance.

I slid to the edge of the couch. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“We’re fine,” Cassidy said.

Another few awkward moments passed. I found myself studying Cassidy. It was kind of strange how much she resembled my mom, especially how my mom looked six years ago. They both had dark hair, both had blue eyes. Both were about the same age, fit and healthy, women who clearly took pride in their personal appearance. I wondered if that was why…

“You worked in Vegas?”

“I did,” I said, answering Cassidy’s question. “I was a cocktail waitress.”

Brianna’s eyes widened a little. “That must have been an interesting job. Imagine the people you met there.”

“They always kept things interesting.”

“Is that where you met Kyle?”

“Yes. He was playing blackjack.”

Again Cassidy and Brianna exchanged glances. This time it wasn’t just interest, but something a little darker.

“What?”

Cassidy clasped her hands. “Kyle told Brian he’d stopped gambling.”

“He’s not good at it,” I said, remembering how much he lost the night I met him. “But he always pays his debts.”

“Oh, Kyle is a good man. An honorable man. But he has his vices just like anyone else.”

That brought to mind the way he looked at me when he held me in his arms, the way his hands felt on my skin. He certainly had his vices, and he was teaching me a thing or two about them.

I felt the blush move over my cheeks and hated my body for betraying me. I was just grateful Kyle wasn’t here to see me blow this first meeting with his family.

“How long have you and Mr. Callahan been married?”

Cassidy touched the wedding rings on her finger. “Just over a year. But we knew each other long ago, when he was still married to his first wife.”

“It’s really a sweet story, except for Abigail,” Brianna said. “Brian was separated from his wife and Mom was a college student. They had this torrid affair—”

“I wouldn’t call it torrid.”

“I would.” Brianna giggled. “It was exciting, from the way you tell it.”

“It was,” Cassidy agreed, a sort of dreamy look coming over her face.

“Then, a while back, Mom came back to town and ran into Brian. He offered her a job and one thing led to another and they got married.”

“That is impressive,” I said. “The two of you, you were still in love even after all those years?”

“We were. He swears that he never forgot about me…and I know I never forgot about him.”

Romantic. I wondered how often love stories were really like that. It seemed to me, no one really believed in love anymore.

Again an awkward silence fell. Then Cassidy suddenly stood and came to perch on the couch beside me.

“It’s hard fitting into a new family, isn’t it? I know that when Brian and I got married, it was an uphill battle to win the trust of his children. Stacy didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And now you…you and Kyle got married so suddenly, it must seem like you’re still trying to get to know him and now we’re here to judge you.”

That was exactly how it felt. Tears filled my eyes.

Cassidy touched my shoulder. “We’re not judging you. We just want to get to know you.”

I nodded.

“Kyle’s a good man. He’s been through a lot…Brian told me stories about his childhood that would give anyone nightmares. The woman who was his biological mother was cruel. An alcoholic, but an intelligent woman. A college literature professor.”

That surprised me a bit. I knew the woman had been cruel—and an alcoholic—but I didn’t know she was a college professor. My informant had simply told me she beat Kyle on a regular basis until she drank herself to death and left him to fend for himself.

When you hear stories like that, you automatically assume the woman was unintelligent. A poor woman who couldn’t get a break. You don’t think of well-educated women who have the means to give themselves and their children a good life.

“He talks about Abigail like she was a saint.”

“She was a saint. She brought children home like some people bring home cats and dogs. Brian told me that there were long stretches when he would come home to find new children in his home once or twice a week. Most of the time it was a temporary solution, but several times it was more permanent. She fell in love with the kids she helped through her work—and that’s what made her such a good social worker.”

“She saved Kyle’s life.”

“She did. He was on his own for too long after his mother’s death. And then he was shuttled from foster home to foster home for more than two years when the state finally became aware of his situation and rescued him from it. But, sometimes, foster homes aren’t a rescue. There are some great foster parents out there, but there are also some where the child is worse off than he was at home.”

She was talking about a world that was far from my realm of understanding. I grew up in a world of privilege. But going through this mess with my dad and meeting Kyle, I was beginning to see that the world wasn’t all sweet-smelling roses.

“Our childhoods make us who we are as adults. Kyle and Ian and Kevin and Stacy could have let their bad childhoods turn them into bitter adults, but they didn’t. Abigail made sure of that. She made them feel loved and gave them a sense of self-worth. She helped them overcome their past.”

“I’m glad Kyle had someone like that,” I said most honestly.

Cassidy took my hand. “And now he has you.”

“I don’t know if I can live up to such a legacy.”

Cassidy smiled. “I thought the same thing. But they don’t need us to be Abigail. They just need us to love them.”

The awkwardness just suddenly melted away. We opened a bottle of wine and had a nice talk after that, about everything from being a part of the Callahan family to the best places to shop in Boston. It was nice. For the second time in two days, I felt almost like I had before my life imploded, before my dad lost everything. I felt like a happy newlywed gossiping with her new in-laws.

A big part of me wished that was really all this was.

