“Fianna?”
I can feel the anger vibrating through Emmett and shaking the ground beneath our feet. I’ve no idea what history exists between the two men, but it’s obvious that Emmett doesn’t like Ronan, and is getting all caveman protective over his cousin.
Fianna shakes her head, a gesture so brief, I almost wonder if I imagined it. “Shall we go back inside? It’s wrong of you to keep Mary away from everyone who’s dying to meet her.”
Emmett’s eyes harden like bullets. “I’m not going anywhere with—”
“It’s fine.” Fianna’s voice is gentle but firm.
I’ve spent less than twelve hours with Emmett’s family, but I already understand that the women are forces to be reckoned with. Including Fianna. Whatever Emmett was about to say about Ronan has been swallowed while he waits for his cousin to elaborate.
“We’ve all moved on,” she continues. “We can’t spend the rest of our lives in the past.”
Ronan, eyes fixed firmly on Emmett, slides his arm around Fianna and pulls her closer to his side. There’s nothing romantic about the gesture—it’s another caveman move, the bravest and strongest guy claiming his prize: the woman. I can already see how the rest of the evening is going to go: Ronan will parade Fianna around, making sure that they are always in plain view of Emmett.
Emmett balls his hands into fists as a tic appears in his temple. “Have you forgotten what he—”
“How could I?” Fianna shakes her head. “I’m disappointed that you even need to ask.” I can hear the emotion clogging her voice. If Emmet can’t, then he’s a fool, but I’m taking no chances.
“Can we go back inside now, Emmett?” I subtly position myself between him and Ronan. “I’m cold. And there are still so many people to meet.”
His gaze bounces off me and back to his cousin who is pulling Ronan towards the seating area positioned around a huge chimenea. I’d like nothing more than to sit out here for a while and soak up the peace of the starry night, but his mom is desperate to show off her son’s fiancée, and it’s the least we can do for her while we’re here.
I cling to his arm as we head back inside. Fianna’s shoes are killing me, and I can already feel a blister forming on the back of my left heel. I’m waiting for him to shrug me off or remind me not to interfere in family stuff that doesn’t concern me, but instead, he doesn’t leave my side.
We collect two glasses of champagne from his dad, Patrick, who scrunches up his face when he sees me and plants a sloppy kiss on my cheek. “My future daughter-in-law. You’ve no idea how happy we are to have you here for Christmas.”
“Thank you.” Guilt sticks in my throat like an apple core. “I’m happy to be here.”
“He’s drunk,” Emmett murmurs as he drags me into the conservatory where The Pogues are belting out: The boys of the NYPD choir were singing ‘Galway Bay’. My favorite Christmas song. The one that never fails to bring tears to my eyes. “Take no notice of him.”
How can he be so coldhearted? Doesn’t he even care that he is going to break his family’s heart when he tells them that there isn’t going to be a wedding?
“How can I take no notice of them when they’re obviously so happy?” I keep smiling, like a marionette with a sinister grin painted on.
Everywhere I look, people are watching us, their faces beaming with excitement not only for Christmas but for the good news the returning son brought home with him.
Upstairs in Fianna’s room earlier, I looked at my reflection in the mirror and tried to see myself through the family’s eyes. Am I everything they wanted for Emmett? After their warm welcome, I’d allowed myself to believe that perhaps I was the daughter-in-law they’d been hoping for, but now I can see that I was wrong. They’re only being nice to me for Emmett’s sake, while he’s playing them all for fools.
The joy and anticipation I’d felt coming down to the party with Fianna is evaporating rapidly, replaced by the gut-wrenching reminder that none of this is real.
I spend the rest of the evening going through the motions, smiling, nodding, following Emmett’s lead when he answers the guests’ questions.
“How did you meet?”
“How long have you known each other?”
“How did he propose? Did he go down on one knee in front of an audience, Mary, or did he do it privately at home?”
I try to inject some enthusiasm into my voice, especially when Emmett is being so attentive. But as the seconds tick by, and the evening gets louder, more raucous, more boisterous even than the twins who’ve crashed out on sofas in the living room where the Christmas tree lights are twinkling, the more I dislike what we’re doing.
There must’ve been an easier way.
Granny Mary calls us over, and Emmett guides me towards her, his hand on the small of my back. She’s in the same seat in the kitchen where we found her when we arrived earlier in the day, her cheeks rosy with the heat of all the bodies in the house and the whiskey she’s consumed. But her eyes are clear.
