Chapter 19
Nora
I dress in a mauve cocktail dress and turn to look at myself in the mirror.
I’m a little surprised to find that the woman staring back at me looks like someone who belongs on the arm of Cillian O’Rourke.
“Ready?” My husband appears in the doorway. Dark suit, no tie. He’s so handsome that looking at him makes me feel a little dizzy, which is unfair given that I need all available brain cells for what’s coming.
“No,” I reply honestly. “But let’s go anyway.”
His mouth curves. “That’s my brave wife.”
The estate looks the same—iron gates, the long gravel drive, the house at the end of it that isn’t a house at all. The O’Rourke estate is the same, but I’m different from the last time I was here.
My hands are twisted in my lap. Cillian reaches across and takes one without looking away from the road.
“We can turn around.”
“We can’t.”
“We absolutely can. My family, my rules.”
“Your family is going to be the family of any children we may someday have.” I watch a grin spread over his face. “I want to do this right.”
He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my knuckles. “You’re already doing it right.”
I watch the gates as they open. “What if Kathleen—”
“I’ve spoken to her and made our position clear.” He glances at me. “Whatever happens in there, I’m with you. You and I are a team. You walk out the door, I walk out the door. Understood?”
I nod, feeling my courage replenish.
They’re all seated in the formal living room when we arrive. Declan with his arms crossed, Ronan holing a glass of what might be whiskey, Lorcan sprawled in an armchair. And Kathleen, her spine ruler-straight, her face closed.
The conversation dies when we enter the room.
Cillian speaks first.
“Before we sit down,” he says, and the room orients around his voice the way it always does—not because he raises it, but because it carries weight, “I have something to say.”
Declan’s jaw tightens. He knows what’s coming.
Cillian looks at each of them in turn. “Nora is my wife. That doesn’t change. Not for business, not for family politics, not for any other reason. She is permanent.”
Kathleen’s hands fold in her lap.
“What that means,” he continues, “is that she gets treated with respect in this family. Not tolerance. Not cold politeness. Actual respect.” His eyes settle on his mother.
“That means no more cruelty. No more setting her up to fail. No more throwing catty women in front of her at charity luncheons.”
Kathleen doesn’t flinch. She’s iron, I’ll give her that.
“If anyone in this room can’t or won’t do that, they’re making a choice about whether they want to be part of my life. My life includes Nora. It always will.” He looks at his brothers, one by one. “Are we clear?”
Lorcan raises his hand. “I’ve always been team Nora.” He flashes me an exaggerated wink and gives me two thumbs up.
“Lorcan,” Declan says flatly.
“What? I’m agreeing.”
Lorcan’s antics ease the tension slightly. Nobody laughs, but Ronan presses his lips together in a way that suggests he wants to.
Kathleen stands.
I fight the urge to step backward.
She looks at me—really looks at me. Not the way she did at that first dinner, when her gaze slid over me like I was repulsive to her. This time, she takes me in. The dress, the wedding ring, my hands, my face.
“Nora.” Her voice is measured. “I owe you an apology.”
The room goes still.
“I was deliberately unkind. I arranged situations to make you feel inadequate, and I said things designed to hurt you.” A pause. Her jaw moves like the words cost her something. “That was wrong of me.”
I wait. Cillian is motionless beside me.
“I was afraid,” she adds, quieter. “Of losing my son. I saw how much he cared for you. I saw it in his eyes. I told myself I was protecting him, but I was protecting myself.” She looks at Cillian, then back at me. “It was not your fault, and it was not fair to you.”
It’s not the kind of apology that oozes mushy gushy warmth or comes wrapped in a hug. But it’s real—I can hear the effort it takes, and Kathleen O’Rourke doesn’t strike me as a woman who finds it easy to admit when she’s wrong.
“Thank you,” I say. “I accept your apology.”
She nods once. Her shoulders drop a fraction—not softening, but releasing something she’d been holding too long.
Cillian’s arm wraps around me.
Declan clears his throat. He’s looking at the floor, which seems to cost him too. “I owe you an apology as well.”
I turn to him. The enforcer, the stone wall, the brother who called me ‘the Murphy girl’ like I was a problem to be managed.
“I was dismissive,” he says. “I was focused on the business and I didn’t—” He stops, starts again. “You make my brother a better man. I can see that. I should have seen it sooner.”
