Chibs smoked a cigarette while Aoife placed some calls. When she finally hung up the phone, he ground out the butt with his heel and took her into his arms. "The call I got earlier," Chibs began. "That was Juice. We found the rental car that the man who attacked you was driving. There was a cell phone inside. Juice has been looking into everything for me, and he said that the guy was calling around to hospitals and nursing homes. Might be the asshole who was calling your Mum."
"If he was looking for me…" Aoife trailed off.
"He might have found Aunt Rois," Chibs finished for her. Aoife's fists clenched reflexively. Chibs pulled her close. "Here's what we're going to do. We'll go see her. I owe her a bottle of good whiskey as it is." That earned him a shy smile. "We'll fill her in, do what we can for her security. Tonight, when we get back, I'll make some calls and get us some help keeping an eye on her and your Mum."
While Aoife and Rois chatted, Chibs gave himself a tour of the hospice. The security was absolute shit. It would keep out curious looky-loos, but no one bent on breaking in. He was beginning to despair when he saw a nurse with familiar blond hair and brown eyes. She had been a club hang around a few years back before she finished nursing school. He approached the nurses' station. When she looked up at Chibs, he gave her one of his lopsided smiles. "Hey, Shari-girl."
"Chibs? I haven't seen you in forever."
"Aye. How you doing, lass?"
"Doing good. Got married last year, got a kid on the way," she answered, unconsciously rubbing her just slightly rounded belly. "What brings you here?"
"My old lady's aunt is here." The words felt awkward but pleasant on his tongue. It was the first time he'd called Aoife his old lady to anyone else. Chibs watched Shari absorb that information.
"Your old lady," she repeated. "Never thought you'd get an old lady," Shari teased with a smile. "Her aunt, huh? Let me guess. Last room on the right?" Chibs raised an eyebrow at her. "Not too many patients whose only family is a niece. Rois is a great lady."
"Aye, that she is," Chibs agreed. "Look, could you keep an eye on her for me? You and some other nurses you can trust? Some guy's been making harassing phone calls to other members of the family and someone broke into her niece's coffee shop a few weeks back. Anything happens, you call me. Can you do that for me, Shari-girl?" Shari nodded. "Ok, anything at all, you call this number." Chibs scribbled the pre-pay number on a sticky note. He handed it to Shari over five folded twenty-dollar bills.
"What's this?" She stared at the cash. "You know I'd do it for the club without the money."
"You're going to need a lot of things if you've got a wee one on the way. I'm sure you'll find a use for it."
Rois' eyes were drooping when Chibs re-entered the room, but she still managed a smile. "Thank you for the Concannon, Filip. I just can't convince the doc to write me a prescription for Irish whiskey."
Chibs paused to steady his voice. In the harsh fluorescent lights, Rois' skin was ashen, and the shadows revealed that she'd lost a bit of weight since they'd last visited her. He wondered how much time she could have left. "Eh, the doc probably couldn't pick a good one anyway. You'd best leave that sort of thing to folks who know their whiskey."
"Aye," Rois agreed. "Come here, lad. I'd like to have a word with you." She pulled Chibs' hand to her cheek, forcing him to come close enough that he could see every line of her gray face. "Aoife told me about becoming your old lady. I want to put a thought in your head – you might want to keep your relationship with her a little quiet until things get sorted out with her attacker. You don't want your Irish business partners taking an unnecessary interest in your old lady." Chibs' made a strangled noise and glanced at Aoife, who was too busy with her phone to notice. Rois' voice was so low he had to strain to hear it. "No, she didn't tell me anything. Come on, Filip, you think it's coincidence that an Irish fugitive ended up selling coffee in a the same little California town as a bunch of outlaw bikers who happen to have IRA business dealings?"
"Aoife…" Chibs wasn't sure how to phrase the question.
"She doesn't know any of that. To her it's all a giant coincidence." Rois released his hand. "You take care of my little girl. It'd be a big pain in the arse to get out of this bed and hunt you down if you don't."
"What did Aunt Rois need to tell you?" Aoife asked as she was draping her jacket across the bar stool.
"She's worried about you." Chibs answered simply. He dropped his boots and socks and pulled his lass to him.
Aoife smiled up at him. "Like always."
"She thinks that maybe it would be best if we keep you being my old lady kind of quiet for a while with everything going on."
"She does?" Aoife looked a little surprised. "What do you think?"
Chibs' reaction to any threat to Aoife was a desire to lock her up in the clubhouse guarded by every single brother of his, armed to the teeth, while he rode out to slay the foe. He would never let her be taken from him the way Fiona and Kerrianne were. But with her fierce independence, he knew that suggestion would go over like a lead balloon. "The real question is, what do you want to do, lass?" Chibs whispered.
"Aunt Rois always had a sixth sense for this kind of thing when I was a kid. If she thinks we should keep this under wraps, even if we don't understand why, we should." Aoife looked up in to Chibs' eyes, pushing the sunglasses up on his forehead. "As long as there are no secrets between us, I don't care what lies we tell the world." She brushed her lips to his and purred. "Now take me to bed. We need to finish making up like we were before those calls today." She ground her hips against him once and licked her lips suggestively before she dashed down the hall, out of his reach, chuckling.
"Oh, now, that's it, lass!" Chibs called with a chuckle of his own. He caught her at the end of the hall and kissed her, fierce and desperate, her back pressed against the door frame. His hands found the button on her jeans and yanked them open with a flick of his wrist while her fingers made short work of the buttons on his shirt. Since she couldn't get his cut or shirt off his shoulders until his arms were free, Aoife's hands went to his waist, and soon his jeans were hanging low on his hips. Aoife's warm, soft hand slid past the waistband of his boxers, and Chibs growled into her mouth. "I fucking love you, lass."
"I love you. And I want you stripped naked in the next ten seconds so I can show you how much."
"Don't have to tell me twice," Chibs answered, dropping his cut and button-down shirt from his shoulders. He ripped his tank off with such ferocity that he heard the tear of fabric, but he kept going, shedding his jeans and boxers, catching up to Aoife so that he could help her with unsnapping her front closure bra and replace the cups with his calloused hands. He devoured her body with his lips and hands, listening to her gasp and whimper with pleasure, before he finally lowered them both to the bed and sunk himself inside her.
The insistent buzzing of his prepay phone intruded on the afterglow, but with Aoife and her family in danger, he couldn't ignore it. As Aoife snuggled down against his chest, he played back the five-second voicemail. A code word, a dock, and a time. McKeavey and the guns would be here tomorrow.