by Mignon Mykel
Conor leaned in and kissed my lips sweetly as my doctor started to clean up her equipment. “Well, I can say that I think he will be fine. We’ll keep an eye on him, because he is getting pretty big and is going to run out of room, but everything looks good.”
I smiled and thanked her, and after she left with brief instructions on what to do in the coming weeks, Conor pulled my shirt down and helped me stand.
“You’re really ok?” he asked.
I nodded. “I am. Yeah, I wanted it to be a surprise, you know, the last great surprise a person could get, but…” I shrugged and grinned, shaking my head. “He’s going to be such a little hellion.”
“Just like his old man.”
I reached up on tiptoes so I could kiss him once. I wanted a long, thorough kiss, but my OB-GYN’s room was so not the place.
“Let’s go look at places to live so I can take you home and ravish you senseless.” Conor squeezed my hip and grabbed my purse, not afraid to put the strap over his shoulder, and helped me out of the room.
That day, we toured two nicer apartments and, after Conor’s urging, a little starter house located on a cute cul-de-sac. An apartment was a one-year commitment. A house? That was a serious commitment, as both a homeowner and for a new couple.
On top of that, I was afraid a mortgage was going to put us over our heads, but Conor assured me we could afford it.
We.
He referred to us as a ‘we’ and while I knew he said he was in for the long haul, it was those little reminders that made my heart so incredibly happy.
It was a three bedroom, two bath ranch-style home with a small yard, but the neighborhood itself had a little park. Conor said we could convert the third bedroom into an office for now, allowing him to work from home even more.
So finally, a smile on my face, I nodded. “Ok. Let’s do the paperwork.”
And we started the next adventure in our life.
Mia
Conor was running late again. Saturday afternoons always had him walking in the door almost two hours after the end of his shift, but I knew the man only had eyes for me. That and I knew he tried to get as much Sunday paperwork finished before he came home, preferring to focus on us when he was home. After talking with Brenna, I found myself at O’Gallaghers.
The place was crazy busy and a glance at the bar itself told me why. The Enforcers were starting to trickle into town. According to Conor, camp was opening up this week and apparently the veterans of the team were having a bonding day.
I had gotten to know a few of the players, but it was easy to spot Jonny and Caleb Prescott. Jonny, with his curly blond hair, and Caleb beside him.
I waddled over to them, my baby belly bigger than ever, and squeezed between the brothers, tapping them on their shoulders.
“Hello, gentlemen.”
Jonny looked over at me and grinned as he lifted his beer to his lips. “Miss Mia.”
Caleb grinned at me as well. “Look at you, all glowing and shit.”
I grinned wide. “How’s Sydney? I haven’t seen her in a bit.” After the wedding, and after things started to settle into a sweet, regular motion with me and Conor, I grew to be good friends with Sydney Prescott. She was a fun girl.
Before Caleb could answer though, Conor came over to us. He started switching out his O’Gallagher shirts for shirts that showcased he was taken. Today’s said, boldly over his chest, “I Make Cute Babies.” Today he also wore a backward ball cap with a bumble bee over his brow. I knew the front of that hat said “Daddy to Bee”. It was a favorite of his and honestly, made me laugh.
“What the hell are you doing here, Mia baby?” He was grinning wide, absolutely no malice in his voice. “You know I don’t want you here when you’re ready to pop like that.”
I grinned and rubbed my belly. “I was just curious why you weren’t home. I now understand why.”
He glanced over his shoulder. I followed his gaze and saw he was looking at the clock, but my eyes landed on the pictures he placed there. He wasn’t shy about showing he was taken and happy about it.
There was also the fancy ‘m’ on his ring finger, silly man.
“Shit. Sorry, babe.” He looked back around and pulled his towel from his pocket. “Stone, man, I gotta fly.”
“Conor…” It really wasn’t that pressing.
“I got a date with my baby mama.”
This earned a chuckle from not only the Prescotts, but a few of the other players nearby.
“Jeez, Conor.” I could feel my face heating.
He winked at me and crooked his finger at me. I followed him to the end of the bar, where he took my hand and pulled me into the back. “Hey, I could have said I had a date to fuck the labor out of you.”
I slapped his back. “Conor!” He had said it in what was supposed to be an empty kitchen, but Rory came out of the stairwell from the upstairs apartment. We got the house, and Rory took over upstairs.
“Way too much fucking information,” Rory said, shaking his shaggy head.
“I’m a lucky fuck, you know it,” Conor said with a laugh, pulling me into his office. He clicked the door shut, locking it twice, because there was a story, and pulled me to the couch.
He tore his hat off with one hand while removing his shirt with his other, behind his back and over his head in the way men did, and unfastened his jeans. “You wearing panties today?”
I was wearing a dress, and going panty-less wasn’t exactly the most comfortable but, “No, I am not.” We had limited time these days.
“How long did Brenna—” Conor had added a really nice leather couch to the office here at the bar recently, one that was deep and gave the two of us more than enough room. He sat down and pulled me to him. I lifted a leg over his hips as he laid back, settling down over him, my wet heat rubbing over his thickness. I rolled my hips once, dragging myself over his rigid length.
