First Class Family
Chapter twenty
áINE
Ihave never been on a private jet before.
I have never even been in the first class cabin of a commercial flight. The closest I got was a peek through the curtain separating the haves from the have-nots on a flight to Florida for my honeymoon with Troy.
He'd booked economy. Because his money was always better spent on things people could see, not experiences that disappeared when you landed.
I shove that thought aside before it can sour the expression on my face and find a smile for Joy, who is currently spinning in a dizzying circle, taking everything in with exclamations of delight. "There's chairs and tables! And a couch! Mom, there's a couch!"
Losing every bit of memory fed sourness, my smile turns indulgent. "I see that."
She stops suddenly and stares at first me and then Kieran. "It's like a flying living room!" Her head jerks one way and then the other. "And a kitchen. Only there's no kettle for gran's tea."
"There is in fact a kettle in the galley." Ellie slides past me to sit down in one of the window seats facing a table.
"What's a galley?" Joy asks, eyes wide.
"It's a kitchen on a plane or a boat," mom answers. "And if this one has a kettle for my tea, it's got my approval."
The plane cabin is full-on luxury with cream leather captain style seats sitting side by side, facing another set across glossy tables on both sides of the aisle. The sofa that has so enthralled Joy is along one wall between the grouped seating and the galley.
To the left of the galley is a short hall that has two doors off of it. A bathroom and…a bedroom?
I am absolutely not thinking about that door and what it implies about overnight flights.
"Are you rich?" Joy asks Kieran bluntly.
"Joy!" I admonish, but mom hushes me.
The woman who would usually reproach my daughter for being rude right along with me is too curious herself. Mom's eyes narrow on Kieran, making it clear she wants an answer.
"Yes. The boss could own his own private jet if he wanted. Although it would more likely be a G200 rather than a G700 like this one," Ellie doesn't hesitate to answer.
"Really?" Neeve pushes her glasses up her nose and stares at Kieran.
He shrugs. "Sure."
"Sure, he says. Like buying a jet is no big deal." Mom shakes her head.
"Whatever we need," Kieran replies.
Which could be taken so many ways, but from the awestruck, hero worshipping looks on my girls' faces, they're taking it to mean he'd buy a jet if we needed one.
Considering the fact he rented this one so we could all fly together in what he considers safety, I'm not sure they're wrong.
"Just you don't go thinking you can buy my girl's affection," mom warns him.
I don't hear Kieran's answer—darn it—because the girls erupt into a flurry of activity and questions as they swarm the plane cabin, investigating.
"Can I sit by the window?" Neeve asks when her curiosity is satisfied.
"Sure," Kieran says again, his big hand warm at the small of my back.
That hand has been there since we walked onto the tarmac. A steady, grounding pressure that feels a little possessive and a lot protective. I don't mind either.
Any more than I'm bothered by the sparks of desire creating tiny explosions along my neural pathways and the bubbles of anticipation fizzing through my blood.
Mom settles into the seat beside Neeve, already pulling her knitting from her tote, her own curiosity about Kieran's financial situation apparently satisfied. Ellie opens her laptop and starts tapping away at the keys.
"Seatbelts while we taxi and take off," I remind my girls.
"We know, mom," Sadie says, but without the eye roll she would usually give me.
She chooses a seat by the window across the table from Neeve, tucking one leg under herself as she settles. I check to see how Joy is taking her sister sitting in the other window seat, but she's back in the galley, talking up a storm with the flight attendant.
No argument over who gets to sit where on the horizon, my attention shifts back to my oldest daughter. She seems calm. Too calm?
After getting my approval, like it wasn't a done deal already, Kieran arranged a meeting for Sadie with a highly regarded, but mob-approved child psychologist this morning.
I was worried Sadie would have a lot of feelings to process after that. If she does, she's doing it silently.
Mostly. She's on her phone texting again and I don't need any guesses to figure out who with. She and Fitz have been texting a lot since yesterday. Already good friends, I think this experience has moved them into bestie territory.
Like me and Ellie.
At least I hope that's what this is. I don't want my daughter falling for the son of the underboss.
Which feels kind of hypocritical considering who I'm about to marry, but I'm signing my life away because I want to protect my children's future. I don't want Sadie throwing herself back in the Lion's Den without a good miracle on standby to help her.
But isn't Kieran your miracle?
Oh, that taunting inner voice.
