The seating arrangements at the Sunday dinner table had changed quite a bit in the preceding seven years. Before his dad, then chief of the local fire department, had died in a job-related accident eight years ago, there had been eight of them: his parents, his brother Heath and his fiancée Hayden, Shane, Kayleigh, and himself and his twin, Ryan.
Today, Heath and Hayden were married and the proud parents of seven-year-old Joey and her five-year-old sister, Kayla. He also suspected Hayden was expecting again, considering she hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol in weeks, not even a tiny glass of champagne to toast her husband’s promotion two weeks ago. The doctor in him knew the signs and assumed he would be an uncle again soon.
His remaining siblings had also done their best to provide him with nieces and nephews. His second oldest brother, Shane, and his wife, Thorne, had contributed two sons to the family. Brady was eleven and followed in his dad’s footsteps, already sure he would be a policeman someday, while four-year-old Connor preferred playing with his toy firetruck, which charmed his oldest uncle Heath, who was well on the way to becoming the next chief of the department. Thorne, on the other hand, had started taking college courses in law a year ago, which made the whole family terribly proud.
Thorne’s brother, Aidan, had become Kyle’s brother-in-law, by marrying the only Fitzpatrick girl, Kayleigh. They had twin toddlers, Ellie and Charlie, who were both spunky as could be. The two of them had given the entire family a good shake-up due to their being incredibly sly and mischievous. Since Kyle was a twin himself, and remembered a lot of the stuff he’d done with his brother, probably driving his parents insane, he felt a little sorry for his sister and his good-natured brother-in-law.
Right now, Ellie and Charlie seemed to be needing an exorcist just because their mother had spooned vegetables onto their plates. Their clamor would have given Kyle a migraine had he not been used to being surrounded by screaming children. Kyle’s twin, Ryan, and his girlfriend, Jordan, who worked on Heath’s squad at the firehouse, looked on.
Though Kayleigh also worked as a physician at the hospital and was no stranger to kids, she now leaned back with an exhausted expression and raised her hands in a gesture of resignation. “Your call, Aidan. You get them to eat their carrots. I’m done for today.”
While she made a face befitting her own beheading, her husband just uttered a gleeful laugh and paid no attention to the screeching twins, who were busy getting mashed potatoes in each other’s hair.
“You can’t give in, honey,” Aidan said. “You’re the one who wanted to have them, remember?”
Kayleigh shot her husband a look, wrinkled her nose, and grabbed a pointy fork from out of Ellie’s reach. “No offense, Aidan, but I expected us to have a pleasant girl like Joey, or a little ball of sunshine like Connor. Nobody prepared me for being the mother of twins bearing a striking resemblance to my own twin brothers from hell.”
Ellen Fitzpatrick cleared her throat loudly and echoed, “From hell?”
“No offense, Mom, but have you ever seen the movie The Omen? The script was based off Ryan and Kyle!”
Even though Kyle didn’t think his sister’s comparison was particularly flattering, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he watched his twin, Ryan, point at Kayleigh with his fork in a show of outrage, while munching on some peas. The fact that the fork held a bite of meatloaf as big as his fist only proved Ryan was a glutton, not that he was in league with the devil. Or so Kyle thought.
“The Omen?” Ryan repeated. “Excuse me, dear sister, but if anyone at this table could give Satan a run for his money, it’s you!”
His sister narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means a red cape and pitchfork would suit you just fine.”
“Pshh!”
“He’s right, you know,” Shane agreed, flashing a diabolical grin. “You shaved your dolls’ heads when you were in kindergarten …”
“And don’t forget her temper tantrums,” Heath threw in, cutting his food with professional calm. “We used to hide in the closet when she got going.”
“You’re not helping,” Kayleigh complained. “And I did not throw temper tantrums!”
Shane started coughing incredulously. “You used to scream so loud it worried the neighbors. The people from the Department of Children and Families came once!”
“That’s not true,” Kayleigh objected furiously. “Mom, would you say something! DCF never came to our house because of me! If they’d come, it would have been because Ryan and Kyle had lice several times in a row!”
