“Just a minute!” I shout to the door, dragging a t-shirt over my head and walking to the door.
Mam stands on the other side with a plate of biscuits, and behind her stands Caitlin and Megan.
“Ladies, we’re having a meeting up here shortly,” I say, exasperated. “It isn’t what one might call a community meeting.”
“I know,” mam says, breezing past me. Caitlin gives me a sheepish look but follows. The door opens again, and Megan enters.
“You can’t be here,” I protest. I might be the Bonebreaker for the Clan, but I have no control over my mother.
“Now, Cormac, when a woman of the Clan’s expecting, you can’t expect us to leave her be,” Megan says, walking right into the room with mam and Caitlin.
“I know, dear,” mam says. “We’ll shut the door and let you men do your thing.”
“Is this about the reporter?” Caitlin asks.
“Ugh, that bitch,” Megan mutters.
I want to shake the lot of them. “How do you know about her?”
“Well,” Caitlin says, looking abashed. “I… she was bothering me yesterday, came into the garden and started asking me all sorts of questions about the baby and Keenan.”
“And she had the nerve to take pictures of the baby!” Megan says, her bright green eyes flashing.
“When was that?” Aileen stands in the doorway of the bedroom. Her damp hair’s twisted into a knot on the top of her head. She’s wearing the dress I handed her, and she’s barefoot, but she’s the prettiest damn thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“We don’t need you to get involved,” I begin, but Caitlin answers her anyway.
“‘Bout dinner time? I went to the garden with the baby, and she was there.”
Aileen looks at me. “She was hiding a good long while then, wasn’t she?”
“Aye,” I say, when someone knocks on my door again. I open the door to Keenan and Nolan, and before I close it, Tully, Boner, and Lachlan arrive.
“Okay, you girls off to the bedroom with Aileen,” Keenan says but he snags a ginger biscuit off mam’s tray first.
“Those are for her nausea, Keenan,” she says, slapping his hand away.
“Honestly!” Caitlin says.
Keenan looks up at me, wide-eyed. “Nausea? There a reason for that, brother?”
Megan and Caitlin giggle.
“Aye,” I say. I can’t hide the pride I feel as I tell my brothers. “Aileen’s expecting.”
“Guess we don’t wait around here,” Aileen mutters. Nolan slaps my back, the others congratulate me, Boner proposes we celebrate at The Craic, and Keenan kisses Aileen’s cheek. She flushes pink and thanks him.
The girls head off into the bedroom, and the men assemble.
“Well done, you,” Lachlan says, giving me a grin. The youngest of our Clan, he only joined rank last year, after Keenan recruited him. He graduated St. Albert’s, the finishing school where our men are trained, and quickly became one of the most loyal, dependable men.
Boner sits on the recliner in my living room and pushes it back.
“Alright, lads, now what’s the story? Why’d you wake me out of a good, sound sleep, for a meeting?” he asks. “To tell me Cormac knocked his wife up? Could’ve told you that myself.”
“Fuck off, Boner,” I tell him. I whip a pillow at his head, but the wanker catches it before it smacks him.
“No, we’re here to talk about what happened to me last night,” Nolan says. He leans back on the sofa and kicks off his shoes.
“Don’t make yourself at home,” I tell him. “After the meeting, I’m kicking you boys out of here so I can tend to my wife.”
Tully and Lachlan give each other knowing grins. “Wish I could tend to a wife,” Lachlan says. I give him a good-natured punch to the arm. He grins and rubs it out. Keenan sits on the sofa, leans forward, and rests his elbows on his knees. He clears his throat and the room goes quiet. We might give each other crap, but we know why we’re here.
“Nolan caught a spy last night.” No one laughs now. “Cormac witnessed as well. They were coming home from town, Nolan was on the front step. Both saw someone spying in our garden.”
“How’d he get past security?”
“She,” Nolan corrects. “A very good question.”
Boner’s eyebrows shoot up. Lachlan looks at Nolan sharply. To my surprise, Tully looks away.
Is he hiding something?
“Says she found the door unlocked and decided to pay us a visit.”
“Unlocked?” Keenan says, his brows furrowed.
“Not unlocked, brother. Not when you look through footage on the security feed.”
Tully looks paler than I’ve ever seen him.
“You got something to say, Tully?” I ask him.
He shifts uncomfortably on his seat and clears his throat. “No, why?”
Nolan sobers. “I think you do. Because I’ve already looked through the feed, brother.”
The room goes quiet, and through the closed door to my bedroom, I can hear the higher-pitched, muffled feminine voices in the other room.
Keenan looks from Nolan to Tully. If Tully’s in any way responsible for a security breach, he’d be smart to fess up now. It’s a major infraction, on a level just below betrayal or theft from the brotherhood. We take security seriously.