Page 34 of Accidental Irish Daddy

The rain begins to pour, and with the terror I’m feeling right now, it’s making me feel like I’m standing on ice.

“Don’t, please,” I beg. I reach into my pocket and pull out my take for the night. It’s nearly a grand…

“Take it,” I tell him. “You have to stay away from us, though, Liam. And you can’t take Bridget away.”

“You bribing me, little girl?”

I swallow hard before finding my voice past the lump in my throat, “If that’s how you want to look at it. You could also look at it as me paying the rent while I’m away. But you have to stay away. If you have Bridget taken from me, if I see you again outside of you coming here for your money, you won’t see another penny from me.”

He looks at the money, and for a second, I think that maybe he’s not going to take it. He dashes my hopes, though, snatching the money from my hand a second later. As he stands there, counting it, his anger melts into a satisfied smirk. “You’ve been holding out on me, Aisling. I should have been fleecing you this whole time.”

“So, we have a deal?” I ground sharply.

“Yeah,” he mutters, stuffing the money in his pocket. “But you’d better not miss a payment…or else I’ll be back here with the police.”

He turns around and walks back into the darkness, leaving me cold and shivering in the rain.

I don’t cry even though I want to. I did what I had to do, just like always.

I’ll do anything to keep Bridget safe.

10

Grant

I have to admit, the nightshirt is a nice touch to Aisling’s subterfuge.

I’ve seen her on the cameras sneaking out of the house every night from the beginning. My motion sensors went off on their second or third night here, alerting me through the silent alarm in my room. I went out to investigate and found nothing.

At first, I wrote it off to a stray animal or maybe someone’s cat getting into my yard. After about the third night, I started checking the camera.

To my surprise, there was Aisling sneaking out with a duffle bag slung over her shoulder around midnight every night while I’m supposed to be asleep. Jeans and T-shirts are her usual clothes. But I imagine whatever she’s going to wear, wherever she’s going, is in the bag.

Funny. When I was a lad, I used to date a girl who did the very same thing when she snuck out of the house to come and see me after her father forbade her from doing so.

I don’t think Aisling’s sneaking out is anything like that, though. For one thing, she’s not a teenager. She can go wherever she likes, whenever she likes. There’s no need for her to sneak around. And when I see her sneak in, she doesn’t appear drunk or in any way inebriated. Nothing about her work during the day has changed anything, either.

She gets up early every morning, just as chipper as ever. No signs of a hangover or even being exhausted…

It’s puzzling. What reason other than to go out to some pub would a young woman sneak out every night? Maybe thereisa boyfriend…or just someone she doesn’t want me to know anything about.

The thought ignites a flare of jealousy within me. I don’t want to think about some other man with his hands on her…

Whatever it is, this sneaking around is uncalled for. I head downstairs for breakfast and find her in the kitchen with Ma, making her tea. Today, Martha has brought over homemade biscuits. Ma’s already munching on one of them.

“Morning, Ma,” I kiss her on top of her head.

She smiles and mumbles, “Top of the morning, mo storin….”

Bridget is sitting at the table with her, solving math problems in her notebook, focused on some homework before school.

“Morning, Bridget,” I say, and she pauses to smile up at me, then returns to her math problems. I stand next to Aisling at the counter and say, “Math this early in the morning?”

Aisling smiles and nods. “She’s got a big test today. Right, Gidget?”

Bridget nods enthusiastically but without looking up from her paper.

I glance over her shoulder at the math problems. It all looks like hieroglyphics to me.

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