Brothers

by Helena Newbury

  I went quiet for a long time. “I’ll think about it,” I said at last.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Stacey smile. As if she hadn’t liked the idea of me disappearing off to Langley for weeks.

  Roberta nodded, stood and smoothed down her skirt. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do, now?”

  “I might have a suggestion,” said Kian thoughtfully.

  “I figure there’s no hurry,” I told both of them. “I’ve had a lot of years of always doing something, always being on a mission. Right now, I want to just take some time.” And this time, I was sure I saw Stacey smile.

  As we walked Roberta out, I looked up at the tree in the hallway. It had lost a lot of twigs and small branches and the trunk was blackened in places, but it was starting to grow back, stronger than ever.

  * * *

  Annabelle

  I leaned over Carrick’s shoulder, raising my voice over the throb of the Harley’s engine. “We’re going to be late!”

  He shook his head, grinning. “Will you quit your worrying? We’ll be fine.”

  I settled back on the saddle. He was probably right but I was pretty sure it was a woman’s right to be anxious, on her way to her best friends’ wedding. Friends plural.

  “There they are,” Carrick muttered, and accelerated, threading his way through the traffic ahead.

  We’d come out to the freeway to guide the others in, because the little church wasn’t the easiest place to find. Mostly, though, I think Carrick had just wanted an excuse to get away from the orgy of estrogen that happens when two women are preparing for their wedding day in the same house on the same morning. You couldn’t move for dresses, flowers and women in momentary floods of tears.

  We saw Mac first. He cut across traffic to swing in next to us, drawing angry beeps. He winked and blew a kiss at a blonde in a big Mercedes SUV and I saw her blush and look away, then surreptitiously look back.

  Ox appeared next. There was a school bus in front of him and the kids were all glued to the rear window, awed by the muscled giant on his oversize bike. Then Hunter, sitting straight and tall as if he was riding a horse, the bike almost part of him.

  We formed up and Carrick led the way down the off-ramp and through the twisting, wooded streets towards the church. The trees broke the sun into gorgeous shafts of golden light: my bare arms would get a little blast of warmth as we passed through one of them, then refreshing cool as we plunged into shadow again. It was idyllic and I’d never seen Carrick so happy. With Bradan safe, his family back together and his demons laid to rest, it felt like he’d let go of a ton of baggage and all we had was a clear road ahead.

  Emily met us outside the church, already in her bridesmaid dress. “Hurry, hurry!” She pulled us inside and then together we pushed the men into a side room to get into their suits while she zipped me into my bridesmaid’s dress. “Where’s Stacey?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” she panted. The zipper had stuck and she was struggling to free it. “I can’t find Bradan, either.”

  That was weird. I’d gotten to know Stacey quite well recently: Carrick and I had been visiting Sean and Louise a few times a week and Stacey was always there, helping Bradan. She was normally super-reliable.

  The door suddenly opened and I yelped...but luckily, the zipper picked just that moment to come free and I was pretty much decent when Kian walked in. “Knock!” Emily told him. “What is it with you and not knocking?!”

  “Sorry,” said Kian. “Sean and Aedan are ready. Where’s Carrick?”

  Carrick, Mac, Hunter and Ox chose that moment to stroll out of the side room. My lungs filled, my hands suddenly going to my mouth. They all looked good but Carrick looked amazing! I’d never seen him in anything but a t-shirt or a leather cut before. With his broad chest stretching out the snow-white shirt and the flawless lines of his gray suit accentuating those wide shoulders and his narrow waist...I flushed and pulled him close. “You look like a badass freakin’ billionaire,” I hissed in his ear.

  Kian crossed his arms. “So how does a suit feel?” he asked.

  Carrick grinned, turning his arms this way and that, examining his cuffs. “You know what? Not as bad as I thought.”

  The other Hell’s Princes looked great too. Mac looked like some gentleman rogue about to tell some rich girl to stand and deliver. Hunter looked like a brooding lawman from some old west frontier town. And Ox—who’d had to get his suit specially tailored—looked like the doorman on the gates of hell.

  Kayley ran in, using both hands to lift the skirt of her dress so that she could sprint. “They’re coming! I just saw the car!”

  We all started hurrying down the hallway towards the church hall. “Has anyone seen my bouquet?” asked Kayley. “I can’t find it!”

  Emily nodded towards the storeroom we were just passing. “Stacey has them all lined up in here, with names and everything.” She pushed open the door—

  Bradan had Stacey pressed up against the wall, her head tilted back, his mouth covering hers. One hand was stroking her neatly-pinned hair, the other was gliding up her side...over her breast. Stacey let out a moan.

