THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (40 page)

“Good, good! And you?”

I shrugged. “As good as ever.”

Patrick beamed, his thoughts clearly spinning when he spotted Delaney. “And who might this be?”

“Delaney Doherty. She’s a friend.”

“Delaney. What a beautiful, Celtic name.”

Delaney blushed as she accepted his enthusiastic kisses near her cheeks.

Patrick turned and yelled to someone, then he came back to me.

“We’ll get you the best table in the place. Have anything you want, it’s on the house.”

“Thank you, Patrick.”

“You’re well known here,” Delaney said, as I took her hand and led her into the loud, boisterous place behind Patrick’s waiter.

“He’s a friend of my father’s.”

“Comes in handy, having friends in high places.”

I smiled, as I led her deep into the dining room, finally finding the table Patrick meant for us. The waiter took drink orders, then disappeared. Delaney’s eyes were bright as she looked around, taking in the dark room with its cheesy décor. The place was filled with anchors and ropes, a nautical theme that seemed especially out of place when you realized there was not a bit of fish on the entire menu.

“The Shepard’s pie is good,” I said.

“What about the corned beef?”

“Excellent.”

We ordered and then sat back to enjoy the bottle of wine the waiter had brought. It was a white this time, a lovely, crisp wine that went down smoothly. I finished a glass as I watched Delaney continue to look around, the amusement on her face like that of a child meeting her hero for the first time. I poured myself a fresh glass and topped off hers, then leaned over the table to catch her attention.

“What do you think?”

She shrugged. “It’s fascinating. I’ve never been to a place like this.”

“Not your usual hangout?”

She laughed. “I grew up poor, so my idea of eating out was McDonald’s. Then I got into business and it became French bistros and hundred dollar tabs.”

“Quite a contrast.”

“I went from poor to not so poor pretty quickly.”

“With Heavenly Match?”

Her eyebrows rose. “How’d you know that?”

“You aren’t exactly unknown in this city, Miss Doherty.”

She inclined her head slightly. There’d been an article about her in a well-known business magazine just a few weeks ago that caught the attention of the local newspaper. It sported a picture of her and a brief history of her business. I read it three times, telling myself that I needed to know her if I was going to protect her. The truth, though, was a little simpler. I liked looking at that picture of her.

“You started the company in college?”

“How cliché is that?” She smiled as she settled back in her chair and lifted her wine glass. “I had a roommate who was having trouble finding a date for the homecoming dance. So I created this algorithm that we could use on the student information database on the administration computers—”

“You hacked the college’s computers?”

“Sure,” she said, a proud smile making it clear that she wasn’t ashamed of her actions. “Everyone does it. In fact, half my programming class had already done it by the time I got around to it.”

“Did it work? Did you get her a date?”

“Yeah. I actually went to their wedding last month.”

“Really?”

“No. She broke up with him a month later. She said he was too perfect.”

I laughed. “But you kept working on it?”

“Yeah. Other girls in the dorms wanted me to do it for them. And then some guy got wind of what I was doing and he offered to invest in the project and…as they say, the rest is history.”

“Must have been exciting for you to suddenly go from college student to CEO.”

“I had to really fight to keep control over it. They wanted to bring in their own people and run it their way because I didn’t have the experience they thought I needed. But I’m a quick learner and I finally bought my investors out and sent them packing.”

“Good for you.”

She looked thoughtful as she lifted her glass to her lips. “It’s mine. I want to make sure it stays the way it is instead of turning into one of these sites where people just use it for hook-ups or whatever. That’s not what this is meant to do. I like the stories we get from people who found the love of their life through our app.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but it was clear that she was passionate about her work. I could almost picture her sitting behind a computer, working her algorithms and making the computer do whatever it was she wanted it to do. I knew enough about computers to check my email and print out legal documents. Everything else I left to Ian. He was the computer expert in our family.

She set her glass down and looked at me. “What about you? I don’t even know what you do for a living.”

“I’m a lawyer.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Really? I would have thought…”

“What? That I was a laborer or something?”

“Maybe.”

I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest, trying to look annoyed. But I was actually amused by her ideas, her thoughts. I liked seeing myself through her eyes.

“Tell me what else you think of me.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know you well enough to have an opinion.”

“Sure you do. Tell me what you think.”

