Imogen looked up at me with huge eyes and gurgled happily, totally unbothered by her old man’s less-than-stellar shit-cleaning skills. Somehow, I managed to get the job done. After I washed Imogen’s butt with a water wipe and smothered her in lotion, Rosie talked me through clean diaper placement and showed me how tightly to fasten the tabs so it was comfortable but still secure.
“Right, so now just bundle the dirty diaper up and put it into a scented bag ready for the trash, and you’re done,” Ro told me. “You did great for your first time?—”
As she said the words, Imogen kicked out happily and caught the dirty diaper that I’d just picked up with her foot.
It flew out of my hands, landed smack bang in the middle of my shirt, and stuck to it like glue with a sickening squelching sound.
I looked down and gagged again at the god-awful stench rising up from the shit-covered polyethylene top sheet that hung from my favorite Led Zeppelin tee.
My tongue came out, and my eyes rolled into the back of my head as I made a choking sound.
Atlas threw back his head and roared.
“Oops,” Rosie said, rolling her lips together to stop herself from laughing out loud.
Slowly, I closed my eyes.
Fuck my life.
—————
Luckily,I kept some clothes at Ma’s house. I often stayed over, especially after Da passed away, because she was alone a lot. Callum had been busy with his first wedding to Maeve and then the drama before their second wedding. Tadhg was traveling around the race car circuit, and Aislynn was in Denver doing her internship, so that just left me.
Maybe it wasn’t cool to admit, but I liked hanging out with my mam. She cracked me up with her Irish one-liners, was an amazing cook, did my laundry, and had my back (mostly). She’d certainly set the bar high when it came to meeting women, so it was no wonder I’d waited years for a woman like Rosie.
Kai had brought his Bluetooth speaker, and it was powerful enough to fill Ma’s garden with music. The kids had been great, playing something for everyone. Sunny and Gabby had even gone around with a pen and paper and got requests from everybody, so they could make a playlist.
Right then, I was holding Imogen on my hip while watching Abe spin Iris around to “Runaway Baby” by Bruno Mars, while the women danced around them.
Kai and DJ were way too cool to dance, so they leaned against my ma’s apple tree watching Sunny, Kady, and Gabby twist their asses with the ol’ ladies and Rosie.
My woman could dance, though it wasn’t exactly a shock. Every move contained a natural sensuality. Every step, look, laugh, and smile made me want her so fucking bad that sometimes I had to hold myself back from grabbing her by the throat and pressing her against a wall just so I could kiss her face off.
I watched Ro take Ma’s hand and try to duck under her arm. Somehow, they fucked up the movement and almost ended up on their asses—which they found completely hilarious. They bent over, howling with laughter, obviously tipsy from the Pornstar Martinis that Kennedy and Cara had been making all night.
I smiled at seeing Mam having fun. She loved dancing. She and Da used to boogie around the bar all the time when we were kids. Da was into rock ‘n’ roll, but Ma loved the Irish singers and bands along with old Motown and seventies disco music, which was kind of cool because it gave us boys a taste of everything.
My kid kept giggling and twisting her little ass along with the music. She was having a whale of a time and had charmed everybody senseless.
“Rosie looks happy,” a voice said from beside me.
I whirled around to see Atlas standing there with his arm flung over Sophie’s shoulders. “Jesus. Why are you creeping up on me like that?”
“We weren’t creepin’, Donovan,” he argued. “The missus wants a hold of Imogen.”
“He’s lying,” Sophie admitted, pulling away from her ol’ man and smiling at Immie. “We were totally creeping.”
My hand smoothed over Imogen’s hair before carefully transferring her into Soph’s arms and watching them walktoward the dancers. “You’re stealthy considering you’re such a big fucker.”
“Not the first time I’ve been told that.” Atlas jerked his chin toward Rosie and Mam. “They seem to get on well.”
“Yeah.” I turned back to watch them. “Ma loves Rosie, but then I could do a lot worse, and she knows it.”
Atlas’s eyes slid to me. “Reno approached me yesterday; asked if he could take my sister out. He’s had a thing for her for years. In fact, a few of the brothers have, but I always shut ‘em down; they didn’t seem right for her somehow.”
My eyes narrowed on him. “True that, seeing asI’mthe man she’s right for.”
He turned his all-seeing stare on me. “The thing with Rosie is that she needs a man who can let her shine. She needs a man who can see past the body and the face, all the way down to her beautiful soul and appreciate how lucky he is. A lotta the brothers appreciated the outside but never delved deeper, but Reno—” he paused, studying my face. “I could see Reno being good for her. They’ve been friends for a long time.”
