Forever Mine: Callaghan Brothers, Book 9

by Abbie Zanders

  He could feel Maggie’s eyes on him. He resisted the childish urge to venture farther, out of her line of sight. While she respected his privacy, she watched over him like a mother hen. What she did, she did out of love and concern, but to a man who had been living without a woman’s direct influence for nearly a quarter of a century, her constant attention took some getting used to.

  Both his cardiologist and his doctor son had told him that walking was good, so Jack used that as an opportunity to go for several strolls each day, weather permitting. He cherished the quiet peace of the chilly early mornings. The industrious hum of the afternoons. The gentle cloaking of early evening.

  He was careful to keep his forays to the paths and away from the steep slopes. It felt good to move again, even if it was done more slowly and with greater care.

  Off to the left, monstrous machines made quick work of harvesting the seasonal crops -— soybean, potatoes, yams, and apples this month. The high-class hotel and restaurant was owned and operated by family friend Aidan Harrison. Jack’s daughter-in-law, Lexi, was the head chef and the creator of the unique mix of Irish and Greek cuisine, a result of her own mixed heritage.

  Lexi was also the only daughter of his old friend Brian. A sweet, loving child, she was the perfect match for his mischievous son, Ian. Not for the first time, Jack wondered what Brian thought of those two getting together and smiled, but it was a sad smile. So much had happened after Lexi’s mother passed. Deep in grief, Brian had remarried. Unlike Adonia, Patricia was a selfish, odious woman who, with her equally unpleasant daughter Kayla, had made life a living hell for Lexi.

  Jack missed his friend. Brian was gone, having succumbed to a massive heart attack nearly seven years earlier. His death was what brought Lexi and Ian together. Jack liked to believe that it was Brian’s way of making amends for all of the bad things that had happened. Lexi was happy now; Ian made sure of that. Hopefully, Brian was at peace now, too.

  The warmth of the sun kissed his face. He lifted it heavenward and closed his eyes, wondering why he was still earth-bound. So many of the people he loved were up there: Kathleen, Bri, Charlie, Fitz, his parents, Erin and Seamus. Why the hell was he still here where they weren’t? How long would it be before he saw them again?

  When no answer was forthcoming, he sighed and returned his gaze to the earth. He could almost hear his father’s voice whispering in the light breeze. “All in good time, son.”

  The words he’d spoken to his granddaughter days earlier were not spoken lightly. Jack truly believed that everything did happen for a reason. If he was still here, it was because he was supposed to be. Sometimes it was the only thing that got him through the day.

  He wished he knew what that reason was. And how long it was going to take.

  December 1979

  Pine Ridge

  “How long is it going to take?” a four-year-old Kane wanted to know as Jack helped Kathleen in the truck.

  “Yeah. How long?” echoed his two-, almost three-year-old brother Jake. Kane curled his upper lip and shot his little brother a cold look.

  “Stop copying me.”

  “Make me,” Jake said stubbornly. One of them, Jack wasn’t sure who, instigated a pushing and shoving match in the back seat.

  “Boys!” Jack warned sternly, not in the mood for their spirited antics. Kathleen’s contractions had gone from five minutes apart to less than two in the span of a few hours. Taking the boys along wasn’t his first choice, but they hadn’t been able to get hold of Erin, and Brian had his hands full with the bar.

  “It shouldn’t take long,” Kathleen said, slightly breathless. “Your new brother or sister is in a bit of a hurry, it seems.”

  “I hope it’s not a girl,” Kane wished fervently.

  “No girls,” Jake agreed.

  “I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I want you both to be on your Sunday behavior.”

  “Like church?”

  “Exactly like church, except you can talk quietly and color. I’ve got brand new coloring books and crayons in my bag for you.”

  “The sixty-four count box?” Jake asked hopefully. “With the sharpener in the back?”

  “Yes.”

  Leave it to Kathleen to think ahead and prepare activity bags for the boys in case it came to this. He hadn’t given it a single thought until just then.

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “Stop copying me!”

  Jack was just about to reprimand them again when Kathleen put a hand on his arm. “Jack.”

