“Yes.” She glared at her brother. “If you must know, which you really don’t, I am dating Samuel.”
Samuel the goon cocked an eyebrow at Claire. “It’s more than dating. You know it.”
Claire seemed to have trouble breathing for a minute as her gaze locked with his.
Heather gasped. “It’s the family curse. I’ll get my wedding dress dry-cleaned. You’ll be needing it.”
Matt shot his mother a look that said “what the hell, woman?” before returning his attention to Grunt. Jena didn’t think the atmosphere in the room could get any tenser. But it did.
“What games are you playing?” Matt said. “I won’t let you, or Frank, use my sister to get to Jena.”
Claire’s jaw dropped as she turned to the goon. “You know Jena? How do you know Jena?” Her face paled the minute realisation struck. “Are you one of those no-neck guys that’s hunting Jena for the mob?” She sucked in a loud, dramatic breath. “You’re with the mob. You lied to me.”
The muscles in Samuel’s shoulders clenched. “Baby, I am not, nor will I ever be, with the mob. I’m exactly what I told you I am. Ex-marine. Current security guy. Nothing more. What you see is what you get. And you get all of it, babe. What we have together has nothing to do with Jena.”
“Semantics.” Matt pointed at Samuel. “Mob or not, you’re here with Frank Di Marco. Jena’s ex is with the mob.”
“Frank is not mob. Frank wants to be mob. Big difference,” Samuel informed Matt.
Matt released his grip on Jena’s dress and took a step towards the goon. Instead of running, like any sane woman would have done, Jena wound her hand into his T-shirt in an attempt to hold him back. Matt vibrated with rage. “Keep away from my sister.”
“Not going to happen.”
Matt glared at Claire. “Keep away from him.”
“Not going to happen,” Grunt answered before Claire could open her mouth.
“I’m warning you,” Matt said. He strode towards Grunt, dragging Jena behind him.
“Help me, somebody,” Jena said as her heels slid over the kitchen floor.
“Hit him and I’ll never talk to you again,” Claire shouted as she tried to get out from behind Grunt.
“I’ll handle this, baby,” Grunt told her softly before growling at her brother. An honest to goodness growl. The kind rednecks and brown bears made.
“She’s too young for you and she doesn’t associate with criminals.”
“Who says I’m a criminal?”
“If you sleep with a dog, you catch its fleas.”
“Are you saying I had sex with Frank Di Marco?” Grunt looked ready to morph into the Hulk.
Three women shouted at the same time, “It’s just a saying.”
It would have been funny if the amount of testosterone in the room hadn’t sucked all the joy out of the house.
A door banged, and a minute later a grinning Megan barrelled into the kitchen. “What did I miss?” she demanded.
Everyone glared at her. She nodded with a chuckle. “Clash of the Titans. I get it. Carry on.” She turned to her mother. “Got any popcorn?”
Her mother looked between the two men. “I have chocolate cake.”
“Great.” Megan rubbed her hands together. “Dish it up. This is going to be better than watching wrestling. I bet a month’s worth of dishwashing that King Kong pulverises Don Don.” She grinned at everyone, her glee overflowing. “Any takers?”
“I’ll get the cake.” Heather sighed dramatically. “Might as well; looks like we won’t get to the roast I slaved over until these two are done hitting each other about the head. Take the fight outside, boys—we’ll watch through the window while we eat. We know how you men like to have an audience when you’re proving who’s got the biggest willy.”
The siblings gasped.
“Mum!” Claire covered her mouth with her hand.
“What?” Her mother held up her hands. “This is my house. This is the lovely meal that I cooked for my children and their friends. If it’s going to be ruined, I can say what I like. After all, it isn’t as though I have a lot to look forward to these days. What’s another ruined family afternoon? I guess it’s a bit much to hope that two grown men would set aside their differences for a couple of hours so I could take my mind off your father in hospital. We might as well have cake and watch them pummel each other.”
And just like that, the tension was sucked out of the room. Both men seemed torn between guilt and the need to hit something.
