Wake My Heart (Jasper Falls 1)

“My cousin Kelly’s wife,” he explained.

Lucky woman, Maggie thought.

Ryan’s father stared at her with his arms crossed over his chest. “How are you related to Caleb?”

“Dad, let it go.”

“Liam, shut up and eat your cake.”

Maggie blinked. Could he really be that serious about disliking her simply because she was an O’Malley? The rivalry was half a century old. She had nothing to do with the bar and found his immediate dislike of her offensive. “He was my husband’s grandfather.”

Rosemarie coughed into her mug. “Husband?”

“Mum.”

Maggie placed a hand on Ryan’s thigh, telling him not to bother. The awkwardness was inevitable. “I’m a widow. My husband was Nash O’Malley.”

“Oh, dear.” Rosemarie’s weathered fingers trembled to her mouth. “He was the young man who had that terrible accident a few years back?”

“Yes.” Her nerves bolstered with steel as she reminded herself the woman’s bluntness wasn’t personal, but the empathy in her eyes was.

“I’m so sorry.”

Liam’s arms uncrossed. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the table until Rosemarie picked up the knife and said, “I think you need a bigger piece of cake.”

Maggie smiled, unused to maternal figures whose first instinct was to comfort rather than blame. She picked up a fork and cut into the gooey crumble. “Thank you.” As soon as the first bite hit her tongue she stilled. “Oh my God.”

Rosemarie smiled expectantly. “Good?”

Maggie covered her mouth. “Delicious.”

“See?” Ryan’s mother patted his hand. “You two have similar taste. That’s a good thing. So, tell me how you two met.”

Over the next hour, Maggie consumed her weight in calories and drank too much coffee while chatting with Ryan’s parents. Once his father let go of the fact that her married name was O’Malley, he relaxed. He was actually funny, in a dry, take-no-prisoners sort of way.

Rosemarie was lovely. Maggie had never met anyone quite like her. Being near her felt like a hardy hug. She was so at ease with others, she put others at ease too. She took interest in every detail she discovered, down to where Maggie thought Ryan should buy his curtains and where one might buy the best tomato plants this summer. Maggie had little knowledge on either but felt significant simply by being asked.

Once Ryan realized she was enjoying the visit, he loosened up. She loved watching him with his parents. Sometimes they’d bicker over nonsense. Other times they’d laugh over some anecdote from twenty years ago that never stopped being hysterical. She envied their palpable closeness, wondering how some families simply worked like magic while others never blended.

“Well, this was lovely,” Rosemarie said as she tucked in her chair. The woman had cleaned the entire kitchen while sharing stories, cake, coffee, and some sort of mythical unicorn dust that made Maggie want her to stay. “Maybe this Sunday Ryan will bring you to dinner.”

Magical feeling gone.

“I’m not sure I can make it this week,” Ryan said.

His mother turned her sharp maternal glare on him. “Ryan, you’ve missed enough dinners. You won’t be missing another. This Sunday’s at Aunt Maureen’s and Uncle Frank’s. I’ll tell them to set out two places.” She turned to Maggie. “You’ll see that he goes, won’t you dear?”

She seemed to have lost the ability to blink. Or speak. But the question sounded more rhetorical than anything else.

“Wonderful.” Liam opened the back door. “We’ll see you then.”

The door closed and Ryan immediately locked it behind them. “Please don’t break up with me.”

She snapped out of her stare. “What? Why would I break up with you?”

“Were you not conscious for the last two hours?”

“What are you talking about? Your parents are incredible.”

He frowned and pointed to the door. “The man and woman who barged in, took over my kitchen, and methodically reorganized all my stuff, you saw them right?”

She rolled her eyes and dumped the last of her coffee in the sink. “You’re being silly. Your parents are perfectly nice and normal. Want to see scary parents, try spending ten minutes with mine. My mother has a gift for making you feel responsible for every disaster in your life, and my father only talks when he’s looking for a pen to do his sudoku. I liked your parents.”

“Really?” He felt her forehead.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking for a fever. I think you might have hallucinated normal people, because I have it on good authority my mother is a maniac.”

She laughed and batted his hand away. Why was it so hard for him to believe that she’d like them? “Ryan, they’re exactly what normal parents should be like in my mind. But I’m not going to Sunday dinner.” Before he could argue or try to convince her, she went into the living room to find her shoes.

“Neither am I.”

She pivoted. “You have to. Your mom said so.”

He laughed. “I’m thirty, Maggie. I don’t have to do something just because my mum says so.”