Book 23 Blackout After Dark #6
Finn pulls his phone from his back pocket.
“Let’s take a picture and tell everyone we’re engaged.
” He sits next to her while she holds up her new necklace, the two of them smiling like crazy loons.
When he shows the pictures to her, she agrees that any of them would be perfect to share the news with their loved ones.
He cues up a text to the McCarthy family group chat. Sharing the huge news that the amazing, beautiful Ms. Chloe Dennis has agreed to marry Finn McCarthy!
Riley returns home to find Nikki excited about Finn and Chloe’s engagement. Her phone rings with a call from her half-sister. To his knowledge, she hasn’t had any contact with her father or any member of his family in the time they’ve been together. “Are you going to take it?”
“I guess…” She presses the green button.
“Hi, Kendall. What’s up?” Her brows furrow and her shoulders hunch ever so slightly as she listens to what her sister is telling her.
“When?” After another pause, she adds, “I’m sorry for your loss.
” More listening. “No, it’s not my loss, too, Kendall.
I don’t think so. Yes, I’ll tell Jordan. Thank you for calling.”
Nikki ends the call, puts down the phone and glances at him. “So I guess my father died yesterday.”
“What? Oh, my God. Nik…” When he would’ve hugged her, she holds up her hand to stop him.
“You don’t have to comfort me, Riley. He’s nothing to me but a bad memory of a childhood spent in chaos.”
“He was your father, Nik. It’s okay if you feel something after hearing he’s died.”
“I feel nothing for him.”
She doesn’t want him to think her heartless, which he says could never happen.
She wants to go to the party but needs to stop by Mason’s on the way there to tell her sister the news.
Worried about Nikki’s nonreaction to the news of her father’s passing, Riley texts his dad for advice on how to handle it.
Let her do this her way, son. Her relationship with him was very different from ours.
You can’t compare the two. She blames him for what happened to her and Jordan as kids.
He put them through hell. She’s not going to grieve for him the way you would for me.
Follow her lead on this and don’t expect her to feel things she simply doesn’t.
Good advice as always, Doc. Thanks.
Free of charge, too!
HAHA
When they arrive at Mason and Jordan’s, they see Mason’s SUV parked in the driveway along with Jordan’s BMW and their friend Gigi’s white Mercedes coupe. Both women had their cars shipped to the island when they realized they were going to be there a while to film the new season of their show.
“The gang’s all here,” Riley says.
Inside, Jordan and Gigi are arguing over who is hotter, Justin Timberlake or Ryan Gosling. When Nikki picks JT, Gigi accuses them of using their twin ESP to gang up on her. “What’s up, Nik?” Jordan asks. “You’re doing that frowny thing you do when something’s gone sideways.”
Nikki crosses the room to sit on the coffee table so she’s in front of Jordan.
Mason glances at Riley as if to ask, What’s this about?
“So, Kendall called me today.”
“Huh? How come?”
“She told me Dad died yesterday.”
Jordan’s face goes flat with shock. “What? What happened?”
“They think he had a heart attack while driving.”
Jordan takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. “I don’t even know what to say to this.”
“I didn’t either.”
Gigi offers to get a plane to take them out to California for services. When both Nikki and Jordan say no, Gigi says that unless they want to deal with questions about the estrangement, at least Jordan has to make an appearance.
After the others leave, Mason says, “What if you and Nik were to release a statement that says something like, ‘Although we were estranged from our father for many years, we send our condolences on his untimely passing to his family and friends.’ Something like that.”
After getting the green light from Nikki, Jordan calls Gigi and asks her to release the statement, saving them from attending the services.
Jared James meets his younger brother, Cooper, at the three o’clock ferry.
When Coop steps off the ferry, he’s surrounded by beautiful, young women who are disappointed to part company with him.
His brother attracts women as easily as he breathes—and he has from the time he was about fourteen.
Now twenty-four, and a recent graduate from New York University with an MBA, his little brother is all grown up.
Cooper convinces Jared to let him drive the Porsche home. They talk about Quinn’s upcoming wedding, and Cooper shares a business idea he has around the wedding destination Gansett has become.
Jared shares the struggles he and Lizzie have endured to have a baby and how difficult it’s been for them.
Jared and Lizzie are happy to have Cooper there for comic relief.