“That roast smells delicious,” Grunt said, earning a beaming smile from Claire. “Wouldn’t want to miss out.”
Matt ran a hand through his hair as he let out a heavy sigh. He pointed at his mother. “You are a master manipulator.” She curtsied. “Fine, we’ll eat.” He stared at Grunt. “We’ll pick this up later.”
Grunt grunted.
“Great, sit down in the dining room and we’ll get the food. Jena, you can help.”
Feeling slightly bewildered as to why she’d been singled out, Jena watched everyone else leave the kitchen.
“I’ve been married thirty-five years,” Heather told her as she pulled the roast from the oven. “If you want a healthy relationship with my son, never forget three things. Food will always triumph over any other need. When confronted with a wall of testosterone, nod as though you agree, then do what you had planned anyway. And if all else fails, resort to guilt. The men in this family can’t stand the thought of their women losing out, even if they’re the cause of it.”
“You know I’m not dating your son, right?”
Heather grinned knowingly. “I know. And given your track record, I’m hoping it will stay like that. In the meantime, you two share that nice little house of yours and see what happens. I would really like grandkids while I’m still young.”
Jena shook her head as she took the dish of potatoes she was handed. They smelled heavenly. Part of her wanted to stay in the kitchen and snack. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to eat with the tension-laden atmosphere in the dining room.
“Hurry up, Jena,” Matt’s mother shouted.
With a sigh, Jena took the food to the other room.
The tension in the dining room was painful. It was almost enough to put Jena off her food. Almost. As a woman who was fast running out of money, she wasn’t about to pass up a home-cooked meal—no matter how much indigestion she’d have to suffer afterwards. As she dug into her meat and mash, she eyed the family photos that filled the walls. There were hundreds of them, all in different frames. Some sitting a little lopsided on the wall. Seeing the evidence of a happy family life, proudly displayed, made Jena’s heart ache. She was pretty sure her mother didn’t even own one photo of her, let alone the hundreds the Donaldsons had.
“That’s our old dog, Roger.” Matt pointed to the photo she’d been staring at, breaking the deathly silence in the room. “He had a thing for Dad’s shoes. Used to bury them all over the garden. Dad had to go to work in his slippers or gumboots a couple of times because we couldn’t find his shoes.”
“I remember that.” Megan’s eyes lit up. “He used to pay us to dig the garden for his shoes. Fifty pence a pair, wasn’t it?”
“Aye.” Matt’s eyes twinkled. “We were robbed. You’d work all afternoon, find one pair of shoes and didn’t even make enough money for a bag of crisps.”
The twins laughed as Heather pointed to another photo. It showed her husband tied to a chair in the garden. He was gagged and blindfolded and surrounded by a group of boys all dressed as pirates.
“That was the time Matt, along with his cousins and their friends, decided to play pirates and ‘kidnap’ Bruce. When I called them in for lunch, they ran into the house and left him there, trussed up behind a bush at the bottom of the garden. By the time they’d finished eating, the game of pirates, along with their captive, was completely forgotten. It was hours before I noticed Bruce was missing and went looking for him.”
The siblings were laughing
hard now.
“That one”—Claire pointed at photo of her dad shouting and pointing on the sideline of a soccer game—“is the time dad got banned from the pitch after he objected to a foul against Flynn.”
Matt grinned. “It wasn’t so much the objection. It was the language he used when he shouted at the referee.”
Megan laughed. “What did he call him? A wee, hairy, bowlegged Sassenach with more intelligence in his balls than in his brain?”
“Aye, only with a few more swear words thrown in for good measure,” Heather said.
“Oh, remember that?” Megan pointed at another picture of their dad buried up to his neck on a sandy beach. She grinned at Jena. “That was taken just before we dug a hole beside his feet and tickled his toes until he promised to buy us all ice cream.”
“And look.” Claire smiled. “That’s him dancing with me at my ballet recital. I was five, and my partner, a whiny wee boy, backed out at the last minute.”