He extends his hand.
I take it. His grip is firm and brief, but it, too, is genuine.
“Welcome to the family,” he says. “Officially.”
Ronan steps forward with an ease that’s natural to him. “I don’t think I was actively cruel, I hope not, but I wasn’t as welcoming as I should’ve been either.” He tips his chin toward Cillian. “Anyone who can handle him long-term deserves more credit than I gave you.”
“I’m standing right here,” Cillian says.
“I know.” Ronan smiles at me, and it reaches his eyes. “Welcome to the family, Nora.”
Then Lorcan is there, and unlike his brothers, he doesn’t bother with formality. He wraps both arms around me in a hug that’s all energy and no restraint, and I’m so startled I laugh.
“I told you she was a keeper,” he says, addressing the room over my head. “Nobody listened.”
“Nobody listened because you say that about everyone,” Declan says.
“No. I only say it about people when I truly mean it.”
Cillian peels his brother off me with one hand on Lorcan’s collar. “All right. That’s enough. Stop touching my wife.”
“You’re mad that your wife and I click so well.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re definitely a little mad.”
“I’m going to break your nose.”
“You’ve already done that. This time I’ll see it coming and be sure to duck.”
And there it is—the specific rhythm of brothers who’ve been driving each other insane their entire lives, who fight and needle and show up anyway. I watch Cillian’s face during it, the way his mouth curves slightly in a smile.
I want our future children to have this. This noise and history and family and love.
Dinner is light and easy.
Not effortless. Kathleen is formal in a way that may never entirely relax, and Declan doesn’t exactly fill silences with small talk.
But when I mention I’ve signed up to take online college classes, Ronan asks me about my coursework, and Lorcan wants to debate the ending of a book I recommended at that first disastrous dinner.
Cillian’s hand finds mine under the table every now and then. His way of asking if I’m okay.
I squeeze back. I’m okay.
Kathleen asks, midway through the main course, “Have you decided what you’d like to major in?”
The question is careful. Not warm, but not unkind either.
“Social work,” I say. “I want to work with abused children.”
A pause. Then Kathleen says, “That’s meaningful work.”
Not a compliment, exactly. But not an insult either.
“It’s what I know,” I admit.
She holds my gaze for a moment. I think she understands what I mean—that I don’t mean textbook knowledge—and something in her reconsiders. She nods and returns to her plate.
Midway through dessert, Lorcan stands.
The table goes quiet.
“A toast,” he says, and picks up his glass. “To my big brother and his gorgeous wife. May they live happily ever after.”
Cillian’s eyes find mine and stay there. He lifts his glass immediately. Ronan follows. Declan, after a beat, does too.
Kathleen is last. She raises her glass, and I watch her look at her son—really look at him—and whatever she sees there makes her rigid posture loosen.
“Congratulations, brother,” Ronan says.
“Congratulations,” the others echo.
As I lift my glass and drink, Cillian’s eyes never leave mine.
After dinner, when Kathleen asks me to retire to the sitting room with her so the men can talk business, the same way she did the first time I was here, I’m a little reluctant to follow her, but I do.
The two of us again sit in the pale room with the antique furniture. We are both very aware of what went down in this room last time.
Kathleen speaks first. She smooths her skirt, then informs me, “Cillian is proud of you.”
That admission is something I wasn’t expecting. “He told you that?”
“He tells me very little, but what he does say is usually significant.” A pause. “He told me you were both the strongest and the kindest woman he’d ever met. At the time I thought he was being sentimental.”
“And now?”
She considers my question. “Now I think he was being accurate.”
I study her—this woman who tried to dismantle me at a charity luncheon, who called me a stray, who arranged for Aoife Sullivan to sit beside me in an attempt to show me how much I was lacking.
And underneath all of it, I see a woman who raised four sons alone after a violent man died and left her with an empire and nothing soft to hold onto.
I don’t forgive everything. Not yet. But I understand it.
“I’d like for us to try,” I say.
Kathleen quirks a brow at me. “Try what?”
“This. Repairing our relationship.”
A long pause. Then, she responds quietly, “Yes. I suppose I’d like that too.”
It’s not a stirring declaration of familial devotion.
But it’s a beginning.