THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (70 page)

“Your girlfriend.”

He gripped the steering wheel a little harder. “Why do you want to know?”

I wasn’t quite sure why. I looked at his hands again, imagining them on a woman’s body, but not my own. I imagined a woman who looked a little something like Blake Lively or Scarlett Johansson. Someone who was fit and beautiful with a body that could please a man like him. It wasn’t much of a stretch. He was so handsome that I could see women in the cars beside us at stop signs and traffic signals taking more than a single look in his direction. He was sitting in a car and women still noticed how hot he was.

“I’m curious.”

“It shouldn’t matter. It’s over.”

“Is it? Because of this? Or was it over before you found out about me?”

He didn’t answer right away. He eased the car through traffic, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel tight between his hands, tighter than necessary.

“She manages a restaurant I oversee in New York City.”

“She’s a chef?”

“No. But she’d like to be someday.”

There was a little pride in his voice.

“You met her through your job?”

He looked over at me. “Yeah. I’m managing director over at my father’s company, Callahan Industries. We own a whole bunch of businesses—restaurants and real estate, a couple of tech companies, and a casino in Vegas.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“What did they tell you about me?”

I shrugged. “That you were Brian Callahan’s son and I had to marry you to end the street war. That’s about it.”

“I would have thought they’d tell you more.”

“What did they tell you about me?”

“That you’re Carmine’s youngest child. That you graduated from Boston College with a degree in literature. That you’re a little rebellious. That you can take care of yourself, but deep down you have a big heart.”

“Who told you that?”

“Carmine.”

I laughed even as I shook my head. “Sounds like my dad.”

“Are you close?”

I thought about that for a minute. My first memories were of sitting on my dad’s knee while he conducted business in his home office. I could remember him carrying me around on his shoulders, tickling me to get me to smile after a hard day of learning my ABCs in kindergarten. And I remembered him dancing with me in his bare feet in the middle of the living room, teaching me what was appropriate and inappropriate before my first school dance.

“As close as a father and daughter can be, I suppose. Daddy was always my buddy, but Momma’s my confidante.”

“That’s the way it should be, right?”

“What about you? Are you close to your father?”

Ian again gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter than necessary. “I would do just about anything for him.”

“Obviously. You’re marrying me when you have a restaurant manager up in New York waiting for you.”

He was quiet for a minute, long enough that I wondered if I should censor myself a little better.

“Do you know that I was adopted?”

“No, I didn’t.”

He glanced at me. “Abigail Callahan, my father’s first wife, was a social worker. It was her job to take kids from bad homes and move them to safer places, to foster homes and group homes. Abigail went above and beyond that. She brought kids home when she couldn’t find something better for them. She collected kids like some people collect cats. Sometimes she’d keep the kids until she found a better place for them. Sometimes she just kept them.”

“And you were one of the latter?”

“Kyle and Stacy and Kevin and me.”

“Stacy’s your sister?”

He chuckled. “Confusing, isn’t it?”

He pulled the car to the curb outside a small Italian restaurant I knew. He climbed out and came around to my side, reaching inside to help me out. We stepped inside, and he was immediately greeting enthusiastically by the maître d, shown immediately to the best table in the place. I’d been here a few times when I was in college, and each time I had to wait more than an hour for a table, even when my friends and I had a reservation once. Not only did we get a table immediately, but they also brought a bottle of expensive red wine while we were still being seated.

“Been here once or twice?”

He bit back a smile as he glanced around the room.

“Don’t tell me your father owns this place.”

“He does, actually. But they don’t know that.”

“Yeah?”

“The place has been owned by a guy named Julio Vicente since the sixties. My father heard he was going to lose it a few years ago and he bought it, then handed Julio the deed and told him to keep it in the black. And he asked me to check in from time to time. That’s all.”

“From time to time? And that gets you the best table in the place?”

“Well, my place is just around the corner, so I probably eat here more than I should.”

The waiter came over then, a big smile on his face as he greeted Ian.

“Mr. Callahan! It’s been too long.”

“Hello, Johnny.” Ian stood and greeting the waiter with a bro hug—you know, one of those hugs that is more of a slap on the back than an embrace. They smiled at each other for a long minute before Ian sat back down.

“The usual?”

Ian looked at me. “Do you like chicken parmesan?”

“I do.”

“Then the usual, Johnny.”

Ian watched the waiter walk away, then he turned his gaze back to me. “So…where’s your place?”

“What do you mean?”

“The restaurant you hang out at? Or the bookstore?”

“I don’t know. I used to hang out at Starbucks a lot.”

