Disclosures - SF4 (21 page)

"No. I’m really not, Da. Before I give her an answer, I’m going to check out a few other sports and talk to some of the players on the team. I promise I won’t agree to do this if it will give her a chance to hurt me again."

Jamie piped up helpfully, "Since they don’t have a scholarship for Ryan, she might choose to play one of the non-scholarship sports."

"NO SCHOLARSHIP!!!" all three O’Flaherty men cried at once.

Ryan cast a sickly smile at her partner and muttered, "Thanks, Pal. I owe you one."

When dinner was finished, and everyone had been calmed about the scholarship issue, Brendan and Conor got up to start on the dishes. Ryan stood too, but Jamie insisted that since she had done the cooking, she couldn't clean. Martin had not been able to hide his worried frown for most of the night, so Ryan took the others up on the offer and asked her father to join her for a beer in the back yard.

The night was really too cold to be called pleasant, and the fog obscured every star, but neither of the naturally warm O’Flahertys were bothered by that fact. They each sat in a comfy chaise and acted as though they were watching the stars for a few minutes. "Jamie certainly has a lovely home," Martin finally said.

Here it comes…three…two…one…

"I don’t know much about this side of the Bay, but in the city a place like this would cost a very pretty pence."

"Umm-hmmm," Ryan agreed, waiting to see where this train was headed before she decided if she wanted to ride it to the end of the line.

"I can’t imagine that Jamie’s father bought the house to provide free housing to her friends, Siobhán."

Ohh…now arriving at "Guilt Trip Station" ! I think this is my stop.
"I’ve offered to pay for half of the …incidentals, Da." She didn’t think this was the best time to bring up the cadre of service personnel affiliated with the house.

"Aren’t you taking the place of one of the girls who was here before, Darlin’?"

"In a sense," she agreed. "But I hope my position is a little bit more permanent than ‘housemate’." She said this in a light, joking tone, but there was a note of hurt in her voice as well.

"Now, now," he soothed, understanding the tone. "I didn’t mean to make light of your commitment to one another, Siobhán."

"But you are, Da. That would be like you asking Jamie for money to live with us on the weekends."

He mulled that over for a moment, but had to disagree with his daughter. "That’s not so, Sweetheart. We’ve welcomed Jamie into the family. The Evanses haven’t had the opportunity to do that for you. Living here without their permission or even their knowledge is not how I would expect you to act."

"But I’m not creating any more expense for Mr. Evans…"

"No, but you are taking income away from him, Love. If not for you, Jamie would likely find another roommate to take the other girl’s place. Mr. Evans is losing that income by having you here."

Ryan thought about that statement for quite a while, mulling it over in her mind from every angle. Try as she might, she could not really punch a hole in the logic. "Okay," she finally sighed. "I see your point."

"Don’t sound so glum, Sweetheart," he urged. "You’ll feel better about being here if you do everything aboveboard. Once they know about you, you can all come to some agreement about finances."

"So….you wouldn’t be disappointed in me if I let Jamie support me this year?"

"Completely support you?" The surprise in his voice was evident. "Siobhán! Do you know how much it costs to support you?"

"Yes, Da, I know," she insisted. "But it’s the only way I can play a sport and keep my grades up."

"But she doesn’t work! How on earth…"

"She has family money, Da. It’s more than enough to support both of us."

"Ohh…I see…" he said slowly.

For the second time in the evening, Ryan was quite sure that he did not.

"Da’s worried that feeding me will send you to the poorhouse," Ryan murmured into her partner’s sweet-smelling hair. They were snug in bed, the chill in the house forcing them to cuddle for warmth as well as emotional succor.

"Oh, I think I can handle you," Jamie murmured, almost asleep. "I’ll apply for government cheese if things get too bad."

"We do need to work out some finances, Baby." Ryan was still wired from her evening, and she couldn’t let the issue go.

"We will," Jamie mumbled. "G’night, Sweetie."

