She giggles and covers her mouth. “Promise I’m not. Let’s do it.”
I shake her hand, which makes her giggle even harder. “Deal. Let’s do it.” I roll over and pull the blanket straight up over my head. “Now let me get some fucking rest first, will you?”
She leans in and tucks the blanket around me. “Of course, love,” she says softly. “I’ll be back later, and I’ll help you get ready.”
But her voice is distant, and even though she’s still speaking, I don’t hear her last words as I drift off into sleep.Chapter 3Tiernan“This is ridiculous. No. No way.”
My older sister Sheena paces outside in the garden, her hand on her hip. Her reddish hair’s pulled back in a messy bun on top of her head, and she’s taken to wearing glasses now, but when she gets fired up, she still looks like the sister I remember back when I was a child. Hell, she seems to think I’m still a child now.
For Christ’s sake, I’ve been a man of the Clan now for years, and a planned fight is literally the least of my concerns. I’ve taken lives for the men of the brotherhood, conducted major business transactions that brought millions into their coffers, and Sheena lost her privilege of telling me what I can and cannot do ages ago.
Doesn’t mean she doesn’t still want to, though.
I sit on the stone bench under the green archway to the garden and cross my ankles. I don’t speak to her at first.
For one brief moment, it strikes me how everything changes here but the garden. The flowers bloom in the spring, fade by summer’s end, then wither and die with the cold of winter, freezing rain, and occasional snowdrift. The garden sleeps then, only to bloom once more in the spring. The same stone pathway lies here that I crossed my very first time coming to the mansion as a lad, this bench the very same I sat on as a sixteen-year-old lad with a chip on his shoulder.
I didn’t like the McCarthys then. It angered me that my sister got roped into one of the most powerful mobs in all of Ireland.
The garden hasn’t changed, but we have. Fiona’s no longer the shy, reserved, neglected thirteen-year-old with freckled cheeks, who chattered all the livelong day to anyone who’d listen. She’s older now, married to Lachlan, and will graduate university soon.
Sheena’s no longer the fire and brimstone investigative reporter who was hellbent on bringing the McCarthy family down. She went and fell in love with Nolan, the third in line to the throne, who watches her now with that steadfast look of his I know well. He’ll give her just enough space to speak her mind, but she loses her temper easily and he knows it.
Back then, when we first came here, baby Sam was only two years old, ignorant to the abuse and neglect he suffered, mercifully shielded by Fiona, Sheena, and me.
And hell, I’m definitely not the stony-faced teen who hated everyone and everything save his siblings. With Nolan’s steadfast perseverance, I learned that there was a place for me, right here in this brotherhood of strong, principled men. In my mind back then, they were only criminals I couldn’t trust. Over the past seven years, they’ve become the brothers I always needed.
I fold my arms across my chest and wait for Sheena to finish. When she finally huffs out a breath and faces me, she throws up her hands in exasperation.
“But I suppose you’ll go ahead and do what you want anyway, as you always do!”
I can’t help but share a smile with Nolan at that, and she doesn’t miss it.
“Oh, you’re on his side, aren’t you?” she rants at Nolan.
Nolan smiles at her, his blond hair falling onto his forehead as he tosses his head, the McCarthy green eyes of his narrowing on her. “Course I do, lass. Why wouldn’t I? Your brother’s a born fighter, and it’s one of my life’s greatest accomplishments having a hand in his training.”
Jesus, my throat tightens at that. And right then, right now, under the overhanging leaves in the McCarthy family garden, I vow to myself I’ll win tonight’s fight, for the whole fucking McCarthy clan.
“And moreover,” Nolan continues, with an uncharacteristic formality to his speech that makes me smile. He’s learned that logic and reason pair well when negotiating with my sister. “Tiernan hasn’t been under our authority for years, Sheena. If he wants to fight, he can. If he wants to buy a sailboat and sail down the coast of Africa and lead others on safari, he can. If he wants to—”
“I get your point,” she snaps, her brows snapping together and her features darkening.
Nolan sobers a touch. “Careful, Sheena,” he says quietly. She clamps her mouth shut, draws in a deep breath, then lets it out again. Like every man of the clan, Nolan’s old fashioned. He’s the head of his home and doesn’t tolerate disrespect or backtalk from any of us.