Seph was drying off Luke, Evie and his Max, telling off Max for trying to bite his twin sister. It was after Seph had twins that there’d been a spate of vasectomies.
“What’s the plan for the evening?” I glanced at him and then Eli, who was mid rinse over the bath, Nancy’s head hanging over with a lot of yelling.
Eli raised a brow. “Poker? We can play outside and keep an eye on the kids when they get in their tents.”
“A very sensible plan.” Seph nodded, watching Luke as he pretty much flew down the stairs yelling for Rose.
We all knew it wasn’t sensible.
But we did it anyway.
MEMORY THREE
MARIE
“We really should stop meeting like this.” Yet again the elevator doors opened again at the last minute and my English foe stepped through them, suited and booted in an unmistakably delicious way.
It hadn’t escaped me yesterday that Callaghan junior was two things: devilishly handsome and seriously fucked up. I’d done a little more digging for information from my father over dinner last night, finding out that his wife had overdosed while she’d been in bed and there had been a suspicion of suicide, although the death had finally been declared accidental. The children were wild and Grant’s dad was worried about them, considering staging his own intervention or at least one on his behalf, and Grant hadn’t been himself since he’d become a widower.
Which was understandable and sometimes I noticed how much we forgot that we weren’t robots, programmed just to work and be as successful as possible.
“How was your evening? Sleep any better?” We were clearly going to make small talk so I embraced it.
He nodded but didn’t look happy about it. “More than the night before. I don’t feel like something dragged up from the sewer as much today.”
“How are your kids?”
He shook his head and looked away from me. “Problematic. Max has been kicked out of school.”
“He’s the eldest, isn’t he? What did he do?” One of my brothers was also kicked out of school. Two schools actually. No one was surprised. He was now at university studying theology. Everyone was surprised by that.
“Punched a kid who was being mean to Jackson – one of his brothers.” Grant shook his head. “I’ll need to find somewhere else for him for September when the schools go back and it might have to be boarding school.”
“Really?” This really was none of my business. “Don’t you think he’d rather be with his siblings?”
Grant froze, his expression dark and angry. “It isn’t really anything to do with you, is it?”
I was used to dealing with cranky men. “It isn’t. But you’ve told me about it and you made me curious. I asked my father about you and he told me your dad was worried about your kids and you, so maybe you do need some help.” My temper simmered. I knew all about big families and how the dynamics worked, how hard they could be and how complicated.. It took a village to raise kids, which was how it worked back home in Ireland, and there was no way he could manage this on his own.
“Fuck.” He fussed with his tie. “I don’t need my dad meddling. He’ll have them all shipped off to boarding school.”
“You don’t want that, do you?”
The lift stopped on the twelfth floor, the doors opening onto a quiet floor.
“No. I went to boarding school. It was okay but - ” he shrugged. “The local primary school isn’t what I want for Maxand the private school he was at was the only one close enough to our house in Oxfordshire.”
“Why don’t you have them live in London and go to Oxfordshire at the weekend and for holidays. Then they see you and there are loads of schools to pick from. And childcare.” I thought about Callum, the youngest and how he was pretty much an orphan.
Grant shook his head. “They’ll distract me from working.”
“Then don’t work as much.”
“You’re not a parent. You don’t get to tell me how to bring up my kids.”
“I’m an older sister in a family of nine. I raised the youngest two.” Both of whom were doing well at college, about to also go to university.
He cast a frown my way and disappeared into Meeting Room Three. I sighed and headed into the coffee room, needing to stock up on caffeine before Polly and Colin arrived.
