Chapter 10 #2
He grinned, which once again transformed his face from ruggedly handsome to sinfully sexy in a flash. “I used to like to tell her I could be trained. Tell me what just happened.”
“When you said your parents would like me, it just hit me in a weird place.”
“Tell me more about this weird place.”
“After the bad breakup and the incident here earlier this summer, I sort of decided I was going to stay away from guys for a while. I need to figure out who I am without a partner, but then I met you, and staying single didn’t seem quite as appealing.”
“Ah, I see.” His dark eyes twinkled with mirth. “This is a concerning development.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I would never do that.”
“Yes, you would.”
He shook his head, but his expression was full of the devil—and he was one handsome devil. “I really missed seeing you when I was stuck on the mainland.”
“So you said.”
“I mean it, and that’s kind of a big deal for me.”
“Is it?”
“Uh-huh. Like I said, I haven’t dated at all since Ruby died. I haven’t wanted to. Until now, that is.”
“I, um… Well… Oh.”
She loved the way laughter looked on him. “Articulate, Piper. Very articulate.”
“It’s your fault. You come in here looking all…”
“What? How do I look?”
“Good. Really, really good, even windblown and soaked to the skin. And you scramble my brain with compliments and blunt honesty, and I’m not sure what to do with that.”
“You can agree to spend some time with me. I know my situation is a lot to take on—”
“It’s not. I mean, it is, but what I’m trying to say is…” She sighed. “See what I mean about you scrambling my brain?”
Again with that sexy grin that made her heart skip a beat and had all her girl parts standing up to check him out.
They liked what they saw. And now she was making her body parts into people.
This was bad and getting worse all the time, but for some reason, that didn’t concern her the way it probably should have.
“Does that mean you’ll hang out with me?”
“Yes, I think I will.”
“Excellent.”
Getting five kids to go to sleep when the wind was howling and the rain was beating against the windows would’ve been a hard enough job.
But add to it that their dad and favorite person was late getting home, and Maddie McCarthy was feeling as miserable as her kids.
Thomas refused to go to sleep until Daddy got home, Hailey and Baby Mac wouldn’t stop crying, and the twins were upset because their older siblings were.
Desperation had her calling Mac to find out where he was and when he’d be home.
“Just finishing up at the alpaca farm.” He sounded stressed and exhausted. “I’ll be there soon.”
“The storm has everyone on edge.”
“Mommy! The house is rocking! It’s gonna fall down!”
Thomas’s proclamation had Hailey and Mac crying even harder than they’d been before.
“I won’t ask how it’s going there.”
“Thomas is afraid the house will fall down.”
“Tell him I said it won’t.”
“And you’re sure of this?”
“Sure-ish.”
“Mac…”
“I’m coming, babe. Getting in the truck now.”
“Please drive carefully. It’s so awful out. Now the lights are flickering.”
“If we lose power, the generator will come on.”
“Thank you for thinking of everything we need before we need it.”
“Don’t worry about anything. I’m coming.”
“See you soon.”
Maddie put down the phone and picked up baby Emma, hoping to console her.
Evie was in the swing and seemed content for the moment.
Contentment was a minute-to-minute thing with twins.
Hell, it was a minute-to-minute thing with all five of them, especially on a day like this, when the older ones had been cooped up inside while the storm intensified.
“Mommy! The house is shaking again!”
She looked up at the top of the stairs, where Thomas was standing at the gate they used to keep little people from tumbling down the stairs if they got up during the night. “Daddy said the house is fine, and he’ll be home in a few minutes.”
“I want Daddy,” Hailey said on a sob when she joined Thomas at the top of the stairs.
“Everyone needs to get in bed if they want to see Daddy. He’s only coming to see kids in bed.”
The two of them went rushing back to their rooms.
That Daddy was their favorite was a constant source of amusement to him. Maddie spent all day every day with them, and he came riding in like the conquering hero at the end of a long day and made everyone happy. She didn’t hold it against him, though, because he made her happy, too.
She’d been anxious all day about the storm, about the possibility of something happening to Mac that would keep him from getting home to them, about the damage the island might sustain and how that would affect their family and friends.
So much to worry about as the storm got more intense with every passing hour.
When she’d declined an invite to stay, Maddie had sent their nanny, Kelsey, home so she’d be safe before the storm arrived in full force.
With Emma still in her arms, Maddie went to the window that faced the driveway to watch for Mac. He’d boarded up the windows on the lower level the night before, but had left the second-floor windows uncovered so they could watch the storm.
Before she met him, she would’ve laughed at the notion that she’d one day be standing in a window, baby in her arms, waiting for her man to come home.
She’d been there and done that as a child after her father left her, her mother and sister, jumped on a ferry and disappeared from their lives.
For years, Maddie had sat in the window of their South Harbor apartment, watching the people disembark from the ferries, looking for someone who wasn’t coming back.
Mac would always come back. He was as different from the man who’d fathered her as a man could be, and he’d restored her faith in the concepts of love and family and loyalty and devotion.
He would, quite literally, claw his way through fire to get to her and their children. Of that, she had no doubt whatsoever.
She wanted so badly to see him coming toward them that she thought she might be hallucinating when she saw headlights at the end of the lane that led to their house. But as the lights got closer, she exhaled for the first time in hours when she realized it was him.
He was home, and just that simply, she felt a thousand times better.
That’s what he’d done for her since the day they’d met.
He made everything better. Before him, she’d thought the last thing she needed was a man complicating her life.
But when it was the right man, that wasn’t how it worked.
And Mac McCarthy was definitely the right man for her.
Even after years together, her heart still skipped a crazy beat when he came through the sliding door, soaked, windblown and obviously exhausted.
She went to him, as fiercely drawn to him today as she’d been that first day, when she’d tried so hard to push him away after they’d collided, him accidentally knocking her off her bike. How silly it seemed with hindsight that she’d ever tried to push him away.
“I’m soaked,” he said as she approached him.
“I don’t care.”
He dropped his raincoat onto the floor and wrapped his arms around her and Emma, smelling of fresh air and hard work.
“Very happy to see you,” she said.
“Likewise, babe. It was a long-ass day.”
“Here, too.”
He kissed Emma’s soft head and then Maddie’s lips. “I’m sure it was.”
“Did you get it all done?”
“Everything we could. The rest is out of our hands.”
“Is everyone safe?” Maddie asked.
His deep sigh set her on edge. “Deacon Taylor hasn’t returned from a routine patrol, and Seamus and Joe have taken the ferries to sea to protect them from the storm.”
“What?” she asked on a whisper. “They did what?”
“I’m surprised Janey didn’t call you. She’s called everyone else trying to get someone to talk them out of it, but they weren’t hearing it.”
“And Deacon… My God, his boat is so small.”
“It is, but like Blaine said, he knows how to handle himself out there, and if anyone can survive this, he can.”
“Poor Julia. She must be out of her mind.”
“She is, but she’s with Katie and Shane.”
“And Joe and Seamus… They’ll be all right, won’t they?”
“God, I hope so.”