Page 29 of The Irish Arrangement

I narrowed my eyes, wondering why she’d be so stiff about his question.

“My father?” She lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “You saw him. You know him.”

“You’re not close to him,” I surmised.

“Never,” she agreed. “He sent me and Mom packing when she learned she was pregnant with me. I seldom ever saw him.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he’s a whiny asshole? Selfish and manipulative?”

Interesting. “Is that what your mother told you?”

“She didn’t need to tell me. I saw that for myself when I was a child and as an adult.”

“Your mom, Nora, just took off with you?” Ian checked.

Cara nodded, and the motion loosened another strand of her auburn hair. As she tucked it back, the simple wedding band glinted from the chandelier’s light. “Yes. I think she realized that he was affiliated with the Mob and wanted to run from him. He kicked her out anyway, wanting to date Keira, and they married.”

“You were estranged your whole life?” I asked.

She smirked. “Oh, you care?”

I glowered right back. “No.”

“We never saw him, other than one time when I was a teen and I was hurt and needed medical care not available in our village. She went to the city to demand that he pay for my medical care. It was the only time she ever asked anything of him.”

Ian and I shared a look.

So, she was poor. Whatever life she led with Nora was one of poverty.

“And Shane stepped up then?” Ian asked.

Cara nodded. “Mom threatened to tell Keira that he was still talking to her, to make her think he was cheating on her. Keira always seemed so obsessed about fidelity, like she worried that my dad would stray.”

“What do you know about your mother, though?” Ian asked.

He hadn’t found much in the way of answers about Nora’s parents or family history. Until we could prove that rumor about her being related to the Boyles was untrue, it would linger as yet another issue for me to deal with.

Again, she seemed on edge, scowling at him. “Why do you want to know?”

“I mean, did you ever meet your grandparents?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Mom was orphaned. Left on the steps at a church and raised in the system.”

Shit. That would make it much harder to find out whether she was related to the Boyles. Leaving the genealogy research to Ian was preferred, but if it came down to meeting someone and beating them into giving answers, that task would fall on me.

“Why do you ask?” Cara replied, tense.

“Because it was a surprise at the last fucking minute that Murray expected me to marry you, not your stepsister.”

She laughed once, bitterly. “Yeah. News to me, too.”

Why’d you go through with it? After Frank gave me her phone, I scrolled back to see what text she could have received that day, when she tried to climb over the garden wall. Unfortunately, she’d deleted it. She’d wiped the whole damn device, actually, and I wondered what she could be hiding to be that eager to erase her correspondence and message logs.

I sighed, annoyed that she was taxing me with more questions, more headaches.

It didn’t matter why she married me. Her motivations wouldn’t change anything. All that I cared about was that she was my wife to knock up.

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