“Hey, Dee, feel like going for a walk?” he turned and asked her.
She regarded him blankly. “Now?”
“Seems like a good time to me,” he said with a pointed glance across the table.
She looked at Ruby and Hank, then nodded with evident reluctance. “I guess so. Come on, Kevin. We’re going for a walk.”
Ruby’s gaze shot up. “You’re leaving?” she asked, a faint hint of panic in her voice.
Deanna regarded her worriedly. “Unless you want us to wait for you?”
Hank seemed to be holding his breath as he awaited Ruby’s reply. She looked at him, waged some sort of internal debate that Sean couldn’t interpret, then finally shook her head.
“Go ahead,” she told them. “Hank hasn’t even ordered yet. I can stay with him.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Deanna persisted, as Sean latched on to her hand and began tugging her from the booth.
“You heard her,” Sean said. “She told us to go on.”
Kevin regarded all of them with impatience. “Are we going or staying?” he grumbled.
“Going,” Sean said firmly.
Deanna looked as if she might balk, but then she shrugged. “We’re going.”
Outside, she scowled up at Sean. “What was that all about? Why were you so anxious to get out of there?”
“Discretion,” he said.
“What?” she demanded. Then understanding obviously dawned. “Oh, of course.”
“You two are acting all weird again,” Kevin declared with disgust.
Sean laughed. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“So, where are we going?” he asked. “Is the celebration over?”
“Not yet,” Sean reassured him. “How about my place? Want to head over there for a while?”
Kevin’s expression immediately brightened. “Will Mark and Davey be there?”
“More than likely.”
“All right!” he enthused.
“Deanna, is that okay with you?” Sean asked.
To his surprise, she looked hesitant, but one glance at Kevin’s excited expression had her backing down from whatever objections she had. “Sure.”
As soon as they reached Sean’s apartment, Kevin spotted the older kids and took off without another word. Deanna watched him go with a contradictory mix of dismay and relief on her face. Sean wished he could read her mind.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned that he’d been pushing her too hard and overstepping some unspoken boundary where Kevin was concerned. He thought they’d talked that all out, but maybe she’d had second thoughts.
“Nothing, not really. I’m glad Kevin’s found some friends. They don’t even seem to mind that he’s so much younger. It’s almost as if he has big brothers. He talks about the two of them nonstop.” She grinned at Sean. “Except when he’s talking about you.”
“There’s nothing like having brothers,” Sean said. “My parents taking off was bad enough, but in some ways losing my brothers was worse. We were best buddies, especially Ryan and me. Mikey was a couple of years younger than me, four years younger than Ryan, but he trailed around after us whenever we’d let him.”
“What about the twins?” Deanna asked. “You never say much about them.”
“It was different with the twins,” Sean recalled. “They were still practically babies when Mom and Dad left—barely two years old. From the time they came home from the hospital, Ryan and I used to take one each and feed them, first their bottles, then that yucky stuff that passes for real food.” He shuddered at the memory. “If I don’t ever again see another jar of mashed peas or carrots, it will be too soon. I’ve never seen a worse mess in my life than those two could make having lunch.”
“You sure that’s not the real reason you don’t want to have kids of your own?” Deanna asked lightly.
“Baby food?”
She laughed. “No. I was thinking of the way babies are when you’re feeding them. You realize just how dependent they are on you. It can be scary.”
Sean thought back to the way he’d felt holding his baby brothers, as if he really were somebody’s hero. If anything, that emotion was the one reason he could see in favor of having kids. It was all the rest—the terrifying fear of letting them down—that kept him single and childless. Instead, he’d settled for being a different kind of hero, one who never had to risk his heart, just his life.
“I suppose,” he said eventually.
She seemed to sense she’d pushed him far enough. “So how’s the search going for Michael?” she asked.
He shrugged, as uncomfortable with this topic as he had been with the one before. Despite how well the reunion with Ryan had gone, he had mixed feelings about the search for Michael. Most of the time he pushed it completely out of his mind. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “I haven’t heard from Ryan lately.”
Deanna regarded him with obvious surprise. “You could always call him or stop by to see him, couldn’t you? Didn’t you say he owns a pub?”
“Yes, but…” He really didn’t have a good explanation for why he’d been avoiding his brother. He was pretty sure it had something to do with the overwhelming feeling of happiness that had swamped him when Ryan had first come back into his life. He didn’t trust that kind of emotion. It never lasted. He supposed a part of him was waiting for his brother to keep reaching out to him. Maybe he needed proof that Ryan was back in his life to stay.
Or maybe it was flat-out jealousy that Ryan had found something with Maggie that Sean wouldn’t allow himself to feel.
“I’d like to go sometime,” Deanna said.
He stared at her. “Go where?”
“To your brother’s pub. I love Irish music. I imagine they have it there.”
“On weekends,” he admitted,
