Her smug tone had me snorting. “Eoghan is just as hot.”
“I know. The O’Donnellys are a bunch of hotties. We’re lucky ladies.”
Something about that statement seemed off to me, but I didn’t get why, and her laughter had me focusing on what we were talking about, not just her remark.
“Anyway, he did, and look at us now. There’s no reason you can’t be Eoghan’s prime beef too.”
“The way to tie a man to you, girls, is to make him so drunk on you that he can’t see anyone else.”
I flinched at the sound of my mother-in-law’s voice.
Oh fuck, could this get any worse?
I felt a little like a rabbit in the headlights when I turned to her, saw her amused expression, and then just wanted to sink into the ground.
“There’s a reason I kept Aidan Sr. tied to me for over forty years. They get offers all the time, but they don’t have to take them, do they?”
“No,” I said slowly, my gaze on my shoes.
“Eoghan’s a loyal boy,” she continued, ignoring my shy response. “If you want more of him, just be loyal back. It’s not that complicated.” She hummed under her breath, and I got the feeling she and Aoife were having a silent conversation. “Anyway, child, if you still need the bathroom, go, because I want to open your gifts.”
I bit my lip, nodded, and muttered, “I didn’t actually go.”
“No, and I’m glad to see you didn’t try to hide that hickey, by the way. There’s no point,” she told me wryly. “Trust me. I’ve had decades to try, and it never works. We’ll be just off the hall down there when you’ve finished.” She surged forward, surprising me when her fingers came to cup my cheek. “Mostly gone now,” she murmured, and I knew she was talking about my bruises. “I’ll make sure Aidan doesn’t mention them, but just so you know, my boy will never lay a hand on you.”
“I-I know he won’t,” I whispered.
“Good.” She beamed at me. “Of course, if he ever did, I’d chop off the hand that hit you.” Lena winked at me, like that was supposed to reassure me, and frickin’ weirdo that I was, it actually did.
Even as I knew Eoghan would never, ever, in a million years hurt me like that.
I sank back into the bathroom, Aoife’s rueful smile the last thing I saw before I used the facilities.
Unlike my old home, this place wasn’t gaudy. The family’s wealth was clear, but not like it was in my father’s mansion.
There, everything was marble and touched with an edge of gilt.
Here?
It was a home.
The hall, when I’d finished in the restroom, was lined with photos and paintings of the family. I’d never seen so many family photos in one place. There wasn’t an ounce of wall left. It was kind of chaotic, but I liked it. I also liked seeing Eoghan growing from a serious young boy into a cocky teenager. Something changed when he was around sixteen or so, the cockiness grew, as did the smirks and the grins in the various shots I looked at, then, he had a buzzcut and I figured he had just enlisted.
Some somberness appeared, but his grin outshone it.
I could see, from those pics, why he’d been considered the joker of the family.
Had the prospect of being forced into marriage changed him so much?
Then, I realized how stupid that thought process was. How sexist.
Why shouldn’t he hate being trapped? Why shouldn’t he loathe it more than me? He was older, he’d had freedom, he’d had the taste and the bug had bitten him—to have that taken away? To have to marry someone he didn’t know? Have his choices ripped from him?
We were both in this together.
It was probably the first time I genuinely felt that.
We’d been shoved into a marriage thanks to our families, and we had to sink or swim as a unit.