She looked around the room, once again taking in the atmosphere. Then she sipped from her glass once more before focusing on me.

“You grew up in this neighborhood. You boxed and that’s probably how you paid for college. You’re close to your parents, especially your mom. And your brothers. You party hard on Saturday, but you’re always at church on Sunday.”

I smiled, more amused than I thought I would be. She got it all wrong, but I liked the guy she thought I was. He was so much better than the man I really was.

“You have an interesting way of seeing the world.”

“Do I?” She studied my face for a long second. “Did I get any of it right?”

I lifted a shoulder, but I didn’t really shrug. I didn’t answer her at all.

The waiter came with our dinners, setting them before us with a flourish. He brought a fresh bottle of wine, too. Delaney dug into her corned beef, sighing as the flavors burst over her tongue.

“Fabulous.”

“Told you.”

We ate for a few minutes, and then she sat back and studied me over the lip of her wine glass.

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend burning up your phone, wondering where the hell you are?”

“Because I have this habit of screwing things up.”

“How do you do that?”

I pressed my fork to a piece of lamb and watched it shred itself into teeny pieces. I was thinking of Tara, this girl I was with in college. We went to law school together and planned this great life together, how we were going to get our degrees and go into practice together once we served out a little time in the district attorney’s office, or something. But then my mom died, and I fucked up.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “I’m just…I’m overly curious about people. My friends are always telling me that I’m too nosy.”

“No, it’s fine. I just…it’s not something I’m terribly proud of.” I set my fork down and poured us both more wine before downing a good bit of mine. Then I set it down and ran my finger along the top rim of the glass. “I screwed up. I had a sweet girl I dated all through college and into the first year of law school. We were planning a life, but then my mom…”

I swallowed the rest of my wine and poured a little more, taking my time setting the bottle back into the old cooling bucket. Then I focused on her.

“You were right about one thing. I was close to my mom. She was…she was a great person. She was one of those people who always wanted to help everyone, who always wanted to make things better. She was a social worker, and she was always bringing home all these kids. Four of my siblings are actually foster kids whom she brought home and my parents adopted.

“When she got sick—it was pancreatic cancer—we all came rushing home. Killian was just out of graduate school and Ian was at Boston College. Kevin was at Stanford and Kyle was here doing whatever it was Kyle did. We all came home to be with her, but she died less than a week after…”

I stopped trying not to think about her death, those last few days with her before her death, then the funeral that changed everything for our family. Even nearly six years later it was difficult to think about.

“After everything, my girl…it was just different. I was different. And things sort of imploded.”

The truth was, Tara was pregnant and ready to settle down, but I was screwed up. My mom’s death…everything that happened…I couldn’t be with her. We fought a lot and she ended up having an abortion and going home to Colorado. Last I heard, she was married to some doctor and they had little boy. I wanted to say I was happy for her, but there was still a lot of stuff there, too much for me to get there.

I looked up. Delaney was watching me, her eyes wide and full of sympathy. Again, this mantra played through my mind:
If she only knew. She wouldn’t want to know me.

“You are close to your brothers, then. I was right about two things.”

I looked up, again amused that that bit of information was what she grabbed.

“You were.”

“But you didn’t grow up in this neighborhood?”

I couldn’t help the smile that slipped over my face. “Do I seem like the kind of guy who grew up here?”

“Sort of.”

“How’s that?”

She blushed. “Well, you have to admit you’re a little rough around the edges.”

I laughed out loud at that. “If you met my father, you’d understand.”

She smiled, too, her eyes moving over me as she did. There was something about her smile that made me want to get lost in her eyes. I just watched her in the dim light, asking her questions just to see her lips move, just to hear the soft musical notes of her voice.

We finished off the second bottle of wine and left, walking leisurely down the street.

“Do you like music?”

I glanced at her. “I do. Why?”

She shrugged. “Most people wear earphones when they work out. You don’t.”

“I like to hear the sound of the bag. It’s almost soothing.”

“It is…when you do it. When I do it, it’s more of an irritant.”

I shook my head. “No. You just need a little more practice.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be good at it. I just started doing it to learn a few self-defense moves.”

“You did that.”

We arrived at her car then. She tugged her keys out of her bag, and I slipped them from her fingers, unlocking the door and opening it with a gentlemanly bow. She smiled, a light dancing in her eyes.

“Do you like fish?”

