Old Dog New Tricks by Roxanne St. Claire

Author:Roxanne St. Claire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: South Street Publishing
Published: 2019-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“So when are you breakin’ the news, lad?” Gramma Finnie looked up from buttering her toast, meeting Daniel’s gaze moments after the last of the Kilcannons and staff left the kitchen to begin a busy Friday at Waterford.

“In time.”

She cocked her head. “I’m pushing eighty-eight, son. Don’t take too much time.”

He narrowed his eyes because she knew he didn’t find jokes about her age funny. “No worries, Gramma. We have plans.”

“And can I know them? Or is it only you and the lass in on your top-secret private plans?”

“Just us, for the moment. But the plan kicks off on Sunday when we have Katie and three of her kids here for dinner.”

Her blue eyes widened behind bifocals. “Saints and angels, Daniel Seamus. When were you going to tell me? Sunday’s young Ella’s birthday celebration, and all the Mahoneys will be here, plus our crew. We’re lookin’ at nearly twenty people, and that’s too many for the dining room, assuming Jessie hasn’t gone into labor, which could be any day.”

He stared at her for a moment, his mind a thousand miles away. Well, about fifty miles…in Chestnut Creek. “A buffet is fine,” he said. “It’s not about eating.”

“With twenty hungry people in this house, it is.” She put her knife down and leaned forward. “So you’re making the announcement then? I sure hope so, since I canna hold it in a whole lot longer, lad. When I’m alone with Molly or Darcy, I all but burst with the news.”

“Please.” He gave her a stern warning look. “We still have to get the results from Bloodline.com, and if they are what we think they are, then Katie wants Nick to know first, and I couldn’t agree more. We’re a month away from anything like that.”

“I know.” She held up her hand and nodded, since they’d had this very same conversation every time they’d been alone in the past week. “But why didn’t you mention the dinner sooner?”

He shrugged, knowing the real answer was he was preoccupied. Thinking about Katie when he shouldn’t have been. Considering how they might tell Nick. Powering through his plan to be friends, while plagued by an age-old male frustration so foreign, he’d forgotten what it felt like to go to sleep hot, bothered, and second-guessing what he knew was right.

“Daniel?”

“I should have mentioned it,” he admitted with an apologetic tip of his head. “I know you worry about where people will sit, but what’s important is that we meld these families before we break the news. We thought it would help make the whole thing easier for them, and us, if everyone knows and likes each other. We’re sort of matchmaking the families.”

He expected that to amuse her, but her gray brows shot up. “Got pigs in your belly, lad?”

“Excuse me?”

“We…we…we. Didn’t take long for a ‘we’ to emerge from this.”

“Well, we are kind of in this together.” Not as together as they could be, but as together as they should be.

“Truth is, you’re ‘kind of together’ more than you’re apart lately.

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