She also looked distracted. No, not that. She looked distraught, I realized with a twisting of my gut, knowing I’d put that look on her face. Before I could make out anything else about her, Lauren dropped her gaze to the phone in her hand, pressed a button, and then brought it to her ear. She shifted away and my own phone started ringing in my pocket. Not wanting to tear my eyes from the woman I loved, I rooted around in my pocket and, without looking to see who was calling, brought it to my ear.
“Hello.”
“Donal?”
My breath caught and then released in a gust of relief. She’d been calling me.
“Baby,” I breathed, fighting the urge to step forward and pull her into my arms.
With her back to me, I watched as her shoulders rose and fell with a shuddering sob. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t meant to leave like that.”
“It’s okay,” I said, my voice breaking. I clenched my jaw and took a deep breath in an effort to calm my emotions. “I understand.”
“I understand too, why you left and needed some time. I didn’t want to, but I do.” She let go of the handle of her bag and wrapped her arm around her waist, as if to hold herself together.
“I shouldn’t have left you. I never want to leave you again.”
Silence fell between us and I stepped closer. If she turned around now, I could reach out and touch her.
“I love you so much, Donal.” She let go then, let the full weight of her unhappiness loose, as her body rocked with the force of her tears. “I’m such a fool.”
I took a deep breath and blinked as a tear of my own slipped from my eye and trailed down my face. Instead of reaching out to her, slowly, I got down on my knees behind her. With one hand clutched around my phone in a vice grip, I reached into the inner pocket of my fleece with the other. “Lauren?”
“Yeah,” she said, and then took a deep breath of her own and swiped the back of her hand over her cheeks.
“Turn around, baby.”
“What—?”
“Turn around, Lauren.”
Slowly, as if time had ceased to function properly, I watched Lauren turn to face me. She sucked in a startled gasp when she saw me on my knees in front of her.
“Will you marry me, baby?” I asked, holding up the diamond ring I’d purchased earlier that afternoon.
But instead of saying yes as I’d hoped, Lauren’s face went white and she dropped her phone. When it clanged to the ground, time seemed to hurtle forward into overdrive and the loud, harsh sounds of the airport assaulted my ears. Dimly, I became aware of the crowd we’d attracted, but I was most aware of the fact that Lauren had placed her hands over her mouth and that her whole body was shaking.
The longer she took to speak, the more worried I became.
She’d been damaged after Javier had abandoned her, and I understood that, but I also needed her to know I’d never leave her side like he had. This morning, as I’d showered, I’d known in my heart that the only way to prove to Lauren that I wasn’t like her ex-boyfriend was to ask her to be my wife—and then to actually meet her at the altar. To pledge myself to her, in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, until death do us part. If she’d have me, I wanted to spend the rest of my life making her happy, and proving to her that love did last.
Now, as the seconds ticked by and the crowd began to titter amongst themselves about the horrible proposal they were witnessing, I wondered if maybe I’d overstepped my bounds, if once again I’d fallen back on bad habits and acted before thinking through the consequences of my actions.
But just as I was about to put away the ring and get to my feet, Lauren unleashed a flood of tears and dropped to her knees in front of me. Throwing her arms around me, she buried her face against the exposed skin of my throat and nodded her head up and down. And into the crook of my neck she whispered, “Yes. A thousand times yes.”
Chapter 15
D O N A L
I hated cigars, and yet here I was, smoking my third one of the week. I didn’t know how the tradition had begun, but there was something about weddings and cigars that seemed to go hand-in-hand. At least on the groom’s side.
Lauren had explained that for brides it was mimosas. She’d been drowning in them since the impromptu bridal shower her friends had thrown for her the weekend before.
Not that I was complaining. These cigars were proof that I’d pulled off the biggest upset of my life.
I’d married the girl.
I still couldn’t believe it.
It had been six months since I’d dropped to my knees in the airport and begged Lauren to marry me. Sometimes I still woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking it had all been a dream. When that happened, I’d roll over and pull her tight against me, and then breathe in her scent until the adrenaline rushing through my veins dissipated and my erratic heartbeat slowed to a steady pace.
“Here, you look like you’re going to be sick.” My dad passed me a cold bottle of beer, condensation snaking down its sides.
With one hand, I grabbed the bottle, and with the other, held the cigar away at an angle. “It’s these things. I hate the way they taste.”
He laughed and took it from me. Stubbing it out in an urn that sat on the wall that separated the patio from the beach, he turned back to me. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Everyone just keeps handing them to me. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started smoking them.”
“You could say, ‘no thanks.’”
“Yeah,” I chuckled. “Have you ever successfully told Uncle Sean no?”
He shielded his eyes and squinted into the distance, searching for his older brother somewhere out on the beach. It didn’t take long for my dad to find him. Not necessarily because Uncle Sean was easy to see, but because he was easy to hear.
“Point taken.”
“Anyhow,” he said, taking a puff of his cigar and blowing the smoke away from my face. “I’m sorry your ma couldn’t be here.”