  “What?” he snapped.

  “Hurry.”

  Jack pressed his foot to the floor, fishtailing his way along the frosty streets toward the hospital. Kathleen held on to the side while the boys whooped in glee in the backseat. At least they weren’t arguing anymore, though Jack didn’t miss the way they took advantage of the momentum around the corners to body slam each other.

  The ER was bursting with activity when they arrived. Jack helped Kathleen to the only available chair and told the boys to stay with her while he ran up to the receiving window.

  “My wife’s in labor,” Jack said hurriedly.

  “Not another one,” a square-jawed, gray-haired nurse muttered. “I hate full moons. Name?”

  Jack didn’t know what full moons had to do with anything, but he didn’t particularly care. In the forty-five minutes it had taken to collect the boys and get to the hospital, Kathleen’s contractions had become almost continuous.

  “Jack Callaghan.”

  The nurse rolled her eyes. “Your wife’s name, not yours.”

  “Kathleen. Callaghan. Kathleen Callaghan.”

  “When did the contractions start?”

  “About four hours ago.”

  “Did her water break?”

  Did it? Shite, he didn’t know. Kathleen said they had to go, so they went. “I – I don’t know.”

  Heaving a heavy sigh ripe with disdain, she handed him a clipboard. “Have a seat and fill this out.”

  “No, you don’t understand, she’s -—”

  “In labor. Yes, you’ve said.” Her mouth thinned into a tight line. “Childbirth is a marathon, Mr. Callaghan, not a sprint. Have a seat.”

  “But—-”

  “Have. A. Seat.”

  “Now look here,” Jack began, about to give Nurse BattleAxe a piece of his mind, but Kathleen beat him to it.

  “Jack!” she cried out, her voice ringing like fine crystal through the frenzied hum. “The baby is coming right now!”

  That got the beefy nurse up off her ass. She stood and peered out through the sliding glass windows. She took one look at Kathleen and her eyes widened before she started shouting out commands with the authority of a commanding officer.

  “I need an orderly, stat!”

  Like magic, a harried-looking orderly appeared with a wheelchair.

  “Get this woman up to OB.” The nurse tossed Jack a dirty look as if he had been the one stalling. “Why didn’t you say she was so far along?”

  Jack clenched his jaw and swallowed his response, concentrating instead on getting Kathleen out of the waiting room chair and into the wheelchair. Kathleen grabbed on to him and gripped his hand hard enough to crush a few of the smaller bones. He winced when he realized how much pain she must have been in to produce that level of strength.

  She was forced to break the contact when they turned the corner. The orderly pushed ahead toward the elevators, where they all crammed in. The muted Muzak piped into the car was at odds with Kathleen’s heavy breathing and sense of urgency.

  “I love you, baby,” he said, brushing a kiss across Kathleen’s forehead.

  “I love you, too,” she panted, “but I also kind of hate you right now.”

  Jack chuckled with nervous anticipation. She didn’t mean it. He hoped.

  The moment the doors opened on the fourth floor, the orderly took off like a shot. A short, motherly-looking nurse in scrubs appeared out of nowhere and
kept them from following.

  “I’m sorry,” she told them, “but no children are allowed in the birthing rooms. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to the waiting room.”

  “But what about Mom?” Jake was looking down the hallway where Kathleen disappeared from sight.

  “Your mom is going to be pretty busy for a while, and she’ll want to know you’re safe and comfortable. We’ll take good care of her, I promise.”

  Jack nodded, thankful that this nurse was far more pleasant than the Guardian of the ER. He couldn’t help but be disappointed, though. He’d wanted to be there for the birth of his third child, but he couldn’t leave the boys.

  They settled into the waiting room, more than half-filled with similarly anxious fathers-, siblings, and grandparents-to-be.

  “Why did Mommy say she hates you?” Kane asked as Jack handed him a Big Machines coloring book. The older woman across from them smirked; the guy to the left of him chuckled and tried to cover it up with a cough.

  “Having a baby can hurt a lot, and hurting a lot can make people say things they don’t really mean.”

