Soaring (75 page)

I could do this. I could lose him. I could live my life without my head in the clouds experiencing the bright flashes of happy he consistently gave to me.

I could do it.

I might even find contentment (one day, in about twenty years).

But it would take everything.

So I’d never do it again.

Mickey was it for me. He had my heart in a way I never wanted it back, not even if he didn’t want it anymore.

I’d go to movies alone. I’d go to bed alone. I’d watch my kids grow up and move away (alone).

I’d find a way to live my life alone.

But I’d never put myself out there again. I’d never give my heart to anyone else.

Because it wasn’t mine to give.

It was Mickey’s.

“Seriously?”

I looked to him again. “I’m sorry?”

“Been away a week, Amy,” he told me.

“As you just returned, I do remember that, Mickey.”

His eyes narrowed and his voice lowered. “Something
is
up your ass.”

I stared at him, stunned he appeared angry.

“As I shared last night, nothing is up my ass,” I returned.

“Then what the fuck?” he asked.

“What the fuck what?” I asked back.

“Last night you answer the phone like I’m the guy you hired to paint your kitchen. You hang up without sayin’ you love me. Now I get to you after I’m gone a week and you don’t come to me and kiss me and you barely even look at me?”

Was he insane?

“Why would I kiss you?”

His expression went from annoyed disbelief to stormy in a flash.

“Why would you kiss me?” he whispered sinisterly.

“You know, Mickey,” I threw out a hand, “just do this. Don’t draw it out. It doesn’t help anything when you draw it out. Clean cut. Surgical. That’s the way to go.”

“Clean cut. Surgical.” He was still whispering.

The kettle whistled and I moved to it, taking it off its flame.

“Yes. If you would, please,” I requested, not looking at him and moving back to my mug.

“All right then, Amy. I did it,” he stated.

I poured my tea. “Did what?”

“Took my inheritance.”

I set the kettle with a crash to the cement countertop as my eyes flew to him.

“What?” Now it was me who was whispering.

He didn’t answer me.

He turned and walked away, disappearing into the hall that led to my bedroom.

I stood wooden where he left me staring at where I last saw him. This must have lasted some time because by the time I came unstuck and was about to move into the hall, I saw him prowling back down it. He did this in a way that I quickly backtracked, walking backward.

I stopped in the kitchen.

He stopped at the end of the counter and threw what he was holding on top of it.

I looked at it and saw it was the letter from Addison Hillingham that I’d shoved in a bathroom drawer I didn’t use so the kids wouldn’t see it.

I’d forgotten all about it.

“Forget to tell me something?” he asked.

Again, my eyes flew to him.

“Mickey—”

“You’re not gonna live any way than what you’re used to living. They yank your money out from under you, I cannot give you that. So I set about makin’ it so I could give you that as best as I can. Called my dad. Had a chat. He already wanted to do it so he was all over it. He talked with Sean, Frank and Dylan and they were all in. Then he went to his accountants to finagle whatever the fuck they gotta finagle so the IRS wouldn’t take a huge fuckin’ chunk outta what my dad wanted me to have. They did their conniving, got it sorted, Dylan was on board, so Dad gave both him and me fifteen million dollars. We signed away any claim to the company, that’s Sean and Frank’s. I can’t touch the money unless there’s an emergency but I get the interest. When I die, it’s split and my kids get it. The interest is a fuckload. And it might not be what you had, but you aren’t the kinda woman who needs that anyway. It’ll still be better than what I could give you without it. So I did what I had to do to make it so you don’t feel the hurt your parents wanted to lay on you for whatever fucked up shit they got in their heads that made them strike out and make their daughter bleed.”

And again, I stood completely still, staring up at him, speechless.

He kept going.

“When we get married, I sell my house, pay back Dad’s investment, the company is ours free and clear to make a go of or fuck up, however that goes down.”

When we get married.

That rattled around in my brain and it was no surprise, since that was happening, I continued to be incapable of speech.

