He held my gaze for another moment, and then nodded. “Well. Alright, then.”
“But sweetheart,” Nancy said, looking at Aidan. “Why wouldanyonewant to kill you, let alone your Uncle Jim? Orus, for goodness’ sake? Jim was at ourwedding. He never even met Aidan.” She looked at me, asking the same question silently with her eyes. “He’s John’sbrother. No, I can’t believe it, I just can’t. There must be some kind of misunderstanding.”
“We’re trying to figure it all out, ma’am,” I said. “And we will. But in the meantime, the important thing is that you two and Aidan are kept safe. So I’m going to ask you both to stay here at Hillview, even though I know you don’t like it. I’m going to ask you to trust me on this, because Tara Donovan told you the truth before. She’s not like her father or her sister. And sheistrying to make up for what her Family has done in the past.” As far as I could tell, anyway. Right then, I just wanted to make sure John and Nancy complied, so I said what I thought they needed to hear.
“Well,” John said, slapping his hands on his knees and standing up, “since that lying sack of shit Jim is alive—”
“John!” Nancy squealed. “Language.”
“—I’d say I owe Ms. Donovan an apology for the way I acted before.”
* * *
While Aidanand John went to find Tara, I showed Nancy to her room. They would be sleeping on a third-floor room which, I was uncomfortable to discover, was immediately under mine and Aidan’s.
“What a nice room,” Nancy said automatically, without even looking around. “But we have no clothes, no pajamas, no underthings—and John needs hismedication—”
“We’ll find all that for you, I promise,” I told her. “If you give me a list, I’ll make sure we get everything you need. Or if there’s anything you absolutely need from home, we can get that for you, too.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m so thankful that Aidan has someone like you to look after him,” she said, her voice wavering. “Thank you, Teo.”
I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”
“It’snotnothing.” She laid a hand on my arm. “It’s everything. And I won’t forget your kindness to John and me, either. You’re a good man, Teo.”
“I’m not,” I said, my voice rough. “I’m not a good man. Not like Aidan.”
She patted my arm and then really did take a look around the room. “I sometimes think Aidan could stand to be a littlelessgood,” she said. “Priests have to listen to such horrible things anyway, I think they should probably know a little about the world before they dive in. Otherwise they run the risk of becoming jaded.”
“There are plenty of bad priests out there,” I said, thinking of Father Benedict O’Sullivan.
“There certainly are.” She smiled at me, blinking her tears away. “I do think Aidan will make a decent one, though, don’t you?”
I cleared my throat. “I’ll leave you to freshen up, ma’am, but I’ll wait in that kitchen area where the elevator comes out. This house can be confusing.”
She studied me closely, a strange unreadable smile on her lips. “Alright, honey,” she said. “That’s very kind of you.”
* * *
Dinner that nightwas less strained than I originally expected, but more awkward—for me, anyway. Tara took the head of the table, with Róisín at the foot, Aidan and I sat opposite his parents. I somehow felt, even more when we’d had lunch with them the other day, that Aidan was introducing me to his family not as a bodyguard or friend but as…something more.
I felt stiff and strange in the chair, even as everyone else smiled and chatted. Maybe it was being the only Italian at a table full of Irish, I thought. Usually Aidan was the one outnumbered, and I wondered if he felt like this when he was at the kitchen table in the D’Amatos’ townhouse, surrounded by loud men with slicked hair and expensive suits. The Irish seemed more laid-back to me—although more than one night with Mr. D and his poker games, I’d ended up stripped down to my undershirt.
The group around the table were loud in their own way, but with much less bravado and jostling for hierarchy. Maybe it was because most of the people at this table were what I thought of as civilians. Or maybe it was just the Irish way to be gregarious, to forgive and forget, to seek commonalities rather than emphasize differences.
Whatever it was, I liked it.
Right up until John asked me how long I’d been a bodyguard. Tara, Aidan and Róisín went quiet, suddenly very interested in their food. “I guess a while now,” I said. “I was in training for a bit.”
“How does one get into the bodyguard business?” Nancy asked, so intrigued that she had stopped eating and was leaning her chin in her hand, her elbow propped on the table. “Were you in security before that? Or law enforcement?”
“My father was in the same business,” I said, which was true. “With a different…company. I work with the same company as my cousin.”
“So it’s something of a family trade?” John suggested.
Aidan choked on his drink, and I had to whack him on the back a few times. “You could say that,” I told John, while Aidan gasped for air. “I guess it seemed like the thing to do. What most of the men in my family end up doing.”
“It’s very dangerous work, though,” Nancy commented.
