9. The Plan, the Crew & the Bestie #2
"Is it the pretty mommy of three you were locking lips with yesterday?" McLaren asks, that edge that entered her voice when she learned about áine Gallagher, growing sharp as the edge of my favorite knife.
I shouldn't be surprised it's her asking and not Noah. Gossip in the mob is as bad as any military unit I've been in.
"Yes. áine Gallagher."
McLaren's eyes widen and then narrow. "The woman you had in a liplock yesterday was áine Gallagher?" She glares at Noah. "You didn't say the boss was kissing áine."
Noah shrugs. "Didn't know her name last night."
"Just that she had three daughters." McLaren's scowl turns inward. "I should have realized…" She shakes her head. "But how the fuck could I?"
"We've been dating a while, but we had to keep it on the downlow so her mom and kids didn't find out," Ignoring McLaren's weird musings, I tell them the cover story áine and I agreed on. "She didn't want to introduce me until we were sure it was going somewhere. Then yesterday happened."
If my fiancée were here, she'd be impressed with the lengthy explanation, but I know my crew. Her name would not be enough for them. I'm just circumventing a bunch of back and forth.
"I'd say it's going right to the altar with you calling them your family and going on vacation with them." Torch smirks.
Noah waggles his brows. "And it ain't on the downlow anymore with that kiss you laid on her last night."
"I heard about that," Thomas says.
I'm sure they all did. From the looks on their faces, I'd say I'm right.
Even Ethan doesn't show a flicker of surprise, though he wouldn't either way.
"What did you do, send out a group text?" I demand of Noah.
He shrugs. "Sure. I mean…the boss has a girlfriend. That's prime info."
"Discretion. Use it," I order.
Unrepentant, Noah grins. "You mean like you did, kissing her where everyone and her three daughters could see?"
It was strategic, though I'm not telling my crew that. It was also hot as hell. I'm not telling them that either. Noah probably already did. Damn him.
"The wee ones okay?" Dagda asks.
"I don't think Fitz would thank you for calling him wee," Torch says sardonically.
"What have you heard about the kids?" I demand.
"There was a fight at school. Fitz wiped the floor with Kenny Jr. Sadie saw it."
Good. News about what happened to Sadie hasn't gotten out and it won't if I have anything to say about it. Lucky for me, I'm sure Mick is on the same page, or rumors would already be flying.
"Anyone says one goddamn word more and you shut them down," I order.
"Will do," Noah says.
Dagda gives a two-fingered salute. "Copy that."
"On it," Agrees Thomas.
Ethan and Torch nod.
Giving me a gimlet glare, McLaren says, "The only people who gossip with me are in this room."
Maybe that's why she talks so much when she decides to. We're the only ones she converses with.
My phone dings with another notification.
McLaren says, "I sent you a link for a flight."
It's a damn private jet, but the more I look at it, the more I like the idea. We'll have to leave a day earlier than planned and stay a day longer, but that's probably a good thing.
It seats up to ten which means I can take security with us, rather than putting them on a separate flight. Booking the roundtrip will cost over a hundred grand but keeping my family safe is worth it.
"Dagda, you and Torch are flying out with us," I inform my crew. "The rest of you have your assignments. I want check-ins twice a day."
"At least it won't be o'dark thirty. You'll be two hours behind us in Vegas," Noah says with satisfaction.
McLaren stays behind when the rest of the team files out of the room.
"Need something?" I ask her.
"Yes." Her eyes drill into me. "The damn truth. You and áine Gallagher have not been dating for a few days, much less a few months."
I wait in silence for McLaren to tell me why she's so certain of that.
She rolls her eyes and tilts her head. "Really? That's how you're going to play it?"
I shrug.
She makes a sound like an angry ocelot. "Listen, Wraith, áine and I have been best friends since third grade.
That woman tells me everything. I know how often she didn't orgasm with Troy, the rat, and how many pushes it took to get each of her girls out of her stretched to hell vagina. Because I was there."