Ryan placed a soft kiss right above her ear and pulled her limp body even tighter against herself. " ‘Night, Love," she whispered, hoping that they could come to an agreement over the financial issues that were beginning to cast a cloud over their lives.

"Jamie?" Receiving no answer, she raised her voice and tried again. "Jamie?" Ryan looked around on the first floor, trying to find her elusive lover. From the scent of espresso wafting through the house, it was obvious that she was up, but exactly where she was up, Ryan did not know.

A faint voice reached her ears. "I’m outside, Babe."

Ryan walked out onto the rear landing to see her partner sitting on the attractive wooden garden bench,
The New York Times
spread out over the small wrought iron table that was pulled up to her knees. She was wearing headphones, and her Walkman lay on the seat beside her. A cup of coffee, or more precisely latté, if Ryan’s guess was correct, shared space with the remaining sections of the newspaper.

"Now this is the picture of a woman starting her day out in the manner to which she has become accustomed." The truth of the matter was that Jamie did, in fact, look absolutely content. A short discussion had taken place when they woke, and she had admitted that, as much as she loved being with Ryan in the morning, she was beginning to miss her pre-Ryan routine. Seeing the contented look on her face, Ryan was very happy that her partner had decided to get back to it this morning. "Are you listening to music?" she asked, leaning over to kiss Jamie’s cheek.

The tousled blonde head shook briefly, and she removed the headphones to reply. "I listen to ‘Morning Edition’ on National Public Radio. The day doesn’t feel like it officially starts if I don’t hear Bob Edwards say good morning to me." Her sunny face was crinkled up in a playful grin, and Ryan got an even better indication of how important this routine was to her partner. Jamie started to get up, offering, "Let me make you some breakfast, Tiger. You look like you’ve burned off a couple of thousand calories already."

"No, please," Ryan insisted, lightly touching the tops of the terrycloth clad shoulders. "I want you to sit right here and enjoy your coffee. I still need to stretch, and then I prefer to take a shower before I eat." Jamie smiled up at her and sank back down onto the bench, tucking her mint green robe around her legs to ward off the morning chill. "Anyway, since breakfast is the meal I do best, why don’t I cook in the morning, and you can handle the evenings?"

A soft laugh and a teasing smirk were Jamie’s reply. "That would be fine, Buffy, but you’ve cooked every night so far. If that’s gonna be the plan, you’ve got to let me do my part, too."

Ryan lay down on the dew-soaked grass, a hiss of pleasure escaping as she let the cool moisture absorb some of her body heat. She started on her stretching routine, looking thoughtful as she did so. "On second thought, maybe you should be in charge of lunch," she suggested. "I get home before you do if you play a full round of golf in the afternoon, and I really do need to eat by six or so. Think you can stand my cooking?"

"I love your cooking," Jamie assured her, "but let’s see how it goes for a while. I don’t want you to wind up doing too much around here. You’re already in charge of laundry…If you add breakfast and dinner to your list of chores I won’t have a darned thing to do."

"Hey," Ryan grunted, nearly pulling her leg over her head in a painful-looking stretch, "being my sex slave takes a lot of time too, ya know. That’s your most important job around here."

Jamie grabbed the section of newspaper that she was working on and held it up close to her face. "If I don’t stop watching you stretch, we’re gonna miss another meal, Buffy. That routine of yours is definitely rated NC-17!"

Over breakfast Ryan commented, "Did this morning work better for you, Babe? You looked pretty darned content out there, reading your paper."

"Yeah…it did work better. I mean, I kinda feel bad to want that time to myself, but I’ve been doing that since I was six, and it just feels right."

Ryan cocked her head, her spoonful of cereal stuck halfway between the bowl and her mouth. "What part of your routine did you perform when you were six?"

"All of it," Jamie blithely replied.

Ryan laughed, thinking of her partner sitting at the kitchen table, tiny little feet dangling high off the floor, reading
The New York Times
. "What…you read one of your little story books while you ate breakfast?"

