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However, before I could utter a peep, Declan murmured, “Ma, I think Seamus would really like a drink.”
Lena tensed, then her eyes flashed wide. Her red hair wasn’t as bright as I remembered from childhood, streaked liberally with silver and gold now, but it glinted in the sun as her hands came to cup her cheeks. “How could I forget my manners?”
She dragged Seamus off inside the house with him looking back at me with wide eyes that asked me to intervene, but when Aidan spun around to follow, Declan barked, “Da,” and my attention was averted.
Aidan, scowling, peered over his shoulder and groused, “What?”
“I told you about this before. You want Seamus in your life, you don’t treat Aela like she’s public enemy number one.” Everything inside me heated up at that. Fuck. I didn’t need him to defend me against goddamn Doyle, but his dad was different. I needed all the help I could get. “You treat her with respect.”
“You ain’t taking that boy anywhere.”
“I’ll take them both anywhere I damn well want. I’m not having you disrespect Aela. You got me?”
Aidan squinted at me and raked me with a disapproving glance before he shrugged and strode into the house.
“That didn’t go too badly,” I muttered, but before he could reply, the sounds of vehicles coming down the driveway made themselves known to me.
In a matter of moments, I’d been formally introduced to Aidan Jr., who I’d only seen glimpses of at Declan’s hospital room, and Finn O’Grady, his wife Aoife, and their baby boy Jacob. I glanced between them all, surprised because though I knew the names, and everyone in the Points was well aware that Finn was high up in the ranks but also like family, there was a disconcerting similarity between the two friends. I knew they’d met in school, so I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but the thought was rammed home when Eoghan showed up with his wife, Inessa.
There was a distinct similarity between them all.
I’d met Finn, Aoife, and Inessa back that night when everything had changed, when Amaryllis, my ex-student, had come to me for help. But I hadn’t exactly gone out of my way to get to know them. If anything, I’d been more worried about getting childcare for Seamus, and then, when I’d heard about Declan’s injuries, my focus had been solely on him.
Inessa had been kind though, Aoife too. Both women were at ease with the brothers in a way that shouldn’t have come as a shock, but still did because I was used to thinking of them as O’Donnellys and not regular men.
Still, these were the ones I knew the least, so when Brennan and Conor showed up, Conor driving, relief hit me. Declan, with his arm around my shoulders in a position similar to how I’d held Seamus close earlier, turned to face his other brothers.
“You drive like a fucking lunatic,” were the first words that managed to cross the distance.
Conor scoffed. “I drive like a regular person.”
“A regular person who needs goddamn glasses. You didn’t see that SUV in front of you, did you? How the fuck you didn’t rear end them, I’ll never know.”
“Because rear-ending is your fucking specialty?” Conor mocked, earning himself a bird flipped his way from Brennan.
“No swearing. Jacob’s a prodigy in the making,” Finn rumbled, “I don’t need him spitting out curse words.”
Brennan scowled at us en masse, before he groused, “Whose idea was it for boy wonder to drive me home?”
“I won’t be kind next time,” Conor grumbled.
“You can drive back with us,” I offered, knowing Seamus would appreciate that. He liked Conor and Brennan, and even though he’d seen more of them, I knew it wasn’t just having been around them that made him like their oddball humor. There was a real ‘odd couple’ vibe between the two brothers that, I couldn’t deny, was amusing as hell.
“Thank you,” Brennan muttered, crossing himself in relief. “I didn’t survive a shootout once this week to die in this dick’s passenger seat.”
I was grateful to both of them for breaking the ice, because ice had never been broken more perfectly than it was right then. It was easy to slip between Conor and Brennan, for Declan to be at my back. I knew them. I got them. They were, I realized with no small amount of astonishment, my kind of people.
Maybe I should want to hang around Aoife and Inessa, but they were, well, girly girls. They wore dresses and skirts, Inessa even had a patterned silk scarf around her neck that screamed Hermès, which I’d seen her use to cover her hair in church, whereas I wore black pants, a camisole on top of my Kevlar vest, and a structured, slim-fitting leather jacket.
As we all trudged inside, heading for a large living room that was dominated with a massive TV screen, and an equally massive sofa, what took me aback the most was how, wherever I looked, there were frames on the walls.
Picture on top of picture on top of picture.
It was incredible.
A still life movie of the O’Donnellys from birth to adulthood.
Entranced, I drifted around, taking stock of the different images, easily picking out the ones which were Declan. They all had the same bone structure, that mouth that was quick to smile, grimace, and snarl. They each were dark, some a little lighter here and there, but all of them—Finn included, were Black Irish.