“I get home after spendin’ a lot of my vacation on the phone with my dad, mom, brothers, gettin’ Fed Ex’ed shit to sign, goin’ over papers and emails, I come to my woman and she doesn’t even fuckin’ kiss me?” he asked and before I could answer (not that I was yet able to do so) he demanded, “So, tell me again how nothin’ is up your ass.”

“It’s a ploy,” I forced out and his stormy expression turned thunderous.

“What’s a fuckin’ ploy?” he bit out.

“That.” I made my arm move to indicate the letter from Hillingham. “It’s a ploy. It’s Dad and Mom’s way of saying they’re pissed at me. Trying to get me to react. Playing their games. I’m not going to lose my trust funds. Hillingham called me a week ago saying he’s shared that with my parents and I have nothing to worry about.”

Mickey scowled at me.

“You didn’t have to take your inheritance, Mickey.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that shit went down?” he asked, also tossing out an arm to indicate the letter.

“Because it was a nuisance,” I replied. “It didn’t mean anything. I got it on Thanksgiving and obviously that day other things took my attention. And to be completely truthful, I forgot all about it.”

Mickey drew breath in through his nose and looked over my head.

I stared at him.

He took his inheritance for me.

I kept staring at him.

He took his inheritance for me.

“All I need is you,” I said softly.

His eyes moved down to me.

Do what I gotta do.

He’d found that letter when he’d spent the night the first time all our kids were together.

And he’d done what he had to do.

“First, I have the Bourne trust fund, Mickey,” I began gently. “Prior to me turning thirty, if I did something that the board or my parents petitioning the board meant they could withhold it from me, they could have withheld that money permanently. Once I receive it, there are no caveats. It’s irrevocable. And that has enough money in it to live on comfortably.”

A muscle ticked in his cheek.

“Second,” I went on, “it could all go up in a puff a smoke and I wouldn’t care. Yes, I might eventually want better countertop appliances when we moved in together, but even that wouldn’t matter and not because I have my own. Because I’d have you. I’d have you and Auden and Pippa and Ash and Cill. If I had all that, since that would be having it all, what else would I ever need?”

“I got here, you barely looked at me,” he returned.

“You’ve been pulling away,” I shared. “I thought you were going to end things with me.”

His face again went stormy. “Are you fuckin’
crazy
?”

“Think about it,” I returned. “Our conversations have been perfunctory. And
you
didn’t say you loved me
once
since you were in Phoenix.”

“That is not fuckin’ true,” he growled.

“‘Same here’ is
not
‘I love you,’ Mickey.”

“It fuckin’ is, Amy, especially when Chop’s around. We been best buds since we were five. He takes every opportunity to bust my ass about anything and he’s good at it ’cause he’s had a lot of practice. Makes the boys at the firehouse look like amateurs. Then again, he gives me shit because I give it back. It’s what we do. And with me, Ash and Cill yammerin’ on about you, he knows what you mean to me, he’s lookin’ forward to meetin’ you, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t take his opportunities, and he got a lot in. He made a point of hangin’ close when I’d call you just to get the chance to give me shit. I wasn’t gonna give him more openings. And it may sound fucked, but I’d never hear the end of it. And seein’ as that would be about me tellin’ the woman I love that I love her, it might piss me off. I didn’t take my kids to Phoenix to visit a man who’s like a brother to me and then spend that time bein’ pissed off. ”

So Josie was right.

Shit.

And they’d “yammered on” about me?

That felt
great
.

“Did you consider explaining that to me?” I asked hesitantly.

He threw both hands out in a gesture of frustration.

“Amy, I’ve been dealin’ with all this shit for you and the fact that once I tell my kids we’re loaded, Cill’s gonna want me to build him his own personal paintball arena. And hangin’ with
your
girl and
you
, suddenly
my
girl is into clothes and decorating. She’s linin’ up babysitting jobs to feed that need. She found some print online that she wants for her wall that she
has to have
in her room and that shit costs a hundred and fifty dollars. She knows I got cake, no tellin’ now what
she’s
gonna want.”

