My Secret Irish Baby: A Second-Chance, Secret Baby Contemporary Romance (Irish Kiss Book 7)

by Sienna Blake

  "They’re already here," he said.

  I turned back to the family with cheeks hot as a nuclear reactor. I lifted a weak hand.

  "Um, hi."

  Michael

  I thought when I told my family about Abbi and my child I would do it tactfully, strategically, calmly. I'd gather everyone together and explain that I was going to tell them something that might surprise them, but I would greatly appreciate it if everyone didn't overreact. I'd reveal the news gently, slowly…

  Well, that plan was out the window.

  After Abbi said hi with nothing more than a squeak of a voice, I had to beat my family back like geese at a park charging a tossed piece of bread.

  "Back, back, back," I hollered, swatting mostly at Eoin.

  I managed to corral Abbi into the bathroom upstairs and close the door.

  "What in the world are you doing here?" I hissed, throwing a towel over her head.

  I ran it over her soaking wet hair till she pushed my hands away and pushed it back so she could see me.

  "Why didn't you tell me they were here?" she shrieked.

  I put my hands on my chest. "Oh, this is my fault now? You told me to shut the fuck up."

  Abbi's eyes were aflame with anger and passion and something more. "Everything is your fucking fa—"

  There was a knock at the bathroom door. Ma's sweet voice came softly, "Things alright in there?"

  I glanced over my shoulder and then looked back at Abbi.

  "They're all out there, aren't they?" she mouthed, eyes panicked.

  I nodded.

  "It's great, Ma," I called out before the whole herd knocked down the door. "We'll be out in just a second."

  Abbi glanced around, eyes darting to and fro. "I'm climbing out the window," she said.

  "Tea or coffee, dear?" Ma asked outside the door.

  Abbi looked at me and I looked at her. She squeezed her eyes shut and sighed. "Coffee, please."

  Ten minutes later we were all stuffed around the kitchen table, high chairs and bar stools and footrests and all. Abbi sat across from me, her tanned skin nearly the colour of ash. She was wearing a sweater borrowed from Noah's wife, Aubrey, and had a towel wrapped around her wet hair at Ma's insistence. She took tiny, hesitant sips of coffee every other second, and each time she replaced it on the saucer, she spilled more onto the little china plate. She kept her eyes down, probably because my family couldn't stop looking at her with goofy smiles.

  It certainly didn't help the prevailing awkwardness that everyone was deathly silent. There was barely even the clink of forks and knives as hardly anyone but the babies was eating. I stabbed a piece of ham and forced myself to chew like all of this was perfectly normal. As if it was every day that families learned one of their members had a secret child with a mystery woman.

  I should have known by Eoin's fucking grin that he was up to something.

  "Michael, brother," he said, "would you mind handing me the kid? Oops, I meant the kidney beans."

  Duffy, his wife, elbowed him in the side. Ma snapped her fingers at him from across the table.

  "Eoin," she chastised.

  "We don't even have kidney beans, you idiot," I said.

  "No kidney beans? Hmm."

  "Ignore him, dear," Ma said, patting Abbi's hand.

  Abbi shook her head. "No, no, it's fine. I, I, um, I love kidney beans."

  Even Noah, the oldest of my brothers, couldn't stop himself from cracking a smile at the ridiculousness of it all. He covered it quickly with his napkin as he reached for his beer. Ma shot him a look and he ducked his eyes sheepishly.

  "Abbi, would you maybe like some wine?" Kayleigh, Darren's wife, asked. "I know the O'Sullivans can be a lot at first."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Darren grumbled, his eyes lighting as he looked over at Kayleigh.

  She handed over the baby and poured Abbi a healthy glass of red wine. Abbi gulped it down, both hands wrapped around the small glass.

  "Michael, brother," Eoin said again, smiling sweetly at me as he drummed his fingers against his chin, "would you be so kind as to hand over the child-an sea bass?"

  Duffy groaned and rolled her eyes.

  "Eoin, what did I tell you?" Ma said.

  "What?" Eoin protested. "You all didn't like my last pun so I thought I'd try another!"