  “But why is she mad at you?” Jake asked.

  Kane shot him a suffering look. “Because Dad’s the one who put the baby in her, stupid.”

  “I’m not stupid!” Jake protested, then turned to Jack. “How did you do that, Dad?”

  Jack heard a few more chuckles. “Oh, look. A combine. Are you going to color it green for John Deere or red for Case?”

  Thankfully, the distraction worked. Someday he was going to have a talk with his boys about the birds and bees, but it wasn’t going to be today. He wondered vaguely how Kane had known as much as he had. Kathleen must have given him the pre-school Cliff Notes version without going into specifics.

  It was less than an hour later when a man in blue scrubs entered the packed waiting room and called his name.

  “Mr. Callaghan?”

  Jack stood and looked into the twinkling brown eyes of a man he didn’t know. By the looks of the surgical scrubs and cap he wore, he was a doctor, but not one Jack was familiar with. He would have remembered this guy. Young. Chiseled features. Too damn pretty. Everything about him rubbed Jack the wrong way.

  “Here.”

  “Congratulations, Mr. Callaghan,” the guy said with a smile worthy of toothpaste commercial. “You have a son.”

  Seated on the floor in front of him, Kane and Jake high-fived. “Told you it was going to be a boy.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did so.”

  Jack narrowed his eyes and fixed them on the doc. “I’m sorry. You are?”

  The man laughed and extended his hand. “Dr. John Christman. I’m assisting Kathleen’s regular OB tonight.”

  Jack took his hand, registering the soft, uncalloused hands. The thought of those hands on his wife didn’t sit well, doctor or not.

  “Your wife is an amazing woman, Mr. Callaghan,” Prettyboy said with a smile. “Made my job a piece of cake. Obviously not your first,” he said, looking at the two black-haired, blue-eyed boys flanking Jack’s legs.

  “Third. How is she?”

  “Excellent. I wish all of my patients were as cooperative,” he chuckled.

  It was an effort to refrain from wiping that smile right off the guy’s face. “Can we see her?”

  “Soon. We’re trying to find a room for her now. As you can tell, a lot of little ones decided tonight was the night. It happens every time there’s a full moon.” The doc reached down and ruffled Kane’s hair. Kane scowled back at him, making Jack proud. “In the meantime, I hear they’re serving chocolate ice cream in the cafeteria tonight.”

  “Chocolate ice cream!” Jake repeated excitedly after the doctor made his exit. “Can we get some, Dad?”

  The last thing he felt like doing at that moment was navigating the crowded cafeteria. He wanted to see Kathleen, to see for himself that everything was all right. He wanted to hold her hand and kiss her lips and tell her how much he loved her. He wanted to hold his newborn son, count his fingers and toes. But he also knew from prior experience that it would take time for the doctors and nurses to check out the baby and clean him up; the same went for Kathleen. None of that mattered to him, he’d seen far worse, but since he had the boys with him, he would force himself to be patient.

  “Sure. Maybe we’ll even pick up a little extra for your mom. I’d say she’s earned it.”

  It took much longer than expected, but Jack, Kane, and Jake were eventually directed to a semi-private room. Kathleen was sitting up in bed, looking tired but radiant and holding a swaddled bundle in her arms.

  Her eyes met his, and he swore that in that moment, he fell in love with her all over again.

  “Come on in,” she said softly, “and meet your little brother.”

  Jack lifted both Kane and Jake onto the chair beside the bed so they could peek over the railing.

  “Yep, he’s a Callaghan,” Kane said.

  Jack leaned over and took in the black hair and bright blue eyes. He looked just like Kane and Jake had, though maybe not quite as big at only nine pounds, eight ounces.

  “What are we going to name him?” Jake asked.

  “Ian,” Kathleen said with a smile. “Ian Patrick Callaghan.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  September 2015

  Pine Ridge

  “Everything okay, Dad?” his third-born son asked, breaking into his reverie.

  “Aye. I was just thinking about the day you were born.” His lips curled at the memory. “I’ve never seen your mother come so close to thumping another woman as she did that bubble-headed nurse.”