  The light from the hallway hit them and they broke the kiss, heads snapping round in shock. Stacey flushed when she saw us all standing there.

  “Time to go,” said Emily, fighting to keep her voice even. A massive grin was spreading across her face.

  Stacey fled past us, eyes on the floor. Bradan followed a second later, adjusting his tie. He looked more determined than embarrassed, as if he was counting the seconds until he could get her alone again.

  “Stacey and Bradan?!” I asked in disbelief as Kayley grabbed her bouquet.

  Emily giggled. “You didn’t wonder why she’s been spending so much time with him?” She looked at my blank face. “Oh God, I love your innocence. The rest of us have been wondering when it would happen.”

  “But she runs like fifty bakeries! She wears a suit! She’s all...controlly. And he’s—” I tried to think of the right words. Irish? Dark and brooding? A barely-reformed criminal? I looked at her helplessly.

  “And he’s an O’Harra,” said Emily. “Exactly.”

  * * *

  Sylvie

  Why am I so nervous? I’m never this nervous going into the ring. My heart felt as if it was going to hammer its way right out of my chest.

  And then a big, comforting hand curled around mine and gave it a squeeze. “For what it’s worth,” said Aedan’s dad, “he’ll be just as scared as you.”

  I looked across at him and grinned. On the far side of the car, Louise looked exactly like I felt: nervous and flighty and drunk on adrenaline. I was very, very glad Michael was here to give us away. With the cult in disarray, Kian was able to get a sympathetic DA to take a new look at his case, free of their interference, and the result had been an early parole. We’d all met him at the prison gates and watched as he took his first deep lungful of free air. That very evening, I’d asked him if, since neither my dad nor Louise’s were still with us, he’d walk us up the aisle. He’d been a rock of cool confidence amidst the chaos.

  He kept telling us to call him Michael but Louise and I were both still stuck on Mr. O’Harra. And in just a few minutes, it would be dad. Ulp.

  The double wedding had been something we’d settled on from the start. Sean had proposed to Louise the day after we all returned from the cult’s town, as soon as he’d bought a ring. Both of us were eager to do it and neither of us wanted to steal the other one’s thunder by being first.

  So we decided to both get married at once and spent the next few weeks browsing wedding dress websites together while Carrick and Stacey organized the bachelor and bachelorette parties, both in Vegas. The guys were tight-lipped about what happened on theirs but I’d seen evidence of one thing they got up to: a few days after they returned, I’d run into Bradan emerging from the bathroom, topless after his shower. As he walked away, I’d seen his back...and the tattoo of a shamrock t
hat now lay between his shoulder blades.

  The car pulled up. Outside, the photographer started clicking. I took a deep, shaky breath.

  Aedan’s dad squeezed my hand again. “You look beautiful,” he told us. His Irish accent was so much thicker than Aedan’s, every syllable like jagged black rock cleaved with an axe to reveal a shining silver core. “Both of you. My sons are lucky men. Now shall we do this?”

  I nodded. Adjusted my veil. And the three of us stepped from the car.

  * * *

  Louise

  I felt as if I was walking on clouds. It was a good thing Michael was there to hold onto because I was in danger of floating right off into the sky. I’d never felt such a mix of fear, excitement and fluttery joy. OK, I told myself firmly as we approached the doors of the church. It’s just a room full of people. Nothing to get all weird about.

  The doors opened and the opening bars of The Wedding March rose up to meet me. Immediately, any notion of staying calm went right out the window.

  It was a sea of faces, all grinning at us. Our joint bridesmaids: Emily, Annabelle, Stacey and Kayley. Carrick and Kian, the best men. Alec and Bradan, our ushers. Jasmine, Aedan’s friend from New York, and her boyfriend Ryan. Three bikers from Carrick’s MC. Jessica, Alec’s girlfriend. And too many more to count.

  And there, right at the front, two men in suits. They turned at the same moment and I caught my breath.

  From the very first moment I saw him in our old apartment building, Sean had always had a powerful effect on me. Just the sight of those smooth tan muscles, the shining black ink of his tattoos...so much badness, so much brooding power. I hadn’t been able to visualize at all how he’d look in a suit. Would it hide what he was?

  Not at all. If anything, the smart clothes just threw all that attitude and brute determination I loved so much into sharp relief. I couldn’t take my eyes off his shoulders, off the glorious X-shape of his back, waist and hips, all that barely-restrained power. Other men wore a suit and looked ready for the boardroom. Sean looked ready to smash the boardroom table in two. And with his tattoos and muscles hidden, all that intimidating resolve had to come out through his eyes, a burning gaze that told anyone they’d better think twice before messing with his family.

