"You’d still be talking to the wrong person," was his mother’s waspish retort even if it made my heart flop around in my chest in a way that told me I needed to go visit a cardiologist—stat. "Since when was I a romantic?"
"At least you identify that it was romantic," Camille said softly, reaching over to pat her mother-in-law’s shoulder. I wasn’t sure why Magdalena looked at her, when she was the newest member of the family, but Aidan’s mother did. Their glances collided and Camille sent her a gentle smile as she said, "And we all do crazy things when we’re in love, don’t we?"
Aidan rolled his eyes, but he reached up to rub his ear as he asked, "You stopped taking your meds or something, Ma? You’re more snippety than usual."
"Shut up. You’ll make this worse," I grumbled at him.
"There’s no making it worse with Ma," he countered, his gaze fixed firmly on hers. "She knows we’re not cattle at the market. She knows what an arranged marriage feels like. And she knows what it means when someone dark comes into your light and stains everything in sight."
His mother glowered at him, but she merely asked, "If you’re such a stain, Aidan, then why did you darken her door at all?"
"Because she’s helping us. She almost died yesterday—"
"Oh, my God, bitch! What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me?"
I cast a glance at Jen. "Sorry," I mouthed, well aware that I deserved her glare. But there wasn’t really an optimal moment to tell someone that you’d almost been killed.
Or, if there was, I’d never received the memo on that particular social nicety.
"What happened?" Magdalena demanded. "And don’t you dare say it’s business because if you do, Aidan, so help me God I’ll let your father do worse things to that ear than I just did." She folded her arms against her chest. "Let’s face it, you need me to smooth things over because if you’re bringing girly over here for Christmas dinner it’s more serious than you’re letting on."
Aidan’s lips curved up. "Ain’t seen you this riled up for about ten years, Ma."
She squinted at him. "Don’t smile at me and think you can worm your way out of things." His smile shot up a few megawatts, and Magdalena groused, "Why do you have to look like your father?"
"Well, he had to have something that’d make you weak at the knees, Ma. Sure as hell wasn’t his sparkling personality, was it?"
Her lips curved. "He can be amusing in his own way."
"His own psychopathic way," someone muttered behind me.
Deciding to grab my balls back, I stopped pleating my fingers together and murmured, "Can we start again?" I held out my hand. "I’m Savannah."
"I’m Magdalena—"
"Lena," Camille chided, and her mother-in-law huffed.
"You can call me Lena though."
Unsure why Lena was listening to Camille, I shot the younger woman a smile first, then, the matriarch of the family. "Thank you so much."
Receiving a grunt for my pains, I watched as she wandered over to the stove.
"Do you want cake?"
Cake was the last thing I wanted, but Aidan nudged me with his elbow and nodded.
Quickly, I replied, "Please!"
Lena grumbled as she cut out a slice of cake, and that was how I found myself sitting at the kitchen table in a three-thousand dollar Valentino suit eating cranberry crumb cake while everyone—even though I already knew their names and most of their life stories—introduced themselves to me.
Because I was me, I was so tempted to turn my voice recorder on so I could listen to this again, but deciding that would be weird, instead I hyperfocused on everything that was said, and came to see another side of Aidan.
For all that he was at a table full of women, he was well at ease with each of them, and they with him. Aoife and Jen more than the others, but that fit seeing as they’d known each other a long time.
It was also clear to see that he was a momma’s boy, but rather than being creepy as all hell, it was sweet. Caring. It showed another side to the man. Never did I think I’d meet his mother, and within seconds, he’d be hauled down the hallway by his ear! Talk about a baptism by fire.
"I was supposed to send you to your father when you arrived," Lena said after a short while.
"Is he in the office?" Aidan asked lazily, no rush in his voice.
"No. He’s sniffing around that present you sent him."
Any laziness disappeared and he straightened up. "Sniffing around it?"
Lena shrugged. "They all are."
"Shit." Tension throbbed through him, and I reached over and patted his good knee.
"You go and sort that out, yeah?"
He shot me a glance, and as our eyes collided, the heat in his was at war with the ice. The heat was for me, the ice for what was about to happen. "Are you sure?"
"I won’t clip her around the ear," Lena crooned, but that wasn’t much of a consolation, was it?
A laugh escaped me though, because the tension that had Aidan sitting straight up seconds before was nothing to now. He shot his mother a glower that would have disintegrated a lesser person into dust, before he snapped, "No, Ma. Watch it. Don’t even tease."
"How else am I supposed to get my fun?" she retorted with a huff.
"How about you don’t terrify the mother of your grandchild?"
I froze, then elbowed Aidan in the side. "What the hell?"
He ignored me. "Give her some respect!"
Mouth dry, I rumbled, "I think we’ve gotten our wires—"
"She’s pregnant?"
"She has a name!" Aidan countered.
I heaved a sigh. "I’m not pregnant."
"We don’t know that."
Uh, yeah. We did.
I frowned at him, wondering what the hell his game was, then, of course, I recognized that if a woman could get pregnant by a look alone, it’d just happened.
I had no idea what he was doing, none whatsoever, but he’d apparently decided the way to get his mom on side was to lie to her.
Christ.
The last thing we needed today was a birth by immaculate conception. I was quite happy leaving that to the Virgin Mary.
As he leaned into me and pressed a kiss to my cheek, I muttered, "Thought you were Catholic. Thou shalt not lie."
He snorted, and didn’t reply, but turned to his mom and said, "You need to look out for her."
Lena was glaring at him, not me again. "Did you get married the way Brennan did?"
"No."
"Why not? If she’s pregnant, your father will go mad."
"Yes, at me."
Lena sat up straighter. "What’s going on here, Aidan? Is this a joke?"
He shrugged. "If you think my becoming a dad is a joke."
She sniffed. "Don’t guilt trip me, boy. Go and play with your father but tell him the second it hits ten PM, that work stops. No excuses. Remember?"
"How could I forget?" he questioned wryly.
"What happens at ten?" I asked the woman beside me—Aoife.
"It’s when the guys turn their phones off. No business until after brunch on the 26th."