Now she was shaking her head. “I don’t see what you’re trying to achieve, Shane. Is this about Brady?”
“No. This is about you seeing that our relationship was real, Thorne. You were not just a means to an end …”
She pushed him away in a flare of anger. “If our relationship was real, I don’t understand why you just disappeared! If I meant anything to you, you would have stayed with me!”
He uttered a sigh of regret. “You did mean a lot to me, but I was still just a twenty-three-year-old idiot who kept telling himself that the job came first. An idiot who was afraid he’d look like a sissy, an unprofessional cop if he imagined himself to be in love.”
“That’s not an excuse, nor is it an apology,” she murmured, sounding hurt.
“No, it isn’t. I know.” Shane stepped closer again. “I should not have lied to you, Thorne. I’m sorry. You probably won’t believe me when I tell you that it was damn hard for me to not be honest with you. More than once, I wanted to throw it all overboard and kick my boss’s ass over his stupid methods. But I kept playing along, telling myself over and over again that it was my duty, that I was doing it for my department and for the case.”
She looked at him in silence for a long time, before whispering, “I was so in love with you. And then I had to wake up and realize that everything was just deceit and illusion. You don’t know what that feels like.”
His stomach lurched painfully. He put a trembling hand to her cheek. “Every kiss I gave you and every gesture of love was real. I shouldn’t have vanished and left you alone—and by no means should I have hurt you the way I did. But I do not regret that we were together.”
“You don’t regret it because Brady wouldn’t exist otherwise, right?”
He put his other hand to her other cheek, as well, holding her face very gently. “I love our son,” he murmured, “but he’s got nothing to do with what I feel for you. If you let me, I’m going to prove it to you.”
“Shane …”
“I won’t ever make a mistake like that again, Thorne.” He inhaled deeply and went for broke. “The next time I ask you to marry me you’re going to be absolutely sure that I mean it.”
She didn’t answer, just gave him that unreadable look of hers, and was silent for so long that Shane thought he would go crazy. He was afraid he was about to get the worst and most devastating rebuff of his life. The thought of Thorne kicking him out of her life now was unbearable. They had a son now, but he also wanted to be with the woman he loved.
He wanted everything.
“I should really throw you out,” she whispered, tears apparent in her voice.
“But?” he wanted to know with a lump in his throat.
“But I have a tiny problem.” She sighed, shivering in her bathrobe, and then put her arms around his neck. His heart started to race.
His tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he managed to murmur, “A problem?”
“Mm-hm.” She nodded, and her gaze softened. “Unfortunately, I have a weakness for stubborn, hotheaded, cocky men with light brown eyes. I just can’t refuse them anything.”
The relief he felt at her playful words made him gasp for air. “You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear that!” He kissed her gently on the lips. “Can I take you home now? So we can have dinner with our son?”
“Why don’t we let Aidan do his avuncular duty for another while, and you stay right here?”
He smiled and pressed his forehead against hers. “Is that even a word? And what’s for dinner?”
“Nothing,” she whispered honestly. “But I am naked underneath this robe, and I’m sure I have another bag of chips hidden somewhere.”
“That sounds like a perfect plan,” he moaned, and kissed her.
Epilogue
“I’m a woman, and women should not be forced to carry heavy boxes, ever,” Kayleigh complained, loudly, so her good-for-nothing brother could hear it in the adjacent room, where he was assembling a cabinet while whistling a lively tune.
She cleared her throat. “Everything used to be better, because men were gentlemen, and they wouldn’t have allowed a woman to carry anything heavy!”
“I can hear you, Kayleigh,” Shane answered cheerfully, having the nerve to laugh at her. “Could you please bring me my toolbox already?”
“Do you have any idea what this thing weighs?”
“Don’t start acting like a girl now, sis,” Kyle’s voice came from behind her.
Kayleigh turned around quickly and glared at her younger brother, who was carrying yet another moving box into the room. “I am a girl!”
