Ciaran (Bourbon & Blood)

by Seraphina Donavan

  Loralei glared at him, and her voice, when she spoke, was somewhere between pissed off and mildly hysterical. “Normal! My shop is in ruins, I’ve been stabbed, and now I’ve been shot at! There is no normal after this, Matt! I’ve nearly died twice in just as many days!”

  “Ciaran,” he began, but had to clear his throat as it galled him to admit it. “Ciaran thinks there could potentially be a leak in the department.”

  She was focused on watching the paramedic tape the bandage over her ankle. “And what do you think about that?”

  Matt rocked back on his heels, put his hands in his pocket, and stared at the toes of his shoes. “I’m thinking there might be something to the theory. I’ve got to look into some things, but I might be able to provide just enough misinformation to make sure whoever is behind this hangs in their own noose. Do you trust me?”

  “After today? I’m reconsidering, but we’ll go with this one on account.” Her sarcasm was so thick it would have taken an idiot to miss it. “You’re my big brother. Of course, I trust you. Your coworkers are another story altogether.”

  “Walk me through what happened here,” he said.

  “Ciaran and I were in the bedroom—”

  “And you think my judgement isn’t sound?” he asked incredulously. “That guy did a number on you, Lor, like no one else ever has. It took him less than five hours to get you in bed!”

  She rolled her eyes. “I said we were in the bedroom, Matt, not that we were in bed. Get your mind out of the gutter! We were talking. That’s all!” It wasn’t a lie, she reasoned. At the time the first shot was fired they had been just talking. “Ciaran heard the tires on the driveway and dragged me off the bed and to the floor before the bullets started flying. He had me hide under the bed, with a gun, and then went off to play hero…which I’m going to kick his ass for when I’m able.”

  “You can’t kick his ass. Not ever. I’m not even sure I could kick it with Grant’s help!”

  “What the hell does that mean?” she demanded. “My head hurts, Matt, and I’ve had the ever-loving shit scared out of me twice! I can’t do cryptic.”

  “I dug a little deeper into his service file with the help of a friend who ignored things like security clearance,” Matt admitted. “The guy is good, Loralei. Not just good, but epic. Like the Celtic version of Rambo. He’s a bonafide Irish Chuck Norris for fuck’s sake.”

  Loralei considered that information for a second, but it honestly didn’t surprise her. Ciaran was always watchful, always aware of everything going on around them, and the few times she had seen him get physical with anyone, he’d moved in a way that just left her shaking her head. Precise, controlled, and wickedly efficient. “I kind of figured that out when he army crawled out of the house to take on the gunmen. Where do we go now?”

  “You and he are going to figure that out. I’m out of it.” Matt stepped closer to her, close enough to whisper without being overheard. “There are only two guys who knew where you were that I don’t trust implicitly, and until today, I never would have questioned either one of them. One of them will be told you’ve gone back to your house. The other will be told you all are laying low at my apartment. Depending on where the bad guys show up, we’ll know who our leak is.”

  “Do you really think that will work?”

  Matt nodded. “These guys, the Russians, are out of pocket. They don’t have the protection or backup of a family behind them. They’re good, but they’re alone. I’ll get ’em, and I’ll damn well end this. That’s a promise.”

  Loralei rose and hugged him. “Thank you for being a truly amazing and kick-ass brother, in every sense of the word.”

  “Don’t get sentimental on me. You know that shit makes it weird,” he said, backing up. As he did, he tugged at her messy ponytail, the remnants of a bun from earlier, in a gesture that was so reminiscent of their late father, it brought tears to her eyes.

  “Never. Go. Figure this shit out so I can have my house back and Churchill won’t require years of therapy.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That damn dog is a menace. I had to go to your house this morning and clean up about six piles. Kaitlyn wouldn’t do it. What the hell do you feed him?”

  “It’s not what I feed him, it’s what he scavenges. He’s so low to the ground that he just finds all the stuff people drop and he shouldn’t have. I had to stop walking him past that Mexican place on Vine. We were both miserable for days after he hoovered up the leavings there.”