At home, Lizzie greets Cooper with a warm hug and then turns her potent smile on Jared.
She asks for a minute alone with her husband.
Jared walks outside with Lizzie, who seems nervous about something. “What’s up, babe?”
“So, um, the woman in town who had the baby?”
“What about her?”
“I, ah, hear me out on this… I, um, I brought her and the baby home with me.”
“What? Lizzie! What the hell?”
Lizzie tells him Jessie has been living at the Beachcomber and has nothing and no one to help her with the baby. Jared is rarely ever angry with his wife, but this… “I don’t think it’s a good idea. What happens when you get attached to the baby and she takes off to rejoin her life?”
“I’m not going to get attached.”
He gives her a skeptical look. “Please, Lizzie. You always get attached. It’s what you do, and it’s why I love you so much. Don’t tell me you won’t get attached and then be heartbroken when they leave, because you will be.”
“I’m going to try very hard not to let that happen. You know how impossible it is for me to see people in need and not want to help them.”
Jared’s anger is replaced by a surge of love for the incredibly compassionate woman he’d been lucky enough to marry.
“I do know that, sweetheart, and I love you for it. It’s just sometimes I worry about you helping others at your own expense, and I can’t bear to see you hurt any more than you’re already hurting. ”
She places her hands on his chest and looks up at him, using her potent eyes to implore him to see things her way.
“I’ll be careful. I promise.” Tipping her head, she flashes her most adorable smile, the one he’s powerless to resist even when he wants to be annoyed with her.
“Do you want to come meet Jessie and the baby?”
He doesn’t, but he will for her. “Sure.” Jared follows her inside to the family room, where Cooper has already found Jessie and is holding her baby.
Seamus O’Grady makes his way home after completing his last run of the day on the ferries, bringing another rowdy group of tourists seeking summer fun on Gansett Island.
Maybe he’s getting old and cranky, but the crowds coming these days seem especially young to him.
There’d been a time when drinking and carousing on Gansett would’ve been his idea of fun.
Now he has a whole new definition of fun, and it includes watching Kyle and Jackson, the boys he and his wife, Carolina, are raising, play baseball.
Quite some time ago, he more or less gave up on the possibility of becoming a father, and then Kyle and Jackson came into their lives, first as their neighbors.
After their mother died, he and Carolina had stepped up for the boys.
The four of them have become a family that also includes Carolina’s son, Joe, and his family, and Seamus’s cousin Shannon and his now-fiancée, Victoria.
When he walks into the house, the first thing Seamus notices is Carolina sitting at the table, looking shell-shocked.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, because there’s no doubt in his mind that something is very wrong. “And where are the boys?”
“They’re playing with Ethan this afternoon. Hope asked if they could come to keep him entertained, because I guess there’s something going on with Marion. She was fully lucid earlier.”
“Wow.”
“Hope said she’d bring them home after dinner.”
“Now tell me what’s wrong.” He can’t move or breathe or do anything but stand inside the door, waiting for her to drop the boot on him.
“We got a letter,” she says, swallowing hard. “From a lawyer in Providence.”
“What’s a lawyer in Providence want with us?”
“They represent the boys’ father, Jace Carson.”
Those words suck all the oxygen out of Seamus’s body and make his knees buckle. Grasping the countertop, he holds on for dear life. “What does he want?”
“To see his sons.”
She hands the letter to him.
He forces himself to read the words and to make sense of them. The boys’ father has only recently learned of Lisa’s death as well as the custody arrangement she made for their minor children. “How is it possible he didn’t know? She’s been gone for months.”
“Which shows how out of touch he is with his children. That’s actually a good thing.”
“None of this is a good thing. We need to call Dan and get him over here.”
“I already did. He’s on his way. He and Kara just got back to the island today, so we got lucky.”
Under normal circumstances, Seamus is never more comfortable than he was with Carolina.
These are not normal circumstances, and he’s as uncomfortable as he can recall being in a very long time.
In fact, he hasn’t felt this unsettled since he’d been quite certain that Carolina was going to break his heart. This feels almost as bad as that did.
Then her hand is on top of his, infusing him with her warmth when he needs it most. “I know you’re thinking the worst but try not to go there. There are a lot of miles between this letter and the worst-case scenario.”