Page 68 of Accidental Irish Daddy

“I wanted to catch you before you left for work. You’ve been running out of here in the wee hours lately.”

“Security never sleeps,” I say dryly.

She doesn’t respond. A chair scrapes across the tile as she sits down at the kitchen table.

“So, Aisling’s staying with me again.”

I sigh wearily. “With all due respect, Martha, I don’t have the time for a lecture.”

“Too bad, lad, because that’s what you’re getting.”

I turn to her. She’s staring daggers back at me.Shit…

“Have a seat,” she says.

I sit down in the opposite chair. “If you’ve come here to tell me to talk to Aisling, save your breath. She doesn’t want to talk and that’s probably for the best anyway. She’s made her decision.”

“Sounds like it’s the other way around,” Martha says, tilting her head at me.

“I tried to ask her to talk to me. I sent her a text last night. She never answered.”

“Well, why would she? What with you accusing her of doing drugs? Have you lost your entire mind, lad? The last thing that girl would ever do is put you in harm’s way. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Iamashamed of myself,” I hiss. “I didn’t mean to accuse her. It just came out that way. And anyway, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place if she’d just told me she was pregnant.”

“Right. And so now you know. What do you plan on doing about it?”

It’s like she’s put up a brick wall, and I just ran face first into it. I look down at my hands.

“I have no idea,” I say softly. “I never planned on her getting pregnant.”

“You’d be surprised how many couples say the very same thing.”

“We’re not a couple—”

“And whose fault is that? Mine? I don’t think so.” She chuckles and pulls a blueberry muffin out of the basket. “It seems to me that this would be a million times easier if you had just told her how you felt in the first place instead of flogging yourself on your own insecurities.”

She gets up and gets a saucer from the cabinet for her muffin, then sits back down. “She’s miserable over there, you know? I hear her weeping at night.”

“Your walls are too thin,” I snark, and she gives me a look that silences me. It’s a good point.

“She thinks that you don’t care for her. That you’d rather her not be in your life in any capacity. You can’t imagine how frightening that must be for her. She’s had to raise her sister on her own and now she’ll have to do the same for that wee baby.”

“I don’t want that, Martha,” I confess. “I swear to you I don’t.”

“What do you want?”

She takes a bite of the muffin while I sit there under the heat of her question.

“I want her,” I say. “I want her here with me. I love her…desperately.”

“Thentellher.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s not that easy.”

“Why isn’t it? Because you’re afraid she’ll reject you? Well, she’s already done that, hasn’t she? And she did it without knowing how you really feel. You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“I will hurt her if we’re together.”

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