She laughed at the exaggeration. “Stop fretting. I’m not tangled up in anything,” she said, waving as she went out the door.
Not yet, anyway.
Mick watched his granddaughter walk away from O’Brien’s as if she were in a big hurry to get somewhere. She didn’t even turn around when he called out to her.
“What’s going on with her?” he grumbled to his wife as he held open the door to the pub. “Since when does she ignore her own grandfather?”
“When she doesn’t want to talk about whatever’s on her mind,” Megan said. “Ever since she came home, you’ve been all over her to make some decisions about her future. Maybe she’s tired of it.”
“Well, she needs to stop wasting time,” he replied. “You can’t tell me she’s still brokenhearted over the jerk in Europe. He obviously wasn’t good enough for her.”
“Not your call,” Megan reminded him. “It’s not about whether he was or wasn’t good enough for her, or about how long it should take her to get over him.”
Mick just scowled at his wife. He hated it when Megan got all reasonable and pointed out that he couldn’t control everything around him, especially when it came to his own family. Okay, she was usually right, but that didn’t mean he should stop trying to make sure things worked out the way they were supposed to.
“Hey, Uncle Mick,” Luke said. “Aunt Megan. Do you all want a table or are you going to sit at the bar?”
“We’ll sit at the bar,” Mick told him. “Then you can fill us in on why Carrie was in such a state when she left here.”
“Mick!” Megan protested. “Don’t involve Luke in this.”
Luke regarded them with an innocent expression that Mick wasn’t buying for a second.
“Was she in some kind of a state?” Luke inquired, as if he hadn’t noticed a thing out of the ordinary about her mood.
Mick frowned at him. “Did all you kids make a pact to keep me in the dark about things?”
His nephew laughed. “No pact,” he insisted. “But I did take an oath to protect my customers’ privacy.”
“Carrie’s not a customer. She’s family.”
“Then march right on over to her house and ask her yourself,” Luke suggested, setting a pint of ale in front of Mick and a glass of red wine in front of Megan, who was trying hard to bite back a smile.
“Ungrateful wretch,” Mick mumbled.
“Watch it or I’ll tell Gram you were calling me names,” Luke retorted.
“Ma doesn’t scare me,” Mick said.
“Well, she ought to,” Megan said. “Now hush. Let’s have a nice dinner and then go home.”
Mick sighed as Luke beat a hasty retreat, leaving him to stew over the lack of information. “You’re both acting as if I’m in the wrong for being concerned about my own granddaughter,” he told Megan.
“Not wrong,” she soothed. “Just misguided. Carrie’s a grown woman. She’ll figure things out for herself. And to be honest, Mick, the more you push, the harder you’ll make that for her. Stubbornness is a family trait. You, of all people, ought to know that.”
He scowled at his wife. “You saying I’m stubborn?”
She gave him an incredulous look. “You are the king of stubborn!” she declared. “But you’re also caring and thoughtful and I wouldn’t have you any other way. Just, please, this once, stop your meddling. It was partly because of your good intentions that our Caitlyn barely made it down the aisle before her baby was born. Learn from past mistakes.”
“Caitlyn’s married now, isn’t she? And every one of our kids and my brother Jeff’s are settled and happy, in some measure due to my so-called good intentions.”
“In spite of,” Megan corrected. She called out to Luke, who was hovering just out of view in the kitchen doorway. “Luke, bring us some of that stew, and hurry, please. Maybe if Mick’s stomach is full of some good old-fashioned Irish food, he’ll take a break from fretting about Carrie.”
Mick frowned at the suggestion. “I’m perfectly capable of doing two things at once,” he told her.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I know,” she said quietly. “More’s the pity. If you need something else to chew on, how about this?”
The suggestion she whispered in his ear for how they might spend the rest of the evening pretty much wiped all thoughts of his granddaughter and her problems right out of his head. He grinned at his wife.
“Clever woman,” he murmured approvingly.