I found that funny and wonderful news. Mickey having a daughter who liked clothes and expensive pictures for her wall were much better problems than Mickey with a daughter who had to play mother to his son because her mother was a drunk at the same time she’s bullied at school.

I didn’t share that.

I asked, “So it was just that your mind was on other things?”

“Yeah,” he answered tersely. “All that and the conversation I’d have to have with my kids about leavin’ their home and the hit it would be about lettin’ that place go. Not to mention, me talkin’ you into lettin’ your kids hang with their dad so when I worked out my notice with Ralph and before my crew got started on their new jobs, I could give the kids to Rhiannon and take you to the Keys so I’d get a shot at you bein’ in a bikini when I asked you to marry me.”

I took a step back.

His scowl grew dark as it snapped to my feet.

It a flash, it snapped back to me.

“Now what?” he clipped.

“You’ve had a lot on your mind,” I noted.

“Uh…
yeah
,” he replied sarcastically.

“Why didn’t you share any of it with me?” I asked.

“Like you shared that with me?” He again threw out a hand to the paper from Hillingham.

“Mickey, as dire as it sounded, it didn’t
mean
anything.”

“Well, you’re fuckin’ tidy,” he shot back strangely. “Had shit to put away in your bathroom and so it wouldn’t crawl up your ass I fucked that up, I opened a drawer, saw that, figured you were hidin’ it from a variety of people, one of them
me
. And it bein’ worthy of hidin’, I couldn’t know it didn’t mean anything.”

“Well it doesn’t, but you could have shared you found it before you went off and took your inheritance,” I returned. “And in so doing, got stuck in your head about a lot of stuff that was clearly weighing on you that
you
didn’t share with
me
.”

“Fucks with the grand announcement I wanted to lay on you when I got it sorted and to a place I could tell you I could take care of you.”

That was sweet but I felt it necessary to reiterate, “You were
already
taking care of me.”

“In the way you’re used to, Amy,” he returned heatedly.

“Yes, to repeat, you’re
already
taking care of me in the way I’m used to, Mickey. The only way I need it to be.”

“Right, so that shit happens,”
again
with flipping his hand to the letter, “and you got a wild hair to buy a Rover and you gotta wait to save for it, if you can get it at all, rather than headin’ out and buyin’ it with cash, that’s not gonna bother you?”

God, why was he not getting this?

“Mickey,
I love you
!” I was now yelling.

“And I love you,” he ground out. “Since that’s the case, I want you to have it all.”

I threw up my hands. “I have all I need.”

“I want you to have,” he planted his hands on his hips and leaned toward me ominously, “
it all
.”

“Why?” I asked shrilly. “When I have everything I need.”

“Because you’re worth it.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

Do what I gotta do.

Oh my God.

Because you’re worth it.

Oh. My.
God
.

“No comeback?” he taunted.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I know that,” he returned. “That all you got?”

“No,” I replied. “That’s it. Just I love you.”

Mickey shut
his
mouth.

I stared at him and it was a surprise when I felt the tear slide down my cheek.

“All my life,” I whispered, “I was the girl who everyone thought had everything or could get it. But the only thing I ever wanted was a man like you. You’re the best man I’ve ever met, Mickey Donovan.” I felt another tear and the words trembled when I finished, “And you’re mine.”

“Get the fuck over here, Amy.”

I didn’t hesitate an instant.

I ran into his arms.

I held him tight and burrowed in, pressing my cheek to his chest as I felt more tears trailing down my face.

He moved to cup a hand on the side of my head and whispered, “Baby, think I made it clear I want a kiss and not sure that’s gonna work with you tryin’ to fuse your face to my chest.”

Immediately, I tipped my head back, got up on my toes and moved my own hands so I could clamp them on either side of his head and pull him down to me.

Our mouths met and we kissed, at first hard and heated, but since it went on for a long time, it shifted to soft and sweet.

When Mickey finally broke the kiss, I slowly opened my eyes and looked into his beautiful ones, seeing at the surface, and all the way down deep, the love he had for me.

It went on forever.

“So now that you’re loaded, this means I get to go whole hog on birthdays too,” I declared.