“An hour.”
Conor leaned up to kiss me, guiding my hips until he slipped into my warmth. We moaned in unison.
The last few weeks hadn’t been very kind to my sex drive, but I was ready for this baby to come out. Labor-inducing sex, it was then.
It was over quicker than we usually went, but that was due to going weeks without sex, and the contractions toward the end.
Holding his hands over my sides, feeling the contractions for himself, Conor looked up at me, his eyes a mixture of glee and worry.
“Is it time?”
I laughed. I really didn’t think one session was going to do it. “Nah, I think they’re just Braxton hicks. She’s pretty comfy-cozy in there.” I groaned when she kicked. “She’s probably never going to come out.”
If I thought I was huge with Aiden, I was not prepared for this pregnancy. With Ava, I felt her up in my ribs all the time, and my belly needed a Wide Load sign.
I pushed up onto my knees, allowing Conor to slip from my heat, and with my hands against his chest, moved to stand.
Conor sat up and looked at the clock. “Bren has Aiden for another thirty minutes. Want to get food?” He reached for his clothes and started to pull them back on as I reached for a tissue to try to clean up as best as I could.
Which was hardly at all.
Conor chuckled and reached for my hand, taking the tissue and going to task, before finishing dressing.
The past few months had been a whirlwind. Aiden Rory O’Gallagher was born, weighing in at ten pounds, eleven ounces, and twenty-two inches. He was big. And because of that, I tore pretty decently.
Conor had been a hands-on dad the moment we walked into our little house on the cute cul-de-sac, and had been incredibly great at making sure I stayed comfortable. I tried breast feeding, because goodness knew I had the supply for it, but Aiden hadn’t been a great latcher, and after a week of trying, failing, and therefore crying, I moved to just pumping and bottle feeding. It allowed Conor to feed him too, and there was nothing I loved more than to watch Conor and Aiden together.
After t
wo months of pumping though, we had more than enough milk to get Aiden to his one-year birthday. I was a super-cow, I joked, to which of course Conor took offense to.
The whole calling myself a cow thing.
Anyway. I stopped pumping pretty early in the game.
Conor had been afraid of ‘down there.’ Not because I gave birth. No, it was because I tore so badly. He was afraid he would hurt me or worse, I would somehow just randomly tear again. One day we’d been messing around, not having sex yet because regardless of Conor’s fears, we still didn’t have the medical go-ahead, and Conor jacked off on me.
A month later, while doing my yearly blood panel for insurance purposes, boom. Pregnant.
I’m not making this stuff up.
So our kids were going to be hardly ten months apart. When I told Conor the news, his face blanched so quickly, I thought that my big man was going to faint on me.
He then called my OB-GYN to be sure that everything was going to be ok, that I was going to be ok. She reassured him, saying that it definitely wasn’t the best thing for my body, but I should have a normal pregnancy. She just was going to keep a closer eye on me.
As we left his office hand in hand, Conor said his goodbyes to his brother and Stone, and the few hockey players still lingering around the bar. We went to my car, leaving his new truck in the back lot. Conor helped me in before going around to the driver’s side.
“Grab something and head home, or ask Bren to stay a little longer and sit down somewhere?” Conor asked as he started the ignition.
We didn’t have too much time to ourselves these days. Hard to with a nine and a half month old at home who was sure to skip the walking stage and go straight from crawling to running.
But I also hated being away from Aiden. Going back to work had been incredibly hard, but I was lucky to be able to spend weekends and summers with him.
“Maybe just pick something up. Brenna said she had plans later tonight.”
“With a guy?” Conor looked at me, a brow up, and I grinned.
“Even if she were going on a date, it would be of no business of yours, Conor.”
“Hey, she’s my baby sister.”
“And she’s a grown woman.”
Brenna and I had gotten incredibly close over the last year, too. We were obviously two very different people than we were when we were friends before, but I definitely valued her friendship.
“Speaking of grown women… I talked to your dad.”
I whipped my head in his direction. “You didn’t.”
Conor had been teasingly threatening to talk to my dad about taking my hand in marriage. Conor wanted me to marry him, and as much as I wanted to marry him too, as much as he’d proven himself over and over again these last few months, I still felt like everything was too fast.
Sure, we were on our way to having two kids, but marriage…? That was a really, really big step. I mean, kids were a big step; they linked him to me for the rest of our lives. But something about marriage scared me a little.
“I told him that eventually you would be ok with the idea, and that I wanted to be sure I had his permission.” Conor reached for my hand and squeezed it before placing our hands on his thigh. “I got it. So I’m just waiting on you, baby.” He said it with a grin. Conor was so incredibly supportive of me and I could tell he loved me above all else. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be right there with you,” he said, pulling our hands to his lips to kiss my knuckles.
He was really a great guy.
Great in bed, too, yes, but his heart and how he was with me, with Aiden, that was what kept me going day after day.
“I love you, Conor,” I finally said. No, I wasn’t ready for marriage, but soon. Definitely, soon.
“Love you too, Mia baby.”
