No shocker it coincided with a certain redheaded Irish Wolfhound’s appearance in his house.
“Ye all right there, Carl?” Aisling asked, the girls also looking up at him now with nearly identically cocked heads and concern on their faces.
“Please safely dismantle that and then meet me inside,” he said. “I’d like to speak with you for a moment. Alone.”
“Oooooh!” Dania and Bebe crowed in unison.
“Miss A’s in trouble!” Dania added.
Bebe jammed her hands against her hips and looked quite indignant. “Don’t yell at Auntie A, Uncle Cawl! We want to make booms!”
“No one’s getting yelled at!” He took a deep breath and gentled his tone. “Sorry. No one’s in trouble, no one’s getting yelled at. And we can’t make booms here, honey. It’ll get us all in trouble if we do. I just need to have a conversation with Miss A, okay? Uncle Mateo will stay out here with you all while we go inside and talk.”
Uncle Mateo, who stood behind Aisling and the girls, looked all too unhappy at the news that no one was in trouble or getting yelled at. He stood there with his arms crossed and a scowl furrowing his brow in a way Carl knew likely mirrored his own.
“You need to chew her a new one,” Mateo said to him through their mate bond.
Carl cleared his throat and returned to the house, pausing just inside the rear sliding glass doors as the crisp AC smacked him in the face.
I am beginning to regret my career choices.
Aisling followed him inside, carrying a tote he assumed contained the ingredients for the bomb.
“If this is gonna be one of those ‘ye need to be responsible’ speeches, save yer breath,” she said as she set the tote on the kitchen counter. “Don’t forget I’m older than ye an’ have more experience in this area than ye do.”
“Aisling, we cannot teach toddlers how to make bombs!”
“Now houl yer whisht. They’re not all toddlers. Dania’s older. And Bebe’s beyond the toddler stage. And it’s not a bomb!” She held up her right hand, thumb and forefinger barely apart. “It was just a wee firecracker. Not even enough to dent a car! Ye make it sound like I was teachin’ ’em how to re-enact Guy Fawkes Day. And I think ye meant we shouldn’t, not that we can’t, because obviously I can, and was. For years, I got paid by the government to teach people how to do it. Safely, I might add. Doesn’t do for our own lads to blow their feckin’ fingers off now, does it?” She held up both hands and waggled all ten digits at him. “See? Nothin’ missin’.”
Yep. Headache.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think you’re grasping the nuances of this delicate situation. If we were living in Idaho at the pack compound, yes, you absolutely could do this. Even larger munitions. This, however, is a residential neighborhood where people will call the police if a dog is barking too long and too loudly, or if you start mowing the lawn before or after certain times. Even on the 4th of July, people will call the cops on people shooting off fireworks.”
She glared at him. “I thought Americans were supposed to be all gung-ho to shoot an’ blow things up. Especially in Florida. Back home, we use shite larger than this to blast the feckin’ hell out of rocks an’ stumps in fields.”
He pointed to the sliders, indicating the backyard. “Do you see a field full of rocks and stumps out there that need blasting? No. Why? Because we DON’T FUCKING HAVE ANY!”
Aisling didn’t cower, but she drew her head back a little. “Well, ye don’t have to be gettin’ all thick wi’ me, now. Quit yer gurning. Dewi told me I’m supposed to be teachin’ the wains, and that’s what I’m doin’! My FECKIN’ JOB!” she was screaming back at him by the end of her rant.
Now I understand why Dewi wanted to shoot and disembowel her.
Carl struggled to rein in his temper. He ticked off points on his fingers. “Numbers, letters, spelling, reading, writing, shapes, colors, basic science, how to tell time and tie their shoes, even geography—not creating IEDs out of common household ingredients!”
“Well, that’s chemistry an’ maths, innit? Science. STEM classes. Don’t ye know girls are sadly lacking in?—”
“AISLING!” He wondered if she was deliberately fucking with him now.
Part of him suspected exactly that.
Especially the way her gaze glittered in a calculating way like…
The breath exploded out of him. “You’re trying to piss me off. Why?”
Her guarded look returned, and she focused on the floor. Folding her arms over her chest, she took a step back. “Don’t know what yer on about,” she mumbled.
“Bullshit.” He closed the gap between them. “What in the actual fuck, Aisling? You’re trying to get me to go to Dewi and demand you be pulled from this assignment, aren’t you?”
She wouldn’t look up and meet his gaze, just slowly shook her head as she studied her feet.