“Yeah,” Megan said. “Mum wanted Matt to step in, but he refused. Locked himself in his bedroom shouting something about ‘real men don’t dance’. Dad was great, though. He made up the steps as he went along and we couldn’t get him off the stage at the end.”
“No,” Claire said, looking wistful, “he liked the attention.”
“Madman,” Heather mumbled with a loving smile. “Always loved being the centre of things.”
Silence fell over the group. Jena watched as Grunt stroked the back of Claire’s hair as she tugged her sister into a hug. Without thinking too much about it, Jena reached under the table and squeezed Matt’s knee. He gave her a grateful smile.
“So.” Claire’s mum took a deep breath. A signal she was about to change the subject. Claire’s heart sank when her mother turned to her. “Tell us how you two met then,” she said with a smile.
Claire felt panic skitter up her spine. She licked her suddenly dry lips. It had been too much to hope that she’d make it through the afternoon without a grilling. As usual, her mum’s cooking was delicious and her sister was entertaining. She wished she could just spend the afternoon relaxing in the home she’d grown up in, looking at the family photos covering the dining room wall and slowly eating herself into a comatose state. Instead she had to deal with the third degree—and this was before she’d gotten to the chocolate cake.
“Well”—she glanced at Samuel—“we kind of ran into each other one night.”
“More like we ran into him,” Megan added helpfully.
Claire shot her a sharp frown. “That’s what I said—we ran into each other. But we weren’t able to talk much that night.”
“Or at all,” Megan muttered before stuffing her mouth full of mashed potato.
Claire glanced at Matt to see if he caught Megan’s words, and breathed in relief when it seemed he hadn’t.
“So.” She took a deep breath. “The following night, we were at the pub when in walked Samuel. He made a beeline right for us.”
Megan nodded. “You could say he swept her off her feet.”
Claire’s toe shot out and kicked her sister hard. Megan yelped before glaring at her. Claire ignored her and carried on talking.
“We got to chatting and discovered we had quite a bit in common.” Like their desire for Matt to never, ever find out about the accident. “Samuel asked me out, and we had our first date yesterday.”
She looked around the table gauging reactions to her story. Samuel seemed highly amused. Her mother was smiling widely. Jena seemed more concerned with her dinner. And Matt, Matt looked suspicious. He stared between her and Megan for a minute. She could see his brain working. She swallowed hard, willing herself to appear innocent and hoping Megan was doing the same. She breathed a sigh of relief when he suddenly relaxed and sat back in his chair. His smile was genuine. He suspected nothing. She almost high-fived her sister with the relief.
“So,” Matt said, “which one of you was driving when you accidentally ran over Grunt?”
“Megan,” Claire said without thinking. She yelped and slapped a hand over her mouth. She made wide eyes of apology at Megan as Matt’s jaw began to clench. He turned on Megan, who was frozen with a forkful of peas halfway to her open mouth.
“How did you know?” Megan looked horrified. “What gave it away? It was the ‘we ran into him’ comment, wasn’t it? Should have kept my big mouth shut.”
The muscle on the edge of Matt’s jaw began to throb. A clear sign he’d run out of patience. “You were in an accident and didn’t report it?” His words were carefully measured. A sure sign he was about to blow his top. He studied Grunt. “Were you injured?” He didn’t give Grunt time to answer before turning back to Megan. “Did you injure a man and neglect to call for help?”
“We took him to the doctor,” Claire said. By the look on Matt’s face, she wasn’t helping things. “He only had a little concussion. Didn’t you, Samuel?”
Samuel grunted. It may have been in agreement, but she wasn’t certain.
Matt let out a low growl in Megan’s direction. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you are in right now?”
Megan went white. Her arm snapped out. She pointed a finger about an inch from Claire’s nose. “She saw his penis, and it’s pierced.”
Claire gasped. “You saw it too.” She pointed back at her sister while she faced Matt. “She couldn’t stop staring at it, the pervert.”
Samuel groaned. Jena gasped. Matt turned slowly towards Claire’s date. “You flashed your penis at my sisters? You son of a…”
That was when he launched himself over Sunday lunch and straight at Samuel’s throat.