  "Not that that's the point, but what is that one even supposed to be?" Duffy asked.

  "Isn't it obvious?" Eoin asked.

  Everyone at the table shook their head, including, I noticed, Abbi.

  Eoin huffed in frustration and threw his hands up. "Chilean sea bass!"

  A series of ohs circulated around the table and Noah added a boo.

  "Way worse than the last one, bro," he said before collecting himself at a stern gaze from Ma. "Not that you should even be making puns, obviously."

  "Oh my God," Abbi murmured, freckled cheeks again flaring the colour pink you only saw in the most brilliant of sunsets.

  Kayleigh refilled her wine glass without another word. We all descended back into awkward silence again as the rain hammered against the windows. Under the table my toe tapped impatiently.

  "Oh, Michael, dear, dear brother," Eoin said once more.

  "Eoin, no!" Duffy ordered.

  "Michael, my most beloved of brothers, could you, please, oh please, pass me the offspring peas."

  Darren and Noah threw potato wedges at Eoin, and Noah's toddlers soon joined in.

  "Eoin Robert O'Sullivan!" Ma shouted, standing up and walking around the table to smack him on the back of his head.

  He shrieked and his chair fell back as he tried to outrun her. The kids all laughed and then the adults all laughed and it took me a moment to realise that Abbi was laughing, too. As she always did, Ma caught Eoin and gave him a good whacking. I caught Abbi's eye across the table and she grinned at me, shaking her head.

  I shook my head as well and smiled.

  Eoin returned to a chair full of potato wedges and grumbled, "I'm sorry no one appreciates my poetic genius."

  Duffy snorted as she adjusted the blanket around her baby. "Poetic genius? Keep your day job, darling."

  I glanced once more at Abbi before actually loosening up enough to take a bite of food. The oppressive silence eased slightly as my family interrupted their blatant gawking with a few bites or sips here and there. I couldn’t stop my eyes from darting across the table to Abbi every few seconds. Each time I found her focused on her untouched plate.

  My grand plan to win Abbi back, to earn my way into her little family, certainly did not involve this.

  After several minutes of mostly awkward, totally silent semi-dining, Abbi suddenly cleared her throat and dabbed at the corner of her lips with the napkin from her lap, her gaze still fixed down.

  "Um, Eoin," she said softly. "Would you do me a favour?"

  Every fork, knife, spoon, or glass that had been raised was lowered and all eyes shifted to Eoin at the end of the table. For the first time that afternoon, it was his cheeks that coloured slightly.

  "What's that?" he asked warily, like a child afraid of, but fully expecting a spanking.

  Abbi pushed a few peas around her plate with the back of her fork and then said, "Could you possibly pass me the tater tots?"

  Her question was met with a tense silence. Eoin looked over at me as if I had the answer for what he was supposed to do. When there was no response, Abbi finally glanced up and looked around the table.

  "Get it?" she asked, the tiniest crack of a smile playing at her lips. "Tater tots? Tots as in kids."

  She looked around imploringly at my family as the silence grew and grew. She caught my eye across the table. I couldn't help but grin myself. Eoin never did know a silence he didn't love to destroy, and after the moment dragged out to its most awkward peak, he burst out into an ear-deafening roar of laughter and slapped his big hands down on the table.

  "Eoin!" half the family shouted as plates clanged, wine glasses tumbled over, an
d the legs of the table nearly buckled. The other half of the family was laughing.

  "Ha! I knew I liked her," Eoin shouted. "I knew I liked her from the moment I saw her. So, when's the wedding?"

  I expected Ma to put an end to Eoin's nosy prying, but Abbi had apparently opened the floodgates because we received a barrage of personal questions instead.

  "What's the baby's name?" Ma asked, pushing aside her plate to lean forward. "Is it a girl or a boy?"

  "How'd you two meet?" Kayleigh asked over Ma, and Noah asked over Kayleigh, "How come you didn't tell us you had a kid?"

  Darren asked about when they would get to meet the kid and Duffy asked how old the kid was and Eoin got down on one knee by my chair to wrap his big hands around mine and beg me to make him best man. I shooed his hand away, which was like trying to swat at a fly the size of a Great Dane, and pushed back my chair.

