He would rather have taken on another pack of reporters. Hell, he’d even be willing to tackle Connor’s team of glorified thugs who thought they were real cops. No, instead God chose to deliver onto Miki’s doorstep the source of all Morgans’ nightmares following a missed Sunday family dinner—a short, red-haired Brigid Finnegan Morgan carrying casserole dishes in the bright pink paisley fabric tote Riley got her last Christmas.
“Fucking Connor. You were supposed to tell her I was missing dinner, not send her here!” His brother had to have told her where Miki lived, and it was no use pretending he wasn’t there. His SUV was parked only a few feet from Miki’s front door, and he’d turned on the living room lights so he could see his way to the door without tripping on one of Dude’s tennis balls. “Okay, come on. You’re an adult. Take the food and turn her back around.”
Kane knew he was lying to himself before he even turned the knob, especially when the garlic and cabbage aroma bloomed in his face when he opened the door and his mother shoved her shoulder through. A second later she was inside, tottering in on a pair of flame-red leather pumps she usually wore only to church or to visit people she wanted to impress.
Obviously, Brigid Morgan had also decided they were appropriate footwear for kicking her son’s ass to the lower circles of Hell where she thought he belonged.
“Since you couldn’t seem to find yer way home, I had Connor tell me where you’ve been hiding. Where’s the kitchen, Kane Aodh Morgan? Never mind, I can see it plain as day from here.”
A heavy dram of Ireland lived in his mother’s words, a strong reminder of the home she’d left behind to chase Donal Morgan’s dreams. When she spoke, her rolling words shouted green hills and a douse of Emerald Isle rain, but Kane could hear the promise of a peat bog in his future if she didn’t get an answer to why he’d not shown up at the family gathering for over a month.
His mother stalked past him, her heels clomping on the wood floor, leaving Kane by the front door. She came to a screeching halt at the open archway and stood there, gaping.
Kane knew what she was staring at. He’d just left a naked Miki still asleep on his stomach and lying on a web of tangled sheets, bared to God and kissed to submission. The memory of the man’s green-tea-and-sex-scented skin was burned into his brain so deep he was surprised he could smell his mother’s cooking through it.
In that moment, he was fourteen again, and his mother had walked in on him jerking off in the bathroom. It’d been the perfect vantage point, overlooking their backyard where his brother Connor and his friends were playing chicken fight in the pool. Their toned, wet bodies had been too much for him to take, and he fled to the relative safety of the old-fashioned bathtub’s wide rim to satisfy himself.
If only he’d locked the door.
If only Miki had a door.
“Yer telling me that in this big, expensive place, you couldn’t be finding that poor boy a door for his bedroom?” Brigid gave her second son a withering glance. “And you call yerself a woodworker. I’ll be heating things up in the kitchen. Yer going to wake up that young man so he can get some food in him. Yer a sorry excuse for a son if yer letting him starve himself to bones.”
Kane wondered if he could get Miki dressed and bundled up in his car before his mother noticed they’d fled, but Dude was a complication. The dog would probably sniff out the food and go investigating. He’d notice Kane squirreling Miki away, especially if it included a car ride.
The skitter of nails on the wood floor confirmed Kane’s thoughts on the terrier, and Dude barely spared him a glance as he trotted quickly by him, his twitching nose leading him to the kitchen.
“Fucking mutt.” Kane padded into Miki’s bedroom and stood at the end of the mattress. He was reluctant to wake the man. The shadows under Miki’s eyes were only just starting to fade, but arguing with his mother was useless. As far as she was concerned, if there was food on the table, everyone in the house showed up to eat. Even if it wasn’t her house and there wasn’t technically a table.
Miki’s foot twitched, and Kane grabbed his big toe, tugging lightly. The singer mumbled and kicked Kane’s hand away, burying his face into the pillows. Kane was tempted to let him sleep, but when Miki squirmed on his belly into the rumpled sheets, Kane got a good view of the man’s naked, firm ass.
“Damn. You hate me, don’t you?” Kane threw a glance up at the heavens. Unless he wanted his mother to learn firsthand about how two men had sex, he didn’t dare touch Miki’s bare skin, but short of tossing a bucket of ice water on him, Kane didn’t have much choice. “Aw, screw it.”
Stretching out across the enormous mattress, Kane lay perpendicular to Miki’s lean body. Tucking his elbows under him, Kane supported himself on his forearms and blew a fierce puff of air into Miki’s left nostril.
“What the fucking hell?” Miki shot up, scrambling to rub at his face. Rubbing hard at his nose, he slapped frantically at the sheets for a moment with his other hand. His hazel eyes focused on Kane, and he glared. “Fucking asshole. Face is okay, but never the nose.”