Right behind Kyle came Ryan, who pushed his twin forward and snorted. “Funny joke, Kayleigh. You’re about as girly as the Incredible Hulk.”
She was used to that kind of comment from her brothers and no longer took offense at being compared to lab experiments gone wrong. In a way, she even enjoyed her special place within the family as the only girl, who’d been henpecking the boys from the time she could talk. While Heath, Shane, Kyle, and Ryan had often had punishments rained down upon them, her parents had always been more indulgent with her antics. It sometimes paid off to be the only girl among four rowdy boys. That she had often been the rowdiest of them all was an open secret.
Another advantage of growing up with four brothers was that she had learned to stand her ground from an early age. No boy had ever been her match when it came to climbing a tree, no classmate had been more proficient with the slingshot, and later, no date had ever copped a feel without her consent. Her right hook was not the only legendary weapon she possessed, for she could also easily talk a person’s ear off.
And in the current situation, she felt it was time to assert her place again. She yanked on Ryan’s ear. “I’d be careful if I were you,” she said darkly, “because I might turn into the green guy any moment.”
“Ouch! Kayleigh, let go of my ear!”
“Kayleigh,” Shane’s authoritarian voice came from the other room. “I need that toolbox now. Hurry!”
Her next sound bite was already on her lips when Brady stuck his cute face in the door. “Aunt Kayleigh? Can I help you carry that?”
“No, sir.” She shook her head with a smile. “That’s Uncle Ryan’s job.”
“Okay.” The light brown eyes of the six-year-old gazed expectantly at Ryan, who groaned in protest but picked up the toolbox and hefted it over to the adjacent room, running a hand through Brady’s hair in passing.
When the little boy winked at her conspiratorially, she could hardly keep from laughing out loud.
Even after half a year, Brady and his gap-toothed grin made her smile every time she saw him. She had taken her nephew to her heart immediately and could have cuddled him constantly, if he’d let her. It had taken a while for her anger with Shane to subside, for, after all, the family could have gotten to know Brady and Thorne years ago. Her brother was a damn idiot, and he was lucky he’d gotten his act together before it was too late.
During the last six months, her brother had worked hard at proving to his leading lady how happy she made him. Kayleigh and her other brothers had gleefully watched Shane put in so much effort for a woman. Before, they had been used to a Shane who didn’t even have to hit on women to get their phone numbers. It had been curious at first to suddenly see him plan romantic dates and family vacations. But he had never looked this happy before.
Her brother was really a lucky bastard, because the woman he’d screwed over so badly had not only forgiven him, but had also recently agreed to marry him. And he couldn’t seem to wait—he’d gone and bought a house with a nice big yard, and he and Thorne and Brady were moving in. They weren’t getting married until the following week, but they’d been engaged—or re-engaged, as the case might be—for only two months, and since Shane paid a great deal of attention to making sure Thorne did not carry anything heavier than a box of tissues, Kayleigh assumed a baby was on the way.
She secretly hoped it wo
uld be a girl, because she felt Thorne was already heavily burdened with two stubborn Fitzpatrick men. And Kayleigh knew what she was talking about, because she had four such specimens for brothers.
The brother came barreling into the future living room just then and set down the TV set he’d been carrying.
“If I had known my brother was going to end up living practically next door, I would have moved to a different city,” he grumbled, shaking his head.
“I can hear you,” Shane called good-humoredly.
“You were supposed to hear me,” Heath hollered back with a frown. “I can already see you knocking on my door every other day to borrow milk or eggs.”
“Hey, don’t waste your breath fighting.” Kayleigh patted Heath’s shoulder. “The truck is still full of boxes that need to be brought inside.”
“I’m always amazed at your concern for our well-being,” Heath jeered, giving her an affectionate shove.
She answered it with a theatrical sigh and threw Kyle a glance over her shoulder. “Hey, Kyle, have I told you about my latest case yet? This patient was brought in with a disgusting abscess. I think he had the most rapidly growing anal fistula I have ever seen in my life.”