“Let me get a proper look at this diamond of yours, Mary love.” She pulls a pair of spectacles from her pocket and places them on her nose with one hand, while pulling my ring finger closer. She examines the ring closely like she’s a professional jeweler. “I wish you’d spoken to me first, Emmett.”
Emmett’s expression doesn’t falter—the man is a coldhearted asshole. “This was what Mary wanted.”
She looks at me, and I smile back at her, praying that she can’t see right through me to the uneasiness crawling through my veins.
“But you didn’t give her the choice.” Granny Mary removes the spectacles and takes a slug of whiskey. “Did he tell you about my ring?” she asks me.
“I…”
I know the story we’re running with, but if I say yes, I’m going to offend her—I haven’t even seen the ring I’ve supposedly refused—and if I say no, I’m going to make Emmett look bad.
“Granny, why don’t you show Mary the ring tomorrow?” Fianna appears from nowhere and throws her arms around the old woman’s neck, planting a sloppy kiss on her papery cheek. “Then she’ll see for herself how beautiful it is.”
Fianna winks at me and straightens. “Enough talk about these two lovebirds. I want to dance, and you’re coming with me.”
She pulls me away and doesn’t let go until we’re in the conservatory where everyone is now dancing the Macarena. Apart from Ronan, who follows us in, and watches Fianna with a bemused expression on his face.
It isn’t long before Emmett comes in and stands guard next to Ronan, his spine ramrod straight giving him his full, intimidating height. Not that Ronan appears intimidated. Without warning, he comes over to join us pulling some John Travolta moves that make the older women giggle.
Emmett’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t want to dance, but he doesn’t want me to dance either. What is his problem? Is it all to do with this Ronan guy, or did he not expect me to have fun while I’m here?
I watch him as one cheesy pop song ends, and another begins. I’m not going anywhere. I remove Fianna’s shoes, wincing as I tear the skin off the top of the blister on my heel, and dance barefoot.
The music gets louder. The room gets hotter. Patrick fetches us drinks and encourages his son to let his hair down before returning to the kitchen to resume his role as bartender.
Three glasses of champagne later, and the room is spinning a little. It’s the most alcohol I’ve ever consumed in one sitting, and I want to find a quiet spot in a darkened room, lay down, and close my eyes. But Emmett hasn’t taken his eyes off me. I don’t know what he’s thinking, and I don’t like trying to preempt his mood when I know so little about him, but I am not going to stop just because it’s what he wants.
If he wants me, he can come and get me.
When the last guests leave, I offer to tidy up and tell Sinead and Patrick to go to bed. I’ve never seen so many dirty glasses. I fill the sink with soapy water and start scrubbing the glasses that are already piled up on the drainer while Fianna gathers more from the other rooms.
“What are you doing?” Emmett comes in and opens the dishwasher. “That’s what this is for.”
“It’s fine, I like washing up.” It’s true. Water has a soothing effect on my spiraling thoughts whenever they feel a little out of control.
Emmett rolls up his sleeves and starts clearing the table of food. Fianna wanders in and out with more glasses and used paper plates which she tips straight into a black sack. We work in comfortable silence, but I can’t stop the thump-thump of my heart. Emmett and I haven’t had a moment alone since we got here, and I get the feeling he has something to say.
Sure enough, he escorts me to my room and waits for Fianna to go to her own room after we say goodnight.
When the door clicks behind her, he opens the door to my room and pulls me inside. We both stand by the door, facing each other, his hand warm and heavy on my arm. I wish he wasn’t so goddamned hot because I can’t see past the blue eyes, the broad shoulders, and the perfect white teeth, but he doesn’t get to manhandle me like this.
I wrench my arm free.
He speaks first. “What was that all about?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dancing all night?”
“It was a party. It’s what people do at parties.”
I don’t know what he wants me to say. I mean, he’s made it quite clear that this isn’t real—I don’t need reminding of that again, thank you very much—but he’s looking at me like he’s angry that I didn’t spend more time with him.
“Anyway.” I break the silence because it’s unnerving me, and my blister is stinging, and I want to sleep. “What’s the big deal with Ronan?”
He watches me so intensely I can’t look away. “I don’t like him.”
That much was obvious.
“It’s family stuff.”
“Okay.”
He hasn’t moved so why does it feel as if his lips are closer to mine. My breathing grows shallow, and my heart chooses now to skip a beat. Great!