Kyle

I stood at the back of the warehouse, a gun in my hand as I waited for the trucks to arrive. This was probably the most dangerous part of my job. Following Jack around was probably the safest because no one was crazy enough to attack him while he was surrounded by his people. But this required me to be alone, to be in an incriminating location, to be vulnerable.

I didn’t like it.

I wondered how things were going with Amelia. I knew that Cassidy and Brianna could be overwhelming when they were together, but I was pretty sure Amelia could handle it. But, again, how much did I really know about her? We’d been married all of forty-eight hours. We’d known each other just a little more than forty-eight hours.

But I could always get a sense about people, and my sense told me that Amelia could hold her own with just about anyone.

I had a fucking headache. I reached up and brushed my hand against my forehead. It’d been plaguing me since the morning I woke up with Amelia in my bed, but it hadn’t been that bad until now. Because I was alone and could focus on it now, I supposed. I should have asked Ian for some aspirin. He always seemed to have some handy.

A horn honked somewhere on the other side of the building. That was the signal that the trucks had arrived.

I pushed the button that opened the towering doors behind me and watched as they came around the corner. The driver of the first truck lifted a hand to me, waving through the windshield. And then all hell broke out.

A shot rang down from the roof of the building across the alley. Then another. I ducked down and ran to the truck, yanking open the driver’s side door and pushing the driver out of the way as I slammed my foot into the accelerator. We had to get these trucks out of the open.

“Thanks, man,” the driver said as I parked the truck in the center of the warehouse and climbed out to check on the two others that should have followed us in. One was roaring to a stop beside the first, but there was no sign of the third.

I ran back to the doors just in time to see a group of Italians swarm the third truck.

I fired and one of the Italians fell. But the others spotted me and fired back. I managed to move around to the side of the truck as bullets followed me. I got a few more shots off, but there were too many of them.

And then another vehicle burst into the alley. Pops and Killian.

They fired through the windows of the car, rushing the truck. I managed to jump back just as they slammed into the side of the truck, taking out three of the Italians even as they pushed the truck sideways by a good five or six feet. I climbed into the cab of the truck, pulled the driver—who appeared to have taken a bullet to the head—out of the way and drove quickly into the garage, dragging Pops’ car behind me a few feet before the screech of metal indicated that we’d separated.

The trucks secured, I ran back outside, closing the massive doors behind me. Pops and Killian were under fire, but Ian had come around the other side of the warehouse, so we pretty much had the Italians on the run.

Adrenaline was rushing through my body as I realized I was out of bullets with the click of my gun as I fired repeatedly at the back of the last Italian.

“What the hell?” Ian said breathlessly as he joined me by the garage doors. “What was that all about?”

“They wanted the guns.”

“They weren’t trying so hard to get the guns. It’s more like they wanted to create a distraction.”

“Why would they do that?”

Ian shrugged.

Pops and Killian joined us, studying the mess of the front end of the Chevy they’d just been sitting in.

“Someone should call Jack,” Killian said.

None of us was really in a hurry to do that. Jack wouldn’t be happy with this latest disaster. But at least we saved the shipment that was stored in the back of the trucks. And he’d only lost one man this time. This time.

I took an Uber home, exhausted from the long day and wanting nothing better than something to eat and a couple of hours in my bed. The loft was quiet when I let myself in. There were wine glasses in the sink. Three. Again I wondered how well Amelia got on with Cassidy and Brianna. I hoped they didn’t make her feel too uncomfortable.

I made myself a quick sandwich, wolfing it down as I scanned the mail waiting for me in my study. The housekeeper had left it there, sitting neatly on the blotter in the middle of a desk I rarely ever used. Bills that my accountant had probably already paid and circulars for businesses I either already patronized or would never go to if hell froze over. A couple of swigs of beer and I was ready for bed.

Just another day.

But then she was there, lying quietly in the center of my bed, once again dressed in nothing more than a pair of panties and a cute little undershirt. She was on her side, her hair tangled around her face, her hands tucked under her cheek. Her undershirt was drawn up a little, revealing the tender, soft skin between the top of her panties and the bottom of her navel. I wanted to bury my face there; I wanted to do so many things to that incredibly beautiful girl. But exhaustion weighed heavy on my shoulders.

I washed up, striped to my boxers, and crawled into bed beside her.

“Hey,” she said softly.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.” She moved closer to me, sliding her hand over my chest. “Your stepmom and sister are pretty funny.”

“Yeah?”

“They want to throw a party for us tomorrow night.”

I groaned, but I’d actually been expecting it. That’s how the Callahans did things. They threw a party for everything.

“It should be fun.”

“Yeah.” I ran my hand over the back of her head. “You like them?”

“I do.”

“Good.”

She moved closer to me, resting her head on my shoulder. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She felt good in my arms. I’d always thought this cuddling bullshit was stupid, but it was actually relaxing. I held her and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep to the rhythm of her breathing.

Maybe this marriage thing wasn’t all that bad.