was fake?” Saoirse whispered when they reached the cool of the kitchen.
“No-brainer! I’m not getting my husband involved in something I think is shady.” Amanda looked appalled. “Besides...” she smirked “...James sees exactly what I see.”
“And what would that be? Exactly?” Saoirse’s tone was filled with a bit more attitude than she’d intended.
“A spark. Lots of them,” Amanda replied, giving the counter a swipe with a sponge as she did. “I’ve been watching you two ever since you met and, frankly, I’m surprised he hadn’t already moved in.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“No,” Amanda answered plainly. “There’s a whole lotta me thinks the lady doth protest too much going on here. C’mon, Murph. You totally have the hots for that guy and, if I’m not mistaken, he wouldn’t mind a little slice of Murphy pie either.”
Saoirse glared at her friend. It was her only line of defense. Then blushed.
“Sare-shae! You naughty little so-and-so!”
“It’s Murphy,” Saoirse hiss-whispered, making a keep-your-voice-down hand gesture.
Amanda leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms. “When are you going to stop this?”
“What?” She knew what Amanda was talking about, but decided rubbing at a nonexistent stain in the deep ceramic sink was more fruitful than playing along.
“Acting like you don’t care. I’ve been trying to set you up for months and this is the first time you’ve bitten. Hook, line and sinker. And all of this pally-buddy stuff?”
“What pally-buddy stuff?” she snapped back defensively.
“Duh!” Amanda began raising a finger per point. “The spats. The arm punches. The high fives. The pretending you totally don’t secretly love it every time he gives you knuckle-rubs because it gives you a chance to take a deep, lovely inhalation of his gorgeous cinnamon man scent. I could go on but I’m running out of fingers. Suffice it to say, Murph, you’re fooling no one.”
Saoirse opened her mouth to protest but nothing came out.
“Murph...the way you behave with Santi is the equivalent of shoving a boy in the playground because what you really want to do is kiss him. Admit it.”
Saoirse squirmed under her friend’s penetrating gaze.
“Okay, fine.” She caved. “I kissed him.”
“I knew I was right!” Amanda shouted, before remembering she was meant to be speaking under a cloak of secrecy, then stage-whispered, “I’m always right,” as if it erased the jubilant cry heard half the way to Brazil.
“What did you know, hon?” James called from the patio.
Saoirse pressed her hands together in prayer position and shook her head. No-no-no. Please don’t tell.
“That Murph and Santi were hoping to get married on St. Patrick’s Day.” She hooked her arm through Saoirse’s and steered her back out into the tiny garden, beaming as if she were announcing her own nuptials. “Isn’t that cute? With Murphy being Irish and all?”
* * *
“Adorable,” Santi replied, eyes more narrow than wide with Amanda’s unexpected news flash.
There was a date?
If he’d thought moving into Saoirse’s had been a reality check, a bona fide wedding date really punched it home.
He was going to have to make good with his brothers before then. Introducing them to his green-card bride without a bit of rift-fixing? Wasn’t going to happen.
He did a mental scan through the year’s calendar... St. Patrick’s Day was about ten weeks away, by his calculations. Not a long engagement. Then again, his parents had met at a dance and had been engaged by the end of it, so by their terms?
Ten weeks had been a lifetime. A lifetime the two of them hadn’t been able to share.
He cleared his throat. It was time to get the ball rolling.
Ten weeks was his new deadline to get things right with his brothers. He was sure they already thought he was nuts and adding this to his catalog of ill-advised life choices wasn’t going to change the portrait.
“Well, then!” He watched as Saoirse put on her best hostess face. “Now that we’re all caught up on each other’s news, who’s up for going along to the track with me for a bit of pony car racing?”
He, it appeared, wasn’t the only one feeling the heat.
“HIGH FIVE!” SANTI held up his hand as she beamed at his obvious pride over his bride-to-be’s panache at the wheel. She’d seriously messed it up today. The good-way kind of messing things up. Not her usual actual messing things up.
“C’mon!” He prodded when she didn’t meet his hand. “High five!”
“Nah.” She pulled off her helmet, shaking her pixie cut back into place. “We need a secret handshake. High fives are old-school.”
“I like your style, Murph.” He nodded appreciatively before raising a finger of objection. “I get to pick it, though. Seeing as you shanghaied our wedding date.”
“That was a week ago. Aren’t you over it yet?” Saoirse teased, then gave a resigned shrug. “Amanda’s a force of nature. I was powerless to resist. And I’m afraid the date is within the timeline we need to follow if the goal is to keep me in the country.” She tugged her fingers through her hair and tossed her helmet into the seat of her old beater. Signing up for race car driving was one of the best things she’d done since moving here. Amazing the amount of stress you could release by careening around a chicane without touching the brake pedal.
“Don’t worry, mija. The timeline is fine. The goal is still the same.” Santi came around to her side of the car and without so much as a how-do-you-do tugged down the zip on her race jumpsuit in one fluid move.
He may as well have slipped his hands inside the suit and caressed her bare skin for the impact it had. Her skin soared directly into hypersensitivity mode, little tingly shots of electricity bringing parts of her back to life she’d thought were long dormant. Her heart was skipping beats like it was going out of style. As she looked up into those gold-flecked eyes of his, she realized he was probably watching her pupils dilate, betraying her body’s response to his proximity. From a distance he was difficult enough to block out. Here? Not more than a few inches apart? Oh, for the love of a cashmere sweater... His stubble looked...soft.
So much for all that hard-won concentration.
“You’re not going to try to dye the champagne green or anything, are you?” Santi’s eyes twinkled as he looked down at her.
“Obviously! It’s an Irish tradition.” She took a couple of steps back from him, feeling a serious need to regain a semblance of control.
Champagne? How seriously was he taking this thing? “If you’re planning on inviting family, we can always have it on Cinco de Mayo or something. It’d be pushing things a bit from the paperwork end of things for me, but if we applied for a fiancée visa or I got an extension on—”
“No, no. St. Patrick’s Day is fine.”
Today would be fine.
“And it’ll be just you and me,” he added. No family. Not yet anyway.
“Against the world?” she added, her brow crinkling in a mirror image of his own, he suspected.
Family.
How could such a small word be so...loaded?