Saying I Do (Stewart Island Series Book 8) Read online

Or even the Irish, slán.

  But he’d no intention of seeing her later or around, and it was plain disturbing to be this close to her for the first time in ever and discover he wasn’t as much in control as he’d thought and—

  His hip pocket vibrated with an incoming call.

  Joe hauled out his phone and glanced at his mam’s phone number flashing on the screen. Brilliant bloody timing; he could kiss the woman.

  With an apologetic grimace, he said, “Sorry, got to take this,” and jogged to the hall’s rear doors.

  Joe slipped outside, the wind driving through his shirt a reminder that MacKenna still had his coat. He’d rather donate it to the lost-and-found box than return for it, so he shut the door behind him.

  “Howya, Mam?” he said. “What’s up?”

  His mam’s voice rattled machine-gun fast as he wandered down the side of the community hall. He mmhmm-ed in the right places but let her running commentary of her and Da’s week and the various updates about family back in Ballymun wash over him in a soothing tide. Footsteps slowing outside Due South, he decided against another chess game with Smitty and turned, instead, toward Oban’s little medical center and the two-bedroom cottage at the rear of it that Joe called home.

  Rough, white-capped waves surged through the wharf’s pylons and smashed into the sand as he strode past. Out in Halfmoon Bay Harbor, the moored fishing boats jostled and shook, tugged first one way and then the other as the current tried to drag them out into the notoriously dangerous Foveaux Strait. Joe cast an eye to where the afternoon ferry’s broad blue and white stern chugged toward the horizon and the little town of Bluff on the mainland. Poor bastards were in for a hellish hour-long trip.

  Mam had covered most of the topics in her reservoir by the time he’d headed away from the beach.

  “Da wants to know if you’ve tried the new ale he sent down,” she said. “He’s like a schoolboy waiting on exam results.”

  The bright-red roof of Joe’s cottage came into sight, and his stride grew longer. It wasn’t much, his little, white clapboard house with the green windowsills that’d soon need repainting due to the past two wilder-than-usual winters. It wasn’t flashy, with its cramped bedrooms and décor dating back to the island’s previous physicians’ tastes. It wasn’t what some would think a thirty-four-year-old man’s bachelor pad should look like, since it was meant for a doctor and his family, but it was Joe’s space. No nosy siblings, no noisy student accommodation, no roommates. Just his private space. And he didn’t give a shite about the color of the drapes or if the living room had good feng shui.

  He unlocked the cottage’s front door and bumped it open with his hip. “They arrived yesterday. I haven’t had time to sample one yet. Though if the lads catch wind of a new Doyle’s on the premises, they’ll be kickin’ down my door.”

  He dumped his backpack on the hall floor and made a beeline for the kitchen, mouth watering at the mention of one of his da’s craft beers.

  “All going to plan, it’ll be in production soon enough and on the shelves of your pub by the New Year.”

  The pride in his mam’s voice was unmistakable. Brewing had been one of the only hobbies his da had brought with him when they’d emigrated from Ireland, and through sweat and hard work over the past eighteen years, he’d expanded a hobby into a mid-sized empire that now shipped his beer—named after his wife’s maiden name—worldwide.

  “But that’s not why I’m ringing you. It’s your sister. Kerry.”

  As if he’d more than one seven-years-younger sister to worry about. Fortunately not. One Kerry was enough for any brother to deal with. Joe removed one of his da’s new beers from the fridge and used the bottle opener tacked to the wall to open it.

  “What’s she gone and done now?”

  His mother heaved out a sigh. Hairs prickled at the back of Joe’s neck. It was the same sigh he’d heard every time one of the twins got into one form of trouble or another.

  “Oh shite, Mam—she’s not knocked up, is she?”

  “Joseph! No, she’s not knocked up.” Another sigh. “But she does have a new man.”

  The whip of tension that had gathered around his rib cage eased. “Kerry’s always got a new man.”

  “This one’s different. He’s…”

  The rib-cracking tightness returned. Kerry had hooked up with some unsavory characters before. While Joe might be a doctor, his younger brother Luke a computer guru, and Kerry’s twin, Kyle, an architect, none of the men who hadn’t treated their sister well had hung about long once the three Whelan brothers paid them a late-night visit.

