“To the best of my knowledge, no. I’m sure Kirsten would have said the same thing. Nobody comes in here looking for a fight. It’s well-known to be neutral ground.”
“Does the clinic gain anything from this extra business?”
Dean gave me a wry grin. “Obviously. Not anything worth trying to set Kirsten up to steal, however. You’ll notice the street outside is nice and empty. That’s about all those clients amount to—safety and cleanliness. I don’t take any money from them other than for the supplies Kirsten uses. If she makes a profit from it, then that’s her business.”
I paused, taking in the information. It was exactly what I’d expected to hear. I decided to change the direction of questioning.
“Did any of these clients seem interested in Dr. O’Leary?”
Dean narrowed his eyes. “Interested how, exactly? Romantically?”
“Yes, or maybe in her capacity as an O’Leary.”
“More than a few men who came in did take an interest in Kirsten. She was naturally oblivious, but when the advance was too obvious for even Kirsten to ignore, she always let them down very professionally. There were maybe one or two…”
“Can you give me their names if you know them?”
Dean nodded. “I keep a note of everyone who comes in, so I’ll send it over to you with any additional notes I have on each of them.”
I was impressed. I hadn’t expected Dean to be forthcoming. It struck me that I never should have expected anything less from him.
“Anything else?” he asked politely.
“Er, yes,” I said, hating myself for hesitating on the question. But I had to know—both for the case and for personal reasons. “Does your relationship with Dr. O’Leary extend past that of a boss and employee?”
Dean seemed to consider the question for a moment or two as he leaned back against his chair. “We’re friends,” he eventually said. “We get on very well. Other than the occasional lunch outside of the office, our relationship is largely professional. Friday night at Capone’s was actually the first time any of us in the clinic had socialized together at night. We all keep very hectic work schedules as you might expect.”
I stopped myself from breathing an obvious sigh of relief. Kirsten had been right, there was nothing going on. Ian had clearly planted the idea in my head to mess with me. What a dick. Silently promising to get him back for that, I stood up and shook Dean’s hand as he did the same.
“Thank you very much for your time, Dean. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to question Rose West, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Dean smiled. “Take all the time you need.”
When we re-entered the reception area, it became immediately apparent both Rose and Grace had been trying to eavesdrop. I only just managed to hide a smirk.
“Rose, you can take Rafe’s questions in the kitchen,” Dean said, prompting Rose to leap out of her seat behind the reception desk to lead me through to the kitchen.
“Oh my God, is Kirsten okay? She didn’t say much on the phone. I can’t imagine what that holding cell must have been like. Oh my God, I couldn’t do that, I—”
“Rose,” I interrupted, causing the woman to shut up immediately. She smiled bashfully.
“Sorry, I was just letting all my thoughts out at once. Is she okay?”
“Dr. O’Leary is doing much better now that she’s back at her apartment. Although, she wishes she didn’t have to avoid the clinic.”
Rose pouted. “It sucks. She’s basically my only friend here. I hope this gets sorted soon.”
“Do you have any idea who might be responsible for framing Dr. O’Leary?”
“I wish I could be more helpful, but honestly, I’m not around much when her other clients visit. There are a couple who are in quite a lot, but I think they’re in more frequently just to see her, if you know what I mean—”
“Can I get their names?” I asked, wondering if they’d match up with Dean’s list.
Rose looked up at the ceiling as she bit her lip in thought. I couldn’t help thinking of how endearing she was. I was glad Kirsten had her as a friend.
“I don’t remember all their names, but I can give you what I know. I’m pretty good with faces and accents though, so I can describe the ones I don’t know by name.”
“That would be excellent. If you could send that to me, that would be ideal.”
Rose grinned. “Anything I can do to help.”
I paused before my next question. “Is there anyone else who may have been interested in Kirsten or had been spurned by her in the past? Like, any of her actual clients or—”
“What, you mean other than Dean?” Rose interrupted, catching me off-guard.
“Dr. O’Leary turned him down?”
She sucked on her lip. “Not exactly. Well, see, I’d just started at the clinic about six months ago, so Kirsten had already been here for half a year as a junior vet. I think she also did some work here during her final year at college. So, anyway…I assumed she and Dean had a thing going by the way they acted. I wasn’t close to Kirsten at the time, so I just…asked Dean about it instead. He said he’d made his interest in Kirsten pretty clear during her clinical trials and asked her out on a date when she started working here for real. Classic Kirsten, she didn’t think he was serious.”
“Why was that?”
“Well, she assumed he just wanted to mentor her or whatever. She thought he wouldn’t be interested in someone that much younger than him. Now, having met you, I get why she’s so oblivious. She obviously can’t think of anyone else as dating material with you on her mind.”
I didn’t quite know how to take this deluge of information. So Dean had asked Kirsten out before. That didn’t mean he still liked her romantically. It had nothing to do with the case since he clearly wouldn’t try to frame Kirsten either way.
On a personal level, knowing Kirsten’s feelings for me prevented her from going out with anyone else both pleased me and made me incredibly sad.
