I echoed her name back at her, leaning into my accent, letting it thicken, and the feel of her name on my lips made my cock twitch. She drew in a gasp and her teeth closed over the spill of her lower lip, pressing into the flesh of it as though she needed to still her reaction to my voice. A flood of heat raced across her face, reddening her cheeks and when she met my eyes, there was an unmistakable spark of attraction. It went both ways.
She couldn't be Kearney's daughter. Kearney would have never let her come out here. It was too dangerous. And that meant someone was trying to use this girl to play me. I gritted my teeth and took a step back, warring with myself over the urge to close my mouth over hers and drag her back to Jackie's spare room and claim her.
My head was spinning. I'd thought I was past having my head turned like that.
I swallowed hard. "This is Tiernan territory and if you know what's good for you, you'll head back into town like a good little tourist. Your man Brannigan is not someone you want to be associated with. Do yourself a favour: see the sights, have yourself a holiday, and take yourself back home."
Above us, the sky rumbled with thunder. I looked up as the clouds burst, fat droplets collided with my face, chilling me to the bone and blackening the pavement with the rain. I heard the clatter of her footsteps as she made a run for it and forced myself not to move.
Perfect or not, I couldn't afford to bring a stranger into my lair.
She was around the corner by the time I looked back down.
CHAPTER 4
Kaitlin
I didn't need telling twice.
I ran all the way back to the bus stop as the clouds burst, turning the pavements dark with heavy, fat droplets of rain. My hair slicked itself to my face in sopping wet clumps, most likely smearing my makeup down my face. I was shivering by the time the bus pulled up, and I clambered on, grateful to sink down into a damp seat and huddle against the steamed up window.
He said my name the way my father said it. Kat, stopping short at the t, with a soft thickness swelling into the stretched out second half, instead of Kate. Not lyn, but leen. But there was nothing fatherly about the heat in his voice.
A soft shiver raced along my skin at the memory of the sound of it. The warmth of his voice, his accent, felt like coming home. Deep down I knew if he hadn't sent me home, I'd have gone with him wherever he wanted to take me.
I'd been waiting my whole life for a man like him. Someone fierce and smooth and not afraid to be reckless. I couldn't believe I'd run away when all I really wanted to do was kiss him.
By the time I got back to the city, I was running on adrenaline and fumes. My stomach felt hollow and growly and I was dizzy from lack of food. When was the last time I ate? I couldn't remember. The day had been jumbled up right from the start.
All the cobbled streets of the Temple Bar area were filling up with groups of rowdy guys, and screaming gangs of girls with pink feather boas and the kind of slutty bride outfits that come out at halloween back home. The whole city was insane. That had to be the explanation.
It wasn't even six o'clock and it looked like the entire town had been drinking all day.
There was a loud roar and three guys nearly barrelled me into the wall as they exploded out of one of the pubs. Two of them were holding the third guy up between them and before I could do a thing, he unzipped his fly and started to piss against the wall. Urine spewed onto the pavement where I'd been about to step, splattering onto my shoes and up onto my legs.
"Oh my God." I wanted to scrub my skin off. This city was a hell hole.
One of the guys tried to apologise, but I was already pushing my way even more determinedly towards the hostel.
Everything about this afternoon needed to be erased from my memory entirely.
I raced up the stairs to my room at the hostel to find the bathroom door locked, a woman's case strewn open on the bed I'd claimed as mine, and some rather explicit noises coming out of the locked bathroom.
"Oh, seriously?"
I grabbed a towel out of my bag and didn't hang around long enough to figure out whether she was in there with a rampant rabbit or a fellow hosteler.
What the hell did it matter to me anyway? Whichever way around I still had some guy's piss all over my shoes and splashed up my legs.
I clamped my hand over my mouth, trying to keep my breathing steady. All I wanted was a shower. Was a shower too much to ask?
Apparently in this shitty city, it was.
The sob I let out sounded alien and it took me a minute to realise that the low, pained sound had come from me.
Everything was a mess. I'd nearly gotten mugged. I was soaked to the skin, running on way too little sleep, at my wits end, with no one to turn to. There wasn't a soul I knew in the city. I wanted to go home, but I didn't have a home to go back to. A total stranger had just peed on my shoes; there was someone I didn't know having sex in the bathroom and I was never going to find Brannigan.
Before I knew it, the tears I'd been holding off were pouring out of me, but I was still struggling against them. I couldn't break down. There was no one apart from me to put the pieces back together.
If I'd disappeared today, no one would have come looking for me. No one would have even known.
A noise at the door made me look up, and I sniffed hard, brushing my tears away at the sight of a black haired girl maybe a bit older than me picking up a caddy of cleaning supplies she'd just dropped.
"Shite. Sorry - just in to do the bathroom."
I swiped at my cheek again, determined to hold it together. "Good luck with that."