  “He’s what?” Joe asked into the void. “And different how?”

  “He looks a bit rough, but he’s a nice lad—Aaron Parata’s his name. Works for one of the tourist companies driving a tour bus.”

  A bus driver? A rough-looking bus driver? That gave Joe a moment’s pause. “He’s not an ex-con or a gang member, is he?”

  Tutting sounds came from the other end of the line. “No, you great git, he’s not. And he treats our Kerry like a queen.”

  “So he should.”

  “Well, he does and all.” His mam cleared her throat. “And two nights ago, he asked our girl to marry him, and she said yes.”

  Joe’s fingertips loosened, and the bottle plummeted to the floor in an explosion of glass and beer.

  “What was that?”

  “The cat knocked a mug off the counter,” he said, moving away from the shards of jagged glass and the spreading puddle of his untasted beer. He leaned a hip against his ancient stainless steel kitchen counter, his distorted reflection in the now-dull steel staring back at him.

  “Son, you don’t have a—”

  “How long have they been together?” asked his mirror image with narrowed eyes, the deep lines etched into a brow partially hidden by the flop of his mud-brown hair.

  “Five months.” Her words were clipped, and worry infused them. “Living in sin for three.” A half-arsed chuckle followed that statement. “Granny Whelan’s words, not mine,” she added. “She’s a bit gobsmacked about it all, but she’ll come ’round.”

  Awkward silence followed. Awkward, because if Granny Whelan knew Kerry was living in sin for the past three months, then everyone in the Whelan clan knew. Except him. And the reason made the fries he’d eaten earlier at Due South sit like a paperweight in his gut.

  Sofia.

  Or, as per the Whelan family’s whispered legend, that redheaded tart who’d left Joe high and dry at the altar.

  “Kerry wasn’t going to tell me about getting hitched,” he said.

  “Yes, she was—she was. Just not for a while. She wanted to wait to find the right time to bring it up, you know?”

  When would the right time be? Probably after two years of dating, at least another two of living together, then he might be ready to hear his baby sister was ready for such a commitment. Not because he’d prejudged Aaron; he could be a feckin’ stand-up, solid guy. But Kerry, out of all his siblings, was in some ways the most like him. Like what he used to be.

  “Sees only the good in people,” his mam would say. “Gullible eejit,” his da would mumble. Joe had been blinded and emotionally burned beyond recognition once; he couldn’t let his sister go through the same with this Aaron character.

  “When’s the big day?” he asked, his steady voice a testament to his self-control since his tone reflected nothing of his white-knuckled grip on the phone.

  “Spring sometime. They haven’t set an official date yet.”

  The relief in his mam’s voice was palpable but spring? That was only months away!

  “I’m sure they’re not rushing into anything like—” She snipped off the last of her sentence as neatly as an infected toenail…and just as ugly.

  Like you did with Sofia.

  His mam and da never warmed to Sofia, though neither had admitted it aloud until later. Luke and Kyle had been working in the US while Joe had been entrenched in his whirlwind romance. B
y the time his brothers arrived back in the country a week before his wedding, Sofia had packed up her five suitcases and a dozen boxes from his Invercargill apartment and had disappeared from his life.

  Tiny shards of glass crunched under his boots as he skirted the mess on the floor and retrieved the dustpan and brush from the sink cabinet. Sofia was ancient history, dragged into the present by bumping into MacKenna and then by his mam’s revelation. Ancient history that was best read in a textbook with a cool, detached eye. Read and learned from.

  “Da and I just felt you should know,” his mam said. “So you’ll be prepared to at least act like you’re happy for our Kerry when she tells you.”

  “I’ll act like I don’t intend to lance her new fiancé like a pus-filled boil.” Joe tucked the phone between ear and shoulder and crouched beside the broken beer bottle. “Best I can do.”

  His ma chuckled and after a few more minutes of nattering, disconnected. Joe finished cleaning the last of the broken beer bottle and grabbed a fresh one, carrying it into the cottage’s cozy living room. He closed the drapes against the darkening skies above Oban, spits of rain pinging against the windowpanes. Then he lit the fire and stretched out on his sofa.

