Page 7 of Sins of Arrogance

“Mommy taught me.” Fitz grins at me.

And my heart warms.

The look of heated ap­proval Mick gives me is less joy­ous but no less im­pact­ful to my fool­ish heart.

My hus­band swoops our son up into the air. At six-one he can eas­ily stand in wa­ter that is only chest-deep for him, while it’s al­most up to my chin.

Fitz whoops and Mick laughs like he hardly ever does, the sound real and happy. My mobbed up hus­band smiles a lot be­cause he has the charm­ing Irish­man thing down pat, but it al­most never reaches his eyes.

And his af­fa­bil­ity act does not stretch to fre­quent laugh­ter ei­ther.

When we were first mar­ried, I thought all those smiles were gen­uine. Now, I know bet­ter. My hus­band is not the ge­nial Irish­man ev­ery­one be­lieves him to be. I’m not re­ally sure who he is, only that I wish he would let me in so I can find out.

“Micky!” A woman’s voice calls from the shore.

A voice I don’t rec­og­nize. I turn to look.

Stand­ing next to my fa­ther on the lawn is a woman, her wil­lowy frame en­cased in a well-tai­lored, de­signer suit-dress. Black hair cut in a stylish bob frames an al­most ethe­re­ally beau­ti­ful face.

“Who is that?” I ask the back of my al­ready mov­ing hus­band’s head.

“Dier­dre Kelly.”

Kelly, as in the other fam­ily that leads the North­side Dublin Syn­di­cate in Dublin along with Mick’s fam­ily, the Fitzger­alds? What the heck is she do­ing here?

“You never men­tioned her be­fore.” I would re­mem­ber.

My hus­band doesn’t bother to an­swer. He doesn’t stop to put on his slides when he steps onto the shore ei­ther. It takes me a few sec­onds longer to step out of the surf, but I still take a mo­ment to slip my feet into san­dals.

The white sand is too hot from the sum­mer sun to walk bare­foot. Reach­ing down, I scoop up Fitz’s shoes as well.

When they reach the grass, Mick lets a squirm­ing Fitz down to run to­ward his grand­fa­ther. Bro­gan Shaugh­nessy, Boss of the largest Irish mob in New York, is a more dot­ing grand­fa­ther than he ever was as a dad.

I reach the small group just in time to hear Dier­dre say, “Micky, I have to ad­mit that of all the places I ex­pected to find you, hav­ing a fam­ily swim with your sweet wee boy and in­no­cent young wife wasn’t one of them. How ter­ri­bly do­mes­tic of you.”

There’s so much to un­pack in that state­ment. Not least of which is how she makes in­no­cent sound syn­ony­mous with stupid. And her em­pha­sis on the word young makes it sound like Mick is twenty years older than me, not a mere eight.

That’s not even a decade. Al­though that eight-year gap was in­tim­i­dat­ing to an 18-year-old bride, it’s seven years on. Our dif­fer­ence in ages hardly reg­is­ters any­more. I’m a wife and a mother. Hardly in­no­cent.

And se­ri­ously, what is up with her call­ing him Micky?

Sud­denly the buzz of con­ver­sa­tion around me stops and I re­al­ize three sets of eyes are fixed on me ex­pec­tantly. Fitz is star­ing in fas­ci­na­tion at Dier­dre Kelly, but she, my hus­band and my fa­ther are all look­ing at me.

“Sorry. Did I miss some­thing?” I ask.

My fa­ther’s lips flat­ten with ir­ri­ta­tion. “Kara, this is Dier­dre Kelly. Dier­dre, this is my daugh­ter, Kara.”

Oh, in­tro­duc­tions were made while I was lost in my thoughts. There was a time not so long ago that it would have sent my stress sky­rock­et­ing to think I messed up.

But I’m work­ing on the per­fec­tion­ism that plagues me with the help of my se­cret on­line ther­a­pist. She’s not the only on­line se­cret I have. I’m also at­tend­ing uni­ver­sity through dis­tance learn­ing cour­ses.

My fa­ther would tell me I don’t need ei­ther a ther­a­pist or higher ed­u­ca­tion.

I don’t know how Mick would re­act. I’ve never asked him, but keep­ing him in the dark so he doesn’t tell my fa­ther feels like the safest course of ac­tion to me.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Kelly.” I reach my hand out to shake the Irish beauty’s.

She barely touches my fin­ger­tips be­fore pulling hers back, her carmine painted lips twisted in a moue of dis­ap­proval. “Wet.”