A perfectly timed moan came through the bathroom door and the woman with the cleaning supplies raised her eyebrows. "Wow. She's enjoying herself." Her eyes lingered on me and I tried to pull on a convincing smile.
"You alright?" She set the caddy down by the bathroom door and leaned against the wall. "You don't look so great."
I tried another smile.
I hadn't cried since Dad died - I'd pushed all my emotions into a tightly knotted ball of anger that had Garrett's name on it. Now the trail had gone cold, my anger was curdling back into rank fear and utter loneliness. I knew from mourning mom years ago that grief is the kind of emotion that carved out a whole chunk of you and I'd been trying so hard to keep it at bay. But who was I kidding?
"No. I mean - yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
The woman's nose scrunched. "Jaysus you're a rubbish liar."
Despite myself, I spluttered a laugh. It felt like a relief that she'd called me out. "Well I guess that's true."
"I'm Nora, by the way. Meant to be the chef, but it's a bit of a do-everything gig, you know?"
I nodded, suddenly incredibly grateful that she was talking to me. "Yeah, I've had a few of them. I'm Kaitlin."
"You look like a bit of a mess, if you don't mind me saying. Tell me this isn't about a boy?"
"God no." My thoughts flashed to Brannigan and then to the man who'd rescued me today. Neither of them could be classed as boys. "It's… I guess I've had a really long day. I've been looking for a friend of my parents," I explained. "And I don't think I'm going to find him."
Nora's eyes softened in sympathy and I realised I must cut a pretty pathetic figure. "Plus, you smell like a urinal, which I'm guessing isn't some kind of personal choice, and you look like a drowned rat."
I spluttered another laugh, because it was either that or cry again. "There is that too."
She leaned down to pick up the cleaning caddy again. "Come on. You can use one of the other bathrooms. I'll let you into the room."
"Thank you so much. I owe you massively."
"One condition, mind. You're coming out with me and mine this evening, once you've cleaned yourself up. I'm not letting anyone think all Dublin has to offer is this stag-infested tourist trap. I'll show you the real craic, and tomorrow you won't even remember sitting here crying your eyes out."
After a lifetime of moving around, I knew that truly warm people were few and far b
etween, but it seemed as though I'd stumbled on a friend right when I needed one the most. A huge surge of warmth swelled in my chest at her kindness. She didn't have to offer any of that, but she was.
As much as I'd have dearly loved to crawl into my bunk and pull the covers up over my head, this sounded like a far better offer. After today, Garrett Brannigan could hang himself. At least until the morning.
---
Nora rolled her eyes as a drunken group pushed past, chanting something I could barely understand, and I stepped well back. Just in case.
After dinner, she'd dragged me out, good to her word. Her boyfriend played the fiddle two doors down, she told me, but after his set was over we were going 'somewhere where you didn't need a mortgage to have more than one drink.'
She shoved the pair of us into the most crowded bar I'd ever seen in my life and pushed her way through the jostling crowd to the front. I could hear the music as soon as we got through the door - fast and wild and reeling with a constant beat from a small drum and the stamp of feet on the ground.
Nora let out a whoop, her fingers tightening around mine as she pulled me forward, into a spin in the crowded middle of the room and she threw her arms up, laughing.
Her boyfriend bought us both drinks between sets and I found myself sipping a large glass of red wine listening to the pair of them joking along with the other members of the band, feeling out of place and a little awkward. Bars weren't exactly the places I frequented back home when I went out seeing as I couldn't legally drink back there for another two years, but when in Rome.
I didn't mind sitting back and letting the conversations buzz around me. Their accents reminded me of my mysterious rescuer, and he was creeping into my head again.
I was mostly disgusted with myself over the way I'd reacted to him, but like it or not, it was undeniable the way his voice had played over my skin like a physical caress. I never knew a voice could be so sexy until he said my name.
He had the best cut suit I'd ever seen. He wore it like a second skin, his shirt open at the top and the dark jacket undone. With his hands planted in his pockets, it gaped a little, revealing a glint of gunmetal at his side that I don't think I imagined. His shirt followed the line of his torso and I could practically trace the taut, slender muscles underneath. In my jumbled day dreams I had my hands all over him. The man was tall and slender, but under that suit was so much coiled power my mouth went dry at the thought.
"Oh no. She's getting that look in her eyes again, Graham."
"Oh yes. I see the one you mean. We can't have that now can we?"
"Your round, Kaitlin. Mine's a Guinness."
One drink turned into three before I knew what had happened. It was already close to eleven when Nora dragged us out of the third little pub where we'd met up with a group of her college friends who'd dragged me into raucous conversations about art and poetry and politics without a care for who they offended. I wasn't offended. I was charmed.
"Graham, your man Liam is a total gobshite."
"Ah, you know yourself he'll say anything for the craic."