  Without permission, his mind drifted back to Due South and his first glimpse of the rumpled, red-faced blonde frozen in the doorway. He took his first sip from the bottle, savoring the taste.

  Sharp. Smoky. Full-bodied.

  His lips curved as he muffled a laugh with another sip and finally relaxed. They were three words he could also use to describe MacKenna Jones.

  The next afternoon, Mac slipped another pin from between her lips and jabbed it through two layers of plain white cotton, forming another waist dart. Fortunately, after years of practice, her aim was true, and she didn’t stab Holly’s bare back beneath the fabric.

  “Perfect,” Mac said. “This’ll be my best one ever.”

  “I should hope so.” Holly cocked her head at the full-length mirror in the room she and Ford shared. “Since this is the first and last time you’ll ever make a wedding dress for your favorite cousin.”

  “As I said, perfect.” Mac wasn’t touching the “first and last time” statement with a ten-foot pole.

  In her life experience, both as owner of her bridal boutique, Next Stop, Vegas, and from her mother, Cheryl, who’d waltzed down the aisle three times so far, the big “M” often didn’t outlast the piece of wedding cake the bride put aside for her baby’s christening.

  But in Holly and Ford’s case, Mac really hoped they were the exception.

  Cue subject change. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to stay an extra night?” she asked, tapping Holly’s right hip so her cousin turned away from the mirror. Mac slid another pin into the slightly too loose side seam. “There’s no one booked?”

  Holly acted as landlord for the two small apartments that used to be Mrs. Dixon’s before the elderly lady was forced to move into a nursing home in Invercargill. Tourists rented the downstairs apartment during Oban’s spring and summer, and Holly’s employee, Rutna, rented Holly’s old apartment on the second floor.

  “Not for a couple of weeks. What tourist in their right mind wants to freeze their nuts off here in winter? And it’s fine; stay another night. The ferry will be running again tomorrow.”

  Thanks to the wildness of the weather, Mac had gotten little sleep the night before. Between the wind howling and Rutna’s baby upstairs crying, Mac was operating at only half capacity. Didn’t help that her brain kept reliving the humiliating encounter with Joe. Mac grimaced and stood up, her big toe aching beneath her sheepskin-lined Ugg boots. She’d packed the comfortable but battered boots to wear during her planned two-night stay—because as Holly pointed out, Oban in winter? Bloody freezing. Didn’t matter that spring was just around the corner; Stewart Island apparently didn’t adhere to such notions, and the sheer force of the wind and waves had cancelled all of Sunday’s ferry crossings.

  She could cope with one more night.

  Once Holly’s dress fitting was done, Mac was a free agent. If by free she meant returning to the apartment to curl up with her laptop and snail-slow Wi-Fi to continue last-minute details for a wedding she’d planned the next weekend. Curled up with her laptop and leftover penis cake, there was little risk of running into Joe again.

  The front door of Holly and Ford’s house crashed open, followed by multiple barks of male laughter and the thud-thud-thud of boots being kicked off in the hallway.

  “Crap!” Holly squeaked. “Ford and the guys are back.” She made shooing motions with her hands. “Go stop him from coming in here—it’s bad luck.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mac muttered around a mouthful of pins. She spat them out and poked them back into her wrist caddy. “What are they doing here anyway? Aren’t they watching the game at Harley’s?”

  On Ford’s twin brother’s enormous TV. The only way to watch the All Blacks kick the Wallabies asses, according to Ford, who’d greeted her at the door an hour ago.

  “Just go, Mac.”

  Mac strode over to the bedroom door and yanked it open. “I’m going, I’m go—”

  Joe stood on the other side, a fist still raised to knock. His presence, only an unexpected foot away, was like a one-two sucker punch to her diaphragm. His scent hit her first. An earthy combination of salt and woodsmoke rose from his woolen coat—the same one she’d worn yesterday, so he must’ve sneaked back to the hall—with an undertone of his cologne that she remembered too well. The spicy-warm smell floated down her windpipe and made the next inhale nearly impossible.