  Then his eyes met mine and the hardness in his eyes just melted, replaced by such an urgent, deep love that I felt my eyes grow hot. It was the same look he’d given me when he’d taken me into the garden, the day after we got back from the cult’s town. When he’d gone down on one knee, showed me the ring and asked me if I’d make him the happiest man alive.

  Do not cry, I told myself sternly. I risked a glance sideways at Sylvie. Oh God: she was looking at Aedan in the same way I’d just looked at Sean and I could see her eyes shining, too. I swallowed hard and faced front before she set me off.

  We moved slowly down the aisle. Walk slow, walk slow! If I hadn’t been clinging onto Michael’s hand, I would have raced down the church in huge strides, heels or no heels, I was so nervous. And then I was there, at the front, and Sean was beside me and Oh God it was real. I’m getting married!

  Everyone looked so amazing: we’d gone for light grey morning suits for the men and deep green for the bridesmaid’s dresses, with simple, matching ivory gowns for Sylvie and me. Kayley was beaming proudly, ecstatic. And Stacey was...wait, Stacey was biting her lip and flushing every time she glanced at Bradan. What did I miss? Did they finally…

  But there was no time to think about it. Everything moved so fast: the service seemed to whip by in a couple of seconds and suddenly we were at the vows. I managed to keep it together until the part where Sean repeated to have and to hold and then I gave a kind of jerk, a shudder, and had to blink back tears of pure happiness.

  When he slid the ring onto my finger I could feel it in a way I never expected to. It connected us: a bond that had started months before in a graffiti-covered elevator in a run-down apartment block. One that had been strengthened by everything we’d been through and was now unbreakable forever.

  “You may kiss your brides,” a distant voice said. And then Sean’s lips were coming down on mine. I could feel his hard abs press lightly against my belly. I was showing a little and Sean never got tired of touching me there, feeling the new life inside me. When he’d come back from the cult’s town, the trace of fear that had been in his eyes was gone. He was ready—eager—to be a father.

  And me? Weirdly, it was Sean’s dad, Michael, who’d finally helped me relax about motherhood. He’d found me pacing the house in the middle of the night, a few days ago, and taken me into the kitchen for some warm milk and a pep talk. “There’s just so much to do,” I’d told him. “Diapers and feedings and baths and burping and I’m meant to play it Beethoven to make it smarter and what if I get it wrong?”

  He regarded me, utterly calm. “You’ll be fine, Louise,” he said in that hard, silver-lined accent, so thick I struggled to understand it, at first. “You and Sean are strong together. That’s all that matters. Beyond that, it’s just about being organized.”

  I started to argue and then blinked. “Wait, what?” No one had said that to me before. I’d been thinking of a baby as some huge, nebulous that I couldn’t get a handle on. “I can do organized!”

  And I had. I’d already bought breast pumps and bottles, diapers and a changing mat. I’d learned about feeding schedules and we’d converted a room into a nursery. Sean and I had even done some practice diaper changes on one of Kayley’s old dolls. Once I had it all planned out in my head, it seemed a lot less intimidating. Not all of the fear went away but now it was firmly overshadowed by excitement. And what made me feel even better was that I had so many people willing to help me.

  Sean grudgingly broke the kiss and looked down at me with a look of devotion that nearly started me crying again. Next to me, Sylvie was in a similar state.

  Sean and I walked down the aisle hand in hand, Sylvie and Aedan right behind us. Outside, the photographer stopped us for just one photo before we left for the reception. All four couples in a line, each of us embracing.

  The photographer moved to take the shot but we shook our heads: not yet. Kian grabbed Bradan and pulled him and a blushing Stacey in as well.

  Sean sank his fingers deep into my hair and leaned down. And five Irish brothers kissed the women they loved.

  * * *

  THE END

  Thank you for reading my books.

  * * *

  The story of how hacker “Mary,” (Lily), met cowboy “Luke,” (Bull), is told in Texas Kissing. FBI agent Calahan also plays a role.

  * * *

  The story of how fellow hacker Gabriella was targeted for assassination by the Russian mob, and how she went on the run (and fell in love) with Alexei, the man sent to kill her, is told in Kissing My Killer.

  * * *

  FBI agent Kate Lydecker, briefly glimpsed in Central Park, is stranded in Alaska after a plane crash and must trust her life to a prisoner and former Navy SEAL in Alaska Wild.

  * * *

  Finally, if you missed one of the brothers’ stories and want to catch up, you can find them in:

  * * *

  Punching and Kissing (Aedan and Sylvie)

  Growing and Kissing (Sean and Louise)

  Saving Liberty (Kian and Emily)

  Outlaw’s Promise (Carrick, Annabelle, Mac, Hunter and Ox)

  Contact Me

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  Don’t be shy! :)

  Brothers