17
They were driving to Fort William. Matt’s mom was behind the wheel, fuming. Jena was riding shotgun and Matt was squeezed into the back seat of the tiny brown car. He held a bag of frozen peas to his swollen eye. His mom wouldn’t let him drive, or sit up front. “Get in the back,” were the only words Heather had spoken since she’d broken up the fight in her dining room, by tipping a bucket of water over Matt and Grunt.
Claire, Megan and an equally battered Grunt had decided to visit Matt’s father another day. Jena thought that was a wise decision.
“I really could have stayed in Invertary,” Jena said again. She still hoped they’d turn the car around and take her home. “I’m happy to stay with Lake and Kirsty while you visit with your dad.”
“For the last time,” Matt said. “Where I go, you go. I’m not convinced Grunt was there seeing Claire. I think he was trying to get to you. They’re up to something. I don’t like it, and until I figure it out, you get to stay by my side.”
“Yay me,” Jena said, and groaned.
“That boy was most certainly there for Claire,” Heather snapped. “You would have noticed that if you’d paid attention to the way he looked at her. He’s head over heels. You were just being an overbearing brother. I keep telling you, the girls have grown up—they need to be able to make their own choices. And you need to deal with them.”
Matt snorted. “There has to be at least ten years between Claire and Grunt. Plus he’s here with a mobster. You don’t need to be a cop to have alarm bells going off over this. What kind of big brother would I be if I didn’t look out for my little sisters?”
Heather let out a heavy sigh. “The point is, my darling, they aren’t little anymore. They have a right to make their own mistakes, the same as you have a right to make yours.”
“So we should sit back and do nothing while Claire makes the biggest mistake of her life?”
“I thought Samuel was a very nice boy,” Heather said. “Not much of a conversationalist, but he obviously adores Claire. Until I have proof to the contrary, I plan on giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
The car slowed and pulled over to the side of the road. Heather turned in her seat to face her son.
“Matt, honey, you have to deal with the fact the girls don’t need you the way they used to.” She put her hand on his knee and squeezed. “I know how
much it hurts. I know it leaves you feeling like you’ve lost your job. It’s horrible to think you’re not needed anymore. But they do need you, honey, just in a different way. If you want the girls to come to you when they’re in trouble, then you have to let them grow up.”
Matt sniffed, gave his mother a tight smile and sat back in the seat. “I don’t like it.”
“No, no parent does. And that’s essentially what you’ve been to them these past eight years. I don’t know what I would have done without you. If you hadn’t come back home when your dad was diagnosed, I would have been lost. But it’s time for you to find your own life now, son. Well past time.”
“That’s why I’m applying for jobs in the cities. I can put my degree in criminology to good use and concentrate on my career. I’m wasting my education here. Especially now I’m not needed.”
Heather let out a heavy sigh and muttered something that sounded very like, “Stupid men, they don’t have a clue about anything.”
Jena bit her lip, stared out the window at the landscape and pretended she didn’t completely agree.
The visit with his father went much as Matt had come to expect. Each day his dad drifted further away from them. Matt didn’t need the doctors to tell him they were nearing the end. A fool could see it wouldn’t be long. An even greater fool convinced himself a miracle would happen, that his father wouldn’t leave them, that his mother wouldn’t be alone. He scoffed. Yeah, he was that big of a fool.
“I’m sorry, Matt,” Jena said softly beside him.
They were standing in the hallway, watching his parents through the crack in the door. His mother sat on the bed beside the prone figure of his father. She combed her fingers through his hair as she talked to him. Her voice was the same soft, melodic tone he remembered as a child. The voice that brought peace when he was ill, or soothed after nightmares.
“He’s been here two years.” He took a sip of his coffee and cringed. Man, it was terrible. “Mum comes every day. She gave up her job so she could do this. She still works, freelance proofreading, and she does well. She says she’s really grateful for a job that fits around her life. She means him. Fits around him. Her husband.”
Calamity Jena Page 13