“No. The quiet, little out of the way place where you go to be alone.”

My eyebrows rose, but then I smiled. “What makes you think I have one?”

“You’re a literature student. All literature students are happier lost in their own little world.”

“True. But if I tell you, it won’t be private anymore.”

“Touché.” Ian lifted his glass of wine and tilted slightly toward me before taking a drink. “So you asked about my girl. Can I ask about your guy?”

“There’s not much to tell. I met him at a nightclub, and I thought he was dangerous and exactly what my father would hate.”

“And that drew you to him.”

“My father is very traditional, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I said, making a wide gesture that included us both. “He didn’t see why I needed to go to college, but he indulged me. Then, the moment I graduated, he began pushing me to get married, introducing me to young men in his employ for whom he thought I would make a good little wife. I was more interested in going to New York and getting a job in the publishing industry. I really wanted to edit books for Harper-Collins or some fabled publishing house like that. But Daddy…he wouldn’t hear of it.”

“So you hooked up with the first boy you knew he wouldn’t approve of?”

“I didn’t see it that way at the time. But, yeah, Spider was kind of my attempt at rebellion.”

“Spider?”

I felt the heat of a blush move over my neck and up across my cheeks. “He’s a musician.”

“I’m sure.”

Ian was smiling, and it was one of those smiles that made my bones melt a little. I could get lost in the amusement that danced in his eyes, the way the light did interesting things to his chiseled features. I had to clear my throat and force my eyes elsewhere before I could find my train of thought again.

“Anyway, I thought I was madly in love, so when Spider’s band got a gig in Chicago, I went with him. But it didn’t take long before I realized what a mistake I’d made, but I couldn’t come home without a good excuse. I’d probably still be there if Daddy hadn’t gotten shot.”

“But you are here, and now you’re back to where you started.”

“Yeah, well, I figure if I do this, Daddy will let me pick my second husband.”

Ian’s eyebrows rose, his eyes moving slowly over me.

“Then you’re assuming this isn’t going to work out?”

“We hardly know each other. And you’re in love with someone else.”

That seemed to take him by surprise. I wasn’t sure why, but I could see it in every line of his face. For a man whose emotion was hard to read, he was suddenly an open book.

“What makes you think it’s as serious as all that?”

“You’re guilty,” I said, playing with the stem of my wine glass. “Every time I ask about her, you try to avoid the subject. And there’s this tension that radiates from you that’s almost palpable.”

He chuckled as he lifted his wine glass, taking another long swallow. “I didn’t realize I was that transparent.”

“You aren’t about most things. But this…it must be pretty raw.”

I wished I hadn’t said it the second it fell from my lips because I could see just how raw it was in the way he looked at me. Thank God the waiter chose that moment to arrive with our salads, talking a mile a minute about the new dressing they’d been trying out and hoping that we liked it. Ian focused on him, smiling, as he assured his friend that he would love it. But I could see the façade, and I could feel the tension that was just underneath.

Was I beginning to break down the wall this man had erected around himself? Or was it just a lucky blow, a small chink in a piece of armor that was nearly impenetrable?

The more time I spent with Ian, the more I liked him. But I was pretty sure I was never going to mean to him what this other woman did and, for reasons I didn’t want to explore, that made me deeply sad.

Ian

It was time. The engagement announcement would be in tomorrow morning’s paper—both the paper version and the online version—so I had to tell her. It would be cruel to let her find out from someone else.

I intended to go to the restaurant and talk to her when service ended for the night. But I knew everyone would be around, that the clean-up crew and the kitchen staff would expect her to have a meal with them, so I decided to go to her place. I was waiting by the door when she stepped out of the stairwell a little before five, exhaustion written all over her face and the downward slope of her shoulders. But it was a good kind of exhaustion. I could see it in the light that came into her eyes when she saw me.

“Hey,” she said almost breathlessly. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you, Carrie.”

She stopped short, her expression tightening slightly. “You could have called. Or stopped by the restaurant.”

I inclined my head to acknowledge her. But when I didn’t say anything, it was as if I’d dumped a load of cement on her shoulders. I could see them tightening like someone had pulled a string tight.

She brushed past me and unlocked her door.

“You have a key,” she said over her shoulder as she marched across the apartment, dumping the bags she’d been carrying on the kitchen counter. She didn’t look at me as she quickly and efficiently emptied their contents, depositing take-home containers in the refrigerator. “Is it so bad that you didn’t even feel comfortable letting yourself into my apartment?”