“Some. Depends on how it’s cooked.”

“Would you go to the fish market with me in the morning?”

I ran the back of my fingers over the edge of her jaw. “Are you asking me on a second date?”

She moved closer to me, not touching me, but moving close enough that I wouldn’t have to pull very hard to bring her into my arms. She looked up at me, that light in her eyes just growing.

“I think I am.”

“What time?”

“Six.”

I groaned. “Nope, sorry, that’s a deal breaker. I can’t get up that early on a Saturday.” I dropped my hand and started to walk around her. She grabbed my arm and somehow she ended up against my chest. I touched her face and we kissed, a nice brush of the lips that threatened to steal the breath from my lungs. She pressed her hand to my ribs, her palm warm against my side. She sighed as she moved closer to me, opening to me with the sweetest tease of her tongue.

It took everything I had not to turn her and press her back against the car, to slide my hands under her t-shirt and explore all the bare flesh that lay under the bottom edge of her bra. I wanted to taste her throat, to drop to my knees and…

I stepped back.

“I should go,” I said a little breathlessly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She nodded as she reached up and touched her lips. “I’ll see you.”

She dropped her keys, as I handed them back to her, then hit her head on the side of the car when she bent to pick them up. She smiled a little, a blush burning her cheeks as she slipped into the car.

I watched her go, laughter threatening to bubble up in my chest. I liked that I had the power to push her outside of her comfort zone. It felt good to see her a little discombobulated. She was such a strong, independent woman, but it was nice to know that just my kiss could knock her off balance so easily.

I really liked her. And that was a little scary.

Delaney

I stood in front of the mirror, tucking and untucking the blouse I was currently wearing. There was something just not right about it. I wanted to look good, but I wanted to look like I hadn’t tried that hard. Like this was just a typical day at the fish market. But it didn’t look like that.

I tugged it off and grabbed another just as the doorbell rang. He was early!

I was still buttoning the loose, white blouse as I rushed down the stairs. I hesitated just a second, finishing with the buttons before I pulled the door open. He was standing there, his hands in his front jeans pockets, a light blue oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up bringing out the blue of his eyes. He offered a small smile, his eyes moving slowly over me. I found myself wondering if he knew how good looking he was or what kind of image he created with that vague aloofness he seemed to radiate. I wondered if he knew how much that aloofness made him even more attractive.

“Morning,” he said, rolling back on his heels.

“Come in. I was just grabbing my keys.”

He followed me into the house, his footsteps reassuring behind me. I ducked into the kitchen, trying not to blush as the memory of our first kiss flashed through my mind. My keys and shopping list were on the counter. I grabbed them and turned to find him standing much closer behind me than I’d expected.

He touched my cheek, his hand warm and scented with the aftershave he must have put on before coming over. I moved closer to him, catching my finger in one of the spaces between the buttons on his shirt. He kissed me gently, his lips brushing mine ever so gently, then he pressed his forehead to mine.

“We should go.”

“Okay.”

He kissed me again, then he stepped back and captured my hand in his. We drove down to the fish market in his car, a black Dodge Charger, and joined all the other souls who’d ventured out of bed before dawn to see what there was to be had from the overnight work of the fishing boats. We looked at crabs and lobster, tuna and bluefish, a few halibut and blue fin shark. The fishermen took the time to explain to us what we should look for and how we should cook it. We finally settled on a couple of beautiful lobster and a tuna that I knew how to filet.

Sean was quiet most of the morning, holding my hand and listening intently when the fishermen talked. He was respectful, polite. A gentleman through and through, which was so impressive after the douche bags I’d found myself dating lately. I found myself watching him, watching the way he sort of stood back out of the way, keeping himself separate from everyone else. I wanted to draw him in, to tell him it was okay to be part of everything, but he was clearly okay with being alone.

We headed back to my place a little after noon, jumping right in to the recipe I found on my phone on the drive.

“I don’t cook,” Sean announced.

“Then you can be my sous chef. You can cut up the vegetables and stir the broth.”

“I’m at your service,” he said with a deep bow.

I grabbed an onion and handed it to him. “Chop.”

He pushed his sleeves up a little higher and grabbed a knife from the magnet strip on the backsplash. “Here I go.”