"Did you know about Kenneth Shaughnessy threatening her?" If she did, I'll have to rethink my view of McLaren.
"No. And you can believe my girl and me are going to have words about that.
She told me she started working there because she needed a low stress job.
Every time I suggested she look for something else, because Allison is a Gremlin and that job is not low stress when she's around, áine always had a reason for not wanting to leave. "
"Not everything then."
"She thought she was protecting her family. That's not the same thing as hiding her new squeeze from her best girl," McLaren snaps. "Hell, she probably thought she was protecting me too. áine has no idea I'm mobbed up."
"Did you know about Troy?" McLaren came into the mob two years after Troy's death, so she might not.
When the stories go around about how Mick deals with traitors, Troy's name isn't usually mentioned. Only what happened to him.
"I figured out he was one of the rats everyone talks about last year. áine never talked about him being in the mob, so I figured she didn't know."
"There's a lot you didn't know."
"Yeah, and all of it about keeping the people she loves safe. Again, not the same as withholding the deets on a man she was getting serious with. I knew about Dan."
"Who the fuck is Dan?" I bark.
McLaren gives me a superior look. "If you'd been dating áine for a few months, you'd know about him too, even if Mamma Mo didn't."
Mamma Mo? It clicks. Maureen.
"Why didn't Maureen know about him?" I hear myself asking.
And how does that fit with áine's genuine upset last night about hurting her mom's feelings by supposedly not telling her about me.
"After the first couple of dates, áine decided she wouldn't tell her mom about any more of them until things got serious with a guy."
"Why?"
"Mamma Mo can be a lot. She insisted on meeting áine's first couple of dates and grilling them. My girl wasn't putting herself or any more men through that unless she thought they'd be sticking around a while."
And if we had been dating, she'd have brought me home before this for the grilling. Or at least told her mom she was dating someone.
"Now, explain what the hell is going on, Wraith. áine wasn't dating you yesterday and today you say you're going to Vegas with her and the girls."
Trusting a member of my crew is easier than trusting an outsider with the truth. And McLaren knows a lot of it now anyway.
When I'm done explaining how the quick marriage will protect áine and her girls and going to Vegas will protect her mom's feelings about the wedding happening so fast, McLaren is looking at me like I'm a book with a few chapters missing.
"áine is going along with this?" she demands.
I nod.
"She's got to be out of her mind with worry not to have seen the pitfalls in this plan of yours. I bet Kara wasn't there when you told Mick about it, was she?"
"No." Not sure why that matters though.
"If she had been, she'd have told you the Vegas plan was bound to fail. No way is Mamma Mo going to believe the spontaneous wedding thing, much less let áine get away with it. What you need is a preemptive strike."
Then McLaren outlines a much more romantic and even I can see a more believable plan that includes a surprise trip to Disneyland followed by the even bigger surprise proposal and wedding.
She makes the very good points that California is also one day wedding license state and Anaheim is more temperate than Las Vegas this time of year.
"Don't tell áine that you plan to propose and surprise her with the wedding. Let her think you're sticking with the spontaneous wedding idea, but changing the location. Her reaction will be more natural that way when you drop to one knee."
The idea of taking the girls to the iconic adventure park makes me feel weird. Like sort of warm in my chest.
Not bad. But different.
"I also think you should bring me along."
"You want to ride a roller coaster?" I ask, sardonically.
McLaren just shakes her head at me. "My presence will sell the legitimacy of your relationship to Mamma Mo and the girls.
There's no way you don't know about me if you two have been dating longer than a week.
In fact, saying you met through me will save you having to make up some lame story about matching on a lonely-hearts dating app. "
"She knows you work for me?"
"Not that you're my boss specifically, but áine knows I work for Harborline Security. She thinks I specialize in logistics for cargo movement."
"You are in logistical support."
"Yeah, but I specialize in hacking and the cargo we protect doesn't make it on any of the shipping manifests." McLaren gives me a wink. "My bestie thinks I've given up my bad old ways. I guess she'll learn different now, huh?"