Heath’s face first turned gray and then green, but his youngest brother was immediately beaming with morbid curiosity.
“Did the fistula secrete? Did you conduct a rectoscopy?”
“Stop!” Heath interrupted. “If you don’t want me to puke all over the TV, you need to stop right now.”
“Same goes for me,” Ryan called from the other room. “You’re both hopelessly perverted, getting off on stories about anal fistulas! You should get yourselves checked for brain problems.”
Right then, Shane stuck his head in the door, looking like an older version of his son with his tousled hair. He glanced at the chaos in the room with a skeptical expression. “Come on, don’t fall asleep, people. We want to sit on the sofa and watch TV in here tonight.”
“I’m sorry, but I refuse to lift another hand until Kayleigh stops telling her awful, abnormal stories.”
Kayleigh crossed her arms in front of her chest, not the least bit intimidated, as Kyle stepped into the living room and shook his head. “Abnormal? All of this is completely normal. Human nature, you know?”
“It’s not normal to enjoy talking about blood, phlegm, and God knows what else,” Ryan insisted. “You really should start acting more like a girl, and then maybe you be able to find a date for Shane’s wedding.”
“I don’t need a date,” she stated belligerently. “Instead of having boring conversations with some idiot I just met, I’m going to sit next to your date and show her photos of my fistula patient. And then we’ll see how much she really likes you.”
Kyle laughed out loud. “I’ll pay for your dress and give you a hundred bucks to do that, Kayleigh!”
Ryan didn’t think it was quite as funny. “Yeah, but the last laugh is on me!” he lashed out at his twin. “Kennedy Miller agreed to be my date for the wedding, but you’re still flying solo, as far as I know.”
“If Kayleigh takes the challenge, I wager you’ll be solo again in no time, too,” Heath commented dryly.
Kayleigh gave her oldest brother a sugary smile. “I have the photographs with me now, if you want to see them.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Kayleigh …”
With an exhausted groan, Ryan flopped down in an overstuffed chair that was standing against the far wall. “Kyle and Kayleigh aren’t going to find dates for the wedding anyway. And then they’ll end up at the children’s table, and we’ll have to worry about what outlandish stories they’re telling the kids.”
Thorne entered the room with two trays full of sandwiches and cleared her throat amusedly. “Children’s table? Dates? Disgusting stories? It seems I’ve missed an interesting discussion again.”
Shane hastened to take the trays from her hands, which confirmed Kayleigh’s suspicion that yet another Fitzpatrick baby was on the way. She remained silent, however, wanting to leave it to the two of them to decide when to reveal the big secret.
Instead, she reached out and grabbed the first sandwich, taking a large bite and explaining to her future sister-in-law, “All I did was tell them a harmless story from the hospital. These guys are such sissies.”
“I see.” Thorne smiled and let Shane kiss her briefly before she handed Brady a sandwich in passing, as the boy ran across the room. “And who still needs a date for the wedding now?”
“Nobody.” Kyle winked. “I assume there’ll be some hot bridesmaids?”
Kayleigh chewed her sandwich with obvious relish. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Kyle,” she warned with her mouth full. “Think of the Holy Mother Church.”
“You’re one to talk,” her brother shot back, narrowing his eyes at her. “Didn’t you once wear a t-shirt to mass that said Jesus was gay?”
She shrugged. “So? That was teenage protest.”
“You were twenty-two,” Shane reminded her with a laugh.
“I was a late bloomer,” she said good-naturedly, taking another bite.
“Oh, I see.” Thorne giggled. “I can see the chaos already.”
“Nonsense.” Kyle rolled his eyes. “So, back to those bridesmaids … And I don’t mean my weird spinster sister over there.”