Originally, we’d planned on getting married in the fall, but when Lauren was asked to compete on a reality TV cooking show that conflicted with our wedding date, we’d moved it As far as I was concerned, I would have married her at the courthouse the day we’d landed in L.A., but she’d wanted a wedding for her mom’s sake. Her mom, who was sitting at a round table directly under a heat lamp and grinning proudly. She had every reason to be—she’d raised a remarkable woman.
We’d known getting married on such short notice would mean some of our friends and family wouldn’t be able to make it, but I hadn’t thought my mom would be among them. If anything, I figured my dad and his girlfriend Stacia would be the ones to miss it. Then again, the wedding had been on the beach in front of his house, so maybe not so much.
“It’s okay,” I said with a shrug as I tried to keep my tone even.
It wasn’t, but what was the point of complaining now? I’d said my peace when I’d spoken to her the night before. Personally, I thought her excuses were bullshit, but how did you say that to your mom?
“Listen, I know things haven’t always been easy between us.”
I raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “That’s one way of putting it.”
He stubbed out his cigar. “I know your ma and I didn’t do a great job with you—”
I scoffed. Ma had done a grand job. Well, up until recently. He’d always been the problem.
“—But there are some things I think you should know. Now that you’re older, and married yourself, you might understand things a bit differently.”
“What sort of things?”
“Things about your mother and me and why our marriage was what it was.”
“You mean how you cheated on her for years and how I have brothers and sisters I can’t even acknowledge?” I shot back, then lowered my voice so as not to attract any attention.
The sound of Lauren’s melodic laughter reached me from across the patio, and almost immediately, the ten
sion left my body. I watched as she clinked glasses with a curvy redhead who’s arm was wrapped around a tall blonde guy with movie-star good looks.
“Is that Cameron Scott?”
My dad accepted a couple of hors d’oeuvres from a passing waiter and handed me one.
I popped it in my mouth and chewed. “Yup,” I answered with an inward groan.
Even though my dad was a celebrity in his own right, he’d never quite gotten over being an Irish farm boy who’d hit the big time by kicking a ball around the pitch. He’d nearly pissed himself when he’d partied with Bono and The Edge back in the 1990s.
“I didn’t realize you knew him.”
“I only met him a couple of weeks ago. Lauren’s known him for ages,” I answered, watching the easy way she interacted with the couple.
Lauren and Cameron had been friends since their days working for a catering company. She’d been in the kitchen, while he’d waited tables. They’d formed an instant bond through snark and humor, and to this day Lauren counted Cameron among her closest friends.
Shit, the man had been one of her bridesmaids!
Just then he said something that made Sarah laugh, and Lauren punched him in the shoulder. When he pulled Sarah and Lauren into a big group hug, I dragged my gaze away and found my dad eyeing my wife with renewed interest.
He hadn’t been thrilled when I’d told him I was getting married; even less so when he found out I was 10 years younger than Lauren. But when you combined her appearance on a TV show with her friendship with an Oscar-nominated actor, he was coming around to welcoming her into the family with open arms.
“She have any other famous friends?”
Ah, for fuck’s sake.
“Dad,” I answered with a warning growl
He held up his hands. “Sorry. I just keep forgetting she’s famous.”
I chuckled. “Don’t let Lauren hear you say that.”
“It’s the truth. The sooner she accepts it, the easier it’ll be on her. On you both.”
My father wasn’t wrong … much to Lauren’s chagrin.
A week after we’d returned from Ireland, Gavin Jones—Lauren’s former boss—published a tell-all book about the downward spiral that had culminated in his breakdown on live TV. The one where he’d called Lauren a cunt and told her she was the worst cook he’d ever met.
Naturally, I’d hated the fucker even before the book had come out, but now I really hated him. He’d devoted a whole chapter to the role his staff played in his fall from grace. He hadn’t mentioned Lauren by name, but people remembered the abuse she’d suffered at his hands from the four episodes of his cooking show that had aired the year before. And then, once the book hit The New York Times bestsellers list, Lauren’s phone exploded with daytime talk shows wanting her to come on and tell her side of the story. She’d declined, but privately we’d acknowledged that Gavin’s book was probably the reason she’d been invited to compete on Top Chef. At least there was a silver lining to the whole fucked up situation.
But I was done talking about my wife’s notoriety.
“Speaking of the truth, what were you saying before? Something about why you cheated on my mom for so many years?” I crossed my arms over my chest.
He blew out a breath and ran his hands through his hair, now liberally peppered with gray. My dad was still fairly young, but looking at him now, I could see the last couple of years of hard living had caught up with him.
That’s what he gets for gallivanting around the globe with a woman young enough to be my sister.
The thing was, I didn’t dislike Stacia, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand what they talked about all day. She was gorgeous and sweet, but dumb as a bag of cans. Then again, if the black smudges under his eyes were any indication, they probably didn’t do a whole lot of talking. Or sleeping.
“You know your ma and I only got married because I knocked her up. What you may not understand is it’s a different world now than it was back in 1995, especially in Ireland. Back then, if you got a girl pregnant, you did the responsible thing. Especially when the girl’s father threatened to cut your balls off with a rusty cleaver.”
