Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
It took ten minutes for the kids to realize that Inessa wasn’t focused on the movie and that Eoghan was following her around the apartment.
Of course, that meant they had to follow him too.
Eoghan fascinated them. Maybe it was because he made no real effort with them. In that way of ornery kids, and my brothers only produced ornery spawn, that intrigued them all the more.
Why hang around the people who actually wanted you there when you could irritate the one who didn’t?
Kat trundled after her next. Then, ever nosy, Third waddled along, tugging at Kat in a silent demand to be carried.
That kid was her mother’s daughter. Why walk when other people’s arms existed to do the work for her?
Aoife was the first adult to follow, sheer curiosity getting her to abandon the movie ten minutes from the end.
The sly smile on my wife’s face told me she knew exactly what was happening.
Inessa was hard to ignore—she didn’t care if she walked in front of the screen in her haste to find whatever she saw on her phone.
The first time, she ended up dragging out some books from under the TV and shouted, “A-ha!”
“What is it, Aunty Nessie?” Jake asked, peering around her shoulder.
Soft eyes found my youngest brother. “It’s a signed book I wanted.”
Cam, never one to be excluded when Jake was in on something, prodded her. “There’s a QR thingy, Auntie Nessie.”
“Oh! So there is.”
She scanned it, and off she went again.
Another signed book. Orient Express tickets from Istanbul to Venice. Emerald earrings the size of my thumbnails.
With each gift, my brothers—apart from Finn—all grew dramatically grimmer.
“That asshole’s showing us up!”
Camille snorted at Declan’s outrage. “How is he showing you up?”
“I bought Aela a cottage in fucking Poughkeepsie because Shay’s at Oakwood College and that’s not impressive now!”
Aidan scratched his jaw. “I got Savvie a set of Da’s journals I salvaged. You don’t even want to know what I had to do to make Ma let go of them.”
Camille clucked her tongue. “Aidan, that’s perfect for Savannah. You know she’ll want to write his biography…?”
“I know.” He grimaced when we all glowered at him. “I figured we’d work out later how to talk her down.”
“Jesus, Aidan!” Finn sighed.
“Maybe she could write it as a fictional book?” Camille offered, ever helpful.
I had a fucking saint as a wife.
My hand tightened around hers and I lifted her knuckles to my lips to kiss them.
“I got Aoife a new kitchen,” Finn demurred.
“Like you didn’t know what Eoghan was up to,” I mocked. “I saw you giving him eye signals.”
“I helped put the gifts where he told me to. That was my only input.”
“Yeah, right,” Aidan jeered.
“Aoife wanted a new kitchen, Finn.” Camille tsked. “So she’ll love your gift. What about you, Conor?”
“Star liked the early gift I made her—”
“Don’t ask questions.” Aidan took a deep sip of whiskey. “If he made it, then it’s bound to be fucking weird.”
“Hey!” Conor pouted. “I resent that. I single-handedly brought orgasms to orgasmless women according to her.”
Camille’s brows lifted. “What?!”
“Well, it wasn’t for women the world over,” he admitted. “Just her, but she seemed to like it. Oh, and I’m a few months away from having enough details on Justice Brackenreid to blackmail him.”
Conor and his hobby of bending the Supreme Court to his—read Star’s—will.
“I’m sure that’ll make her very happy.”
“Oh, definitely,” Conor chirped. “What does she have now?”
Camille smiled as Inessa curved her arms around Eoghan’s neck and hauled him close. “Is that the lodge, Finn?”
“Yeah, she has a key in her hand.”
“Lodge?” I queried.
“A compromise. Inessa hates camping,” she joked.
“Ah.”
“You once told me this place would be your gilded cage,” Eoghan rasped, loud enough for most of the people in the room to hear. “But you’ll never be caged. Not as long as I’m alive.”
I heaved a sigh when he kissed her and Camille awwwwed.
The rest of my brothers and I shared another stern look that promised we’d be beating the fuck out of Eoghan as soon as the holidays were over.
Little shit never stopped over-fucking-achieving.
On the cusp of midnight, Inessa had a new Aston Martin and popped open a ring box with an engagement ring that, by the sounds of it, Camille had helped him pick.
Aidan, in self-defense, put Die Hard on, and I let Camille go hang out with the girls, who were all cooing over Inessa’s gifts.
“Fucker’s making us look bad,” Declan repeated.
Finn shook his head. “Our gifts are good enough.”
“There’s good enough and then there’s this!”
“I thought you got Aela that painting she liked on top of the cottage?”
He frowned at me. “I did. But that’s not this! Talk about a fucking love letter to her.”
“More like treasure map,” Conor teased. “Declan, they’ll love what we got them.”
“You never said what your gift is,” Aidan prodded.
“I wasn’t going to say it in front of her, dipshit,” I dismissed.