We were toxic for each other. Our attraction had prevented us from moving on. So why couldn’t we shake our feelings?
I stood up. “Thanks, Rose, that’s everything for now. Please send me anything you know about Dr. O’Leary’s evening clients as soon as you can.”
She smiled. “Anything you need, Rafe.”
I left the Collins Veterinary Clinic with more questions raised than answers given.
I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that this case, and my feelings for Kirsten, were going to take a long time to sort out.
Chapter Nine
Dean was late. Or I was early. Checking my phone for the time, I realized it was the latter—I was painfully early.
But who could blame me? I no longer had a job to go to. I couldn’t leave the city or go out at night.
Being accused of a crime I didn’t commit sucked.
And so here I was, sitting in a pancake house fifteen minutes early, having actually gotten there twenty-five minutes early. I sighed heavily. What an idiot I was, but I needed to get out of my apartment. Not the least because I felt like a prisoner within my own home. Sure, I could have visited the family home and stayed there for a few days, but something was stopping me.
If this whole set-up was a plot to involve the Irish mob in something, then I didn’t want to give anyone a reason to believe I suspected as much. I needed to keep up the front that I was independent and wasn’t going to run to my daddy or big brothers for help. I could only hope it was the right move.
The other reason I wanted out of my apartment was that I kept thinking of Rafe pinning me down beneath him on the sofa while I was dressed in nothing but a towel. Even though nothing had happened, the tension had remained. I doubted it was going to disappear any time soon.
It wasn’t just the sexual tension. When we’d leaned against each other for the best part of an hour, saying and doing nothing, I’d been overcome with an overwhelming peace—a sense of rightness that had been m
issing from my life. I didn’t think I’d been as relaxed as that in a long, long time—not since Rafe and I stopped speaking to each other. It had felt like a fundamental part of my life had finally been returned to me.
That wasn’t fair because I knew Rafe had only taken this case out of duty to me. He knew I couldn’t turn to anyone else. Once my name was cleared, he’d go back to his life outside of the mob and I would have to let him. Even if I myself wanted out.
And yet…
There was a small, desperate part of me that hoped this case, alongside Matt and Katya’s marriage, would help bridge the gap between the Irish, Italian, and Russian mobs. For all intents and purposes, the Wildes were out of the game, which meant the main players were my father and the new Russian head, Sergei Volkov. Anyone might be trying to topple them, be they a member of the new Colombian faction or from within their own syndicates.
“God, I needed to get out of this shit for real,” I muttered into my soda.
“I don’t doubt you do,” came a voice from behind, startling me half out of my skin.
“Christ, Dean, don’t do that to me,” I exclaimed as the man sat down opposite me, grinning like a maniac at my fright. “You’re early.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re earlier.”
“Touché.”
He looked tired, and for what felt like the first time, older than thirty. When Dean noticed I was watching him, he frowned.
“You look like you’re expecting me to keel over.”
“Well, you are covering most of my shifts.”
“As if you need to remind me. And it’s only Thursday—of week one. I seriously think I’m going to have to hire some temporary cover.”
I couldn’t help balking at that—someone taking over my job? I couldn’t take it.
“I wish I could come back to work,” I said quietly, head drooped. A curled finger under my chin surprised me as Dean gently lifted my head up.
“That childhood friend of yours is going to clear your name, Kirsten O’Leary, and then you’ll be back at work before you know it. I’ll give you some of my shifts, too, just to see how you like it.”
God, Dean always knew what to say to make me laugh—something I felt like I hadn’t been able to do in days.
“So you don’t suspect for even a second that I’m guilty of the crimes I’m being charged with?” I asked.
He shook his head, chuckling slightly. “Not even for a second. You don’t have it in you to be a criminal.”
“What, not even a little bit? My family background didn’t give you pause for even one second when you employed me?”
“It wasn’t your family background that gave me pause when deciding to hire you, no.”
“How reassuring—wait, something else gave you pause?”
“Ah, that’s the waiter now. Are you ready to order?” he asked, clearly deflecting my question. “I’ll have the double stack with maple syrup, whipped cream and vanilla ice cream, please,” he told the waiter, eliciting an incredulous look from me. Dean shrugged his shoulders. “I have a long afternoon ahead of me. I need the sugar.”
“I’ll have a regular stack with bacon and maple syrup, please,” I told the waiter, then returned to staring at Dean.
“What?”
“What gave you pause when hiring me after I finished college? Not to sound arrogant, but I figured I was a pretty great student.”
“You were—and are. It had nothing to do with either your academic or family background.”
“So what was it?”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” He looked—reluctant. It only made me want to know the answer even more.
“Have I ever let something go before?”
“Not to the best of my knowledge. You know we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you weren’t so oblivious, Kirsten.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I asked you out. Like, four times.”
I stared at him, stunned to silence. What the hell was he talking about?
I tilted my head in confusion. “Excuse me?” I finally said.