“Can you let my granny down gently with the ring tomorrow?”
He pulls away, opens the door, and then he’s gone without so much as a backward glance.
The good night’s sleep I was so desperately hoping for is screwed. I’ve known Emmett O’Hara for twenty-four hours, and already it feels as though we’ve experienced a lifetime of shit that’s going to keep me awake at night. It has nothing at all to do with the fact that the asshole is so hot he could melt butter with his smile.
Nothing at all to do with it…
Ugh! I step out of the dress and drape it over the back of the chair in front of the dressing table, knowing that I’ll probably never look that sexy again.
And the asshole didn’t even notice enough to make a move.
I climb onto the bed—literally—and pull the comforter up to my chin. Now that I’m in bed, my brain is determined to replay everything that Emmett said today. Every smile that I happened to catch when he wasn’t watching, every gentle nuance of his voice when he spoke to his mom and grannies, every accidental touch we shared before he clenched his jaw and went all alpha male on me.
I bury my face in the pillow and let out a silent scream. Why couldn’t he have been a ninety-year-old with a walking stick and a silver-haired wife at home? He would have beaten the thug with his stick and sent me on his way.
Instead, I got rescued by the handsome prince with a chip on his shoulder.
Just about sums up my luck.
I must doze off at some point because when I wake up, the smell of fried breakfast is wafting into my room through the gap around the door.
I’m ravenous. Yawning, I throw back the covers and wince as I put my foot on the floor and open up the blister on my heel. Fantastic! Now I have to go downstairs and ask my fake future mother-in-law for a Band-aid and remind Emmett that I’m nothing like the women he usually dates.
I pull on a pair of jeans and a sweater loaned to me by Fianna—seriously, what would I do without her—and head downstairs to the kitchen. Everyone is there.
Apart from Emmett.
“Come on in, Mary,” Sinead calls out to me from over her shoulder.
She and Erin are cooking breakfast —Sinead flipping rashers of bacon on a griddle while her sister-in-law stirs a huge tureen filled with scrambled eggs. Granny Nina is still knitting. There’s a deck of cards on the table between the brothers. The twins are spooning porridge into their mouths, their asses half off their seats in their eagerness to get outside and explore.
No one is nursing a hangover.
I take a seat beside Fianna while Patrick fills a mug with steaming tea from a pot that’s wearing a Christmas-pudding tea cozy. “Where’s Emmett?” Jeez, when did I start sounding so needy?
“He had some business stuff to attend to. He’ll be back soon.” Patrick dunks a shortbread biscuit into his own gigantic mug of tea.
On Christmas Eve? So, he’s a hot, workaholic asshole.
“Fianna, why don’t you show Mary around after breakfast?” Sinead sets a plate down in front of me piled high with bacon, sausages, eggs, fried tomatoes, hash browns, and something else that I think might be black pudding. “Toast is coming.”
“On it,” Erin calls out.
I can’t help smiling. I know I’m an outsider, but they’ve all accepted me as if there was a Mary-shaped hole just waiting to be filled. The only person treating me like an outsider is the person who’s supposed to be in love with me.
After breakfast and two more mugs of tea, Fianna gives me a tour of the rest of the house. There’s a games room complete with a snooker table, pinball machine, air hockey table, and mini putting green. There’s a small cinema room with twelve plush, red velvet seats and a popcorn machine; a sauna room; an indoor pool; a gym; and an art studio.
Fianna smiles at me. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but Auntie Sinead and Uncle Patrick are the most down-to-earth people you’ll ever meet.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask if Emmett is the same, but I manage to stop myself in time. I don’t know what happened between us last night or how Emmett will be with me when he gets back, and I don’t want to make things any more strained than they already are.
“Who uses the art studio?” It’s a bright, airy room overlooking the rear garden—forest—with several easels set up, and stacks of paintings stored under white sheets.
“Auntie Sinead paints; she says it’s therapeutic even if she never lets anyone see her work. Emmett used to paint before… Well, before he moved out permanently.”
Emmett used to paint?
“Let me show you something.” Fianna removes a sheet from an easel to reveal a portrait of a young man. “My brother, Oisin.” Her voice cracks. “Emmett painted this shortly before my brother died.”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” I can feel my heart ripping open with hers, and I tell myself that it’s okay to be heartbroken over someone I never knew. “What happened?”
Before she can reply, the door opens, and Emmett is standing there, staring at the portrait, with an expression I can’t read. Then he’s gone.