"I reckon he fancied you, Kaitlin."
I grimaced at her assessment, partly because the words reminded me so strongly of my dad. Isn't there anyone you fancy, Kaitlin? You could have anyone you wanted. "I don't think so."
Listening to them was like hearing people speak another language, but I didn't care. For the first time in months I was actually out having fun. Like someone my age was supposed to. Nora hooked my arm into hers as she squeezed us between weaving individuals. My head was a little blurry and I was pretty sure I was weaving as much as the rest of them, but I didn't care. Everything in my life had been pulled out from under my feet, so I could do what I damn well wanted now.
"Taxi!"
I did a quick mental calculation of the money I had in my wallet.
"I can walk back-"
Nora stomped her foot. "Taxi! You're not going home just yet. The night's young, come have a drink with us."
With the smile on her face and the unfamiliar hum of so much alcohol in me, I didn't have the will in me to say no.
That's how we ended up in a place called Finnegan's at just before closing time. Compared to Temple Bar it was way out of the centre of town.
The wider streets with normal people and slightly run down shops somehow felt more comfortable to me than the rowdy stretch of bars we'd left behind.
I should have stayed somewhere like this. But not knowing Dublin, I hadn't known where to look away from the centre.
"It's my ma's place," Nora announced, holding the door open like she owned it, which I guess she kind of did, in a way.
The building was ancient, or it seemed that way to me. I'd thought the buildings around the hostel were old, but this was older. It didn't look like there was a straight line in the entire place and the glass in the windows was all thick small panes that rippled and warped what you were looking at through them like some kind of kaleidoscope.
As soon as I walked inside, the framed newspaper cuttings of past boxing matches with local fighters made my head trip dizzily back towards Brannigan. Would he go drinking in a place like this? Maybe he'd been here. Maybe he was in the pictures somewhere, standing next to my dad.
I squinted at the frames, trying to make out names in badly corroded newspaper print, not helped by the gloom inside and the lightbulbs that seemed to be struggling to make much of an impression on the dark interior. If I'd been more familiar with the faces, maybe I'd have seen them staring back at me from the smudgy newsprint.
But tonight wasn't supposed to be about that. There was a fire in the grate even though the bar was mostly empty and I was glad Nora's mom hadn't let it go out. I wanted to curl up in one of the deep leather sofas and let the heat seep through me.
Nora nudged us towards a table in the corner. "Sit yourselves down. What are you having?"
I ended up with a small glass of Guiness, which Nora said I had to have.
"It's only a half, Kaitlin. You can't call yourself Irish when you've never even tried the black stuff. You can't come to Ireland and only drink Californian wine. That's blasphemy."
I sipped at the thick white froth on top and grimaced. It was so bitter.
I looked up to see Nora and Graham laughing at me over their own pints.
"Oh Jaysus. You've got to drink through the head. You don't get a better pint than that. This is right from St James' Gate."
I shook my head, spluttering a little at her frustrations with me. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
But it didn't matter. Even after the nightmare my day had turned into, Nora buoyed me up. She was right. I needed to laugh and forget about the farce my life had turned into.
Flirting with the local hardmen while trying to find Brannigan didn't sound like a good idea. But the man who'd rescued me and my bag from the Ballyfermot boys wouldn't stay out of my head.
Whoever he was, he'd swooped in like some sinister version of a white knight. I had no doubt he was trouble and not the petty misdemeanor kind of trouble either.
The kids there would have mugged me without a second thought if he hadn't been there. But they hadn't even tried to face him off, even though they outnumbered him.
The word that glued itself to the image of him in my head was gangster, and it fit the suave way he'd strolled along the street, as though he owned it. And I was hot just thinking about it.
Maybe it was a lifetime of responsibility, looking after mom when she was dying and then looking after dad every year after that, through all the new towns he dragged us to. I'd never had time for boys. I didn't drool over the jocks on the football team the way every girl my age was supposed to, and I didn't take it as a compliment when they tried to look up my skirt in gym glass, or 'accidentally' groped my boob in the swimming pool.
The boys in every high school I'd been to were immature kids and I didn't have the time to massage their egos complimenting their shitty taste in music and listenin
g to all the angst and woes of your typical Californian, or convincing them that I had better things to do with my time than getting drunk and high all weekend.
I'd buried any attraction I'd felt for anyone pretty deep. I guess us Kearneys were good at that. It was easy enough when all they did was bore me.
But there was nothing at all boring about a man like that.
I blinked, tuning back in for the punchline of Graham's story. "And the bishop ate it!"
Nora's laugh barked out loud enough to stop the chatter from the table down the far end of the bar.
I hadn't noticed we weren't the only ones Nora had locked in. There were three half finished pints sat on the table and the pair of eyes that met mine were a startlingly familiar green.
Dad's Irish Mafia Friend (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 110) Page 4