“It’s all that whore in you,” Jenna chimed in happily.

  I smiled, watching Owen glance at us both out of the corner of his eye before he burst out laughing.

  “You’re a gas, darlin’,” he breathed between chuckles. “A real gas.”

  I wished I could hug her then. I wished I could harness that thing that she had in her, that amazing element that ran through her DNA and made her mix with anyone she came across. Even in a foreign land she was totally comfortable. Completely Jenna.

  I couldn’t understand it, couldn’t fathom it to save my life, but I loved it fiercely.

  “That’s the gaff, just up there atop the hill,” Owen pointed out ten minutes later. “The one with the fence needs mending, but don’t go tellin’ Sean I said shite about it. I’ll never hear end of it.”

  “Are we not staying with you?” Jenna asked.

  “Not with me, no. I’ve an apartment with my wife farther up the road a ways. One bedroom and a wretched couch. Sean and his have a spare room for the two of ya. You’ll do better with him but mind the eggs. His wife Sorcha is a grand cook but her eggs are manky. Grit like sand on a beach. Here ya are, home sweet home.”

  Owen pulled us to a screeching halt in front of the large stone house. It sat in the darkening rain with glowing yellow windows that looked warm and inviting like something out of a brochure. A shadow moved across the big bay window in the front, paused, then hurried toward the door. It banged open and a wisp of a woman stood in the light, smiling brightly as her blond hair was batted in the wind. When she waved I instinctively waved back.

  “That’d be Sorcha, Sean’s wife. Ya two go on up the steps to meet her. I’ll get the bags out the boot.”

  Despite the rain I took my time getting out of the car. I waited for Jenna’s door to open and uselessly put my hand over her head to try to block the rain. She smiled indulgently, taking my hand in hers and lowering it to swing between us.

  “It’ll be fine,” she assured me, pulling me forward.

  “I never said it wouldn’t be.”

  “You didn’t have to. It’s in your body language.”

  “Can they tell?”

  “No.” She gave my hand a gentle shake. “They don’t know you like I do.”

  “Kellen,” Sorcha greeted me warmly.

  The moment I was in range she pulled me in to a crushing hug that both surprised and calmed me. She released me without ceremony and did the same to Jenna, pulling her in close and saying her name as though they were old friends finally reunited.

  “You must be shattered from yer trip,” she said, motioning for us to follow her inside the house. “Come in and warm yerselves. Dry off. Sean! They’re here!” She smiled at us dripping wet in her entryway, the wind and rain pouring in a curtain behind us, dripping off the roof in miniature waterfalls. “And they’re the prettiest couple I’ve ever seen in my life. Do you take after your ma, Kellen? I’ve never seen photo of her.”

  “I don’t. Not much. No. Only in the eyes.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, unsure if that was enough of an answer. It didn’t feel like it and suddenly I felt like a shit that I came here without a picture of my mom. It never occurred to me that they’d want to see one and I didn’t have many to start with. What I did have I’d never shown to anyone. Not even Jenna.

  I had hoped that coming here and meeting this family I’d find more of myself in them, but then Sean appeared from the kitchen all smiles, graying black hair, and dark eyes that were more green than my blue. He was short like his brother, no more than five foot seven with none of the bulk to his body that I carried. I didn’t look anything like them, meaning I didn’t look anything like my grandpa, meaning I probably looked a hell of a lot like my dad.

  The thought made me sick in my stomach.

  Jenna shook my hand impatiently, snapping me back to reality. I blinked again, looking around the room at the faces that were watching me and waiting.

  “I think he’s tired from the trip,” Jenna explained with a smile. “I slept but he didn’t. Kellen, your Uncle Sean was just introducing himself.”

  “I’m sorry.” I offered my hand to the man in front of me. His smile recovered from where it sagged in confusion at my blank stare. “Jet lag brings out the worst in me. I’m Kellen. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Grand to meet ya,” he replied politely. When he released my hand he smiled genuinely at Jenna and I was so damn thankful she was there I nearly fainted at her feet. “Are ya hungry? We’ve had our supper but Sorcha kept the pot hot for ya.”