  Matt grimaced. “Jesus.” He leaned in and kissed the top of her head. “Be careful, and as much as it pains me to say it, do what Ciaran tells you to. If anybody can keep them from getting to you, it’ll be him.”

  Loralei stood there, staring after him as he went to talk to the crime scene techs. Ciaran approached her, holding her overnight bag and Churchill’s pet carrier. His own bag was slung over his shoulder.

  “We need to go,” he said softly.

  Her eyes teared up, and she glanced at him. “They destroyed your house, Ciaran. I’m so sorry.”

  “They’re just walls, milish. They can be rebuilt easily enough. You can’t. Now get your beastie and let’s get you somewhere safe.”

  Loralei picked up Churchill and snuggled him close. She placed a kiss on the top of his fuzzy head and followed Ciaran out into the night.

  Ciaran held the door of the borrowed truck for her. His own was shot to hell, all four tires flattened and not a window left intact. The fuckers, he thought bitterly. Wrecking a man’s house was one thing, but destroying his truck was another altogether. Still, the truck Grant had provided for them at Matt’s request was a step up. He could appreciate the sleek lines and cushy interior.

  After she’d climbed in, he reached over her and fastened her seatbelt for her before walking around the vehicle and climbing behind the wheel. Leaving the remnants of his house behind, he turned onto the main road and headed toward town. He’d made a call to a friend who was out of the country and had been given the access code to his farm and the small cabin there that served as a guest house.

  “Matt looked at your service record,” she said abruptly.

  It didn’t surprise him. If he was entrusting someone with seeing to his sister’s safety, he’d want to be damn sure he knew they were capable. He glanced over at her, “I never imagined he wouldn’t.”

  “So just how bad-ass are you?”

  Ciaran laughed. “I did ten years as a Ranger in the Irish Army…Special Forces with training similar to what your operatives would have here.”

  “I don’t know what that means. Can you kill a man with your bare hands? Do you know seventeen deadly uses for a stick of gum? What?”

  “I know only one or two truly good uses for a stick of gum. I can and have killed men with my bare hands, though I prefer not to.”

  She blanched, her face going pale. “I guess it’s worse when you’re that close to them.”

  He glanced over at her, his hands draped casually on the steering wheel of the borrowed truck. “Not really. Killing is killing, whether they’re two feet from you or two hundred. But when you’re that close, there are more chances for it to go wrong and for you to go down with them.”

  He said it so dispassionately, like he was talking about rebuilding an engine or how to debone a chicken. “Oh,” she said.

  Ciaran’s heavy sigh told her she’d done a poor job of concealing just how much his answers had unnerved her. He didn’t look at her again, but she had no doubt he was cataloguing her every response.

  When he finally spoke, his words were soft but earnest. “There’s a reason we never talked about all this…yes, it is classified, but that part of my life is over. I never intended to use any of those skills again, but I don’t regret anything I did then, because it puts me in the unique position of being able to protect you now. And I will. No matter what.”

  It went quiet in the truck, both of them focused on what he’d just said. Finally, he sighed again. “There’s something I need to
tell you, and you probably won’t like it, but it’s been heavy on my mind,” he offered with a shrug.

  It was a familiar gesture, one he often used when uncomfortable or defensive. Immediately, Loralei was on alert, waiting for the backpedaling, the “it’s not you, it’s me and this can’t happen again” speech. “If it’s going to piss me off or make me cry, I’d appreciate it if you just shelved it, because I don’t think I can handle another downward swing on today’s roller coaster.”

  He glanced up at her then, his eyes widening in surprise. Then he shook his head. “I deserve that, I guess. You’ve more reasons not to trust me than to…but no, I don’t think it’ll do either of those things. And for the record, nothing that has ever passed between us, except my walking out, has ever been a mistake.”