“None of us had lice!” Ryan yelled, outraged, giving his girlfriend a sideways glance. She seemed to be following the altercation with interest.
“You did, too, Ryan! Mom shaved your heads twice in a row. You would’ve looked like Kojak if we’d put some seventies-style sunglasses on you!”
“Oh, is that why you did the exact same thing to your dolls?” Ryan screeched. “Like Kojak, very funny!”
“Please stop it.” Ellen Fitzpatrick sighed deeply. “It’s Sunday. You’re not setting a good example for the kids. But just to clarify: nobody from DCF ever came to our door, and you got the lice from playing with the Gallaghers. I put each of you in the tub every night,” Kyle’s mom insisted, her cheeks practically aflame. That her kids had brought home lice must have been a cause of massive shame for the woman whose house had always looked spotless and who continued to get an award for her apple pie at the church bazaar every single year.
Her daughter-in-law Thorne gave her a soothing look and then winked at the older woman. “Brady brought home lice three times in a row when he was in kindergarten. I felt I was an awful mother and worried my house was dangerously grubby, Ellen. It happens.”
“If we had lice, it was Kayleigh who gave them to us.” Ryan lifted his chin triumphantly. “Your hair was always matted, and you used to come home from the playground looking like Pigpen from Peanuts. Aidan, if I were you, I’d take a long, hard look at your wife’s childhood photos. It’ll be a miracle if you don’t run from the house screaming.”
Kyle watched Aidan grin and offer a piece of carrot to his daughter, who, mysteriously, accepted it and happily stuffed it into her little mouth.
Kayleigh, on the other hand, frowned grumpily. “If anyone kicks the devil from his throne in hell, it’s going to be Ryan. And just for the record, I never had lice.”
“Do you really have to keep invoking the devil on a Sunday? We were just in church an hour ago.” Ellen Fitzpatrick shook her head. “And I do not want to hear about lice while we’re eating. It spoils my appetite even worse than Kyle’s stories about his patients.”
Kyle threw his mom an amused glance. “Don’t provoke me, Mom. The day before yesterday, a guy who’d had a few too many beers was brought in. He thought he could repair the garbage disposal while drunk. From now on, his wife will have to open his beer cans for him, since–”
“No details!” Heath snapped, cringing. “I can imagine it far too clearly, no need to describe it further.”
Kyle shrugged and cut a potato in half. “I just wanted to enlighten you guys, in case one of you drinks a bit too much and thinks it’s a good idea to repair the garbage disposal. I’m sure Hayden would divorce you, Heath, if she suddenly had to open all the pickle jars.”
His sister-in-law winked at him. “Don’t forget changing the batteries for the remote,” she went on. “That would be difficult with only one hand. If Heath can’t watch his sports shows, he gets so grouchy.”
“Hey,” the man in question complained. “I do not get grouchy.”
“But you do, love.” Hayden sighed and gave him a quick once-over before turning to Kyle again. “I’d probably go on a killing spree if Heath actually tried to repair the garbage disposal drunk.”
“Good.” Kyle nodded. “Then you could finally divorce the grouchy guy and marry me instead. It’s about time!”
While Hayden laughed in genuine mirth, Heath reacted with a scowl an
d a typical Fitzpatrick gesture—raising his fist in a threatening manner.
Kyle gave him a wolfish grin. “No offense, dear brother, but your wife needs someone who knows how to appreciate her instead of demanding she change the batteries in the remote for him.”
“Is it just me, or did that sound like sexual innuendo?” Ryan chimed in cheerfully.
Heath put a possessive arm around his wife’s shoulder. “Rest assured I do know how to appreciate my wife, little brother.” For the benefit of everyone around the table he added, “At least four times a week, to be precise.”
“Heath, really!” Ellen Fitzpatrick shook her head and pointed at the children, who were sitting between their parents. “Not in front of the children, come on!”
Brady, who was sitting at the table with a forbidden smartphone, which Kyle identified as his twin brother’s, didn’t even look up as he told his grandmother in a worldly tone, “I don’t mind if you guys talk about sex, Grandma.”