Dean rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“See, this is what I mean. I asked you out three times in your final placement, then risked it and asked again when I finally hired you. The first three rejections I willfully dismissed since you were busy being a stressed final-year student who could barely tell her elbow from her knee. I wasn’t sure if I could handle having you as a full-time employee, but you were too good a vet for me to pass up hiring you. I figured it was worth asking you out one, final time, but…”
“But?”
“You joked you were young enough to be my daughter, and you figured I was asking you out to give you sage life advice.”
“I—oh. I remember that. You were asking me out?”
“How are you so smart and this dense, O’Leary?”
“I’m not dense,” I bit out with a strong dose of irritation. “Clearly, you didn’t make your feelings obvious enough.”
He laughed at that. “Kirsten, both Rose and Grace have known about my feelings for you for months. Even the part-time veterinary nurse we had in over winter clocked onto it. I didn’t have to say a word about it to them, they all worked it out by watching us.”
Oh. I didn’t really have anything to say to that. Had my head really been so full of pining for Rafe that I had frozen out any guy who showed the slightest interest?
Dean? My boss, Dean Collins, had feelings for me. It just seemed…ridiculous.
“You flirt with anything on two legs, sometimes more,” I said, thinking of the way he crooned at the pets brought into the clinic, much to the delight of our female (and sometimes male) clients.
“And? Since when has liking someone meant you can’t flirt? Especially when the person you like is as block-headed as you are.”
I reached across the table and poked his shoulder. “See, now you’re just insulting me. How am I supposed to like you back if all you do is make fun of me?”
“So all I have to do is dial it back on the insults, and you’ll like me? God, had I only known that from the beginning.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“I don’t mind the insults, really. Do you seriously like me?”
He gave me a small, very genuine smile that did strange things to my stomach.
“Yes, seriously. Now that you know, will you give my feelings some thought? It’s not as if you’ve got much going on to preoccupy you right now, anyway.”
“You’re such a dick,” I threw back at him, and then, “yes, seriously. I’ll think about your feelings.”
I couldn’t keep pining after Rafe. It was time to move on. Whether that meant with Dean or someone else further down the line, who knew? I just knew it had to happen.
“Ah, I didn’t realize I was going to interrupt such a serious conversation,” a voice suddenly said, and I turned in horror. Why the hell was Rafe here?
“Rafe, what are you—why are you—”
“Dr. Collins had some files he needed to hand over to me, so he asked me to meet him here on his lunch break. I got here way too early, so I figured I’d grab some food, but luckily for me, he’s already here.”
“Rafe,” Dean said mildly, inclining his head before rummaging through his bag and retrieving the documents he needed to hand over.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. How much had Rafe heard? Clearly enough to warrant that tumultuous expression on his face.
“Well, I don’t want to interrupt your date, so I’ll be moving along. I’ll see you tomorrow at ten, Kirsten,” Rafe muttered before hurrying away.
He was out of sight before I regained the ability to speak.
“You didn’t want him to hear any of that, did you?” Dean asked, observant as usual.
“No,” I replied honestly.
“He’s the one you’re hung up on.”
“Yes.”
I didn’t know how I expected Dean to react
, but a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders was certainly not even an option that crossed my mind.
“At least now I know you have great standards. It’s only worth having a love rival if they’re not a complete idiot, I guess.”
“What?”
“I was worried the guy you were hung up on was going to be a complete and utter, hopeless mobster. I’d never be able to compete with someone I didn’t understand. Him, on the other hand,” Dean gestured outside towards the road Rafe had disappeared down, “him, I can understand. That works for me.”
When our pancakes finally arrived, he easily turned our conversation back to tales of the vet clinic, of Rose missing her boyfriend, and of Grace only now taking an interest in the goings-on of her fellow workmates because of my arrest. When we finally paid the bill, I couldn’t, in all honesty, remember anything that was said.
“Look after yourself, O’Leary,” Dean said when we left the pancake house and reached the crossroads where our paths split. “If you think of any information you might need from us, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Dean.”
Then he leaned in, and for a moment I thought he would kiss me. Then he sighed and pulled me into a hug instead.
“Don’t dwell on things too much. Just put yourself first and sort out this arrest before you deal with anything else.”
“I will. Now get back to the clinic before Rose complains that you’ve cut into her lunch hour.”
Dean left, leaving me to do exactly what he told me not to do. I returned to my apartment, to dwell on everything both Dean and Rafe had said. And hadn’t said, I thought bitterly.
Frustrated at the lot life was currently dealing me, the clock hands had barely hit five in the evening before I headed over to my liquor cabinet and pulled out an unopened bottle of a twelve-year Red Breast whiskey. I hadn’t been one for the stuff a few years ago, but I’d developed a taste for it lately.
Guess that means I’m finally living up to my Irish roots.
I should have known that, two hours later, I’d end up at the door of the Wilde estate, banging on the wood in a drunken uproar. I knew it was stupid, but I didn’t care.
Betting On Us (Wilde Love Book 3) Page 6