Page 85 of Catch Him
“Is the other surprise waiting downstairs my father?” she asked him, knowing her non-answer was driving him mad.
“Yes,” he said tightly. “When you kicked me out for your girls-only weekend I flew to San Francisco to meet with him. We… worked things out.”
Sinead thought back to when he got back on Monday morning and had taken her to bed. “You said you got the bruise on your ribs by accidentally getting hit by some old lady’s handbag in the grocery store.”
“Your father’s fist, handbag in the grocery store. Similar outcomes. But then I asked him for his permission to marry you and he got all choked up. I swear there might have actually been tears. You know how the Irish are. Desperately sentimental when it comes to things like love. He eventually forgave me for breaking your heart. We drank Budweisers like men do. I put a bag of frozen peas on my side. And we watched the Giants kick the Dodgers’ ass. Now, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said softly, because she knew in her heart this was the only time she was ever going to accept a proposal. “I will marry Declan Gallagher and David Whitmore, both.”
He sprang to his feet. “Excellent. Now chop, chop. The judge is waiting. And I hope you understand… no photographer. But I did bring in cake and champagne.”
“That works.”
Twenty minutes later and there was a knock on the door. “I need another minute!”
She really didn’t. She’d done her makeup, the dress was on, the shoes were on. She just had a hard time standing in front of the full-length mirror and realizing she was looking at herself.
Sinead O’Hara, former Mill Valley cop turned princess. How had this happened?
Declan, she thought. Declan had happened to her.
The door opened and she could see the top of her father’s head. “Are you decent?”
“Yeah, come in, Dad.”
He turned the corner, saw her and suddenly froze. “You look just like her,” he said, his voice cracking. “She would have wanted to see you. She would have wanted to have seen how beautiful you are.”
Sinead could feel the emotion back up on her. “Don’t make me cry, Dad. It will ruin my mascara and Dec’s already agitated it’s taking this long. He keeps texting me to hurry.”
Her father walked over to her. He also had a jewelry box in his hand. A long flat rectangle. When he opened it she saw her mother’s charm bracelet. A delicate thing, with a baby carriage charm, for her, and a little silver gun, for her dad—which Sinead always thought was weird but her mother thought was hysterical. A bird, because they were always her favorite animals. A heart. Which was what she felt for her family.
That was it. Just those four because she died before her father could add to it. For such a hardass, Declan was right. Her father did have a soft underbelly to him. Always had when it came to her mom.
The heck with mascara, she thought even as tears welled in her eyes.
“She would have wanted you to wear this,” he said gruffly. “I always meant to give it to you… I just had a hard time of letting go of it. But it’s yours now.”
Sinead took the bracelet out of the box and put it around her wrist. “I’ll never take it off.”
He nodded, seemingly satisfied.
“You’re going marry the cocksucker?”
“Yeah. He turned out to be alright. So no more hitting him in the chops, okay?”
“Love tap,” her father muttered.
Since they had reached a pretty good place in their relationship, Sinead didn’t push it.
“You want to walk me down the aisle or whatever he’s got set up?”
“That’s why I’m here. This is some place. At least you’re marrying up. My father always told me it’s just as easy to love a rich girl as it is a poor girl.”
Sinead didn’t mention that this place was just a sliver of the empire Declan controlled. She also didn’t mention she and Dec had talked about finding her dad a security job in one of his holdings. Something nice and legit.
But that was a fight for a later date. Now it was time to get hitched.
* * *
