Read Online Put a Ring on It by K.A. Mitchell - Free Book Online Page B

most parents liked to hear about a son’s engagement. Theo would have been less tense if he were facing the investors after a catastrophic dress rehearsal. But if there was one thing he excelled at, it was putting a good face on a disaster.
    Marilyn, Kieran’s mother, called them in from somewhere in the house.
    The dining room table to the right of the entry was set with china, smooth linens, and lit candles. An embroidered cloth covered two bread loaves, the braided ends peeking out.
    Marilyn stepped forward and kissed her son’s cheek, putting a hand on Theo’s arm in welcome.
    “Mom? Why is the table set for shab—?”
    Marilyn pinched Kieran’s mouth shut, jerking her head in the direction of the kitchen.
    “Are they here?” A slender figure with bottle-black hair strode out of the kitchen. The flowing hippie clothes overwhelming her small frame could have come from the wardrobe of a Hair revival. She held out her arms to Kieran.
    “Hi, Bubbe .” He gave her a quick embrace.
    “ Tsatskele .” She held on, squeezing him.
    “That’s for girls, Bubbe.”
    “It means ‘pet,’ and who here is marrying some alte raykh goy so he can live soft?”
    “He’s not old.” Kieran’s grandmother was in her eighties, but she moved like a much younger woman. Now she fixed him with a sharp glare. “So this is the shaygetz who wants to marry my grandson?”
    “This is Theo, Bubbe. Theo, my grandmother, Emma Schwartz.”
    “ Gut shabbos , Mrs. Schwartz.”
    “Hmm. He talks pretty. Nu ?”
    Theo didn’t know that bit of Yiddish, but the scorn was easy enough to follow.
    Marilyn came to Theo’s rescue. “Ma, I told you all about Theo. He’s a very decent man.”
    “I didn’t know Bubbe was visiting.” Kieran peeled off his jacket.
    “Because you don’t pay attention when I tell you things.” Marilyn snatched up Kieran’s and Theo’s coats and nodded at the stairs. “Why don’t you both collect your father from his office? Tell him it’s time to eat.”
    Theo checked his phone as they climbed the stairs. Gideon had called two more times and Dane once. Nothing from Jax, but it was barely seven thirty on the west coast, so Jax probably had yet to pry his eyes open unless he had an early call. Theo would fix things with his family made of friends as soon as he’d gotten Kieran through this. He took the opportunity to do an Internet search on shaygetz.
    “Did your grandmother call your father a shaygetz when he and your mom got married?” he asked Kieran.
    Kieran shrugged, hands fisted in the pockets of his jeans. “I wasn’t exactly around to hear. But I know things were a bit rocky. From what I heard, she flipped out about their adoption plans too, until she got her hands on Finn at his bris , and then we were all her babies to coo over.”
    “Did you—ah—how old—?” Theo knew Kieran had been adopted at fifteen months, but whether his foreskin had come from Korea with him wasn’t something Theo had thought to ask. Theo’s own had been left at a St. Louis hospital at birth.
    Kieran raised his eyebrow as Theo struggled to get the question out, looking faintly amused. “I was already cut. But I guess at the ceremony they had to get a drop of blood. From the same spot.”
    Theo winced.
    Kieran shook his head. “I don’t remember it—or anything much before my fourth birthday party. More than a drop of blood spilled at that.”
    “Oh?”
    “Another time.” Kieran knocked on his father’s office door.
    Theo considered himself talented at reading people, but Dr. Niall Delaney defeated all his efforts. He seemed to move through his family like a ghost, leaving no more impact on it than his children’s Irish first names. For all Theo knew, that hadn’t been Niall’s decision either. He seemed to be separate from everything, recording it all with pale gray eyes for a sociology monograph.
    Perhaps the fact that Theo had only visited on Jewish holidays when Marilyn’s traditions came to the