“Well, she’s over there cooing with—” Aidan broke off and glared at Eoghan. “Oi, fucker. What was this about?”
Eoghan slunk into the only seat he’d use on this damn sofa which, of course, was across the damn room from us so we all had to move over there.
He shrugged. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Declan punched his shoulder. “You asshole.”
A low-level smirk danced on Eoghan’s face. “I can’t help it if I’m the romantic one of us.”
“The romantic one?!” Conor squawked. “Fuck you!”
Eoghan eyed Conor. “Don’t make out as if your gift to Star won’t be perfect for her.” His gimlet stare skewered each of us as he growled, “You picked your brides and they picked you. Inessa and I didn’t get that. I was rectifying the past.”
He didn’t have that exactly right. My beginnings with Camille had been fraught with their own stressors—not that they knew that. Not really.
“So you’re not going to show us up next year?” Finn teased, because he seemed the least worried of all of us.
Eoghan shrugged, but I answered, “He set himself up for a fall. He has to beat this.”
When Eoghan grimaced, we cackled.
“Fuck you.”
“No, thanks,” I joked, settling back in my seat.
But for all the shit I gave him, I knew he was right—Inessa hadn’t had a choice, neither had he. With how much time I spent around Inessa and Victoria, I knew they deserved the world.
And if Maxim Lyanov hadn’t figured that out yet, Eoghan and I had ways of convincing a man to agree with us.
Three hours later, Camille and I made it to our parking garage.
“Okay, game plan. You grab Roman’s stuff and overnight bags and I’ll get the gifts?”
After the fam had decided we’d converge on Finn and Aoife’s place, as they were hosting tomorrow, for an impromptu sleepover, all the parents had returned to their respective homes to pick up the gifts.
“Well, we could do that.”
Once I’d pulled into my spot, I arched a brow. “We’re heading back to Finn and Aoife’s…”
“Yes. After.”
“You have plans for me, huh?”
“Definitely. Concrete ones.” She leaned down to stick her shoes on then whined, “Brennnnnan.”
I hid a smirk. “You chose to wear them.”
“I wore these for you so you have to carry me upstairs.”
“Like a piggyback?”
Dumping the heels back in the footwell, she crowed, “That would mean I’d be riding you and from the back. Sounds like no fun.”
“So, what’s the new game plan?”
“That we take advantage of an empty apartment while Aoife and Finn are looking after our baby?”
“Sounds like you’re smarter than me.”
Before I shut off the engine, she hit the button that moved my seat back. When she scuttled over onto my lap, I sighed as I set my hands on her hips.
I smoothed one hand over the length of her spine. “Thought your feet ached.”
“You can rub them later.”
“Last time we did this, you got cramps.”
She looped her arms around my neck. “Brennan O’Donnelly! Are you trying to talk me out of rocking your world in our car?”
With a hum, I urged her closer. “Thought you wanted a piggyback ride?”
“It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind or to want two things at once. Even if they’re physiologically impossible.”
I had to laugh. “How many glasses of Champagne did you have?”
“Two.”
“Liar.”
“I did! I had designs on you, so I knew to limit the booze. You wouldn’t fuck me the last time I got drunk. I asked nicely and everything.”
“Don’t pout. I like you fully aware of what I’m doing to you.”
That earned me a shiver. “Don’t remind me because if you say no to me tonight, I’ll weep.”
I pressed the lever on the driver’s seat so it angled the backrest to a more comfortable position.
She squirreled closer then released a broken sigh when she wiggled and situated herself over the bulge in my pants. “You always tease me.”
“Not always.”
“Always.” Her hips rolled. “Pretending like you’re not hard for me—”
“I’m always hard for you. Whenever you come into a room, I have a semi.”
“Is that true?” she asked gleefully.
“You can check if you want. Just not tomorrow.”
Her laughter cascaded over me like bubbles from the Champagne she loved, but she fidgeted some more until her skirt was higher up her thighs.
“I’m sure you wear stuff like this to torment me.”
“Of course. I love feeding your fantasies.”
“You do that by breathing.”
Despite the compliment, she tipped her head to the side. “You seem pensive tonight.”
“Not at all.” I smoothed my fingers over her upper thighs.
“You weren’t like the others. Worried about your gift.”
I shrugged then smirked when she popped out her bottom lip. “There are a handful of hours before Christmas morning.”
“Maybe I want my gift now,” she drawled, reaching between us and stroking my cock through my pants.
“Your gift is more than my dick.”
“What did you get me?”
“Security.”
“More coins?”
I toyed with one of her thigh-highs, enjoying her tremble as I swept higher, over her inner thigh. “Nope.”
Whenever she graced me with a look this long, I felt her eyes bore into my soul. It laid me out before her. Blood and sinew and bones and a heart that beat for her alone.