We worked side by side, not really talking, but making a point of bumping hips from time to time or reaching across each other for items that we could have gotten without the reach. I’d never shared the kitchen with anyone before. My mom didn’t cook. My dad was never around. And I usually had the food on the table before a man showed up. But Sean was different, and I was thrilled to share my favorite hobby with him.

When the food was done, we set the table out by the small garden at the back of my unit. Sean popped the cork on a bottle of wine, and we settled down to lobster rolls and tuna filets.

“Where did you learn to cook?”

I shrugged. “I was alone a lot when I was a kid. It started out as a way to entertain myself. I’d check out cookbooks at the library and make my mom buy the ingredients for the things that tempted my fancy. But then it became something I really liked doing.”

“You are very good at it.”

“You didn’t do too bad either. You know how to mince a mean onion.”

“My mom would be pleased. She tried to teach all of us how to cook, but I don’t think it really sank in with any of us except maybe Killian. He likes to cook.”

“Killian. That’s a very Irish name.”

“My mom…she was a traditional kind of lady.”

“She sounds like a great woman.”

“She was.” He lifted his glass and studied the wine for a long moment. “She worked all day long, but she was always home in time to make sure we’d all done our homework and our chores, and to come in and say goodnight. I remember I started complaining when I was about thirteen that I didn’t need my mom to kiss me goodnight, but I always missed it when she didn’t.”

He had this distance in his eyes as he talked about her.

“My mom was the opposite. I had to go into her room to put her to bed most nights.”

“Are you close, you and your mom?”

I shrugged. “It was always just the two of us. I mean…there was a succession of men. My mom isn’t one of those women who can be happy on her own. But she kept them outside of the house, so I guess I should be grateful for that.” I put down my fork, picking up a napkin to dab at the corner of my mouth. “I knew some girls when I was a kid who had a hard time with their mothers’ boyfriends.”

“I suppose it could be hard.”

“Well, I know a couple of the guys my mom was with weren’t kind to her. This thing with Claude…it was twice as bad for my mom. But she never talked about it, never brought it home. I just happen to see the bruises once in a while.”

“That must have been hard enough, being aware that it was happening, but not being able to talk to her about it.”

I thought about that for a second. “Yeah, it was.” I sat back a little and studied his face. “I don’t think I ever really thanked you for what you did with Claude.”

He looked bashfully down at his glass of wine as if I was embarrassing him.

“It was nothing. I was just in the right place at the right time.”

“I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

“Not really. I understand the whole jealous ex sort of thing.”

“You ever been there?”

“As the jealous ex or the one the jealous ex was stalking?”

He smiled when he said it, as if he thought it was pretty obvious which I was talking about, but he wanted to make sure he was right.

“Either.”

He lifted his glass, holding it between his hands, contemplating it as if it was the most interesting thing in the world at that moment.

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life I’m not proud of,” he said slowly, a cloud of emotion passing through those beautiful blue eyes, “but I’ve never stalked a woman who made it clear she didn’t want me around. And the only ex I’ve ever had was my college sweetheart, and she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. So, no, I’ve never been there.”

The mood suddenly shifted with his words. I almost regretted asking about his past relationships because it clearly made him think of something he wasn’t happy to remember. He stood and began to gather the dishes, snatching mine up so quickly that some of the broth the filets cooked in slopped over the edge and spilled on my blouse.

“Oh, hell!”

He immediately set the plates down and grabbed a napkin, dabbing it at my shirt.

“It’s too greasy,” I said, standing up. The stain was worse than it’d looked initially, spreading quickly over the front of the white material.

“Shit,” he mumbled, pressing the napkin to my belly.

“I’m going to have to take it off and set it to soak.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry. That was a damn clumsy thing to do.”

“It’s okay.” I touched his face to make him look up. “Really, Sean. It’s not a big deal.”

His eyes moved up to mine, and he looked me—almost bashfully—in the eye. I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed him.

“Maybe I’ll take a shower, too. I still smell like the fish market.”

“Okay,” he said, his lips brushing against mine again. Then he stepped back, moving out of my way. I walked into the house, conscious of his eyes on me, conscious of every step I took. My hands shook as I unbuttoned my blouse, slipping it from my shoulders as I reached the stairs.

“Are you coming?” I asked, glancing at him over my shoulder as I slid the blouse from my shoulders.

He only hesitated a second.

