Thief (A Bad Boy Romance)(50)

I’m still not sure if it’s funny or sad that she’s ended up marrying a two-bit small-town gangster two and a half times her age.

There in the doorway though, Steph throws her arms around me. “Oh my gawd, Silas!” She hits my shoulder, grinning widely at me.

“I heard you were in Africa or somethin?”

Well that’s a new one.

I shake my head. “Ireland, actually. Not Africa.”

Stephanie rolls her eyes and waves a hand at me, as if it’s an easy everyday mix-up. She turns and breezes through the house towards the kitchen, grabbing an enormous glass of wine from a side table in the hallway.

“So you’re here for your uncle?”

I nod as I follow her into the kitchen.

“Oh my gawd,” she turns in the kitchen doorway, her eyes wide as she brings a manicured hand to her mouth. “Jesus shit, does that make me your aunt now? Gawd that makes me feel so old!”

I knit my brow as I suppress the smile. “Steph, I’m a year older than you. And no, I don’t think that means you’re my aunt.”

Her shoulders slump with relief. “Well thank fucking Christ. Oh! You should stay for dinner!” She turns and sweeps into the utter shit-show of the kitchen - raw spaghetti and splatters of tomato sauce like some sort of crime scene all over the place.

“I’m making pasta.”

Making it, or assassinating it?

“Declan’s on his way home, actually, so we could have a proper family dinner!”

I smirk at the idea of a that. Right, this family? Proper? My uncle the crook, my aunt the stripper, and me the career thief.

Yeah, a regular nuclear family we are.

“Didn’t know you cooked, Steph.”

I’m not staying for dinner, but I don’t have to tell her that. I’m here to set some shit straight with my uncle about some boundaries and about staying the fuck out of my life, and then I’m leaving.

I look up and frown as I suddenly see Stephanie with a metal bread-tin of some kind in her hand, heaped with pasta and sauce as she opens the microwave.

“Whoa, Steph!”

She looks up quickly. “Yeah?”

“Can’t put that in the microwave, you know.”

She furrows her brow as she looks at the metal dish in her hand piled with cracked, dry pasta and lumps of canned tomato sauce. “What do you mean?”

I shake my head, staring at her. “Steph, it’s metal. You can’t put metal in the microwave.”

She pauses for a second before she starts to laugh, waving a hand at me as if I’m pulling one over on her. “Oh, Silas! You almost had me there!” She laughs as she slides the dinner abomination into the microwave.

“Stephanie!” I stare at her. “It’s metal.”

“Well how else is it going to cook, silly?” She laughs as she turns away.

The backdoor bangs open, startling us both as Declan himself comes striding through the door.

He stutters to a stop as he sees me sitting at his kitchen table, his eyes narrowing as a grin spreads across his face.

“Well, well, the prodigal fucking nephew!” He pulls his cigarettes out of his pocket as he moves towards me, swatting Steph on the ass and eliciting a giggling squeal from her before he settles across from me at the table.

“You know Stephanie, right?”

He knows I know his new wife.

“I do, actually.” I look up at his new wife and my former classmate, who’s thankfully transferring the pasta from the metal dish to what looks to be a microwave safe glass one.

“So, Steph, how did you and my uncle meet?”

Cheer practice back when we went to high school together? Hopefully something much later than that?

“Well, of course I knew this lovely creature from before,” Declan chuckles his wheezing laugh as he stands and grabs a bottle of whiskey and two glasses from the kitchen counter. He sits again and pours into both of them.

“You know, from when the two of you were back in school.”

I smile thinly. “Yeah, no, I remember.”

He chuckles again. “Well, I lost track of her until about three years ago when I saw her dancin’, and I knew it was love at first sight.”

I raise my brow, suddenly wondering if I’ve somehow gone through my whole life underestimating my uncle’s emotional capacity. Dancing? Love at first sight?

Who knows, people can change.

“Shit kid, I’ll tell you, the tits on this one when she was up on that pole-”

Yep, theeeeere it is.

Declan whistles. “Love at first sight when I saw those perfect fucking tits, I’ll tell you!” He chuckles, red-faced as he reaches over to goose his young wife.

“Declan!” Stephanie giggles, feebly pretending to push my uncle’s hands away from her ass. “Dirty!”