Page 28 of Dark Succession
Things fell into place, and the reason the woman looked so familiar became clear. “Mrs. O’Malley.” Teague’s mother.
Which made the other woman—a younger version of her mother, right down to the green eyes—one of Teague’s sisters.
“Oh, no, please call me Aileen. We’re about to be family.” She sailed over and enveloped Callie in a cloud of Chanel No. 5. Her warmth would be significantly more convincing if her daughter didn’t look so shocked by it before she wiped the expression off her face.
Good to know.
She pasted a bright smile on her face. “Of course.” But why were they here? It was poor timing, to say the least, especially with Papa looking like he wanted nothing more than to boot the entire lot of them out of his office.
Aileen must have caught her look. “Carrigan and I are here to help with wedding planning.”
She blinked, the words forming and reforming in her mind as she tried to make sense of them. Wedding planning. They were on the brink of war and these women wanted to drag her off forwedding planning? She shot a look in her father’s direction. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Of course. Your wedding is less than four weeks away.” Aileen’s sharp look at Papa was enough to tell everyone in the room what she thought of the accelerated timeline. “I’d be a poor mother if I didn’t ensure that the first of my brood to marry had the wedding of his dreams.”
Considering she knew Teague hadn’t chosen this wedding any more than she had—and they were on the verge of all-out war—the statement bordered on preposterous. “Perhaps we can reschedule? I have a meeting with my father—”
“Your father has assured me that you have no plans for the day. Carrigan, why don’t you help Callista pick out something a bit more appropriate to wear while I discuss the budget with Colm?”
Which was how Callie found herself being escorted out of her father’s office and getting the door slammed in her face. She glared at the heavy wood for a long momentbefore remembering that she wasn’t alone in the hall. “Is your mother always so…?”
“She gets what she wants, when she wants it. Even our father doesn’t cross her.” Carrigan shrugged. “You can try to get out of what she has planned today, but I wouldn’t bet against her.”
Frustration threatened to choke her. There were so many more important things to be worried about right now. War. Threats from the Hallorans. The future of the Sheridans with her at the helm. The wedding didn’t even place top ten. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds and then releasing it. The frustration didn’t disappear, but it was manageable now. She knew better than to fight battles she wouldn’t win, and she definitely didn’t want to cause any tension with the O’Malleys. It was more than potentially alienating a future mother-in-law. They were allies against the Hallorans and any other threat that arose—allies that, frankly, Callie’s people needed.
Which meant she had to spend today doing mindless errands like picking out flowers and deciding on catering.
She opened her eyes to find Carrigan watching her closely. The woman was as beautiful as her mother—possibly even more so. She had the kind of flawless bone structure that would last through the years, her softness burning away to leave only steel in its wake. Callie recognized it becausehermother had had the same thing. She’d like to think she did as well, but she was hardly unbiased. “I need twenty minutes.” It would be cutting it close, but she refused to leave the house without at least a shower.
Especially since she swore she could smell Teague on her skin.
“I’ll stall her, but you should hurry.”
She hurried.
Twenty-two minutes later, she was back downstairs, showered and dressed in a pair of slacks and a silk shirt. Aileen swept a quick look over her. “You’ll do.”
Callie tamped down on her irritation. She’d dealt with women like Aileen O’Malley before, though most of them didn’t actually have the power they seemed to think they possessed. Aileen actually did.
So she smiled and followed the woman out to the limo parked in front of the house. Five minutes in her future mother-in-law’s presence, and she was already exhausted. The woman might smile and fawn when it suited her, but it had to be a mask. Callie had met Seamus O’Malley, and he was the kind of person who chewed up everyone around him and left them bleeding in his wake if they weren’t strong enough to endure.
Aileen was anything but broken.
In some ways, that made her even scarier than her husband.
After his night with Callie, Teague was only more determined to put a stop to this bullshit war. He spent the morning trying to get a hold of James, and finally pinned the man into agreeing to drinks tonight. It was at Mickey’s, which was right in the middle of Halloran territory, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It had the slight bonus that no one connected with the O’Malleys would see him talking to James. He doubted his father or Aiden would support it—not when it was growing clearer everyday that they weren’t particularly torn up about the impending war.
Impending. He didn’t even know if he could call it that anymore. It was here, whether he liked it or not.
He walked into Mickey’s, stopping just inside the door to take in the room. On the surface, it looked just like a hundred other Irish pubs scattered around Boston—a little dark, a little dingy, and mostly empty. Or it did until he saw the crest above the bar—a shield, half-white and half-red, with a white horse on the bottom half—marking it as owned by the Hallorans. His family had something similar in the places they patronized regularly.
He’d suggested meeting somewhere in neutral territory, but James had shot him down immediately. For whatever reason, he wanted the home court advantage. Unfortunately, Teague wasn’t in a position to tell him no. So here he was, hoping like hell he wasn’t walking into a trap.
The bartender stopped wiping down the bar and looked at him, the man’s thick, bushy brows lowering until they practically covered his eyes. “Help you?” His tone said the only thing he was helping Teague with was to get his ass out the door.
“He’s with me, Tommy.” James walked through the door leading into the back—most likely to a private room—and stopped. “Been a long time.”
“Yeah.” He took in the man’s changes the same way he suspected James was surveying him. He’d grown in the years since they’d last laid eyes on each other, his blond hair now hitting his shoulders and a closecropped beard covering his jaw. James looked closer to a biker than a businessman, but then his father had neverput the emphasis on poise and surface manners the way Teague’s had.
