SEAN: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 3) by Glenna Sinclair Read Free Book Online Page B

my fork down and poured us both more wine before downing a good bit of mine. Then I set it down and ran my finger along the top rim of the glass. “I screwed up. I had a sweet girl I dated all through college and into the first year of law school. We were planning a life, but then my mom…”
    I swallowed the rest of my wine and poured a little more, taking my time setting the bottle back into the old cooling bucket. Then I focused on her.
    “You were right about one thing. I was close to my mom. She was…she was a great person. She was one of those people who always wanted to help everyone, who always wanted to make things better. She was a social worker, and she was always bringing home all these kids. Four of my siblings are actually foster kids whom she brought home and my parents adopted.
    “When she got sick—it was pancreatic cancer—we all came rushing home. Killian was just out of graduate school and Ian was at Boston College. Kevin was at Stanford and Kyle was here doing whatever it was Kyle did. We all came home to be with her, but she died less than a week after…”
    I stopped trying not to think about her death, those last few days with her before her death, then the funeral that changed everything for our family. Even nearly six years later it was difficult to think about.
    “After everything, my girl…it was just different. I was different. And things sort of imploded.”
    The truth was, Tara was pregnant and ready to settle down, but I was screwed up. My mom’s death…everything that happened…I couldn’t be with her. We fought a lot and she ended up having an abortion and going home to Colorado. Last I heard, she was married to some doctor and they had little boy. I wanted to say I was happy for her, but there was still a lot of stuff there, too much for me to get there.
    I looked up. Delaney was watching me, her eyes wide and full of sympathy. Again, this mantra played through my mind: If she only knew. She wouldn’t want to know me.
    “You are close to your brothers, then. I was right about two things.”
    I looked up, again amused that that bit of information was what she grabbed.
    “You were.”
    “But you didn’t grow up in this neighborhood?”
    I couldn’t help the smile that slipped over my face. “Do I seem like the kind of guy who grew up here?”
    “Sort of.”
    “How’s that?”
    She blushed. “Well, you have to admit you’re a little rough around the edges.”
    I laughed out loud at that. “If you met my father, you’d understand.”
    She smiled, too, her eyes moving over me as she did. There was something about her smile that made me want to get lost in her eyes. I just watched her in the dim light, asking her questions just to see her lips move, just to hear the soft musical notes of her voice.
    We finished off the second bottle of wine and left, walking leisurely down the street.
    “Do you like music?”
    I glanced at her. “I do. Why?”
    She shrugged. “Most people wear earphones when they work out. You don’t.”
    “I like to hear the sound of the bag. It’s almost soothing.”
    “It is…when you do it. When I do it, it’s more of an irritant.”
    I shook my head. “No. You just need a little more practice.”
    “I don’t think I’ll ever be good at it. I just started doing it to learn a few self-defense moves.”
    “You did that.”
    We arrived at her car then. She tugged her keys out of her bag, and I slipped them from her fingers, unlocking the door and opening it with a gentlemanly bow. She smiled, a light dancing in her eyes.
    “Do you like fish?”
    “Some. Depends on how it’s cooked.”
    “Would you go to the fish market with me in the morning?”
    I ran the back of my fingers over the edge of her jaw. “Are you asking me on a second date?”
    She moved closer to me, not touching me, but moving close enough that I wouldn’t have to pull very hard to bring her into my arms. She looked up at me, that light in her eyes just growing.
    “I