  Michael laughed at that. “I’d forgotten about that. She messed up the birth certificates, didn’t she?”

  “Aye. Your mother and I wanted to name you Ian, after your great-grandfather. But things were chaotic that night, and the overworked lass got the names mixed up. You became Michael Patrick Callaghan, and the woman down the hall took home Ian Constantine Delvecchio. Sure enough, Michael is a fine name,” Jack continued. “But Erin had already claimed it for her firstborn.”

  “It did make for some awkward moments during family get-togethers,” Michael grinned.

  “Aye, it did at that.”

  “Why didn’t you have it changed?”

  “Ach. A tangle of red tape. Plus your mother said you didn’t really look much like an Ian anyway,” Jack laughed. He tried to picture Michael as an Ian and it just didn’t work. “She was right about that. So. Why have you sought me out?”

  Michael shrugged. “Do I need a reason?”

  “No, I suppose not,” Jack said carefully. “But knowing you, you have one.”

  “Yeah, okay. I thought you might like to do something today, away from here.”

  Jack turned his gaze back to the fields below. He did want to get away. The farm was beautiful and Maggie was bending over backwards to accommodate him and make him feel welcome, but this feeling of being dependent upon others weighed heavily. He hated the post-bypass restriction of not being able to drive for six weeks, and that he couldn’t come and go as he pleased.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I thought I’d leave that up to you.”

  Jack didn’t hesitate. “I want to go to the Pub.”

  Michael grinned. “Thought you might.”

  Good man, Michael.

  Before long they were on their way into Pine Ridge proper. When they arrived at the Pub, Michael pulled around and stopped in front of the back door, but made no move to get out of the car.

  “You’re not coming?” Jack asked.

  “No. I’ve got some stuff to do at the hospital. I’ll be back for you in a few hours. Only once up and down the steps, and slowly. Doctor’s orders. And if that isn’t enough incentive,” Michael smirked, “I’m telling Maggie.”

  Jack acknowledged Michael’s gift with a nod. That was the difference between men and women, or at least one of the many. Much of a man’s sense of d
ignity came from doing things for himself. When he had to depend on others, he felt like less of a man. Kathleen used to say that kind of thinking came from a lingering strand of cavemen DNA, and maybe she was right. He’d been raised by a generation where gender roles were far more rigid than they were today; his parents’, even more so.

  It didn’t matter. Outdated or not, he had definite ideas on what made a man a man. Honor. Pride. Strength. Courage. Self-reliance. When things got tough, a man pulled himself up by his bootstraps and did what he needed to do. He provided for his family, even if it meant selling a part of his soul to do it.

  December 1982

  Pine Ridge

  Jack sat at the kitchen table, wolfing down a sandwich before he opened the Pub for business. In a rare moment, seven-year-old Kane and five-year-old Jake were actually getting along, laughing together as they built and destroyed towers of painted wooden blocks and Legos on the floor. Three-year-old Michael sat nearby with a stack of pop-up books, glancing up every now and then to check out their progress. And one-year-old Ian made a game of snatching blocks away from his older brothers and cackling wickedly before flinging them back at their heads. Each time he did, one of the older boys would reach out and knock him over, but it didn’t stop him. He’d pretend to pout for a minute or two, then approach from a different angle.

  Their physical resemblance was striking; all were big for their age, with jet black hair and bright blue eyes. There was no doubt they were his sons; each was a slightly different image of him at those ages.

  Personality-wise, however, they were quite different. Kane was quiet and intense. Jake was intense, too, but tended to be a bit more tactful to get what he wanted. Michael was studious, preferring puzzles and books to trucks and cap guns. And Ian, well, Ian was what his grandmother would have gleefully called a “mischievous imp”. His primary source of amusement was anything that annoyed his older brothers.

  Jack took a moment to appreciate the scene. He had a beautiful, loving wife, and four happy, healthy sons with another child on the way. He couldn’t have asked for anything more.

  Except possibly a bit more money in their bank account. Celebrating two birthdays and Christmas in one month left them more strapped than usual.