THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  She led the way into the living room, and we curled up on the couch, sparkling water in glasses on the table.

  “You seemed good last night. Better than I expected.”

  “It was fun.”

  She smiled. “Were we at the same party?”

  I laughed a little. “It was…I like Mia. I like spending time with her.”

  “That’s good considering she’s about to be your wife.”

  I turned away from her, stretching out with my feet on the coffee table. “I don’t know what it is. I feel comfortable around her.”

  “You don’t normally feel comfortable around pretty girls?”

  I shot her a dirty look. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t, actually.”

  “She’s not my type. She’s not the kind of girl I like to pursue, but I find myself laughing when I’m around her. She’s quick and smart and…”

  “Uh, oh,” Stacy said, reaching over to punch my shoulder lightly. “You better watch out.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t say that you think I’m falling for her because I don’t honestly think I’m even capable of it.”

  Stacy was quiet for a long minute. “Why not?” she finally asked.

  I glanced at her. “You and Kyle and Kevin and I, we all come from the same sort of background. Abused and neglected and tossed away. You of all people should understand.”

  “Yet I managed to fall in love with Killian.”

  “With your brother. Could you possibly have found anyone safer?”

  I expected to be punched in the shoulder again, but she simply drew quiet, crossing her arms over her chest as she seemed to try to draw herself up inside of this shell of protection. I knew the tactic. I’d seen her do it a million times when we were younger, whenever she felt challenged or unsafe. She rarely did it to me anymore, but if anyone could push her buttons, I suppose I was one of those people.

  “I didn’t choose Killian because he was safe. If anything, he was the most dangerous person I could have made myself vulnerable with because he had every reason to turn me down.” She reached up and scratched the side of her face thoughtfully. “And I was convinced that he’d killed Davis, so falling for him was incredibly stupid, really. But you can’t help who you fall in love with.”

  “But there was this other woman,” I said, glancing at her, not missing the surprise in her eyes. “I know you guys all think I’ve been something of a monk this last year or so, but I haven’t. There was this girl in New York—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I really liked her and I wanted to keep her to myself for a while.”

  “Yeah? So why aren’t you still with her?”

  I shook my head. “She wanted me to move in with her, but I…the idea of leaving Boston and everyone here made me feel like I was drowning. And when I brought her here, let her walk about my place, my skin crawled every time she touched one of my things, you know?”

  “You like your privacy.”

  “But the thing is, when Mia walked through my apartment yesterday, dragging her fingers over the furniture, over picture frames and things, it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I found myself hoping that she liked the place, you know?”

  Stacy didn’t say anything, even when I looked over at her.

  “Why do you think that is? I mean, I knew Carrie longer and I really liked being with her. I could see myself being with her a month or two down the road; I could see things continuing the way they were. But when I drove up there to tell her that I was getting married, I didn’t feel the way I thought I should.”

  “How did you feel?”

  I shook my head. “It bothered me to watch her cry. I wanted to take the hurt away from her, to soften the blow.”

  “Yeah, but were you tempted to run away with her and leave Mia high and dry?”

  “No. In fact, I’m standing there watching Carrie fall apart and I’m wondering in the back of my mind if the maid picked up my suit from the dry cleaners for last night’s party.”

  Stacy bit the inside of her cheek, but I could see that she was fighting back a smile.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see it, Ian?”

  “See what?”

  “What’s the first thing you thought about when you woke up this morning?”

  I felt the heat burn across my face before I saw the smile that bloomed full force across her face. My thoughts had all been pretty much the same this last week or so—finding Kevin, the wedding preparations, and Mia. And my thoughts about Mia had grown decidedly intense these last few days, especially since that first kiss yesterday afternoon.

  “But I’m a guy,” I said. “That’s where my thoughts always are.”

  “Did you think about this Carrie that way?”

  I shrugged. “When we were together, of course that’s where my thoughts went.”

  “But you weren’t with Mia this morning, yet you were still thinking those thoughts.”

  “Have you seen Mia?”

  Stacy laughed. “She is a pretty girl, but even you admitted that she’s not your type.”

  “Maybe my type has shifted.”

  She slid closer to me, resting her hand lightly on my shoulder. “I think, dear brother, that if you aren’t falling for your fiancée, you’re in serious lust with her. And that’s not a bad thing.”

  “And what if things turn sour after the wedding? What if she becomes some sort of nag, or we just realize we can’t stand living together?”

  “That’s what divorce is for.”

  “You’re a lot of help.”

  She slipped her hand down into mine. “Just the fact that you’re worried about it tells me that she matters more to you than you think. And, Ian, I think you are more than capable of loving someone. Despite everything you went through before Abigail found you, you’ve managed to become a good man, a strong man. A man who might struggle with emotion in a way a guy like Killian doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t love as deep as he does. Maybe you love even deeper because of what you went through.”

  I leaned close and kissed her cheek. “Thank you, sis.”

  “Any time.”

  I leaned forward as if I was about to get up, but then I looked back at her again.

  “Hey, I was wondering…I know it’s a little untraditional, but they told me I need to pick soon so that they can do whatever it is they do with this information—”

  “What information?”