  Unable to express her relief, Loralei gave a stiff nod. In the close quarters of the truck, close enough to smell him, to feel the heat of his body, she felt strangely vulnerable, perhaps because whatever he felt he needed to say had the power to utterly destroy her. But she’d never been a coward and had no intention of taking the easy way out. Head on, she decided. “So what is it then?”

  He gripped the steering wheel more tightly, his knuckles white on it. A muscle worked in his jaw, clenching and unclenching until at last he spoke. “I didn’t tell you the truth about why I came to Kentucky. There’s a reason for that, and it relates here.”

  At the end of her patience and on pins and needles waiting for him to just spill whatever it was that he felt he needed to tell her, Loralei snapped at him. “You think maybe you could get to the point before daylight? The more you talk right now the less you say, and it’s making me antsy as hell.”

  He chuckled. “God above, you’ve a temper like a wet cat! Here it is then: I’ve given you my apology and a partial explanation for what happened—for my own shitty mood and shittier treatment of you. But not all of it. I left something out that, truth be told, I was ashamed to confess.”

  A wave of nausea and fear rolled through her. “Was there another woman?”

  He shook his head and gave her a shaming glance. “No, there hasn’t been since the first night I laid eyes on you, and I’ve no mind to change that now. This—it’s about my family.”

  Relief was instantaneous, washing through her in a flood. But on the heels of it, came distrust. Clearly, he’d been less than honest with her. “You told me you didn’t have a family, other than your sister in New York,” she said, her voice tinged with the hint of accusation.

  “That’s still true enough,” he said, his voice chilled and biting. She never questioned that his anger was directed at her. In that moment, relating his story, she wasn’t even sure he was totally aware of her presence. After several moments, he finally spoke again, “The truth of the matter is that I have a family but they want no part of me. The day of our fight, I met my father.”

  Loralei frowned. “What do you mean ‘met’?”

  “He’s from here, from Kentucky,” Ciaran explained. “That was why I chose to come here…but it took a bit to work up the courage to go and see him. Suffice to say, it didn’t go well.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s a starting point, but you do realize you need to offer a few more details than that, right?” It was like pulling teeth to get it out of him, and that was enough to tell her it was bad. Ciaran was more of a talker than most of the men of her acquaintance, but she attributed that to his Irish upbringing and a general, cultural love of storytelling. Still, it was unlike him to skirt the point so broadly.

  He pulled the truck off to the side and put it in park, turning to look at her. His expression was utterly flat, devoid of emotion, and yet all the more evocative for it. Whatever had happened that day, he’d shut it down so fast that he hadn’t even allowed himself a chance to feel it. Immediately, perhaps even instinctively, she knew it had been bad. Her urge to reach out to him was difficult to tamp down, but she didn’t second guess herself on doing so. Offering him sympathy would only piss him off. Instead, she sat silently and waited.

  Ciaran kept the truck in park, hands on the wheel, and stared out at the night as he told her the rest of it. “I went to his office at the distillery, told him who I was, and he told me to get my arse off his property before he called security. That I’d never see a penny of his, and if I thought I’d blackmail him over his past indiscretions, he’d see me in hell first.”

  Her heart broke for him in that moment, shattered into a million tiny pieces. She knew what it felt like to be rejected by a parent, but never so completely. Through the pain and the well of anger at such blatant cruelty, something else finally struck her. “Distillery…Samuel Darcy is your father?”

  His expression hardened, his eyes going cold and dark. “Samuel Darcy is the Yank who slept with my mother and left her. I’ll not call the bastard my father ever again. When I was in his office, I saw a picture of a group of young girls standing on the deck of a sailboat. You were one of them.”

  Loralei slumped against the seat, the weight of that pronouncement sinking into her. Everything was getting more and more tangled by the minute. “I’m friends with Mia…your sister,” she said softly, though she didn’t doubt for a moment he was already aware of it.

