Chapter 10

She promptly smacked her cane into Stephen’s shin, demanded a kiss for his old auntie, and called him auseless little sod who didn’t write often enough.

“I’m not blind, boy! I can read a postcard!”

Mike’s shoulders were shaking with the effort not to laugh.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Alicia. We’ve been busy.”

“Busy with what, eh, busy with what?”

“I told you,” Stephen said patiently. “Busy with the hospital.”

“Hospital, pah! What do you need a hospital for? Him, he needs a hospital, walking bloody heart attack, but that’s what you get for marrying a southern nancy.”

Mike grinned. He’d never been called a southern nancy before.

“I told you—”

“That’s the trouble with you young things, think you run the world while you’re playing at life. You need to slow down, you’re too thin. You! Michael, wasn’t it? Why are you eating all the pies, eh, and my nephew’s resembling a garden rake!”