  His sleepy-blue gaze skimmed over her face. Her I’m just hanging with my girl no need for make up face she’d thrown on before she’d arrived at Holly’s. Mac’s scalp itched under his examination of her cable-knit sweater and thick leggings, the tingles spreading down to her Ugg boots.

  Gaining control of her body parts, MacKenna snapped shut her still parted mouth and folded her arms, trying—unsuccessfully—to block Joe’s view into the room behind her. “You can’t come in here.”

  “I think you mean the future groom can’t come in.” Joe’s chin rose and the indifferent mask vanished from his face, the corner of his eyes crinkling as he looked over the top of Mac’s head. “Howya, Holly?”

  “Mac’s using me as a pin cushion,” Holly said. “But she’s nearly done.”

  “Yeah?” Joe leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, the plaid shirt under his unbuttoned coat pulling taut across his broad chest. “Ford nominated me to tell you we’ll be taking over your telly for a bit. Bree booted us out at half time after we woke little Tāne from his nap.”

  He directed his comments behind Mac. As if she wasn’t glaring up at him from her height disadvantage. Her gaze scanned down his beige-colored jeans—which she had to admit he filled out in all the right places—to the dark-blue, obviously hand-knitted socks on his feet.

  Joe’s toes wiggled. “Like what you see?”

  Mac jerked her gaze upward—to the smirk curving Joe’s mouth. So the smug doctor thought she was checking him out? She formed her lips into a smile.

  “Possum-merino yarn?” she asked. “Did you knit them yourself?”

  “Not this particular pair.” Blue eyes clashed with hers. “But I’m handy with a needle…or a pair of them.”

  “It usually takes four to knit socks.”

  The bite of tart slipping off her tongue startled her back a step, her fingers dropping away from the door handle, which she hadn’t realized she’d been clenching. You’re going to stand here and argue with him over knitting techniques? Heat climbed past the cowl neckline of her sweater and prickled over her cheeks. Bane of being a blonde with fair skin, cherry-red embarrassment was dead obvious.

  Down the hallway from the direction of Holly and Ford’s living room, came the roar of a crowd over Ford’s surround-sound speakers.

  “The second half of the game is starting,” she said.

  “Who’s winning?” Holly leaned an
arm on Mac’s shoulder. “No—don’t tell me,” she added before Joe could speak. “We’ll be out soon, so save us a seat?”

  “Sure.” Joe met Mac’s gaze once more and then turned away.

  Heat still scalding her cheekbones, she kept her chin tucked down as she unhooked the tape measure from around her neck and slid the pin caddy off her wrist. “You can get changed. I think we’re done here.”

  “Good.” Holly turned her back to MacKenna. “Unpin me, and let’s watch the mighty Blacks beat the Wallabies.”

  Endure another forty minutes trapped in close quarters with Joe? Not likely. Not when her language skills hadn’t improved with the man since the awkwardness yesterday. Mac quickly slid out the neat row of pins holding the back of the gown together.

  “There you go.” She wanted to yank the cotton shell off Holly, bundle it in the garment bag she’d brought, and make a run for it. But she was a grown-ass woman, so she’d be grown-assed about the situation…and hide in her cousin’s kitchen. “I’ll go and make a snack while you watch the game.”

  “Oooh. Make some of your to-die-for scones; the guys’ll love them.” Holly whipped around, and nearly lost her dress. She hugged the bodice close to her chest, her smile dreamy, whether it was from the thought of hot, buttery scones or from thinking about Ford currently cursing up a storm in the living room, Mac didn’t know.

  “Actually, better make a double batch because Ford—” Holly’s brow crumpled. “Are you okay? You’re a little flushed. Oh God—are you sick from running out in the cold yesterday?”

  That gave Mac a perfect excuse. Who wanted germ-laced scones?

  “I might be a little feverish.” She feigned a cough. “I should go home before I infect anyone else.”

  “And forgo the scones with butter and strawberry jam I now can’t stop thinking about?” Holly grinned at her. “We’ve all got cast iron stomachs, and I know the real reason you want to disappear.”

  The pin Mac held slipped and fell to the floor. “Really?”

  God, she sincerely hoped her cousin didn’t know. She bent and snatched up the pin and jammed it back into the caddy, keeping her guilty face averted from Holly.