“Huddle,” DJ demanded, pulling me and Gabby close. “We don’t need anyone, right? We all look out for each other.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“Are you okay?” Gabby asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I just feel a bit stupid.”
“It’s him who’s stupid,” my boy snarked. “He’s a fucking idiot.”
I gazed at Gabby’s earnest face, and my eyes slid to DJ, taking in his angry expression.
Leaning toward my girl, I kissed the top of her head, then I reached a hand up to my son’s face and touched his jaw before drawling, “How many times do I have to goddamned tell you, DJ? Stop saying fuck.”
CHAPTER 7
DONOVAN
It was late morning by the time I got to Rock Springs Airport and picked up Callum and Maeve. I’d parked up and bundled them and their luggage into my truck before hitting the I-80 heading east.
“I can’t fucking believe this shit,” Callum groused. “We should be on a plane to Ireland right now.”
“Shut your mouth, Callum O’Shea,” Maeve scolded. “There’s a sweet little baby in Nebraska who’s lost her mother. If she’s yours, the only place we’re going is Toys R Us to stock up, then home to Hambleton to settle her in.”
I shook my head in disbelief at my new sister. “How the fuck are you so calm about all this?”
“It’s not the baby’s fault that my husband’s an eejit who obviously didn’t wrap up properly. What am I meant to do? Let her go into the foster system? I don’t think so. Am I happy about all of this? Of course not. Am I scared out of my wits? Well, yeah. But what else is there to be done?”
Glancing down, I saw Callum squeeze Maeve’s fingers, and my chest filled with warmth because my brother had that. He had a woman who brought him peace of mind and support at a time when others would’ve run for the hills, and it got me tothinking about Rosie because she was the same way. I just hoped I wouldn’t do something stupid to push her away.
The O’Shea family was notorious for big clanging fuckups.
Back in the day, my dad had screwed up with my mam so many times that I was surprised she didn’t drag him through the divorce courts. He was full of anger from his childhood, which he often took out on her, me, and Callum. My older brother got the physical brunt of it, whereas Ma and I got the psychological shit. I knew he was probably suffering from his own issues having grown up in a war zone, but his behavior was hard to forgive.
Callum’s fuckup almost destroyed his marriage, too. He’d learned from an early age never to open up and never admit fault, or else Da would take a belt to him. He grew up automatically keeping shit to himself and closing down on people until he met Maeve and had to learn to change his ways after he hurt her and almost ended up divorced for not being honest.
I never wanted to become a product of my environment, which was probably why I rebelled. If Da told me to go right, I’d go left.
Myathairnever wanted me to enlist. Dad had an irrational dislike of soldiers and the military, probably because of harrowing experiences back in Belfast, so of course, it was the first thing I did as soon as I was old enough. He wanted me to run the bar with Callum and settle down with a nice Catholic girl and have babies, and I did the opposite.
Da loved me and I loved him, but he’d never been proud of me. Still, I wasn’t particularly proud of him either, so go figure.
I didn’t often think about my da; honestly, I tried not to, but there was something about the last few days that had brought him to the forefront of my mind. Maybe it was because I knew Callum would have missed him desperately on his wedding day.Or maybe it was because Maeve was pregnant. Either way, I felt his ghost haunting me.
“I don’t understand how this could’ve happened,” Callum muttered. “The age of this little girl doesn’t add up. I’ve been thinking; I’m certain I was seeing Bethany around then.” He glanced down at Maeve. “She never told me she’d had a kid or that I was a father when she came to the bar on New Year’s Eve. If she did have my kid, wouldn’t she have said?”
“Could the mother have been somebody else?” I asked.
“You know I only ever saw one girl at a time,” he retorted. “No overlaps, not ever. I may have hooked up with somebody at the end of whatever it was we had, but the dates would be off.”
“Let’s just get there and talk to the social worker,” Maeve suggested. “We can speculate all we want, but all it will do is drive us loo-lah. We need to do a paternity test and take it from there.”
Callum bent his head and kissed the side of Maeve’s hair. “You okay, wife?”
She rested her cheek on his shoulder. “I’m nervous, but I’m sure once we get there and find some answers, I’ll settle down.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” he murmured, his hand going to her belly. “I’m such a fuckup.”
Her fingers rested on top of his. “Now hush, Callum O’Shea. This happened way before we were first married, and you didn’t know anything about it. However, if that little girlisyours, there’s no question of what we’re going to do. You know that, right?”
