“Please come in and take a seat,” Jo indicated the large kitchen table, “and I’ll get everyone a drink.”
Ciar swallowed hard. This meeting had already gone off the rails, but he sat as instructed while trying to get Gray to look at him.
She was having none of it. Fear that he’d come too late flooded him.
He accepted his glass of ice water. Josephine must have thought the tension radiating from the assembled bodies didn’t need any alcohol.
His dad patted his knee under the table, and damn if it didn’t almost bring tears to his eyes. This was the moment. He couldn’t take the coward’s way another time, or he would lose everything.
He would lose Gray, and he couldn’t allow that.
Gray’s mom settled between her scowling husband and son and fiddled with her own water, which he suspected was vodka.Amen, Josephine MacGregor.
As the silence ratcheted up in its intensity, Ciar slowly scooted his chair back and stood, gaining everyone’s attention, including Gray’s. Taking a deep breath, he asked, “Gray, might I speak to you privately?”
fifty-one
GRAY
Gray’s bodymight be stiffly sitting in a chair, but on the inside, she was a quivering, emotional mess. Ciar had finally come, and though she’d told herself he was too late, that he’d left her hurting too long, her heart pounded in relief at seeing him again.
She was aware that he stalked her movements when she went to Dublin for checkups, just like she knew that if she didn’t wish to see him, she could have switched to a doctor in Inverness. In fact, she had told her mother that she would ask her doctor to recommend someone for the last few weeks of her pregnancy.
But here he was, wanting to speak to her. Regardless of how upset she was with him, she and their son needed to hear whatever he had to say. For closure, if nothing else. Gray would also hear him out for Imogen’s sake. She loved Ciar’s daughter, and it destroyed her to hand the baby back to Tina and walk away.
She finally looked at Ciar, really looked at him standing before her family. He was nervous, though only she probably knew it since he was keeping his face as expressionless aspossible. His father kept nervously glancing up at his son. Ciaran knew too.
She was about to stand and take him somewhere private when her dad said, “You want to speak to Gray privately, do you, after running around on my daughter for months?”
Her mother tried to intervene, but he was having none of it. “Whatever you have to say at this late date, boy, can be said in front of her family.”
Gray found her voice at that. “Dad. Enough. I’ll speak to him.” She was about to rise, not as easily as it used to be, when Ciar stopped her.
“Stay where you are, Gray. Your father’s right. I’ve hurt you, and your family deserves to know why.”
“Ciar. No,” his father demanded before standing and placing a hand on his son’s shoulder.
Gray was taken aback. Something felt wrong. Whatever Ciar had been hiding for months surely wouldn’t make his father react that way.
Ciar patted his father’s hand. “Sit, Dad, please. It’s the only way.”
More worried than ever, Gray stood. “Ciar, no matter what this is,” she paused and gave a halfhearted wave between him and his father, “you don’t owe my family your privacy.”
“The hell he doesn’t,” her brother growled. “Whatever he has to say must be bad, and you’ll need your family if he hurts you again.”
Ciar nodded at Lochlann, then her mom and dad. “Sit, Dad, and you too, Gray. Please.”
Once they were settled, Ciar cleared his throat and took a sip of his water. Gray felt tears prick her eyes, and he hadn’t even started.
“This is difficult for me to speak on, so bear with me, please. I don’t deserve any more chances from you, Gray, and my fear isthat once I’ve finished, you’ll ask me to leave you alone for good, but if there is even a small chance that you can forgive me, I’m willing.”
He was only looking at her, speaking to her as if no one else was in the room. She could only nod, affirming that she would listen.
“I’m not quite sure where to begin. I’ve practiced,” he said, wiping his hands down his shirt and clearing his throat again, clearly uncomfortable.
Gray didn’t know at this point if she or Ciar was struggling more. She glanced at her mother, who shrugged and winced.
“I was eight when I went to live with Dad,” he began and then shook his head, cursing under his breath. “No, I won’t start there. I’ll begin with Imogen. She isn’t my daughter.”
