My brows rose, but I said, "Thanks."
She smiled at me. "Don’t worry about it. Lena will calm down. She’s probably still in shock."
"I’m not pregnant," I muttered, aware mother and son were sniping at each other.
"Aidan clearly wants her to think you are," was Aoife’s dry retort. "God knows why but these men are wily." She chuckled. "Method to every madness."
That had me frowning as I turned back to Aidan when his arm slid around my shoulder. He turned me into him and kissed me sedately on the lips.
A glint was back in his eye, cold and hard, which made his soft kiss all the more powerful. "Be good."
I blinked. "What can I do here?"
He smirked at me. "That’s exactly what I’m asking myself." Sniggering, I watched as he clambered to his feet. "Okay, ladies, I’ll see you back at dinner."
"There’s a golf cart waiting outside for you to take to the summer house," Lena told him. "Your da sent it over to save your knee. Why you won’t just use a goddamn cane I’ll never know."
"Not this again," Aidan sniped as he limped off, letting me realize that when I’d spoken with him about his leg, I wasn’t the first to get in his face about it.
Lena pinned me with her stare the second the French doors that led to a very lovely patio area slammed to a close. "Don’t you care that he’s hobbling around like that?"
"I do. We’ve already argued about it," I confirmed, well aware that I had to find my footing here.
Fast.
Lena wasn’t any scarier than the guy who’d infiltrated my apartment and I’d managed to hold him off with a mop and a coffee table book. How much worse could this be?
"Argue a lot, do you?"
"Lena," Aoife chided. "You’ve got to give her a chance."
"I don’t have to do anything." Lena sniffed. "He brings a girl to my doorstep and—"
I didn’t want to start on a lie. "Lena, I’m not a girl, and I’m not pregnant. I don’t know why Aidan said that. I don’t want to lie to you though, because I’m going to be a part of your son’s life for a long time, and eventually, you’re going to realize that I’m not pregnant," I said wryly.
Lena pursed her lips. "Remind me to clip his ear again?"
I winced. "He was just trying to protect me."
"No, he was trying to manipulate me into twisting his da’s arm to the idea of another non-arranged marriage." She grunted. "Only my Eoghan was a good boy."
Inessa, the youngest wife here, murmured, "I can promise you he isn’t a good boy, Lena." Her mother-in-law cackled, surprising me. Inessa shot me a smile. "Let’s not lie to ourselves, hmm?"
"It was good to see Aidan smile though, wasn’t it?" Aoife prompted.
Lena huffed, but she did concede, "Thought my ears were deceiving me when I first heard him laugh." I received a gimlet stare. "So there’s some use to you, at least."
"Better than Prozac, that’s me," I confirmed, something settling inside me as the other women started taking some of the spotlight off me.
"The boy’s been on worse than Prozac," Aela retorted.
"His eyes were clear, weren’t they?" Inessa asked.
So, they’d known he was taking drugs. "He’s clean. Has been for about six weeks," I informed them.
Lena pursed her lips. "You the reason for that?"
I shook my head. "No."
"Well, unlike my son, at least you’re honest. Used to be a time when they were terrified to lie because their da used to tell them he’d cut off their fingers if they did."
"Christ," Aela muttered.
"You know that’s not a good thing, don’t you, Grandma?" I turned to see Seamus, Declan’s son, pausing in his attempts to lick a spoon clean of what looked like cake batter.
The female population in five years’ time was going to swoon whenever he walked into a room.
These O’Donnellys and their goddamn genes. Talk about blessed.
"There are worse things in this world, my boy."
Victoria said something that had Shay smirking, and they turned to each other, chuckling in a way that had both their cheeks burning with heat.
Teen crushes were so cute.
"I won’t be telling Jacob that I’ll cut his fingers off if he lies," Aoife muttered.
Lena shrugged. "Different times."
"Not sure there was ever an era where that wasn’t politically incorrect, Lena." Camille pursed her lips. "You were upset when you found out about Eoghan’s beating—"
"When was he beaten?" Inessa burst out, bristling.
"Before your wedding," Aoife murmured as she bit into a sugar cookie.
"How did you know that?" Jen asked.
"Finn was mad at Aidan Sr."
Lena’s mouth tightened. "Keeping them on the straight and narrow is one thing, but beating them into—" She sighed. "I know you were beaten too, child, for not wanting to go through with the marriage."
Eyes wide, cake forgotten, and fascination at fever pitch with this conversation, I tried not to feel like I was living in a reality TV show.
Talk about bliss.
"It’s never right to beat your child," Aela grumbled. "Even if he’s a pain in the butt and won’t ever do as he’s told," she called out so Shay could hear.
He grinned at her. "Mom, you know you love my BS."
She rolled her eyes. "If you say so, kiddo."
"I didn’t like it," Lena admitted. "But I wasn’t as brave as you all back then."
"Hard to imagine you not being able to chew nails," Aoife commented with a soft laugh.
"Well, Junior wasn’t wrong about the darkness staining everything, was he? We talked about that."
Damn, I wished I’d been a fly on the wall for that conversation.
Lena drummed her fingers against the scrubbed oak kitchen table, which made her nails clack against it and, clearly wanting to change the subject, asked, "You were dating all those years ago?"
"No. It didn’t work out." I shifted in my seat. "But I’m glad we’re together now."
She tipped her chin. "Did you really argue with him over a cane?"
"Yes—" Sheepishly, I admitted, "I bought him one for Christmas, but it will be delivered to my apartment in The Sharpe."
"You bought him a cane?" Lena repeated, and I wasn’t sure why that surprised her, but it did because her brows were doing a salsa dance on her forehead.
"I did. My mother taught me that if you can’t make a man listen, you just make him do instead."
Lena processed that but slowly grinned. "She’s a smart woman."
"She is actually," I agreed dryly. "She had to be smarter with a man like my father."
"Why? What’s wrong with him?"
"He’s a famous musician," I explained quietly, aware I had everyone’s attention.
"Famous is an understatement," Jen tossed out after she finished dissecting a cookie on a paper napkin with her fingers and popped a piece into her mouth. "Her dad is Dagger Daniels."