  Jenna shook her head mildly. “We ate on the plane. Thank you, though. I’m really excited to taste authentic Irish cooking.”

  “I’ll keep it in the fridge for tomorrow,” Sorcha promised with a glowing grin. “Or if ya get a hunger in the night ya can warm it.”

  “That sounds amazing.”

  “Grand.”

  Owen burst into the room behind us, a muttering of curses on his breath as he kicked the door closed and shook his collar down.

  “Ma won’t be wantin’ to come out in this shite,” he told Sean gruffly. “I’ll bring her round in the mornin’.”

  Sean nodded in agreement. “Bridgette, she’s our sister, she put the babes to bed hours ago. She and Donal won’t be comin’ by tonight either. Best to let ya two rest a bit. Meet the clann in the mornin’.”

  “I’ll make breakfast,” Sorcha added brightly. “Bangers, eggs, white puddin’, and soda bread.”

  Owen looked at Jenna and me meaningfully.

  “I can’t wait,” I told Sorcha.

  Jenna nodded with enthusiasm.

  We said our goodbyes to Owen, agreeing to see him again in the morning when he brought his mom over for breakfast. I was nervous about that. I was nothing to this woman. Nothing but the bastard grandson of the French prostitute who stole her husband and tossed him aside when she was done with him. What she wanted to do with me I had no idea.

  Sorcha led us up the worn wooden stairs to the top floor of the house. We walked down a narrow hallway filled with arched doorways obviously not built with giant Americans in mind. I’d have to duck slightly to pass through any of them. I knew Jenna would be a bit embarrassed that she’d have to do the same.

  “Toilet’s on the left here,” Sorcha pointed out, pushing a door open to show a small, clean bathroom covered in blue tile. “I set out clean towels for ya in yer room. Here ya are on the left.”

  She opened another door to show a square room with a tight, tall window flanked by flower printed curtains, dark wood floors, yellow wallpaper, a long white dresser, and a queen sized bed with a thick blue and yellow quilt draped over the mattress.

  “It’s nothin’ fancy,” she said almost apologetically. “Probably nothin’ like whatcha have in California, but it’s—“

  “Beautiful,” Jenna breathed. She smiled at the other woman. “It’s lovely, Sorcha. Is that quilt hand sewn?”

  Sorcha smiled proudly. “It is. My ma and me, we sewed it together before my weddin’.”

  Jenna ran her hand gently over the colors. “It’s beautifully done.”

  “Thank ya.” Sorcha took a bracing breath before stepping back into the hallway. “I’m sure ya both are tired. I’ll leave ya to it, then. If ya need anything at all Sean and me, we’re down the hall on the right, opposite the toilet.”

  “Thank you,” I told her sincerely. “Goodnight.”

  “Codladh sámh.”

  “What does that mean?” Jenna asked curiously.

  “It’s Gaelic. It means goodnight. Or sleep well.”

  Sorcha smiled as she closed the door behind her with a gentle click.

  The room fell silent. We stood there motionless as we listened to her feet pad down the hallway, taking the stairs back down to the kitchen and living room. She and Sean would probably put out the fire in the hearth, turn off the lights throughout the house. More than likely they had a ritual. A set of steps they did every night together to end the day. The idea was comforting, cozy and warm like the house.

  It wasn’t huge and it wasn’t ornate, not like a lot of the houses I saw in Ranchos Palos Verdes, but it was lived in. It had memories on the wall. Pictures of family plastered over every surface, some old black and whites obviously of people dead and gone but never forgotten. It was full of family and life being lived from the smooth dark hand rail on the stairs to the thick smell of beef and vegetables in the air.

  “You doing okay?” Jenna asked.

  I looked around the room like I was looking for answers. Weird thing was, I found them.

  “Yeah,” I said with a slow grin. “Yeah, I think I’m doing okay. I might even be doing great.”

  “So we’re not bailing? I don’t have to sneak out this second story window and disappear into the night back to Dublin?”

  “No. We’re good.”

