Page 32 of Nolan (The Doherty Mafia)
He stopped outside the store and pulled out his phone to make a call. I was shocked when my own phone rang. I couldn’t believe he called me.
“Hello?” I was breathless when I answered the call.
“Amelia?”
“Nolan?”
“How are you?”
I tried to catch my breath before I answered again. I didn’t want him to know how excited I was to hear his voice. Why was I this excited? Aldo would’ve despised me if he knew my reaction.
“I’m fine…yeah…totally fine.”
“Me too. I’m totally fine too.”
I stared at him from across the street. He looked upwards, in the other direction, gazing up at the dark sky. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, beaming with joy. He was thinking about me. What was he thinking?
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked abruptly.
“N…nothing…I don’t think I’m doing anything.” I’d never felt this tongue-tied before and it was embarrassing. I wasn’t doing a good job of hiding my excitement.
“Okay, good. You’re having dinner with me and my brothers. Apparently my sister-in-law, Reese, took a shining to you and wants you there.”
I was too overwhelmed to come up with a response quick enough. At least a sensible response.
“Dinner?” I mumbled.
“Yeah, it’s just a family dinner, nothing fancy. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. But since you’ve met my dad already, I figured I should introduce you to my brothers and sister too.”
“I’d love to come. I liked meeting Reese too,” I replied.
“I’ll pick you up at seven. Text me your address.”
Nolan ended the call and I still held my phone tightly to my ear. I saw him grinning up at the sky…or had I just imagined it? I felt a tightness in my belly at the thought of what would happen tomorrow.
A Doherty family dinner, and I was invited. Aldo would be excited about it too.
Sixteen
Nolan
Amelia sat beside me in my car with her legs crossed, making her dress ride up her slender legs. She wore a black dress again, this one was even more sexy than the one I remembered her wearing at the bar. It had a low back and a low front. Her arms were bare, her hair was left open in curls around her shoulders. She had her signature dark makeup on. Same boots too. I was glad to see she hadn’t ‘dressed up’ to meet my family. She stayed true to herself.
I liked knowing what to expect from her. I liked there weren’t any surprises. I’d accurately predicted what she’d look like and it made me feel even more comfortable with her.
I’d picked her up from her apartment and we drove to my brother’s cabin in the woods. That’s where he lived with Reese, cut off from the rest of the world—just the way he liked it.
“Sounds exciting to be living in a cabin, off the grid,” Amelia remarked.
“Yeah, Killian has always enjoyed time to himself. He likes to live in isolation.”
“What about Reese?”
“She’s devoted to him. They met under unusual circumstances, but she will live wherever he is. I don’t think there’s anything that could separate them.”
“That sounds sweet. Some people are lucky.”
I didn’t want to look at Amelia. I didn’t want to know what she thought of their relationship. I had a lot on my mind for the night already—and I didn’t want to add the pressure of trying to figure out how Amelia felt about me.
“What unusual circumstances did they meet under?” she asked.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.
“It’s complicated, I’m not sure how much of it I can share with you. To put it simply, Killian wasn’t supposed to be with Reese. She was supposed to be with someone else. She’d been given to someone else?”
“Given?” Amelia exclaimed, chuckling like I’d said something funny. “Which century is this story from?”
Yeah, just as I figured. She wouldn’t understand how my family worked. How our world operated.
When I didn’t join in her laughter, she became serious.
“Reese was given to a man? By her parents?”
“By her stepfather.”
I saw Amelia’s face—she was in shock. I’d already said more than I should have.
“And Killian rescued her from that shitty situation?” she asked.
I nodded and Amelia sat back in the seat, looking out of the window now to think about what she had just heard.
Yeah, it was pretty fucked up and she didn’t even know the half of it.
We were all seated around Killian and Reese’s dining table. Amelia had been invited to sit beside Reese, for some reason I couldn’t figure out. I sat across from her, which was exactly where I wanted to be so I could see her face at all times. I liked that.
The food had all been neatly laid out on the table. Glasses were filled with everyone’s choice of alcohol. Reese and Killian kept glancing at each other and the smile on my sister-in-law’s face told me they had some good news to share.