For a moment, the table was completely quiet. Then Shane cleared his throat uncomfortably and asked his son, “How do you know what sex is, big guy?”
The boy, who was such a spitting image of his father it was almost creepy, raised a lazy eyebrow and replied casually, “I’m eleven, Dad.”
“I see.” The corners of Shane’s moth curled with amusement, and Kyle registered his own lips twitching and suppressed a chuckle as well. “That explains everything, of course.”
“Everyone at school knows what sex is. Ms. Miller told us all about it last year,” Brady continued, before holding up the phone in his hand. “Plus, Uncle Ryan has dirty pictures on his phone.”
Kyle choked on his last piece of carrot and burst out laughing in the general horror that ensued. “You were supposed to keep an eye on the scores,” Ryan scolded his nephew, “not go through my pictures!”
“I’d like to know exactly what kind of photos my son just found there,” Thorne cut in, her voice dangerously calm. Kyle glanced at his twin brother’s girlfriend, but Jordan didn’t look fazed.
“Oh, you do not want to know,” Ryan shot back with a groan, actually blushing violently.
“Yes, I think I do,” Thorne replied firmly.
Ellen Fitzpatrick was flustered. “Why do you keep dirty photographs on your phone, Ryan?”
“Why wouldn’t he, Mom?” Kayleigh couldn’t stop laughing. “He’s the guy who got caught chained to a bed with his own handcuffs, remember?”
“Kayleigh,” Ryan warned as she made a gleeful face in his direction. “Shut up.”
Aidan cleared his throat—visibly struggling not to burst out laughing as his wife had. “What exactly does Brady mean by ‘dirty pictures’?”
Ryan blushed even more violently than before, but Jordan couldn’t be unnerved. She answered in his stead, “When Ryan had that course in D.C. a month ago, he sent me a few nude photos of himself—and I replied in kind. That’s probably what Brady’s talking about.”
“Nude photographs?” Shane reached for the phone his son was still holding in his hand. “Let me see—”
“Shane!” Ellen snapped, holding out her hand. “Give me the phone now. I’m confiscating it.”
“Thank you, Mom.” Ryan glared at his older brother.
“You’ll get your phone back when everyone heads home,” Ellen stated with finality., taking the phone from Brady’s hand and putting it in the pocket of her cardigan. Then she rounded on Ryan and clucked her tongue in a disparaging manner. “And what makes you think you can give Brady your phone and tell him to check on football scores during dinner? You know phones are not allowed at the table—especially on a Sunday!”
“Why would he remember that when he couldn’t even think of the nude photos before handing his phone to an eleven-year-old?” Jordan rolled her eyes. Still, she didn’t seem bothered that little Brady had seen her in her birthday suit. “Did you send the photos to anyone?”
The boy shook his head but quickly broke eye contact. Kyle had to give it to his nephew, he was pretty cool for a boy his age. He imagined that his own head would have looked like a tomato ready to explode if he’d discovered nude pictures of his future aunt. “No, I didn’t.”
Jordan grinned as she stole a few beans from her boyfriend’s plate, before winking at Brady and stage-whispering, “You should have sent Uncle Ryan’s nudes to your phone, to blackmail him with.”
“I don’t have a phone yet,” Brady replied grumpily, throwing his parents an accusatory look. “Almost all of my friends have their own phones, but I don’t.”
Jordan clucked her tongue. “Well, you could have gotten one at last, if you’d been a little smarter about this whole thing.”
“Don’t give my son any ideas, Jordan. He’s not getting a phone.” Thorne rolled her eyes and turned to her husband. “And as for you, buster, stop showing so much curiosity in nude pictures of other women.”
“Oh, honey, come on, it’s all in the family.” Shane grinned and kissed his wife for a much longer period than the situation warranted, which led Brady to make loud retching sounds.
“Ewwww! Don’t start this again, you guys!”
“Mom, give me back my phone,” Ryan pleaded like a teenager, not the thirty-one-year-old he was. “I have this bet going, and I need to know—”
“If you don’t stop it this moment, Ryan Niall Fitzpatrick,” Ellen threatened with a scowl, “I’m going to shear your head like you have lice, so help me God.”