  I studied her familiar face for a long second. “Would you stand up for me at the wedding? Be my best man—or woman, or whatever?”

  Tears filled her eyes, but she nodded.

  “Of course.”

  I leaned close and kissed her cheek again.

  “Love you, Stace…”

  “See,” she said softly, “you are capable.”

  ***

  I was running a few programs on my computer, searching through everything we already knew about Kevin, every phone we’d found in his bedroom after he disappeared, every program on his hard drive, searching for anything I might have missed that might tell us where he’d gone. There was nothing new and I’d run through these things dozens of times already with all the same results. But it never hurt to look at evidence more than once.

  The only thing we had on Kevin right now was the knowledge that he had a soft spot for Brianna. A daughter Pops hadn’t known he had until two years ago, Brianna was the first move Kevin made against the family. He kidnapped her to force her mother, Cassidy, to steal information on Brian and send it to him. I still couldn’t figure out what it was Kevin was fishing for in that whole scheme since he knew about as much about Pops as Cassidy—an outsider who’d known him for maybe six months twenty-eight years prior to all that—but whatever it was, he didn’t get it because Cassidy broke down and told Pops what was really happening. And Pops, in true cowboy fashion, went out to California and saved Brianna, so it all blew up in Kevin’s face.


  But there’d been something between them in the time afterward. We didn’t know it was Kevin until about six weeks ago, so he was living in Pops’ house off and on over the last two years, building a relationship with Brianna that was more romantic than sibling based. For that reason, I had all of Brianna’s phones bugged. But Kevin was too smart for that. In fact, it was his program that I was using, a program that he’d infected most our phones with so that he could gather intel on us, on MCorp, on the Irish mob. It was intel he used to ignite the street war between the Italians and us.

  If he was talking to her, he was doing it through some other method and she wasn’t talking. But I think Brianna was sufficiently outraged by the shooting last month that she would tell one of us—her mother, at least—if he even tried to contact her.

  Exhausted from staring at the computer screen for so long, I pushed back from the computer and ran my hands over my face. The doorbell rang, catching me by surprise. I rarely had visitors I wasn’t expecting ahead of time. And I wasn’t expecting anyone now.

  I jammed my finger into the button that connected to the security system and brought up an image of the doorman in the lobby.

  “What is it, William?”

  “A Ms. Rossi, Mr. Callahan.”

  The doorman stepped aside and a fuzzy image of Mia filled the screen.

  “Send her up.”

  I shut off the computer screens and strolled out into the living room, tugging at the bottom edge of my t-shirt, pulling out wrinkles that sitting in an office chair for hours had created. I entered the code on the elevator that would allow the door to open when she reached my floor, then stood to wait. It wasn’t a long wait. And when the doors opened and she stood there in this lovely green and black dress…every nerve in my body seemed to suddenly stand to attention.

  “Hey.”

  “You said you’d call.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s been a crazy day.”

  She stepped off the elevator, her hand reaching for me, but stopping just short of actually touching me. She licked her bottom lip and the sight of the tiny pink tip of her tongue was incredibly hot. I wanted to yank her into my arms, touch her everywhere.

  “I just thought we should talk because things are about to get pretty crazy. I have the bridal shower tomorrow and my bachelorette party is this weekend. And then the rehearsal dinner is next Thursday and…I just…”

  I held out my hand. “Let’s go sit down.”

  She smiled a little, her hand cool as she slipped it into mine. I led the way to the couch, glancing behind me to watch her walk, nearly smacking my shin against the coffee table because I wasn’t watching where I was going. Her smile widened because she didn’t miss any of it, her own gaze taking in everything about my movements.

  I wasn’t sure there was going to be a lot of talking here this afternoon.

  “We should talk about where we’re going to live after next week.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “I just assumed we’d live here.”

  “Is that okay?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to move in with your parents.”

  “Probably not.” She laughed. “Can you imagine having breakfast across from my dad every morning?”

  I groaned a little. “It would be—”

  “Insane. He’d ask you all kinds of stupid questions, pretending he was just looking out for our welfare, but really just wondering when he was going to be a grandfather again.”

  I laughed. “My pops would probably be the same. You should see him with David…he’d love to have more grandkids.”

  “What about Kyle? How long have he and Amelia been married?”

  “Less than a month.”

  “Oh. I thought…they look like they’ve been together forever.”

  “No. They just met a month ago, as far as I know. It was one of those spur of the moment sort of things.”

  “But they seem so happy.”

  “They are. They got lucky.”

  “And Sean and his girl?”

  “They’ve been together a couple of months. But I think they’re pretty content to take their time.”

  “So the pressure is on.”

  I nodded, biting my lip to hide a smile. “I guess Pops’ll have to wait a while.”

  “Do you even want kids? You never really answered.”

  “Sure. Someday.”

  She nodded, a thoughtful look coming over her face. “Is it stupid that we’re even thinking about that sort of thing?”

  “No.” I tugged at her hand and pulled her closer to me. “I know this is an arrangement created by Jack and your father, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t become something else.” I touched her face lightly. “I like you, Mia. And I hope you kind of like me, too.”