She might even be right. And maybe he's my girls' miracle too. Whatever else is going on, there's no question my daughter feels safe right now in a way I couldn't make happen.
I press my lips together hard against the emotion that rises every time I think about what happened. Maybe I'm the one that needs to process my emotions.
But she's only twelve years old.
Sadie should never have gone through what she did with those boys at St. Patrick's.
But even if we weren't mob adjacent with me working for Kenneth Shaughnessy, it could have happened.
I try to prepare my girls to keep themselves safe, but darn it to heck and back, wouldn't it be easier and better for boys to be taught not to be little creeps?
The fact her sense of safety is relying on a practical stranger right now, and a room full of mob consequences to restore it makes me want to scream. Or torch Kenneth Shaughnessy's new luxury sports car.
Two men step into the plane cabin through the still open doorway.
"The big one is Dagda," Kieran says near my ear. "The one who looks like he's been in the sun since birth is Torch."
Dagda is nearly as enormous as Kieran. With a dark complexion and close-cropped hair, and carries himself with the particular stillness of a man who has been in live combat. My brother carried himself that way.
So does Kieran.
Torch is lean and sun-browned, with the kind of restless energy that makes you think he is always calculating how far away the nearest exit is. He was different yesterday. More intent.
Maybe because his focus was all on keeping Kenneth Shaughnessy away from me and my family.
Both of them in a small flying tube at thirty thousand feet is either very reassuring or very alarming. I am going with reassuring.
"We met Torch yesterday," I say.
Kieran nods. "They'll be with you all whenever I can't be."
"They're our bodyguards?" I keep my voice equally low.
"For this trip, yes. If you feel good about it after spending some time with them, it will become a permanent assignment."
"But don't they already have mob jobs?" I ask under my breath, not wanting my mom to overhear.
"Yes, but there's no job more important than keeping my family safe."
When he says stuff like that, I don't know how to respond.
My insides know just fine. They swoon. My brain?
Feels like it's fritzing. Bzzt. Kieran claims me.
Bzzt. Kieran kisses me. Bzzt. Kieran claims my girls.
Bzzt. Kieran protects us. Bzzt. Kieran gives me the best orgasms—plural—of my life. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
Joy shrieks with delight when a television starts lowering from the ceiling opposite the mini couch she's now sitting on with the flight attendant.
I shake my head. "Joy."
"Sorry, sorry." She claps her hand over her own mouth, eyes dancing above it.
"Here's the remote." The flight attendant hands the electronic device to Joy and stands. "You can access three different child-friendly channels. If you want to watch something on one of the other channels, Mr. Lleshi has the override code."
A squishy feeling in my chest, I glance up at Kieran. "You remembered to have them put parental controls on the television?"
"Of course he did," Ellie answers for him, not bothering to look up from her computer. "The boss is thorough and nothing is hurting your girls on his watch. Not even themselves."
Kieran just shrugs.
"Oh, I like that one. Can I watch it with you?" Dagda asks my daughter when a popular animated kids show with LEGO figurines for the characters and a world made from the building blocks pops up.
Joy looks up at him, then at Kieran, then at me and then back to Dagda. "You really like it?"
"Uh huh. My little cousin got me hooked on it the last time I was back in the Old Country visiting."
"What's the old country?" Joy asks.
"Ireland," mom answers, her attention on the bodyguard sitting beside her granddaughter instead of her knitting.
"You don't call it that." Neeve pushes up her glasses and frowns. "Why does he?"
"Me mam was from Eire and I went there to live after me da died," Dagda says, his Irish brogue thick.
Joy tilts her head to the side, her little girl eyes filled with curiosity. "You don't live there now."
"No. That's why I call it the Old Country."
"Okay." Joy turns back to the television and presses play. "We can watch this one, but after we have to let your friend pick. It's only fair."
Stifling a smile, I watch to see how the bodyguards respond to Joy's edict.
Torch gives her a tight smile. "Not necessary. You pick the next show."
"And then it will be Neeve's turn," I say firmly.
Sadie will watch her middle school appropriate shows on her tablet with earbuds when she needs the entertainment. Right now, she's too busy texting to worry about favorite T.V. shows.
"Are you Kieran's friends?" Joy asks the men over the opening credits of the show.
I try to not wince at the thought of a six-hour flight set to the soundtrack of kids shows.
"Aye," Dagda says.
Torch just nods, his attention on the door to the aircraft.