Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
T he girl for him.
Period.
Not a notch on his bedpost.
Not one of many dropping off meals at the firehouse.
Not just a good time during a slow night at Marinos.
The girl for him. Period.
Katie was still trying to process all of that, when along came The Creep, who was about as welcome as a colony of lice during a slumber party.
“I should have known you’d be a part of this too, Katie,” The Creep hollered, shoving a high school kid with a Flock of Seagulls haircut and a homemade T-shirt that said “Art With Larry” out of the way as he continued his march over to them. “You, your sister, your whole family is trash, so it’s no surprise you’d pull a move like this.”
Next to her, Frank growled—literally—and took a step forward, his hands balled into fists.
She reached out and put her hand on Frank’s arm. He glanced down at her in question. “You don’t want me to take care of him?”
Katie shook her head, the sense that everything was going to work out settling in her belly and making the last of her tears dry up. “I was the one who got you into this; I’ll take care of it.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Not to argue, but I got myself into this by telling you it was my DeLorean.”
The man was as stubborn as every male member of her family—and every female member of her family. Fine, he was going to fit in with the rest of the Madigans without any problem. God, she hoped his family liked her. And?—
The rapid approach of The Creep forced her back to the here and now.
“Can we fight about this later?” she asked, jerking her chin in the direction of The Creep and his entourage of shitheads.
The smile that broke out on Frank’s face was big enough to show off his dimple. “So there’s going to be a later?”
“Most definitely,” she said, the butterflies in her stomach waking up and going for a test flight in a tornado.
He shot her a quick wink, and then they turned together to face off against The Creep, whose blond hair was feathered perfectly, and the collars of his double polo shirts popped in accordance with the unwritten bylaws of rich yuppie assholes everywhere.
“You two are going to have to make this right,” The Creep said with a sneer. “I want my car detailed and a letter of apology.”
Katie considered it for all three point two seconds. “That’s not gonna happen.”
Anger turned The Creep’s cheeks blotchy. “You trashed my car.”
“You can’t prove that,” Katie said with a shrug, not about to give this twerp any of her emotional time.
“I have witnesses,” he spluttered.
Frank snorted behind her and asked, “Who?”
The Creep gestured back to the trio of doofuses behind him. “Them.”
Oh no. That wasn’t going to fly. Katie had scoped out the parking lot before touching that ugly car. The only person who’d seen her anywhere near the DeLorean was Frank, and he wasn’t going to rat on her. The Creep had nothing.
“All they saw was you chasing my car as we left the parking lot,” she said, keeping her tone utterly pleasant because she knew how much it would piss him off. “Nothing else.”
She really shouldn’t enjoy watching The Creep’s face get blotchier the angrier he got. The nuns at St. Bernadette’s would be so disappointed in her. Although they were pretty much always disappointed in the Madigans, so what was one more sin?
“You’re really something; you know that?” The Creep snarled. “I guess this is what I get for slumming it with a Madigan.”
Slumming it?
Oh, hell no. An ice-cold fury froze Katie’s blood as she pictured her sister sitting in their tiny apartment, mourning her breakup with this asshole. Then she thought about all the times The Creep had made Connie feel like she wasn’t enough, and her anger turned red hot. The only thing that was saving the man from a broken nose was the fact that Connie was finally free of him.
The Creep looked back at his friends and laughed. “No sweet piece of ass is worth someone even breathing wrong on my DeLorean.”
“Guess not,” Katie said with a smile that he really should have taken as a warning.
While he was standing there, high on his own ego, she snagged the Big Gulp from one of his shithead buddies, tore off the lid, and poured it out on his Nikes.
The Creep gasped and looked past her to Frank as if he was in charge of her. “Are you just going to stand by and let your girl do that, Hartigan?” The Creep demanded. “What kind of man are you?”
Frank shrugged his broad shoulders and grinned. “The kind that knows she can fight her own battles without any help from me.”
“I always knew you were an absolute airhead,” The Creep said. “I didn’t realize you were a chicken shit, too.”
Katie didn’t think. She didn’t consider. She just pulled back her fist and landed a solid punch square in the middle of The Creep’s nose.
He yelped and stumbled back, his hand covering his nose as blood ran down.
“Nobody talks about the guy I’m gonna marry someday like that,” she said, jabbing her finger into his bony chest as he continued to backpedal. “Now go home in your ugly fucking car before I show you what my knee can do to your tiny little balls.”
The Creep shook off the helping hands of his douchey friends and glared at her. “You two deserve each other.”
This time, Katie’s smile was genuine, powered by adrenaline, and the thrill of righteous vengeance that had been finally delivered. “That might be the only nice thing you’ve ever said in your entire entitled life.” Loud beeps and the sound of a chain being hooked up to a car pulled her gaze from The Creep to the tow truck parked a few rows up. “Oh wow. Is that tow truck taking your car? You don’t think someone would have turned you in for parking illegally across two spots, do you?”
The Creep didn’t bother to respond; he just took off, yelling the whole way that he had cash for the driver if he just left his baby alone.
“Wow,” Frank said, once it was just the two of them again. “That was even more impressive than the purse punch.”
“I think I’ll stick to whacking people with my handbag,” Katie said with a laugh, as she rubbed her sore knuckles. They were red and already starting to swell up. “You were right, you know. About me. I was scared.” She let out a shaky breath. Her heart was beating hard enough to feel like it was banging against her ribs, and her instincts were all screaming for her to shut up now, but she had to finish this. She had to tell him the truth. “I’m not scared of stepping out of the shadow of my family, though. I am scared of becoming just another one of the many notches on your bedpost, when I want to be more.”
Frank cupped her chin and tilted her face up. “You were more from the moment you finally let me buy you a beer at Marinos and I ended up carrying your sister to your car.”
Then he dipped his head down and kissed her, his lips making all the promises she knew he could and would keep.
By the time he broke the kiss, all of her nerves had dissolved, and all her questions had been answered.
“So I’m the guy you’re going to marry, huh?” he asked as he opened the driver’s door to her Pinto so she could get inside. “I like the sound of that. What do you think about a December wedding?”
“As in six months from now?” The question squeaked out of her as she got behind the wheel, even as a vision of what kind of dress would be perfect for a Christmas wedding filled her head. “Don’t you think that’s a little fast?”
“When you know, you know,” he said with a shrug, before closing the door and then walking around to the passenger’s side and getting in. “Anyway, wouldn’t you rather start this adventure sooner rather than later?”
Mind racing, Katie went through all of the reasons why this was a crazy idea. There were millions, but none of them seemed to matter.
“What about kids?” she asked, turning the key in the ignition. “How many do you want?”
He considered for a second and then said, “Sevens a good number.”
“That’s a lot.” How many years would she be pregnant? And who could afford all those diapers?
“Well, you have a twin, and I have a twin,” Frank said, grinning at her as if seven kids—including twins—wasn’t completely overwhelming. “That means the chances of us having a set of twins is really up there. We should be mentally prepared for it.”
Somehow, he made it all sound completely reasonable. December wedding. Seven kids. Twins. She should be running for the hills. Instead, she put the car in gear and put the pedal to the metal.
“In a hurry?” Frank asked with a chuckle.
“Yeah. You said some things about what would happen if we found ourselves naked in a bed.”
“And I promise to deliver on every single one.”
Katie had never driven home so fast in her life.
It was worth it.