Ciaran (Bourbon & Blood) (8 page)

L
oralei eased
the tiny hybrid car to a stop in front of the house that was slowly starting to come together again. Ciaran had protested their assistance, but Matt and Grant had insisted. The roof had been patched, the siding replaced, now they were working on rebuilding the porch railings that had been shredded by gunfire.

Had it really only been a week? So much had happened during that time. She’d barely seen Matt until the day before, when he’d shown up on her doorstep exhausted and haggard. But he’d arrived with good news. They’d recovered enough pieces of the grenade canister to trace it back to Jenkins, cementing his ties to the Russians. He was going away for a long time.

She and Ciaran were back on track, as well. It would never be smooth sailing for them entirely. They were both too proud and, she admitted it readily, a little too damaged for that. But she loved him enough to fight for him, and heaven knew he’d proved the same. There was only one tiny piece of the happy ending that still needed work. His family. Once again, she’d taken matters into her own hands.

“I don’t know about this.”

The words spoken from the passenger side of the car didn’t quite penetrate. Loralei had been told there would be no permanent hearing loss from the grenade, but that it could take some time for her hearing to return completely to normal. Turning toward the passenger seat, she took in Mia Darcy’s pale face and put two and two together.

“It will be fine,” Loralei promised.

She was lying through her teeth. Ciaran had proven resistant on the subject of meeting his family, so she’d taken the initiative. She’d driven the short distance to Fontaine, cornered Mia in her office and blurted out, without tact or forethought,
hey, you have a half brother.

In retrospect, she thought, it probably hadn’t been the best of plans.

“What if he doesn’t want anything to do with me?” Mia asked. “Let’s face it…we are finding new and twisted ways to be more dysfunctional every day!”

Loralei turned her gaze back to the house. “He’s very proud. And when he went to your father and your father turned him away, it left him with certain ideas about the lot of you. Unfairly, I might add. But he didn’t move halfway across the world to try and connect with his family on a whim. It’s important to him, even if he won’t admit how much just yet.”

“I’m nervous,” Mia admitted.

“You’re shacking up with a man your father hates. The entire county is talking about you and this tragic, modern day, star-crossed lovers bit…and you’re worried about meeting a half brother?”

Mia rolled her eyes. “When you put it like that…”

Loralei grasped the door handle to get out of the car and made another promise she wasn't sure she’d be able to keep. “Come on. I’ll introduce you. It will be fine.”

C
iaran was carting away
another load of shredded drywall. It was an unending task. Somehow, those fuckers hadn’t left a wall in the place untouched. Between plumbing, electrical, and structural repairs, he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t have been cheaper to just build a new house.

He reached the living room, now bare of any furniture as it too had been destroyed in a hail of bullets, and stopped in his tracks. Loralei had let herself in with the key he’d given her. It was a symbolic gesture, as there had been holes in the wall he could have driven a truck through at the time.

It was the woman who entered behind Loralei that had him tongue-tied. It was the first time he’d been face to face with his half sister. Unexpected, terrifying, and more than a little infuriating, he turned to Loralei and threw his hands up in the air. The universal symbol for “what the fuck” only prompted a shrug from her.

“I thought,” she finally replied, “that it was time you met your sister. Mia Darcy meet Ciaran Darcy, your half brother and generally the most sullen man I’ve ever met.”

He said nothing at Loralei’s less than gracious introduction, but instead watched the slow smile spread over the other woman’s face. It was beautiful and welcoming. It terrified him.

“You must take that after Quentin,” she said softly. “He’s the middle child, and he acts it in every regard.”

“I don’t know much about him,” he replied cagily. He was trying not to be rude, because if he was, Loralei would make him pay for it. Also, in spite of how off-kilter he felt and how blindsided by her drop-in visit, he was actually incredibly pleased to see someone who shared his DNA and didn’t hate him on sight.

“You wouldn’t…mostly because our father is a gigantic, raging asshole. We don’t have much to do with him. Ever. At all, if it can be avoided, honestly. He’s sort of like a contagion,” Mia answered.

“You’re babbling,” Loralei pointed out.

“I do that when I’m nervous,” she snapped back.