ABOUT LAST NIGHT
book 2
The last job I ever saw myself in was working as a barmaid for an extremely popular Irish-American pub. Hey, nothing against waitresses and bartenders. It just wasn’t something I ever saw for myself.
At seventeen, I graduated high school a year early only to go straight into nursing school—with many of my Gen Ed’s already completed.
My big plans, the ones that worked so damn well on paper, had me graduating with my Bachelors of Science in Nursing by the age of twenty, with even greater plans of continuing on to eventually become a Certified Nurse Anesthetist. Ideally by twenty five.
I had such great plans.
But just like plans—and life—tend to do, everything sort of fell through the cracks my freshman year of college. My years of overachieving had me burning out by the end of first semester and with failed classes came lost scholarships. I had to drop out of my classes and work double overtime to afford my rent and expenses. I was a nursing assistant at a fairly nice assisted living facility, making bonuses on top of bonuses, and overtime on top of that.
But eventually I burned myself out there too and needed to go back to school.
I was now twenty-four with no degree to my name, but thankfully I was only a semester away from the first one. On paper, my new plan had me graduating the anesthesia program in another three years, so not too far from my original hopes, but I wasn’t placing any bets these days.
While I loved my job and the people I worked with, namely my residents, I needed something that worked better with my schedule and paid extremely well.
Selling myself or finding a sugar daddy were not options.
I was walking down the street and came across O’Gallagher’s, an Irish-American pub near both my apartment and school, when I saw a Help Wanted sign in the window. While not something I saw for myself, if I were to work at O’Gallaghers I could get rid of my car—I had nothing against Uber or Lyft—and hopefully make enough in tips working four to eight hours most nights, rather than working twelve hour shifts at the nursing home every night.
I didn’t have any sort of experience in the service industry outside of what I did in health care, but I sucked it up and walked into the doors, applying and interviewing on the spot.
Turned out, the O’Gallagher siblings lost a couple of their barmaids with the end of the previous school year and were hoping to expand the business.
Conor, the oldest of the three, was a hunk with his big body and bearded face, tattoos up and down one of his arms, and his sexy ease of wearing a tee and ball cap. Brenna, the youngest, was incredibly sweet and just a bit younger than I.
Then there was Rory.
I’d heard about Rory O’Gallagher. He had a reputation that preceded him.
Rory was the type of guy who made money, flaunted money, and was, frankly, a rude piece of shit.
If you were talking to the girls he dated.
And even dated was too nice of a term.
The girls he fucked.
And left.
He took what he needed from them, gaining respect in their little circles, and then dropped them all like bad habits.
Rory O’Gallagher was not a nice guy.
Sure, he put on a pretty front, but under it all, lay a dirty, rotten, conniving man.
And it would be in my best interest to forever stay clear of him.
September
Rory
The first thing I always noticed upon waking was the sun trying to cut through my eyelids.
It was fucking obtrusive. Let a man sleep, yeah? Especially a man who worked until the early morning hours.
Damn sun and its insensitivity.
I know, I know, room darkening shades. But those things cost money, and my money was better spent elsewhere. Well, that and my last apartment had a tiny ass window in the bedroom and didn’t warrant the black curtains. The apartment above the bar, where I’d just moved into a few weeks prior, had much better glass to the outside world.
The second thing I noticed was the leg wrapped deliciously around my hip.
Which, of course, led to the third thing, the lovely phenomenon known as ‘morning wood.’
Let�
��s be completely open and honest here. I noticed that one every day.
Of the three, it was the leg wrapped around me that gave me slight pause though. I almost always walked my women out at night.
I lifted my eyelids, squinting against the sun, and looked down and over to the body attached to the leg. She was on her stomach, leg up over my hip and face down in the opposite direction. Her contortion didn’t look comfortable but then again… I chuckled, remembering the acrobatics of last night.
This chick here swore she’d been an Olympic hopeful in gymnastics and damn, she had the flexibility to go with that statement, but I highly doubted at twenty-three, Team USA was going to take her. Any other country, sure, but the United States gymnastics team had standards.
And I knew her age because I checked her ID before serving her last night.
Could it have been a fake? I mentally shrugged. Sure, fakes could be damn convincing but as a guy who had a business in college making forgeries, I was going to go ahead and say her license was legit.
She’d been really fucking cute last night, with her halter top and short skirt. This morning though her hair was a bit of a mess. I frowned to myself, taking in the chick’s white blonde hair. She was face-down in the bed, the sheet draped low covering her ass, and she was wearing a tank top with those small spaghetti straps. When the fuck did she put clothes on?
I reached down to reposition my dick and frowned when I encountered my boxers. When the fuck did I put clothes on?
I wracked my brain, trying to piece together the night.
I closed the bar last night with Emily. After she left for the night, I talked Cute Halter Top upstairs when all was said and done. She nodded, giggled, and stuck around for me to finish closing up.
We went upstairs, got it on like Donkey Kong…
And then I walked her to her car.
And Em—
I quickly looked down at the girl beside me. Shit.
I leaned over the woman as to not wake her, and lifted her hair gently to confirm my fears.