I walked quickly, my heart pounding as I listened to his steps on the stairs. I left the door to my bedroom open as well as the door to the bathroom. The shower was a narrow stall, not one of those fancy walkthrough things that some modern condos had these days. But it was big enough for the two of us. At least, I hoped so.

I undressed without looking back, without checking to see if he’d followed. Then I stepped into the shower, closing my eyes as the cool water ran over my head. I waited. The more time passed, the more I was convinced he’d decided not to follow and my big gesture had fallen flat. But then he was there, sliding up behind me, his hands a warm contrast to the cool water. He reached for the soap, wetting it under the spray and then working up a lather. He ran his hands over my back, the sweet smell of the soap filling the shower stall. I pressed my hands to the wall and leaned forward a little, loving the feel of his hands as they moved over my back, my hips, my ass. Then he lifted my hair off my neck and kissed me there before running his hands along my shoulders, rubbing away what little tension had been.

I leaned back into him, the heat of his body seeping into mine. I wanted to turn; I wanted to see him, but a part of me was afraid. I hadn’t been this intimate with a man in a long time. What if he didn’t like what he saw? What if I didn’t like what I saw? What if he wasn’t turned on by me? What if…I don’t know…? All these crazy thoughts were moving through my head, all these thoughts about him, about me, about things that shouldn’t matter but did. I was scared.

But he was clearly not worried about much of anything. His hands slipped around my waist, still covered in lather, running over my belly, my hips. Up along the outer edge of my breasts. It was as if he was purposely avoiding the places that he knew I wanted his touch, the places that were standing up and begging for his fingers, his palms, to touch and feel and…I just wanted him.

I slid my hands over his forearms, tugged his hands upward. He resisted me just a little, but then he cupped my breasts, holding as much of the rounded weight in his hands as he could. His palms pressed hard against my nipples, making them ache even more than they’d done before, his fingers pressing into my flesh as he gently squeezed.

God! It felt so good!

He kissed my neck again, his mouth moving over the tender skin, nibbling just a little. He sighed as he squeezed my breasts again, then his hand moved slowly downward, his palm sliding over my flat belly. His fingers brushed against my thigh, moving inward, touching me in places that had been screaming for attention since that first kiss. I spread my legs just slightly, a sigh slipping from between my lips as his fingers dug, looking for my clit.

Suddenly, all those thoughts that had stopped me from turning were gone. I needed to touch him, needed to feel his lips against mine, needed to feel the firm, warm flesh of his chest against mine. He was waiting, ready for me when I turned, our tongues dancing as I slid my hand over his shoulder, moving downward. I brushed a nail against his nipple, dragged a moan from between his lips, my fingers moving over his ribs. His hands were on my ass, tugging me closer to him, his erection throbbing as he pressed it against my lower belly.

We moved backward, slipping under the stream of water coming from the showerhead. It was like kissing in the deep end of the ocean, so many sensations rushing over me that my mind couldn’t separate them all. And then my back was against the cold tiles of the shower stall, his hands still moving over me as he moved his hips against mine. I wanted him to lift me up; I wanted to feel him inside of me so desperately that I almost couldn’t breathe. But then he was pulling away from me, stepping out of the narrow stall before I could stop him.

“Sean…”

He came back, a towel open and waiting for me to walk into it. He didn’t say a word as he wrapped me up and lifted me, carrying me into the bedroom. He dried me as if I was a small child, rubbing the towel over my limbs, my belly, his eyes hooded with desire as he moved around, snatching a bottle of lotion off the dresser. He rolled me onto my back and climbed onto the bed, rubbing the sweet smelling cream onto my shoulders. He moved slowly down my back, giving me a massage like nothing I’d ever had before.

I don’t know if I was more relaxed or more turned on. I so desperately wanted his touch, but he was careful not to give me the littlest satisfaction while, at the same time, rubbing muscles I didn’t even know I had. I fell into something of a coma, so relaxed that I wasn’t sure I could move when he asked me to turn over. But then he was rubbing my feet and his eyes were moving slowly over my nakedness and I was no longer embarrassed, no longer shy, but every nerve and every erotic muscle seemed to have come alive. He was so hot, sitting there on the edge of the bed with nothing but a towel over his body, his eyes darkened by need, his muscles popping and jumping, his hard body covered in a fine, red hair that I wanted desperately to run my fingers through to see if it was as silky as it looked.