  “I do.”

  “Good.” I lifted her chin slightly and brushed my lips over hers. “I want to get to know you better. I want to spend as much time as possible with you. And if things progress to the point where children are a possibility, I hope they look just like you.”

  I knew I’d said the right thing when she melted against me, leaning into my chest as if her bones had turned to butter. I tugged her chin upward, capturing her lips. She tasted the same as she had the day before, like every good thing I’d ever tasted. I remembered the first time I kissed Carrie, how she tasted of the garlic from the pasta she’d just been eating. I remembered thinking that I was grateful she worked in an Italian restaurant rather than one where I wasn’t really into the cuisine being served. It was an odd thought to be having when kissing a beautiful woman for the first time.

  Was it possible Stacy was right? Was it possible that Carrie simply wasn’t who I thought she was, and that was why I didn’t have the feelings for her that I thought I should?

  I groaned softly as I moved closer to Mia, my hand drifting to her hip, tugging her closer before wandering further down along the curve of her thigh. All those curves…she was so beautiful, so sweet to the taste, so silky soft…my fingertips actually ached to find her bare flesh, to slide along the outside of that toned thigh, to feel the heat of her skin against mine.

  This is what I’d been thinking about the moment I opened my eyes this morning. I was thinking about the garter belt and stockings she’d been wearing the night before. I’d been thinking about the feel of her skin against my palm, about the taste of her lips on mine. I’d been thinking about how incredible it would be when we were alone again, if it was here or in that lovely garden or on a plane thirty thousand miles up in the air, hurtling toward the quiet beach side resort where I’d booked our honeymoon.

  I wanted her. I wanted to be alone with her. I wanted to spend hours lying in my bed, wanted to see every inch of her beautiful body, wanted to explore every curve, every angle, every crevice. I wanted to take my time, make her laugh, make her moan, make her cry out my name. I wanted to see pleasure in her eyes.

  Just a single kiss had ignited so much need inside of me…I don’t think I’d ever felt these things for any other woman. Not even Carrie.

  Mia leaned back against the couch and I followed, kissing her as if I was never going to see her again. She pressed her hand against my chest almost as if she was pushing me away, but then it began to slide downward, searching for the bottom hem that would allow her access to what was underneath. She had the same thought I did, that need to feel flesh rather than cotton against her palm.

  I tugged at her skirt and pulled it up over her knee. She sighed against my mouth as my hand slid over the top of her thigh. In a second, I had her ass in my hand, the perfect roundness of one cheek, my fingers playing with the edge of her silk panties. And her hand slid under my shirt, resting against my pounding heart. I let my mouth move from hers, sliding slowly down her throat. She groaned and the vibration of it moved against my lips, setting off a wave of sensation from the tip of my spine to the base.

  I peppered her throat and her collarbone with kisses, working my way down to the addictive valley between
her gorgeous breasts. She ran her hand over my head, pulling me closer to her, showing me just how excited she was to feel my touch and that…hell, I was so turned on!

  I pulled away for a second, stripped my shirt because I wanted to feel her hands on me. Then I lifted her onto my lap, tugging her skirt free of her legs, slipping my hands underneath. I held her ass in both hands for a moment as she lowered her mouth to mine, as she took charge of the kiss that threatened to drive me out of control. And then my hands slid further under her dress, sliding over her hips to the small of her back, my fingertips sliding under the elastic holding her panties in place.

  She moved her hips. If she hadn’t moved her hips, maybe I could have made it through without going completely insane. But she moved her hips and her silk covered cunt rubbed against my cock and I couldn’t control myself. I pushed her forward and tore at her dress till it was above her waist, needing to get the damn thing out of my way. There was a deep blush on her cheeks as she reached down to help me, tugging the dress up over her head. And then her breasts, overflowing from the cups of her bra, were just there, in my face, so beautiful that there weren’t even words for them.

  I told myself long ago that I wasn’t a breast man. I was a leg man. But those beauties…they would make a liar out of anyone. I slid my hand inside and scooped one out, taking that delicious nipple in my mouth. She groaned again, her fingers dancing over my scalp. There was nothing better than the taste of a woman, the feel of puckered flesh between tongue and teeth. She moved her hips again and…I was truly losing it.

  I’ve always prided myself for being a man in control. But this woman…

  “We have to stop,” I whispered against her throat.

  “Why?”

  “Because…because…”

  I wasn’t sure. I just knew that we couldn’t do this, not like this. I didn’t want her to just be another woman who’d spent the night in my bed. I wanted…I couldn’t even find the words to explain it to myself. But she wasn’t going to be just another notch on the bedpost. She was going to be my wife and our first time shouldn’t be in a fit of passion on the couch.

  I lifted her off of me and snatched my shirt up from off the floor. I had to put distance between us; I had to walk to the back of the room to keep myself from going back to her and giving in to the need that was still racing through me like fire. I could hear her moving behind me; I could imagine what it looked like as she pulled her dress back over her head. I wanted to turn and watch the show, but even that would be too much for my fevered mind.