I slipped the key she was addressing off my keyring and set it on the counter beside her hand. She stared at it for a second, then she began to shake her head.

“Ian, I don’t…it was just a fight.”

“I know.”

“I know we were both angry, but it wasn’t this sort of bad, was it?”

“No.”

She reached for my hand, but I pulled it away. If she touched me, I wasn’t sure I could go through with this. It was hard enough looking at her, seeing the pain on her face.

“Then what are you doing? Why are you giving me my key back? I gave it to you because I wanted you to feel free to come and go as you pleased. I…I know I pushed you to move in, but I understand that your family needs you in Boston. I’m okay with that if it means we stay together.”

“I know.”

“Then please…”

“I’m getting married.”

The words fell between us like a stone in the ocean. She gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles white. Her chin shook and tears began to slip slowly from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“I don’t understand. Were you seeing someone else all this time?”

“No. It’s not like that.”

“Then what?” She looked up at me, her eyes wide with grief. “Who is she? Where did she come from all of a sudden?”

How did I explain this? I studied Carrie, her smooth, silky blond hair, her blue eyes, her thin, delicate shoulders. Her body was as familiar to me as my face in a mirror, the way she sighed when I kissed her, the way her body wrapped itself around me when I embraced her. Even her smell was so familiar, a scent that had always conjured memories of warm summer days. I wanted to make the pain disappear from her eyes, but even as the desire slipped through me, my thoughts drifted to Mia, to the shopping trip we’d be taking tomorrow, to the engagement party her parents were throwing for us tomorrow night.

I felt disloyal. I was breaking this woman’s heart and I was thinking practical thoughts, wondering if the suit I wanted to wear had been picked up from the dry cleaners.

There was something wrong with me. Mia said I was unreadable. But the truth was likely rooted elsewhere. It was likely more to do with the fact that ever since I was a small child I’d had trouble forging strong attachments. Abigail said it was a natural response to the torture I suffered at the hands of my uncle and his friends. She said I’d learn how to get around it someday, but maybe this was the one thing she didn’t get exactly right.

Mia thought I was in love with Carrie. But I wasn’t capable of love.

“Ian, please!”

I focused on her, on the tears rolling slowly down her face.

“You were right,” I said. “My family matters more to me than anything else. And my family needs me to marry this girl.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?”

I moved around the counter, took her face in my hands. The moisture of her tears was a lovely sensation against my palms. She looked up at me, slipping her arms around my neck. I kissed her, roughly, taking from her everything I’d been thinking about since I left her more than a week ago. And she responded as she always had, touching me with a passion I wasn’t sure I could return. There was something different about this, something that hadn’t been there before. Or maybe there was something missing. I don’t know, but I pulled her closer and kissed her until I couldn’t catch my breath.

“This doesn’t have to be the end,” she whispered against my ear as I moved to kiss her throat. “You don’t love this other woman. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“You wouldn’t be happy being the other woman.”

“I would if it meant not losing you.”

I sighed against her shoulder, wondering what I’d done to earn such devotion. I kissed her throat again, breathed in that lovely scent one last time. I pulled away, extracting myself from her touch even as she moved to wrap her fingers in my shirt.

“You’re better off finding some man who wouldn’t hesitate to move in with you the first time you asked.”

“Ian…”

“I’m sorry. But this is the way it has to be.”

I walked out, not allowing myself to look back, not even when I heard something crash against the wall just behind me. It hurt. I wasn’t a complete monster. I did feel something; I just wasn’t sure what it was. Was it grief? Guilt? Heartbreak? I wasn’t sure. I knew I cared about Carrie. If not for Mia and this whole mess, I know I would have been content in a long-term relationship with Carrie. But did that mean I loved her?

Love was something of a foreign concept to me. I know I loved Abigail. She was the first person to truly give a damn about me. The other social workers turned a blind eye to what was right in front of their faces, never bothering to do their due diligence in order to protect me from my uncle. My parents were dead—killed in a car accident—and my uncle was the only family I had left. If they took me from him, it would mean foster homes and group homes. It would mean something less than what I already had. They assured me that I was better off where I was. They pretended they didn’t see the scars, the bruises, the emergency room reports and the stitches. It wasn’t until Abigail that someone finally saw what was right before their eyes. And she…if she hadn’t taken me home that night, I wouldn’t be here. And that wasn’t just me being overly dramatic. It was the simple truth.

Abigail, Brian, my brothers, and Stacy. They were the only people I had ever found myself capable of loving. And I wasn’t even sure that what I felt for them was as much love as it was gratitude. Respect. Loyalty. Those were things I understood.