  Abbi looked bewildered and overwhelmed and amused, like she'd stumbled upon some strange circus family that she couldn't look away from. I went around to her side of the table and scooted her chair out for her. I took her by the hand and led her away behind me to my family's increasing protests.

  "No, don't go!" Noah cried. "We'll be quiet again, we promise!"

  "Michael, was that a yes or a no on the best man thing?" Eoin shouted after us as Abbi and I started running down the hallway, laughing at our great escape.

  I opened the front door for her. She tugged off the towel around her hair and let it drop before darting out into the rain. I jumped out right after her.

  "Your family is crazy!" she shouted over the downpour, smiling from ear to ear.

  "You flew across an ocean without telling me. You're crazy!" I shouted back.

  Her eyes sparked like lightning amongst the rain clouds as she yelled even louder, "You bought me a house without telling me. You're crazy."

  The rain soaked us, matting down our hair and seeping into our clothes. We blinked against the drops as we stared at each other. I slipped my wet fingers between hers.

  "I need to show you something."

  Abbi

  The office was immaculate. On the highest floor of the PLA Harper building in the heart of Dublin, it had floor-to-ceiling windows with a sweeping view of the city lights nestled like sparkling diamonds amongst the fog. On one wall were built-in shelves of a deep, dark wood, polished to a high sheen, modern and sleek. The intricately carved ceiling moulding looked like it belonged more in Versailles than an office, and the marble floors with dark swirls of grey looked too beautiful to step upon. But there Michael and I stood, in the centre of the massive, completely empty office, with muddy puddles of water extending around us as we stood side by side in silence.

  "What is this?" I asked, glancing from the view up to Michael.

  "This is my office," he said. "Was my office."

  I turned to face him, my shoes making slurping noises like I was stepping through a bog.

  "What do you mean?"

  Michael glanced around the empty office. "I didn't come back to Dublin for my old life, Abbi," he said, hands in the pockets of his rain-soaked pants. "I came back here to say goodbye to it."

  I followed his gaze around the empty office. In a way it reminded me of the empty apartment room where I sat alone assembling Zara's crib by myself. Sure, my floor had been dirty carpet that stank of cigarettes instead of the finest marble, but there was the same void, the same stillness, the same pervasive loneliness. I had said goodbye to my old life in a room much like this one, if not in appearance. I knew the sadness that came from rooms like these.

  I just didn't know why Michael felt he needed to be here alone, why he needed to go through this alone. Without me.

  "I put in transfer papers for Denver," Michael explained, staring down at his toe and the puddle of murky water around them. "It'll be a demotion, but all that mattered to me was being there, being near you so I can…"

  His words trailed off and he sighed. I reached out a hand and turned his chin so that his face turned toward mine. I waited for him to lift his eyes to mine.

  "I just want a chance," he said softly, his eyes imploring at he looked at me. "That's all I want, and I know I don't deserve it after all that I've done, but I just… I just need a chance."

  I looked from eye to eye, uncomprehending. "A chance?" I asked.

  Michael's eyes dropped again to the floor as if the weight of holding them up had become too unbearable.

  "I just want a chance to earn back your love, Abbi," he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper, the vast space around us making it sound even smaller. "A chance to earn my place with you, with Zara, with your family."

  Michael's shoulders were sloped forward, his neck bent, his eyes lowered; he was a man who was pleading.

  "That's why you paid for Zara's tuition?" I asked. "And the house?"

  Michael voice shook with fervour. "I know it's not enough, but I can do more and—"

  "Michael," I interrupted, grabbing his hands and sweeping them up.

  He raised his eyes and I cupped his cheek. There was pain in his eyes.

  "Sit," I said, nodding at the floor.

  "It's a mess," Michael said, frowning.

  I raised an amused eyebrow. "And we're not?"

  Michael laughed wearily and we sank together to the muddy marble. Our knees touched much like they did in the linen closest the first night we met. I didn't move away then and I didn't move away now. I kept his hands in mine.