  “Thank God,” she moaned happily, falling back on the bed with a thud. She kicked off her shoes and stretched her legs out to the end of the mattress. “I am too tired, it’s too rainy, and this bed is too comfy for that mess.”

  I went to the window to look down into the garden on the side of the house. I could see the broken section of fence Owen had told us about. Inside there were neat rows of vegetables and flowers being buffeted by the rain and wind. Dancing happily, drunk off the drink.

  “They’re nice,” I commented offhand.

  Jenna hummed in sleepy accord.

  “I don’t look anything like them.”

  “They’re still your family, Kellen.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t get weird.”

  I chuckled, turning to look down at her. She smiled back at me from the bed, her hair a dark pool of black ink shining around her face. It was wavy and wet, like she’d just come out of the shower.

  “Don’t get weird?” I asked.

  “You know how you get.”

  “I do.”

  “So don’t do that.”

  “I’ll try.”

  She reached out and grabbed the edge of the blanket, pulling it over herself until she was wrapped up in the quilt like a big burrito. She fluffed a pillow under her head and sighed, “That’s all anybody can do.”

  I watched her eyes fall shut, her mouth slip into a sleeping pout. Her breathing evened out into a steady rhythm that mixed with the thrum of the rain and made me sway on me feet with fatigue. I needed to go to sleep. I needed to be fresh in the morning when I met the rest of my family so I wouldn’t be ‘weird’. I needed to pee, I needed to change clothes, I needed to Houdini some of that blanket out from under her body, but for now, just for a minute, I needed to see her. To see her sleep soundly, peaceful and beautiful. Solid as the earth under my feet and gentle as the sun on my skin.

  Snoring like a frat boy blacked out at the end of a bender.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jenna

  They get up early in Ireland. Like dawn early. Maybe not in Dublin, maybe not everywhere, but in the quaint village of Dunleer Cross just north of the Pale and west of the Irish Sea, they sure as shit do.

  Kellen and I found out quickly that his family kept chickens. And a rooster. The second that guy started going on about the dawn the whole house was up and bustling. We could hear Sean and Sorcha moving in the bathroom next door then down the stairs, over the groaning floor boards of the old house. We stirred slowly, getting our bearings the way you did on your first day in an unfamiliar place. You soothed your mind after that initial WTF panic and promised it that no, you were not sold into sex slavery in the night. You came here willingly. You were safe. Calm the hell down.

  “I hope they have coffee,” Kellen grumbled, stretching out next to me.

  “Tea,” I told him. “They drink tea here.”

  “Shit.”

  “It’s probably strong tea.”

  “Meaning it’s weak coffee.”

  “You could drink nothing.”

  He turned his head to smile at me, his unshaven face scruffy and dark. “You mean I could shut up and quit bitching about it?”

  “Your choice.”

  He grunted as he rolled over and collapsed his body on top of mine, crushing the wind out of me. Crashing every inch of himself against me in a way that woke me up like water to the face.

  “I’ll be good,” he said deeply, his mouth against my neck. “No complaining. No being weird.”

  I leaned my head back, letting him have more of me. “How will I recognize you?”

  “You’ll know me.” He lifted up on his arms and took hold of my hands, raising them over my head. Elongating me. Stretching me out farther underneath him as he lowered his weight onto my hips, grinding slowly. “You always know me.”

  My mouth fell open as my breath caught in my throat. “Kellen.”

  “I’m gonna be good, Jenna. I promised I’d be good.”

  “This is good,” I whispered. “This is really good.”

  “You make me this way. Only you.”

  I hiccupped on a moan as he pulled at my thigh, lifting it high against his hip. “Good thing you put a ring on it.”

  He had a condom on and was inside me before I could blink, and all thought left my brain. All understanding of where I was and how quiet I should be. Of the people in the house and the rain that had dried up outside. Of the sun shining warm on the world, begging us to come out and play. None of it made sense, none of it mattered. All I knew was the feel on him heavy on top of me and heady inside of me, spiraling me out as he wound me up.