  “She’s not my sister. That was made more than clear to me, milish,” he said sadly. “I’m not welcome here, at least not by them. The question is, how do you feel knowing I’d be a blight to you here?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  He shifted the truck into drive and pulled forward. Once the truck was in motion, he reached over and took her hand, holding it loosely in his. “It means that if you were to be with me, beyond this mess that’s sprung up around you, it wouldn’t go well for you. People you’ve known your whole life would most likely turn their backs on you.”

  Loralei unfastened her seatbelt and scooted toward him. On the gravel road, traveling at ten miles an hour, it was a safety risk she felt she could afford to take. Laying her head on his shoulder, she just savored the point of contact, the ability to touch him. “If they’re small-minded enough to do that, then I don’t need them in my life.”

  “And me? Do you need me in your life?” he asked.

  “No,” she answered honestly. “I don’t need you in it. I want you in it.”

  He smiled up at her. “I think that might be better.”

  “But Ciaran, you have to promise me one thing?”

  “I’d promise you anything,” he said and there was a wealth of meaning in his tone.

  “You can’t let what Samuel Darcy said color your perception of the rest of them. I can promise you he does not speak for the Darcys. His children hate him…Mia most of all. She has good reason. You need to meet her.”

  He pressed a kiss to the top of her head even as he turned off of one gravel path and onto another. This one led to a gated entrance. “Is that really what you want to talk about right now? A sister who may or may not want anything to do with me?”

  It was a topic they would revisit, she decided. “Whose place is this?” she asked.

  5

  Without a word, Ciaran got out and opened the gate then came back to drive the truck through. Afterward, he got out and locked the gate behind him, setting the alarm on it. She didn’t move from her spot as he returned to the truck and drove down the path.

  When they reached the end of the long drive, he took a gravel road that veered off into the trees. The guest house was a log cabin that had been original to the property and had been restored.

  “Come on. Inside with you and that…I hesitate to even call it a dog.”

  “You love Churchill!” she protested.

  “I tolerate Churchill because you come as a pair,” he said. “That dog produces more gas than some continents.” As if to prove his point, the dog chose that moment to yawn widely, which in turn produced a particularly noxious fart. “Jesus!”

  Loralei was laughing while holding her nose. “He does require a certain level of u
nderstanding and patience.”

  “Or the lack of a sense of smell,” he agreed, reaching for their bags. He ushered her toward the cabin and retrieved the key from its hiding place on the beam above porch swing. After he unlocked the door and she’d gone inside, he glanced behind them, scanning the trees for anything that seemed off. He noted where the densest of shadows were, where branches twisted and mingled to create natural pockets a person could hide in. Satisfied he had the lay of the land, he entered the cabin behind her.

  It was one large room with a small kitchenette and a living area. The far corner contained a large bed and opposite it was a bathroom encased in frosted glass. It was clearly a space intended for a single person or a couple who were very comfortable with one another.

  “This is cozy,” she said. By cozy she clearly meant awkward as hell.

  He chuckled. “I’ve watched you shower up close, without even the benefit of glass between us.”

  She moved toward the bed and sat down heavily on the edge of it. “Things were different then.”

  “They could be again…would already be if we hadn’t been interrupted earlier,” he reminded her as he placed their bags on the small bench at the foot of the bed. There was no closet, just an open shelving system along the wall. “But for now, I think you should eat something. You didn’t have dinner, and you’re looking a bit pale.”

  “I’ve been stabbed and shot at. It doesn’t exactly put roses in your cheeks,” she retorted smartly. “I’m not really hungry, and it isn’t like I can’t stand the loss of a few pounds.”

  “Don’t do that,” he warned. “Don’t say things like that. There’s nothing wrong with your weight or your body, other than what it’s been put through in the last few days. You need to eat so you can heal. The kitchen’s supposed to be stocked. I’ll make you something.”

  She frowned at him. “You really don’t think I’d look better thinner?”

  He walked toward her, cupped her face in his hands and lifted her chin until they were eye to eye. “Loralei, I think you’d look better naked, but beyond that, there’s no room for improvement in my book.”