He chuckled and shook his head, a small, genuine smile splitting his lips. My grandfather had been a butcher, and from the day my dad had first darkened his doorstep, he’d threatened him with any number of creative maimings. Once, on Stephen’s Day, he’d promised to skin my da alive if he didn’t stop looking at his phone at the dinner table. Needless to say, there’d been no love lost between the two.
“Okay, so you only got married because she was pregnant with me. Fine. But that doesn’t explain why you got five other women pregnant too.”
My dad’s eyes flashed and his head whipped around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. They weren’t—no one cared about the groom at these things. Nearly everyone was on the other side of the patio fawning over Lauren, staring at her ring and asking about her dress.
He stepped closer. “Listen, I’m going to tell you some things, and you might not believe them, but they’re the truth.”
I stared at him expectantly. This ought to be good, I thought, waiting for him to continue.
“First, I didn’t knock up five other women. Only two.”
I sputtered an indignant cough. “You’re fucking kidding me.” And then I started ticking them off one-by-one.
He brushed the names aside. “Kaylie, Keyshawn, and Royce aren’t mine.”
“What?!”
This time heads did turn our way to locate the source of the shouting. I lifted my hand and waved. Nothing to see here, folks. Just having a chat with my dad.
Next to me, he smiled and raised his drink in a silent toast to our observers.
When they eventually turned back around, I said, “What in the ever-loving-fuck are you on about?”
“Just what I said. They’re not mine.”
“But you claimed they were.”
He shrugged. “Look, I slept with their moms. I’m not denying that.”
I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t even understand what you’re saying right now.”
He leveled me with an exasperated look. As if it was my fault I couldn’t keep up with the twists and turns this conversation was taking. “I have a fuck ton of money, Donal, and those women don’t. If they were desperate enough to try and pin a baby on me, they probably need it more than I did.” He coughed, looked away guiltily, and amended his statement. “Than I do.”
“Wait, what?” I sputtered. “Another one?”
He shrugged—again. Like what he’d just said was no big fucking deal. Like he hadn’t just casually mentioned he might have another kid out there somewhere. That I might have another brother or sister. “It might be mine.”
“Might?” I barked. “You don’t know?”
“Stacia’s friend …”
My eyes bugged out of my head and my jaw dropped. “You fucked Stacia’s friend and the daft woman stayed with you?”
Shit, she’s even stupider than I thought.
“Oh, calm down,” he huffed. “Stacia was there.”
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath. This was more than I needed to know about my dad’s sex life. Way, way more. I held up my hand and opened my eyes. “Stop. I don’t want to know. Forget I asked.”
He looked out over the horizon, his eyes hard and defiant. “I’m not ashamed of how I live my life.”
“No, that’s perfectly clear.” I paced several steps away, and then turned back to him, realizing he still hadn’t answered my earlier question. “Why? Why do you do that shit? Weren’t mom and I enough?”
He eyed me down the length of his nose. “Does it matter?”
Does it? I asked myself.
The truth was, nothing he could say now would make me forget all the nights I’d walked into my mom’s bedroom and found her crying. She’d tried to pretend she wasn’t, but even when I was a little boy, I’d known better. Or the Christmases
she’d find receipts for jewelry or other expensive gifts sshe hadn’t been the one to unwrap.
And yet, I needed to know.
“Yes, it does.”
“Walk with me,” he said, taking off through the gate toward the water.
I jogged after him, careful not to put too much weight on my bad foot. My injury had healed nicely (this time), but I was all too aware how that could change with one wrong step.
Once I caught up, he continued walking, his tux jacket unbuttoned and flapping in the breeze. He’d taken his tie off ages ago. “The truth is, son, your mom and I had an open marriage.”
I stopped moving. “Bullshit.”
He stopped as well. When he turned to me, the look on his face was more earnest than I’d ever seen. “I assure you, it’s not.”
When I opened my mouth and nothing came out, he continued. “We stayed legally married for you, but we didn’t love each other.” His eyes darted away again and he shook his head. Almost like he couldn’t believe the words he was about to speak. “Fuck, Stacia might be the only woman I’ve ever loved. And your ma? Well, she’s been in love with the same person for almost 20 years.”
“I don’t believe you. If that’s true, why isn’t she with them now? You’ve been divorced for years.”
He took a few beats to answer, his gaze boring into me. “Who says she’s not?”
The world stopped spinning and all sound fell away as I processed the implication of my father’s statement. Was my mom in love with a woman? My “Aunt Patty” was my mom’s lover?
No, that didn’t make any sense at all. I would have known.
Wouldn’t I?
“What about all those nights she cried herself to sleep when you didn’t come home?”
He shook his head and looked at me with resignation. “Most of the time she was crying because I’d left so Patty could come over … and then she didn’t. Their relationship was always volatile that way. From what I hear, not much has changed.”
SCRUMptious: (Dublin Rugby #3) Page 11
