“And I can’t wait to meet him in person instead of only seeing him on a computer screen,” he replied. “Looks like motherhood suits you.”
“Thanks, Ro.”
“Don’t you mean motherhood suits Andy?” Orna said, picking up a menu and peering at it.
Keira’s mouth tightened. Orna hadn’t readily approved of her being back at work full-time while Andy stayed home with their son. It made financial sense, because Keira’s career was incredibly lucrative. Both Ronan and Keira had been raised to be type A high achievers who were incapable of not working. Maybe there was something about trying to win the love of their absentee mother in there, or maybe that was just the researcher in him looking for meaning where there was none?
“I would say parenthood suits Andy,” Keira replied in a frosty tone. Clearly the hour-long drive with their grandmother had worn her patience down.
Orna looked up and winked at Ronan from over the top of her menu, a wicked sparkle in her eyes shaving a decade off her age. Yeah, she was inappropriate and old-fashioned and stubborn as a bull. But Ronan’s grandmother was one of the biggest influences in his life—hell, she was the reason he’d chosen to study resilience and mental fortitude for his master’s thesis. Because for all her faults, she’d stormed through life’s challenges like a Spartan warrior, and that was something to be admired.
“You shouldn’t make jokes like that, Gram,” he admonished.
“You two are no fun,” she groused. The waiter interrupted their catch-up for a moment to take their orders and leave them with some fresh-baked bread and butter.
“I can’t believe you’re back,” Keira said to Ronan as the waiter walked away.
“I can’t believe you’re living in a town called Kissing Creek.” Orna made a face, her crow’s-feet deepening with the disgusted expression. “When Keira told me, I thought she was pulling my leg. What a stupid name.”
“Apparently they named the creek after a town in Bavaria called Kissing, where the founders were from. I read somewhere that one of the men wanted to name the town after his family name, but it was Leichenberg, which literally translates to mountain of corpses, and they thought it might bring bad luck.”
Keira blinked. “That’s dark.”
Orna simply shrugged, as though naming a place Mountain of Corpses was completely fine by her. “So tell us, Ronan. Why’d you come back?”
“I told you when we Skyped,” he said, meeting her hard stare with a charming smile. “I got a job offer.”
They both knew it was bullshit. The timing couldn’t have been more obvious, because the offer had come in not a month after Orna had been rushed to the hospital with a stroke. And that had only been because Keira had found her and called 911. Orna had tried to call their mother repeatedly, and, as usual, Merrin hadn’t picked up her phone. The news had rocked Ronan to his core—how could he be half a world away from the woman who’d raised him when she might not have too many years left?
Naturally, he’d found an opportunity to bring him back home. One that wasn’t to the standard of his Harvard and Cambridge background, but it had been close to Orna and Keira and that’s what mattered to him right now. The rest could be figured out later.
“I’m not sick,” Orna said, ignoring his response. “I don’t want you to throw your life away because I had a little visit to the hospital.”
“It wasn’t little,” Keira mumbled under her breath, and she squeaked when the older woman jabbed a bony finger into her arm.
“I’m fine, okay? Fit as a fiddle, I’ll have you know. And as I always say—”
“The older the fiddle, the sweeter the tune,” Ronan and Keira recited in singsong unison. His grandmother was full of funny old sayings.
“That’s right,” Orna said with a nod. “Best you two remind yourselves of that; there’s nothing wrong with growing old. Not everybody has that privilege.”
Ronan leaned back in the booth and watched as Keira rested her head on top of her grandmother’s, her brown hair—the same shade as Ronan’s—mixed with Orna’s snow-white perm. Despite their disagreements and how they often rubbed each other the wrong way, this was his family right here. His little sister, his grandmother. The three musketeers.
“Now,” his grandmother said. “We need to talk about your marriage situation.”
“Wasn’t aware I had one of those,” he replied breezily.
“You don’t. That’s the issue. I know I already have one great-grandbaby, but I’m