He fell silent immediately.
“If you’re not going to shave his head, Ellen, it would be awesome if you could show me a photo of him as a child with a bald head.” Completely unfazed, Jordan put another piece of meatloaf on her plate. “I’m dying to know what he looked like without hair. And if you decide to go looking for old photographs, I’d also love to see pictures of Ryan as a baby.”
“Isn’t it enough that you have to look at his nudies, Jordan?” Kayleigh groaned. “Ryan may be nice enough to look at when he’s wearing clothes, but with his head shaved … I’m not so sure.”
Kyle watched his twin brother squint and give his girlfriend a skeptical look. “Why do you want to look at my baby photos?”
She offered him a wide grin, attacked her fresh piece of meatloaf, and replied with her mouth full. “I want to know what our baby might look like, once we decide to get pregnant. I want to be prepared in case you were an ugly baby, like with a unibrow or something, so I don’t go into shock after giving birth. And you should know that I was a particularly cute baby.”
It seemed Jordan had decided to tease her boyfriend a little, because all those present were witness to Ryan becoming frighteningly pale and then shaking his head vehemently. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I don’t intend to go through hours of labor and then push out a child, only to end up with an infant who has more facial hair than I do.”
Kyle’s twin choked on something or other and started coughing, looking helpless and stunned. “What?”
Jordan cut her food into bite-sized portions and explained as calmly as if she were laying out the rules of soccer, “Since I’m thinking about getting pregnant soon, I’m wondering what the baby might look like. That’s a natural thing to do, you know.” Jordan turned to Ellen and asked eagerly, “So, what did Ryan look like as a baby?”
His mother couldn’t hide her amusement as Ryan gulped air like a fish on dry land.
“Oh, Ryan and Kyle were both absolutely adorable—and neither of them had any facial hair to speak of.”
“See, that’s reassuring.” Jordan gave a content nod.
Ryan cleared his throat with a croaking sound and finally seemed to find his voice again. “Did I miss something, Jordan? You want to get pregnant?”
Jordan shrugged a calculating shoulder. “Not right here and right now, but in the coming months, yes.”
Bewilderment was clearly written on Ryan’s face. “And you couldn’t tell me that in a slightly more … private setting? It had to
be at my mother’s dinner table, over her meatloaf?”
“Hey.” Jordan wrinkled her nose. “Don’t be such a nitpicker, Ryan.” There were sniggers from the audience for her brilliant word choice. “It’s your fault Brady saw nude pictures of us, so who are you to get upset about a harmless conversation on pregnancy?”
“Harmless?”
The fact that his girlfriend was planning offspring seemed to disconcert Ryan so much that he didn’t even complain when Heath emptied the rest of the delicious gravy on his own plate.
But Kyle didn’t want to witness his twin peeing his pants in sheer panic—and he was sure that was what was about to happen. So he rose and rapped the dining table with his knuckles. “I’m heading out, people. Kayleigh, I’m counting on you to take care of Ryan if he has a heart attack, okay?”
“Will do,” his sister promised cheerfully, simultaneously keeping her daughter from shoving a pea up her nose.
Kyle pressed a goodbye kiss to his mother’s cheek, but she rose from her seat and pointed toward the kitchen. “Wait. I have something for you, dear.”
“Don’t you dare give Kyle my phone, Mom,” Ryan called angrily from the table. “Jordan’s nude pictures are as off-limits for him as for anyone else!”
Kyle didn’t want to give his brother the finger in front of all the kids, so he just flashed a mean grin before following his mother into the kitchen, where she pressed a collection of Tupperware into his arms.
“What is this?”
She winked at him. “You’re on your way to visit the little boy in the hospital, aren’t you?”
He opened his mouth in confusion. “Yes, but—”
“No offense, honey, but I saw you pack up a few leftovers for him last week. I’m sure the boy would love to eat his meatloaf without it being squashed in a crumpled piece of aluminum foil.”
A Matter of Trust (The Boston Five Series #5) Page 2
