11. From Mobster to Daddy
Chapter eleven
From Mobster to Daddy
WRAITH
Her hair still askew from sleep and wearing flannel PJs with white kitty faces all over them, Joy careens into the kitchen a couple of minutes after áine leaves it.
Enough time for me to get my hardon under control. I'm lucky there's no wet spot on the front of my black cargo pants. I nearly came in my boxers for the first time from touching áine and the way she responded to that touch.
She's so damn sensual. How is she not in a relationship? The men she's dated have been fools, and any of them that touched her will be sporting broken hands. She seemed upset when I said I'd kill them.
"You're here," Joy shouts at full volume. "What are you doing here so early? What's that?" She points to the hot cocoa I'm putting in the microwave to warm up for her. "Are those for us?" She stands against the table and leans toward the box of pastries.
"I brought breakfast," I answer her first question and then I answer the second, "Cocoa. And yes."
Having no trouble understanding my short answers, Joy's hand darts out to grab a pastry, but stops and hovers above the box.
"I didn't wash my hands," she says forlornly.
Feeling a weird urge to smile, I tilt my head toward the sink. "Do it."
"Gran doesn't like us using the kitchen sink to wash our hands." She sighs, taking a reluctant step toward the door. "Will you save the honey bun for me? It's my favorite but Neeve likes them too."
I should have gotten two of everything instead of an assortment of singles. "I'll cut it in half."
"You will?" Joy asks rapturously. "Thank you!"
She runs back across the kitchen and drives into me and hugs me hard around the waist before turning to rush from the kitchen.
I'm still processing the surprisingly pleasant drive-by affection when Neeve comes into the kitchen, wearing her school uniform, her hair a smooth curtain and her eyes wary. "Hi."
"Good morning." Taking the cocoa I heated for Joy from the microwave, I offer it to Neeve before putting another cup on the turn table and setting the timer for forty-five seconds.
I don't want the girls burning their tongues trying to drink.
Neeve takes the cocoa. "Thank you, uh…Mr. Lleshi."
"Kieran's fine."
Neeve nods silently before sipping her cocoa and then smiling.
"Where would I find a bread knife?" I ask her.
I could use my tactical knife to cut the pastries, but I have a feeling that would not meet with either Maureen or áine's approval.
Neeve points to a drawer to the right of the sink.
Opening it, I find what I'm looking for.
When I start cutting all the pastries in half, Neeve smiles again. "Mom does that sometimes, so we can get more tastes."
"Does she?"
Neeve nods. "May I have one?"
"Yes."
"You don't talk a lot, do you?" She picks up half of the honey bun just like Joy thought she would.
"No."
Neeve sits in the chair I'd been sitting in earlier and pulls a napkin from the holder on the edge of the table by the wall. "I don't either."
"Do you feel like you shouldn't talk too much?" I ask warily.
She shakes her head. "I like to read, not talk. Joy and Sadie like to talk."
"Some people do. Some don't."
"That's what mom says." Neeve looks at me for several seconds in silence. "Are you mom's boyfriend?"
"I am."
The little girl takes a bite of her pastry, chewing silently while she thinks that over. "She never had a boyfriend before."
"She hasn't?" Do I feel guilty for pumping áine's daughter about her?
No.
Hell, if McLaren wasn't áine's bestie, I would have asked the computer specialist to compile a dossier on her.
"Nope." Neeve looks at me speculatively. "Are you going to marry her?"
"I want to," I answer honestly.
I don't tell her that I'm going to. It might be true, but we're creating a narrative that works for áine's family and Mick's plans.
Neeve's narrows her eyes in thought. "Would you be our daddy then?"
"Would you be okay with that?" I ask instead of answering.
"I think so. I wouldn't be a bastard anymore, right? Not if you're my dad."
"Who the f—" I break off before I drop an f-bomb in Maureen's kitchen. "Who called you that?"
Neeve's shoulders hunch. "Kids at school."
"Did you tell your teacher?" I ask. I know she didn't tell her mom, or Neeve would already know that she's not illegitimate just because her biological father died.
"Yes, and she made them say sorry, but they keep doing it."
After I had to move in with my stepfather and mom, I heard that word a lot. From him, the other Albanian Boys and their kids. I'll be damned if I allow my new daughter to go through the same thing.
She's sweet. Vulnerable.
I was neither.
"Do you know what a bastard is?" I ask her.
"I thought it was a mean guy and told them I'm not mean, but Lily told me it means I don't have a daddy." Neeve's lower lip trembles and she ducks her head. "I don't have one. My daddy died."
What the actual fuck? There's no way áine is the only single mother with children at St. Patrick's Elementary.
"Who's Lily?"