"Noooo…I read
The New York Times
."

"When you were six?" The disbelief was evident in Ryan’s tone, if not the question.

"Yeaaaaah…is there an age limit that I’m not familiar with?" Jamie’s green eyes were dancing, obviously enjoying the teasing.

"So you’d sit at the table and read the paper while you had your juice and your cereal?"

"Noooo…I’d read the paper while I had my latté and my jam and bread. While listening to ‘Morning Edition,’ that is." Now she was unable to hide her grin, finally breaking into a laugh at the astounded look on Ryan’s face.

"That’s…that’s…Are you serious??"

"Yes, Babe. I didn’t understand ten percent of what I read, but my father read the
Times
while he ate, so I read the
Times
while I ate. It was a nice time for us," she said softly, looking rather wistful. "I’d ask him questions about words I didn’t understand, and he’d quiz me on different things that he thought I should know about. I was probably the only six-year-old who could have competently cast a vote in the 1984 presidential elections." Ryan was staring at her with a rather stunned expression still gracing her face. "I just find that unbelievable," she muttered, thinking of the thick-paged, small-word picture books she'd read at age six. "That doesn’t explain why you were eating bread and drinking latté though. That sounds like some strange form of yuppie child abuse!"

Jamie laughed at her partner’s hyperbole. "That was one of mother’s eccentricities. She thought breakfast cereal was a horrible thing to put into a child, so we ate more like the French. Marta would go to the bakery in the morning and buy brioche or a baguette, and we’d just have some fresh bread and a little jam. I guess I started drinking latté to imitate mother. I couldn’t drink espresso, because it was way too strong, so Marta added steamed milk until it suited me. I probably had a half-ounce of espresso to twelve ounces of milk, but it made me feel very sophisticated." Her smile faded as she admitted, "Both of my parents paid more attention to me when I acted like an adult."

Ryan grasped her hand and chafed it a bit between her own hands, "How do you want to handle breakfast with our kids?" She knew that talking about their future family always lightened Jamie’s mood, and today was no exception.

"I’m not sure," she admitted, her smile returning. "I kinda liked being treated like I had a brain. They never treated me like a dumb kid, and that really helped my self-confidence and independence. But I think I like breakfast at your house a lot better."

"Let’s compromise," Ryan suggested. "We can have porridge and back bacon with latté and the sports section of the
Times
."

"Best idea I’ve heard all day," Jamie agreed happily, picturing their future family sitting around a breakfast table that looked amazingly like the one in the O’Flaherty manse.

"I will never understand how taking a shower together takes three times longer than showering separately." Ryan was grumbling, mostly under her breath, as they jogged through the corridors of the brand-new, partially finished Haas Pavilion. Jamie didn’t take her grousing very seriously, knowing that her partner loved their communal cleanup. Ryan just hated to be late, no matter how pleasurable the reason for the delay.

They arrived at the office they were looking for less than five minutes after their scheduled time, but Ryan was apologizing to every person she made eye contact with. "Hi, I’m Ryan O’Flaherty," she said to the receptionist, speaking her name with just the barest hint of an Irish accent. "I’ve an appointment with Coach Placer, but I’m late. Is he still available?"

The woman looked at the large clock on the wall, then glanced at her appointment book. "It’s 9:03, Honey. Take a chill pill."

Ryan shoved her hands into the pockets of her chinos, and started to rock back and forth. She looked about ready to jump out of her skin, and Jamie placed a calming hand on the small of her back, giving her a light scratch. Ryan took in a breath and held it for a moment, feeling some of the tension leave her body. "I…um…I just hate to be late," she admitted.

"Three minutes is not late, Honey," the woman laughed. "Three hours…three days…three weeks…now that’s late." Her laugh floated behind her as she walked down a short corridor and poked her head into an office. Stepping back towards the reception desk she motioned Ryan and Jamie forward. "Come on, Honey, he’s on the phone, but you can come in."