  "Michael," I said, running my thumb along his, "love isn't something you can earn."

  I gestured around the office.

  "No matter how much money you have, it will never be enough. No matter how much success you gain it, will never be enough. No matter how many material things or homes or fancy suits, all of that will never add up to enough, enough to earn love. It's just not the way it works."

  Michael stared at me. He'd learned to view love like any other goal to achieve in life: have a plan, work hard toward it, and he could have it, just like a Rolex or Mercedes.

  "Love," I continued. "Love is given. Given and given freely, or it's not love."

  I squeezed his hands and smiled. Michael frowned and shook his head. "But then, then, what do I do?" he asked.

  I laughed. "The only thing you haven't done," I said. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

  Michael gave me a bewildered look. I licked my lips and scooted a little closer toward him.

  "I've loved you since that weekend in the mountains together," I explained. "I gave you my love that night and it's been sitting there on the doorstep of your heart this whole time. You've run away from it, covered it in cash, run away from it again, built a house around it. But all you've needed to do, all you've ever needed to do is take it. Just take it."

  My words became imploring as I searched his eyes. I wanted him to understand. I wanted him to understand that I'd been waiting for him. He'd been running laps around me and all I wanted for him to do was stop. Just stop and be with me. Michael looked at me hesitantly.

  "It can't be that easy."

  "Why?"

  He took a moment to think. "Because it just can't be," he finally said, shaking his head emphatically. "You can’t just give me something I don't deserve. The things I've done to you…the things I've done to our child… No, I want to earn it. I have to earn it."

  "You can't!" I cried, grabbing hold of his face. "You can't. I've already given it to you. It's right here." I placed his hand on my heart. "What can I say to make you see?" I asked. "Michael, you have to see."

  He pulled his hand away and then stared at the lines of his palm as it rested open on his knee. "Why can't you just let me do things the way I know how?"

  My fingers balled into fists of frustration, my nails digging into my palms. "Because your way sucks," I said as bluntly as the smack of a baseball bat. "Why can't you hear me? Am I not speaking loud enough?"

  I cupped my hands over my mouth and shouted, "Michael O'Sullivan, I love you!"


  My voice echoed off the marble floors and glass windows as Michael looked at me in horror, as if we were in a library.

  "Someone's going to hear you," he hissed, placing a hand over my mouth.

  I immediately tugged it away.

  "I don't care as long as you hear me," I said before shouting again with my head thrown back. "I love Michael O'Sullivan and he didn't do anything to deserve it!"

  "Abbi," Michael warned.

  "Did you hear me?"

  Before he could answer there was the rap of knuckles against the door and a tall blonde woman poked her head inside.

  "Is everything alright?" she asked, eyeing me and the mud around me like I was a vagrant.

  Michael tugged me to my feet and dragged me toward the door.

  "Yes, Caroline, thank you. We were just leaving."

  Outside the office a dozen or so curious heads popped up from behind grey cubicle walls.

  I grinned and shouted, "I love him terribly, madly, crazily, stupendously, ridiculously, idiotical—"

  Michael darted toward the emergency stairwell, pulling me in behind him. His face was red. "Abbi, what the hell are you doing?"

  I peered over the railing to see the stairs descending far below us.

  "Good idea," I told him. "Much better acoustics in here. I love Michael O—"

  Michael pressed me against the wall with his fingers flat against my lips. His green eyes searched mine as he held me pinned to the hard concrete blocks. "Are you going to stop?"

  I nodded. But when he peeled away his fingers, I started again. "I love Mi—"

  His hand covered my mouth again. "Abbi!"

  My heart was beating in a way it hadn't in years; it felt like the pounding of horses' hooves on a wide plain. He ignited in me the girl I'd been in those mountains. Maybe I could remind him of the boy he'd been there, too. With only a wicked grin against his hand as a warning, I bit down on whatever my teeth could find.

  "Hey!" Michael shouted, wrenching back his hand in surprise.

  I took the opportunity to dart down the stairwell ahead of him. I was correct, after all: the acoustics in here were amazing.