  “I should have done it years ago,” he grunted against my ear. “The minute I loved you I should have told you. I should have waited for you because I wanted you. Always you. Only you.” His hand gripped at my hair the way he did when he was getting close but his breathing was slow and measured. Unhurried. “All my life I’ve only ever loved you.”

  I was wordless, boneless, mindless. I pressed my mouth to his shoulder, his cheek, his hand as it traced my face and ran down my neck to my chest, his palm covering my body, his warmth giving me shivers. I fell apart around him as he went supernova inside of me and I wondered in the back of my breathless mind how long he was with me. How much of those words were Kellen on the surface where he loved me.

  The way he looked down at me afterward, his dark eyes black but fixed on my face, I felt a dull ache of hope that it was all of them.

  All of him.

  ***

  By noon we were surrounded.

  Sorcha and Sean were in the house of course, along with Donal and Bridgette, the oldest of the siblings and the only girl. Donal was taller than the rest, round in the middle and hairless on his head while his chin flourished with a bushy gray beard. Bridgette was short like her brothers and rail thin with flaxen hair that made her look more like Sorcha’s sister than anything else, but I suspected her blond hair was bottle bought.

  Callum would be so disappointed.

  Bridgette and Donal brought their two grandchildren Nina and Garrick in tow. Seven and ten years old, both dark haired and bright eyed. Their dad was in the Defense Forces serving in the Army branch of the Irish military. He was a linguist, a job that put him on deployment often and his children in the care of their grandparents every time.

  Kellen and I stood in the corner of the living room with Sorcha watching the kids play outside in the backyard. There was a swing there by the garden, still wet and dripping from the rain, but the kids didn’t care. They raced each other, their feet pushed toward the sky, their heads falling back in laughter that nearly sent them to the ground underneath them. Higher and higher they flew, laughing louder each time. Shrieking with delight and fear as they hurried back toward the ground only to fly up even higher on the return.

  “Their ma is gone, no one knows where,” Sorcha told Kellen and I quietly. “And there’s no need to speak of her. None in the family do.”

  I smiled at the kids and their rosy cheeks painted by the cold January air. “They seem happy.”

  Sorcha smiled in agreement. “They are. Brandon is a fine father. A proud soldier. He’s got a girl lives in Dublin, works for a bank, makes visits out every weekend. Brings sweets and kisses for the babes. Loves ‘em as though they were her own.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “It is. Children need stability. They need family and comfort. Without it Lord knows what could become of ‘em. Thieves and vandals. Lost souls without a home to call their…” Sorcha paused, remembering the company she was keeping. She smiled weakly at Kellen, immediately apologetic. “Well, it helps to be loved. It certainly helps.”

  I watched Kellen with my stomach in my shoes, my blood cool water coursing through my veins.

  I was surprised and proud when he smiled graciously at her. “I’m happy they have it.”

  Sorcha sagged with relief, her smile gaining strength. She patted me on the back before excusing herself to the kitchen, probably looking for oil to help remove her foot from her mouth.

  “That was nice of you,” I whispered.

  “I said I’d be good, didn’t I?”

  “You did, but I think I underestimated just how good.”

  “Best behavior.”

  “Thank God, because I think your grandma just walked in.”

  Kellen froze, his eyes fixed on the front door.

  Owen came in first followed by an elderly woman with an arched back and skin that hung pale like bleached dough from her bones. Her expression was placid but her eyes were fierce. Cunning, cleanly belying her age. She scanned the room slowly, taking in every face, and even though she didn’t linger on Kellen or me, she undeniably took notice. She was a sharp one and I felt my pulse quicken under her brief scrutiny.

  Owen helped her into the room and she was followed closely by a woman much younger but still in her mid-forties with red hair and deep brown eyes set above high cheekbones. Both she and Owen led the dowager to a seat by the fire that burned low but insistent against the winter chill that poured in from outside.

  I stepped around the couch to close the door for them but stopped dead when I nearly smacked right into a pair of bright green eyes.

  “Oh,” I stuttered, stepping clumsily back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was coming in.”