“Thanks a lot,” Kayleigh muttered, only restraining herself because Brady was in the room. Otherwise she’d have had some choice words for Kyle.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, Kyle.” The woman responsible for the broad grin Shane had been wearing for months now wrapped an arm around her soon-to-be husband’s waist and smirked. “We only have one best man and a best woman—my brother and your wonderfully weird sister.”
“I take back everything I said then,” Kyle groaned. “There will be chaos! And mayhem, too. After your wedding, you’ll see why my sister can’t get a date.”
Kayleigh swallowed the last bite of her sandwich, glared at her brother with a determined expression, and growled, “If I wanted a date, I could get one easily.”
“Says who?”
“Me.” She nodded at him. “You just wait and see.”
Also by Poppy J. Anderson
The heat is on (Boston 5 Book 1)
When Hayden's fiancé breaks off their engagement, her whole world falls apart. After all, she has loved Heath Fitzpatrick since they were children. Though she can hardly believe he really wants the breakup, she picks up the pieces of her life and tries to accept the new situation.
But her efforts are thwarted time and again by the rest of the Fitzpatrick clan, who have always been part of her life—and who are notorious for being outspoken, persistent, and downright meddlesome. None of Heath's siblings are above adding their own two cents. Or twenty.
Even Heath himself, a daring firefighter, seems to be having trouble adjusting to his new single life. So how in the world is Hayden supposed to move on, forget the plans they made for the future, and get Heath off her mind? And even more difficult—she'll need to banish him from her heart, forever.
More than a feeling (Boston 5 Book 3)
As the only girl in a family with four brothers, Kayleigh Fitzpatrick learned to assert herself at a young age. She had to, if she didn't want to end up tied to the stake. These days, she stands her ground as a physician in a chaotic emergency room. She knows how to deal with all kinds of emergencies, even rioting patients that try to attack helpless nurses.
As the unmarried daughter of a Catholic mother however, she is sick of listening to the continuing admonitions to start looking for a husband and make babies. Kayleigh knows that her take-charge, tomboyish attitude and her hot temper tend to frighten off most men anyway, and she doesn't want to change for anyone, because she simply likes herself the way she is.
The only thing she needs right now is a date for her brother Shane's wedding. She bragged in front of all her brothers that she wouldn't have a problem finding a companion for this special occa
sion. When her plan doesn't quite work out and she can already hear the jeers and mockery of her merciless siblings, help arrives from someone she did not have on her radar at all.
All tied up (Boston 5 Book 4)
Ryan Fitzpatrick may come from a family in which he’d feel his mother’s wooden spoon if he declared that a woman’s place is in the kitchen, or that she should defer to her man, but he still goes for the type of girl that wouldn’t think of curbing his freedom, telling him what to do, or making demands. If he were to commit to any woman, she wouldn’t be complicated, let alone pigheaded or irascible—he doesn’t want to end up with a woman like his sister, whose loudmouthed temper is enough to drive a man crazy.
But by some embarrassing twist of fate, he meets Jordan Esposito, a woman even more domineering and hotheaded than his sister. And Jordan is responsible for Ryan’s absolute and total humiliation.
Luckily, he has sworn never to go out with obstinate, complicated, maddening women. But would it really be so bad if he made an exception just this once?
Let’s kiss and make up
Going back to the little Texas town where she grew up seems like the perfect plan for Kate. After catching her fiancé in flagrante with their neighbor, she only wants to put distance between herself and her life in L.A.’s bustling chaos. The fact that her grandmother bakes the best cakes in the world is only further incentive to return to Hailsboro for some tender loving care.
But as soon as she arrives, she finds herself at the center of the small town’s rumor mill as a host of gossips assume she's flirting with the high school football coach, Hugh Lindsay. Of all people! Her childhood best friend, who was not only her first kiss, but also her first for other things … including her first heartbreak.
Kate soon discovers that first love is like a cake recipe. It doesn’t always work out on the first attempt, but the second time around, it has the potential to be delicious.
Blast From The Past (The Boston Five Series #2) Page 18