I didn’t understand romantic love. I wasn’t sure I ever would.

***

Mia waited for me outside her father’s house. She was sitting on a stone wall by the front door, swinging her legs as she read from a book in her hands. I was able to watch her for a second, before she realized I was there. She reminded me of a younger version of that actress, Carla Gugino, with all those lovely curves and her slightly rounded face. She wasn’t as confident as most women. There was something a little awkward about her, but that awkwardness added to her beauty in a weird sort of way. I liked that awkwardness.

“What are you reading?”

She didn’t look up immediately. She touched her finger to the page of her book, finishing the sentence she’d been reading before she finally looked up.

“
Wuthering Heights
.”

“Interesting choice.”

She shrugged. “I suppose I thought that since we’re getting married, I should bone up on a few tragic romances.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “You think our marriage will be a tragedy?”

“It has all the makings.”

“Yeah?”

“Have you never thought about it before? It’s an arranged marriage and that alone has the makings for a tragedy.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, we know almost nothing about each other. I don’t know if you’re going to be an attentive husband, or if you’re going to ignore me and let me live my own life once we’re married. And you have no idea if I’m the clingy type.”

“True.”

“We could discover that we’re completely incompatible and that our marriage will be a miserable affair for us both for as long as it lasts.”

“That would be tragic.”

“See?” she asked almost triumphantly.

I laughed because she just seemed so pleased with herself. She jumped off the wall, sliding her book into her shoulder bag and strolling casually out to my car. I followed close behind, opening the door for her and watching as she slid inside. She was wearing a white summer dress with little roses on it, a color that made her pale skin seem darker. The skirt pulled up a little as she climbed in, revealing a turn of her calf that was more exciting than it should have been. And the view from above her breasts, tightly encased in the thin material and threatening to burst, made my balls tighten a little as I imagined what the view would be like without the dress.

“Have you ever thought about children?” she asked as I climbed into the car.

I knocked my knee into the gearshift.

“I just ask because my mom was asking if we’d discussed it. She seems to think that we should be discussing practical things when we’re together rather than trying to get to know each other.”

I turned the ignition and revved the car’s engine.

“Is that something we really need to talk about?”

“I don’t know. I suppose.”

“Do you want children?”

She didn’t answer right away, and I found myself hoping that meant she was willing to drop the subject. I pulled out of her father’s driveway and turned the car back toward downtown. She shifted in her seat, turning toward me, and I just knew I wasn’t going to like what came next.

“I want to have children. But I don’t want to have children with a man who’s not going to be around.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I know we’re getting married and everything, but this thing feels temporary to me. Doesn’t it to you?”

I glanced at her. “I’ve had all of a week to get used to the idea of getting married. I think it’s a little early to wrap our minds around anything else.”

“But we haven’t even discussed where we’re going to live after the ceremony. Have you planned a honeymoon? Do you want us to live together, or can I get a place of my own? Is this marriage going to be a marriage in the true sense of things, or do you plan on spending all your time in New York with your girlfriend? I just…I don’t know what this is.”

“And I do?”

She shrugged. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

We were both quiet for the rest of the drive. She didn’t perk up again until I turned the car into the underground parking garage under the building that housed my apartment. She stared at the cars parked in their assigned slots. The Mercedes and BMWs, the Jaguars and Cadillacs, cars that reeked money.

“You live here?”

“Penthouse.”

She whistled under her breath. “I knew you Irish did well, but I didn’t realize how well.”

“Pops is a good business man.”

“Must be.”

I walked around the car and helped her out, her hand tucked securely in mine. We walked to the elevator tucked into a back corner, and she pulled away the moment we were alone, wiping her hand against her hip. I tried not to let it bother me, but there was something about the movement that made me feel like the dirty little kid I once was.

The door opened directly into my living room. I gestured for her to lead the way and watched as she moved through the room, her fingers brushing the back of furniture and the tops of framed pictures as she made her way to the tall windows at the back of the room. She stood a foot back and studied the scene down below. I moved up behind her and looked myself, always awed by how insignificant the city looked from up here, as though nothing could hurt me as long as I was up here.

“Like a king surveying his kingdom from the top of the castle garret.”

I looked sharply at her, wondering if I’d spoken my thoughts aloud. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring down, a contemplative expression on her pretty face.

“You don’t like heights?”

“I don’t.”

She stepped back, moving around me as she wandered through the rest of the room. She gestured toward the stairs. “You don’t have some sort of playroom up there, do you?”

“I do, actually.”

She turned, looking at me so sharply that it was almost amusing.