“According to her, I do it all the time,” Ciaran replied. “But, that and being Irish go hand in hand a bit. We like to talk.”

Mia nodded. “Right…I know you haven’t been here that long, and this is probably new for you, but I’d really like it if you came to Thanksgiving dinner.”

Ciaran blinked at her. “I think that might be pushing it a little.”

“No,” she answered. “Thanksgiving dinner this year is going to be strange and all kinds of awkward. It’ll be the Darcys and the Hayeses all under one roof…Because I’m apparently completely insane. We’ll need you there. They outnumber us.”

Ciaran considered it for a moment. “Do your older brothers know about this invitation?”

She blushed. “They don’t actually even know about you yet.”

“It’s a bad idea,” he said again. “Talk to them, and if you still want me to be there, I will…but only if all three of you are in agreement. I’ll not be thrown out on my arse again.”

Mia nodded. “I will. In fact, I’m going to go out to the car now and call them so I can meet with both of them tonight…and I’ll just do that now so you and Loralei can fight about whatever it is you look ready to fight about.”

The door closed softly behind her, and Ciaran found himself looking at the woman who had turned his life and his house upside down. “You can’t ever leave well enough alone, can you?”

“Was it?”

“Was it what?” he asked sharply.

“Well enough,” she replied as if he were an idiot.

He couldn’t bring himself to lie and say yes. Instead he just moved toward her and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her with a wicked intent, pressing her back against the door until they were chest to chest and hip to hip. When he broke the kiss, drawing back from her slowly and reluctantly, he said, “Sometimes, Loralei, a man likes to make his own decisions.”

“And sometimes, when an intelligent and capable woman loves a man who is behaving like an idiot, she has to save him from his own decisions,” she retorted. The reply lost some of its heat since she was breathless from the kiss.

“Is that why you did it? Because you love me?” he demanded.

“That’s why I do pretty much everything,” she admitted. “I know I meddled. I know I went behind your back…but if I hadn’t, you’d be spending Thanksgiving alone, or God help us both, at my mother’s house.”

He shuddered at the thought. Anything was better than facing off against her ice-queen of a mother. “And now I’ll be spending it with total strangers who have no idea what the hell to make of me.”

She laughed at that. “Trust me, you will be the least interesting thing happening at Thanksgiving. The Hayes and Darcy families have been feuding for more than forty years, and now they’re all going to sit down at a table where someone gets to use a big knife? Yeah, they need you there just for security!”

“I’ll go,” he said, “on one condition.”

“Oh?”

Ciaran smiled down at her. “You have to go with me. You’ll sit right there beside me instead of under the scrutiny of your dragon of a mother.”

“That’s a done deal,” she agreed. “I was already planning on it.”

Ciaran’s smile shifted into a grin. “It seems to me, I owe you a debt of gratitude…and I do like to pay my debts.”

Her eyebrows shot up, and a smile that was pure flirtation curved her pretty lips. “What did you have in mind?”

“Take my sister back home, then you’re going back to your house, you’ll climb into that big bed of yours, wearing not a stitch…”

“And?” she prompted.

He kissed her again, hard and quick, before whispering against her ear, “I’ll show you exactly why they call the Irish silver-tongued devils.”

“You are so bad,” she whispered.

“Only when you want me to be, love. Only when you want me to be.”

Ciaran closed his arms around her for a moment, kissed her, and then stepped back. “I do owe you a debt of gratitude,” he said seriously. “For giving me another chance when I don’t bloody deserve it. But I promise you this, I’ll spend my days trying to earn it…and every one of my nights.”

She smiled at him, watery and overly emotional as she was wont to be. Loralei would forever have her heart on her sleeve, and he would do whatever it took to protect her from anything that might hurt her.

“I do love you,” she whispered softly as she headed out the door to take Mia home.

“Aye. But I love you more,” he said and meant every word of it.

T
he End

T
hank you for reading Ciaran
, A Bourbon and Blood Novella. If you’d like to read Mia’s story, it can be found in Bennett, Bourbon & Blood, Book One. Clayton, Bourbon & Blood, Book Two will be available in March!