"She's my friend. She tripped Owen Casey in gym class after he said it." Neeve lifts her head again, her little face filled with satisfaction.
"Did she get in trouble?" I ask, filing Owen Casey's name away for later.
One of the boys that attacked Sadie was a Casey. It's a common enough name in New York, but I don't trust coincidences.
"No. She learned how to trip kids by accident on purpose in soccer." Neeve sounds proud of her friend.
I put the last hot cocoa in the microwave for Sadie and then sit across from Neeve at the table. "Good skill to have."
I'm surprised Joy hasn't returned yet for her honey bun.
"Do you know how to do it?" Neeve asks.
"I do." Accidental physical encounters play their role in covert ops.
"Would you teach me?" She pauses, sucking her lips in. "Mom might not like it. Lily's mom got real mad at her brother for teaching her, but I'm glad he did."
"Does her brother play on her soccer team too?" I take a sip of my black coffee and wince. Should have heated it in the microwave while I was at it.
Neeve shakes her head, a look of hero worship coming over her quiet features. "He's the coach."
"Must be a lot older than Lily then." If he's the team's coach.
"He's twenty," Neeve says with awe. Like achieving that age is a major milestone on its own.
I'll have to look into Lily's brother if my daughter admires him this much. "What's Lily's last name?"
"Kennedy," Neeve says. "So, will you teach me?"
"Yes." A girl needs to be able to defend herself.
All the girls, including áine, will be taking lessons in self-defense.
But the first lesson I'm going to give my daughter is one in vocabulary. "Bastard can mean illegitimate."
"Fake?" Neeve asks, her nose squinching in her little face.
"No. It means the person's parents weren't married."
"But my mom and dad were married." Neeve frowns.
"They were. Him being dead now doesn't change that."
"Then why do the kids call me that?"
"That's something I'll be taking up with your teacher and their parents."
"You will? But—"
Joy bursts back into the kitchen, interrupting her sister. "Did you save my half of the honey bun?"
Dressed in her school uniform like Neeve now, Joy's hair has been smoothed and pulled into a ponytail that explodes in a big pouf of curls from the scrunchy, explaining why it took her so long to come back to the kitchen.
Sadie is right behind her. The twelve-year-old is dressed but not wearing a school uniform, confirming she has no plans to go to school today.
None of them will be going, but I'll wait to break that news to them until their mom and gran join us.
I direct both girls to their cocoa and the pastries before reheating my coffee and leaning against the wall by the fridge to drink it.
Sadie starts the kettle before sitting down with her sisters. "Mom told me you got gran tea, but she won't drink it." Sadie looks apologetic. "Gran only drinks tea steeped in water brought to a boil."
"My gran was the same." I push off from the wall and grab Maureen's cup before removing the lid to pull out the sachet of Barry's Irish Breakfast Tea and lay it beside the empty cup near the electric kettle.
All three girls are looking at me when I turn back around.
"Gran is going to like that," Sadie says. "She'll say you show good Irish sense…"
"For a man," Joy and Neeve finish with giggles.
"I see how it is. I'm well outnumbered in this family," I tease back, feeling a strange lightness in my chest.
"You are," Neeve crows and all three girls crack up.
"What's all this ruckus now?" Maureen bustles into the kitchen, áine two steps behind her.
They've been in the living room for the last couple of minutes. Although I could hear the muffled sound of their voices, I couldn't distinguish any words. Contrary to what my woman thinks, I do not have the ears of a bat.
"Kieran brought us breakfast!" Joy shouts.
Neeve stands up, grabbing her now empty cocoa cup and used napkin. "Sit here, gran. I'm done."
"Sit yourself down, cailín. Pastries are well and good but you'll be eating some eggs before you leave the table."
I toss my coffee cup in the trash and open the fridge to pull out a carton of eggs. "Fried or scrambled," I ask.
Maureen sizes me up. "You're not one of those men who doesn't know how to boil water for tea then?"
"No."
At her mother's bemused look, áine says, "Kieran isn't much of a talker, mom."
"Can I trust him with our breakfast eggs?" Maureen asks her daughter.
"If he says he can cook, then he can," is áine's evasive but firm answer.
Maureen looks back at me. "Although I've a mind to test that theory, I'll not have a guest cooking me breakfast in my own kitchen."
"I invited myself over for breakfast, it's only right I make it."
"Set those down by the stove and make yourself useful bringing that stool to the table." She nods toward a stool stored in an empty space between cabinets under the countertop. "Then you can get the chair from my bedroom."
"Copy that."
A smile edges the corners of the older woman's mouth upward but there's a flash of sadness in her eyes and áine winces.
"Army?" Maureen asks me.