Page 74 of Craving Chaos

“Damn straight.” Nana’s eyes squint until I don’t know how she can see out of them. “A Byrne never forgets.”

I give her a beaming grin. “How’ve you been while I was away?”

“Can’t complain. I’m still here.”

I laugh and shake my head at her. “That’s setting the bar awfully low.”

“I can’t reach so high these days. Best to be reasonable with my expectations.” She winks. “Enough about me. I want to hear about the Italian you were stuck with for three weeks. Was he good looking?”

My jaw hits the floor. “Nana! He’s Italian Mafia. I distinctly remember hearing you say that the Italians don’t know their asses from their elbows.”

“True, but the term Italian stallion exists for a reason, and while I never got to test the truth behind it doesn’t mean you can’t. For science. Wouldn’t mean you’d have to marry the man.” Her shrewd eyes hold me captive, scanning for tells. She reminds me of a human version of that fingerprint-matching software you see on TV shows where thousands of records are processed in seconds before a perfect match pops onto the screen. Nana dissects every tiny nuance and somehow deduces what’s under the surface with eerie accuracy.

When she mentions not having to marry the man, she sees something in me that sets off her inner alarms. Within seconds, the savant puzzle solver has the entire picture, her eyes softening in the corners.

“Shae, lass. You’ve fallen for the man, haven’t ye?”

Hiding anything from Nana is pointless. I nod and tamp down the tingles that burn the backs of my eyes.

“I don’t know what to do, Nana,” I admit in a whisper.

“Do about what? Does he not feel the same?”

“He’s definitely crazy about me.” Crazy being the key term.

“Well, that’s good.”

“It is?”

“For you, of course it is. You’ve too much life in you to settle for anything less.”

I hadn’t truly thought about that perspective. She’s not wrong. “The problem is he’s the boss of their family. He can’t be with a woman who works in another organization.”

She nods sagely, her thin, lined lips pursing together. “Loyalties would always be in question.”

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t want to ask him to step down, but I also feel like it’s always women asked to set aside their lives for the sake of a man. That’s not fair, nor do I want to be that woman willing to give up everything for a man.”

“Shae, darlin’.” She cocks her head to the side. “Tell me yer not making life choices based on other people’s situations.”

“No, but—"

Her brows jump to her gray hairline as she stares at me pointedly.

“I mean … women are always the ones asked to give up their livelihoods to be mothers and let men run everything.”

“And I take it you see that as a negative.”

“I guess it’s not if that’s what the woman wants as well.”

“And this man of yours, do you think he expects you to sit at home and raise babies?”

“No.”

“Do you think he or your family would respect you any less if you weren’t working at Bastion?”

“No.”

“Then it sounds like an exciting new opportunity to forge your own path if you ask me. You aren’t other women, Shae Byrne. You look at you and your circumstances to make the decision. Nothing else. What do you want?”

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