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I found that hard to believe, especially as I knew he was fascinated by the arts. Enough that his home was a rogue’s gallery—literally—of stolen artwork. Nobody who was that obsessed, who spent a couple of million on a safe to protect lost paintings, could be classed as ‘uninterested.’
She just didn’t know him.
And that saddened the hell out of me.
“I see you disagree,” she observed softly. “There’s plenty a woman never learns about her son. That’s how it should be. He’s lived in his father’s shadow since he was a boy… it’s time that changed, I think.”
She drifted away without another word, no sign of distaste or disapproval in her statement, but neither was there any appreciation. But that was okay. Very likely, I wasn’t good enough for her son, but he disagreed and I was more than happy with that.
A few minutes later, Brennan disrupted me by asking, “What’s caught your attention?”
If it had been Declan, I’d have talked about Finn. Maybe mentioned his parents’ strange way of breaking the ice. Instead, because it was him, I murmured, “I like seeing you all this way. It reminds me that just because everyone in Manhattan is terrified of you, I don’t have to be.”
He snickered. “Not just everyone in Manhattan.”
Chuckling, I teased, “Most of the East Coast, huh?”
“Well, I hate to be modest.”
“He does. Hate to be modest,” Declan inserted, his hand slipping around my waist as smoothly as he slipped into the conversation. “Did the folks give you shit?” he grumbled. “I’m sorry, I was helping Shay out.”
I arched a brow. “With what?”
“Man stuff.”
What went up, had to go down—my brows furrowed. “What kind of man stuff?”
“Things women don’t understand.”
He and Brennan shared a look, but while they both seemed to understand, I really didn’t. “Huh?”
“Never mind. Just know I’d have come and saved you if I’d been able to.”
Despite the mystery, I patted his hand. “I know. They were semi-decent.”
“I, on the other hand, could have saved you, but I decided it was time to rip off the Band-Aid,” Brennan remarked, lifting his glass and taking a sip of what looked like a Bellini.
The big, tough Irish mobster rocking a sling on one shoulder and a holster on the other while holding a slender flute of champagne with peach juice was more than discordant.
In fact, it was jarring enough to make me want to paint it.
I didn’t particularly want Aidan Sr. or Lena’s approval. It wasn’t something that would keep me up at night. If they hated me, they hated me.
So be it.
I wasn’t, and never had been, an ass-kisser. With Aidan Sr. in particular, I wasn’t sure if getting rimmed was a surefire way to make him hate me more. All I could do was be strong, stand firm, and believe that I made the right decisions along the way.
Better communication might have kept Declan and me together, but back then, I didn’t think so. He was young, and like Lena had said—under his father’s thumb. I’d known that way back then. He’d come to me so many times after doing a job, and though he hadn’t said anything, I’d felt how lost he was. Sometimes, when he was inside me, that was the only time he’d feltfound.
He’d even told me that once.
And it had resonated with me in a way that was beyond comprehension.
That had been better than an ‘I love you’ in my mind. To this day, it still probably meant more to me than any of the random crap men had a tendency of saying when they thought themselves tied to a woman.
But I knew, then and there, that I’d paint all of Lena’s boys and gift her the portraits.
And just like I knew she’d adore them, I knew they’d be my best work. Ever.
