‘You do that.’
She pointed to the door that led to the room she’d been told was hers and Carter’s for the next night or two while the cottage was made ready for them. ‘I might just go and do that now.’
‘Okay.’ She turned to go. ‘He loves you, you know.’
Slam. The trap had closed.
Chapter 17
Prita stared at Barb, wondering for a moment which one of them had gone stark raving mad?
Barb, for suggesting that Flynn loved her?
Or Prita for wanting it to be true?
‘I’ll leave you to think about that, shall I?’ Barb was still smiling at her, like she’d not just dropped a bomb and was completely unaware of the destruction she’d left behind as she walked past Prita towards the kitchen door. ‘Go make your calls and then come to the kitchen. I think we could all do with a cuppa and some scones after the day we’ve had so far.’
Scones? Tea? To be talking about scones and tea when the world had just been turned completely upside-down was insanity, wasn’t it?
A phone started to ring. It was the theme to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That was her phone’s ring tone. She’d had her phone on her last night but it hadn’t been at the hospital so she assumed it was lost in the fire. She glanced around and noticed her handbag on the side table by the front door. How had that got here?
She’d left it in the car when she’d got home last night. Someone must have got it—and her car. Perhaps it wasn’t a burned-out mess like she’d imagined. Not that it mattered. It was hers. Something physical that was hers that had survived the fires. She ran across the room to grab it. Her phone was still ringing. She dug around in the handbag and grabbed it out. Papa’s face lit up the screen.
‘Papa?’
‘Aingeal. Thank the sweet lord. Are you okay? I’ve been calling and calling since I got the message that you’d been injured in a fire, but you weren’t answering your phone.’
‘I’m fine, Papa, I’m fine.’ She should have called him. Why hadn’t she called him? Oh, that’s right, she’d been out of it then Chandra had arrived and then she was released from hospital and in the car all the way back to CoalCliff she’d been busy calling the insurance company and figuring out how she could possibly run her clinic without even any of the basics. Then when they’d got here Flynn had had his episode and she’d gone and kissed him to distract him, which had, incredibly, worked except he’d left in a huff and then Barb had been all like, ‘he loves you’ and she had barely been able to breathe let alone put together a coherent thought process. So, plenty of reasons for not calling Diarmuid. But now she felt like a shit for not thinking of him and his worry first. ‘I’m so sorry, Papa, but I didn’t have my phone with me and there was so much to do at the hospital and calling the insurance company on the way back here—’
‘It’s fine, aingeal, I understand. I was just worried, that’s all. It’s such a relief to hear your voice though.’
‘It’s wonderful to hear yours too.’
‘Is Carter okay? I—’
The phone hissed and crackled and she missed his next words. ‘Sorry, Papa, I didn’t catch that. The reception’s terrible.’
‘That’s my fault. I’m on a plane.’
‘What?’
‘I’m on my way out to see you.’
Prita’s chest tightened and she had to blink back the rush of tears that threatened to overwhelm her. What the hell was with all the tears lately? She wasn’t a cry-baby. She cleared her throat and spoke past the thickening. ‘You didn’t have to do that. I’m fine.’
‘Of course I did. You think I could go and sing in front of a crowd when I hear my aingeal beag has been injured in a fire and lost everything? I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. Or Carter. I had to come. I had to come.’
His voice was thick, broken, and it tore something loose inside her. She’d never heard her papa like that before. Sure, he could wail out a song and make others cry their hearts out, but he’d never cried in front of her or even looked like he was about to since her mother had died. He’d lost his shit—the famous Diarmuid Brennan’s temper that had seen him in trouble multiple times before her mother had calmed him down—but not cried. Not once. Yet, he sounded very much like that was exactly what he was doing right now. Hearing those tears in his voice, it broke something inside her. It hurt. Too much. ‘Papa, Papa, we’re fine. We’re both fine. He wasn’t there, he was having a sleepover with Tilly and Aaron at CoalCliff. And they didn’t let him come to the hospital, so he didn’t see me right after, didn’t even find out until this morning.’
‘But he’s lost everything again.’
‘I know. I know.’ Hearing his distress made her pull herself together, made her think clearly for the first time about the fact that everything was gone. The knowledge that it wasn’t ‘everything’ like she’d been thinking. ‘We can replace things. He knows that. He’s a tough little kid really, and so far on from where he was when he came to us. And that’s the thing that matters to him. That he has us.’
‘Yep, yep.’ It sounded like, through the crackling, that her dad was sniffling, gulping. Oh god, she wished she was with him right now so she could put her arms around him and hug him close so he could see that she was fine. That everything would be fine.
And it was going to be. Fine. She’d been through worse. She’d started over before. And when that had happened, her papa was over the other side of the world and she’d not told him
