"Yes. I do. Which is why I can't understand why I'm being irrational," I said. "At some point, I'm going to end up with verbal diarrhea and telling you all sorts that will have you running back to Derbyshire."
She laughed softly. "I'll look forward to the controlled and brilliant Jackson Callaghan losing his cool."
A knock at the bedroom door caused her to sit up. "Jackson? Van? I realize that sex addiction is a recognized problem, but Dad wants to know if you're coming down at all this evening." It was Claire's voice, sounding less angsty than she had when she was outside with Killian.
"We'll be down in five," I said, groaning, my hands winding around Vanessa. "Tell everyone to be on their best behavior."
Claire laughed. "No chance. Seph already opened the tequila."
I fell backward on to the bed. "Fuck."
Vanessa laughed, grabbing my hand and pulling me up. "Come on. It'll be fun."
***
My family reverted from being civilized, well-respected professionals to being something like teenagers and university students who never had to wake up before ten and whose tolerance for alcohol was almost medically impossible. Payton and Seph, stomach lined with the masses of food Marie had catered, proceeded to sample four different types of tequila, while Max reintroduced himself to Dad's whiskey cabinet, Killian as an assistant taster. Vanessa, Claire, Amelie, and Marie, with a few of Marie's friends, started on the wine, with Marie having set up a wine tasting table, although no one was spitting any out. At one point I heard Marie mention how doable Killian was – her phrase, not mine – which resulted in a diatribe from Claire insisting that Killian would be a terminal virgin as no right-minded woman would ever go there. I shuddered and escaped outside with a good three fingers of dad's finest Scotch to peruse the sky and give Vanessa some space, as I knew I kept staring at her.
My dad had the same idea. When he and Marie first got together we'd not quite known what to make of her. Callum was too young to understand anything other than she was the kind and pretty lady who cuddled him like his mother had. For us, Max, Claire and myself, the house became filled with noise and laughter, both of which we'd forgotten as we'd lived under a shroud since the day my mother died.
Marie was vibrant and colorful, bossy and affectionate with my father and so, so full of life. She made friends easily, and those friends visited, bringing their children and the house became full as it never had before. We loved it. We could play, run around and get messy as kids should and Marie laughed and made sure we were safe. She'd been the second eldest of nine children, born into a New York Irish family and she liked us, more than liked us. I still wondered what she saw in my father at the point when she met him as without my mother he'd been a mess.
Dad loved Marie, probably more than he had loved any of us kids. He loved her partly because she loved us, and he really didn't know what to do with us until we became old enough to start to understand law, golf, and rugby. But when she had her friends around, even with his, he would take himself off outside for the odd twenty minutes to 'recalibrate' as he called it. Marie just laughed at him and accepted it for what it was.
"Jackson," he said as I sat next to him. "I see Max sniffed out the good stuff."
"I think Max is on a mission tonight," I said. My brother rarely drank alcohol. "He's preoccupied with something but I don't know what."
Dad nodded. "I think do."
"You mean, Marie has an idea and she's told you?"
"Yes, well. Same thing." And it was really. "I like your young lady very much. I think you do too, the amount you've been staring at her all evening."
"I tried not to. It's hard."
He nodded. "I don't think she minds. Claire tells me it seems serious. You need me to have that chat with you now about where babies come from?"
I laughed. It had been a standing joke since Max and I were in our early teens and Marie had sent him in for 'the talk', knowing full well we were up to speed, as much as any thirteen and fourteen-year-olds could be, on contraception and sex. Some of it had come from her, she had never been a prude, and some of it had come from magazines that Marie's sister's eldest son passed onto us. Max and I had sat through dad's somewhat gilded monologue on how to treat girls and not get them pregnant, enjoying his discomfort before rolling around in hysterics, telling him we already knew. He'd then grossed us out by full-on kissing Marie in front of us, reminding us that we had three younger siblings. "I think we're good."
"Is it serious? Do I need to go in the safe?" He looked at me curiously and I felt sixteen again when I had thought I might've gotten a girl pregnant, only this time I wasn't scared. My mother's engagement ring was kept in the safe. She'd had three rings from my father: her engagement ring, wedding ring, and eternity ring. He'd told me, Max and Callum, that we could have one each to give to the person we were going to marry. The fact he'd said person resulted in much teasing of Callum and us suggesting that he'd prefer a boy, which we now knew wasn't true. Callum had gone through more girls than both of us put together, partly because he was a man whore, partly because he'd learned Marie's charm and inherited every model-standard gene that ran in the family. He was also a veterinarian, which girls seemed to be magnetised by.
"Possibly," I said, feeling nervous just by saying the word. "But not yet, it's too soon."
"Son," Dad said. "Do you remember how long me and Marie were together before we got engaged?"
I had no idea. The concept of her being my dad's girlfriend had never been something I'd wanted to think too much about. "No. One day you were grumpy and sad because of Mum, you went on a case in New York and when you came home Marie was with you."
"How long was I gone for?"
I shrugged. "Four weeks?" We'd had an awful nanny at the time who used to let Callum cry constantly. It ended up being the three of us who looked after him.
"I was away for fourteen nights. Marie was the lead counsel for the opposition. I met her on my third day there and I proposed to her on my tenth."
"You knew her a week?" My dad was never impulsive. He was well planned and over thought everything.
He laughed. "I knew I was going to bring her home after three days."
"Did she know about us?"
