by Winters, KB
Not. Even. Once.
And I wouldn’t this time either. Just because my stupid heart was seeing things and making me feel things that I absolutely did not want to, didn’t mean I had to say anything or act on it. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. In fact, I doubled back to the baking goods aisle to pick up some chocolate chips, flour and nuts so I would have something sweet waiting for me when I came home from Eamon’s. Tonight.
My last night with him.
I repeated that speech to myself while I packed the groceries into my trunk and again when I brought the bags in to the kitchen and baked my sweet treats. It became my mantra for the rest of the afternoon. And it worked.
Mostly.
When I forgot to remind myself, my mind inevitably wandered back to him, but I was good, and I quickly shut that shit down.
It wasn’t much but it was a start.
A damn good start.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eamon
Forty thousand dollars wasn’t a lot of money. Sure, to the average working stiff it was a full year of taking shit from some middle manager, two weeks of vacation time and endless meetings that made him want to kill himself, but it still wasn’t a lot of money.
I knew to Layla it was a lot of money, and I knew how it made her feel to fuck me to clear that debt, but it was an unimpressive amount. And when you saw it all together it was just four stacks, each containing one hundred pieces of paper with Benjamin Franklin’s face smiling at you.
On top of the stack was another five hundred bucks. Exactly the amount Peter Michaels owed.
“Is there anything else I can do for you Mr. Connelly?” The pretty bank manager gave me a professional smile, keeping her distance like a smart woman.
“No thank you Natalie. I’m set.” Her gaze slid to the now closed safe deposit box and back to my face.
“Very good, Mr. Connelly.” We locked the box and she escorted me to the door with a smile and a friendly, “See you again real soon.” It was folksy as hell but a nice touch.
So said Patrick when she gave him the same routine.
Cash in hand, I made my way to the car and ripped off the bands, balling up a few bills, rolling some between rubber bands and shoving it all into a convenience store paper bag. My dad would be pleased and that was all that mattered.
Patrick was waiting in the over the top sun room when I arrived. “I thought you might have had more important things to do than meet with your ol’ da.” Sometimes, for no discernible reason, Patrick would speak in a stilted Irish accent.
“It’s still Saturday, isn’t it?” I flashed a grin and though his wrinkled eyes were still keen as hell, his smile was the one I’d known all my life.
“It is. You look well rested.”
“So do you for once.” The old man refused to slow down even though his body wasn’t quite as sharp as his mind was, which was to say his big frame no longer held the fifty extra pounds of muscle it had in his younger days.
“Yeah, that Ambien is better than whiskey and a cigar. Who knew?” Another ghost of a grin flashed before his expression turned to business.
“Got something for me?”
“I do.” I nodded and handed him the paper bag, standing there in front of his desk like a child waiting to be scolded as he counted it out. By hand. Twice.
“Good job son. I can always count on you to get the job done.”
“Yeah, you can.”
He gave a sharp nod, the only sign he would ever give that he was impressed. “Shae and Rourke are waiting in the dining room, we’d better hurry before they eat all our lunch.”
“Lunch?” Though we usually ate family dinner on Sundays unless work kept us busy, it was rare for all four of us to sit down to a meal any other time. “What’s up?”
Patrick stood to his full height, so we were almost eye-to-eye. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
And I knew that was that. Patrick didn’t reveal any information any sooner than he deemed it necessary. It was a damn frustrating part of working with my father that no one ever told me, his weird little eccentricities that weren’t a huge problem at the breakfast table could make life irritating as hell as an adult. “Fine. Keep your secrets.”
“We all have secrets, son. Just make sure they’re not the kind that get you a desert grave.” And with that he entered the kitchen with me behind him wondering what kind of trouble was about to fall on our heads because nothing but family matters would get Patrick riled up.
And he was riled up. It was the stiff set of his broad, square shoulders, those tiny lines of tension around his mouth as he took the head of the table and I took the spot to his right. “I taught you boys well if you didn’t devour everything in sight.”
“I had breakfast at Ma’s,” Rourke said by way of explanation for his empty plate.
“I had some leftovers in the kitchen.” Shae smiled, looking relaxed as always in his seat beside me.
“Well fill up your plates, we have business to discuss.” Business could mean anything from some guy harassing Aunt Fiona to one of our businesses being audited by the tax man.
The dining room fell silent as it always did for the first few minutes of any family meal while Patrick gave thanks and then we all grabbed a little bit of everything from potatoes to bacon and cabbage, roast chicken, bread, spiced beef and my favorite, colcannon.
“Such a huge feast on a Saturday, what’s up, Uncle?” Rourke asked before he took a bite of bread.
“Bad news,” Patrick began and stopped with a dramatic pause while he took a sip of whiskey. “The Milano brothers have been seen around Rocket.”
“Which brothers?”
“Does it matter?” Patrick’s eyebrows arched in question, baiting me to tell him what I thought.
“You know it does. Gio and Frank are kids, doing stupid shit that draws too much fucking heat.” It mattered because the younger Milano twins, Lorenzo’s grandsons, were barely twenty and they were crazy as fuck. Reckless.
“And …?” Patrick taunted, always testing and teasing.
“And Daniel knows how to handle his business. Angelo is all right. A little crazy, but he cleans up good. If Lorenzo sent the twins, then he’s just swinging his little dick, but if he sent his older sons, he’s making a real play.”
It was simple fucking business and I’d do the exact same thing if I had to.
“Maybe they came to steal some of our ideas for their new gaming lounge?” Shae offered, protective of the project he’d been handed with a neat little bow tied around it.
“What if I told you it was Gio and Angelo?” Patrick’s silence to my question spoke more than his words could have. Or should have.
“Damn. That motherfucking Lorenzo is trying to train the fuck out of Angelo,” Rourke offered between bites.
“Probably both of them. And considering how reckless they are, he probably hopes one of them straightens up before they both wind up dead. I’m surprised we haven’t seen Daniel. That motherfucker is the one he should be training. He’s smarter and more level headed than Angelo.”
I was also surprised they hadn’t landed themselves in the morgue yet. Then again, maybe they were waiting on me to put them there.
“I want eyes on them until they get the fuck out of Rocket.”
Patrick’s expression was serious, and I pulled my phone out, connecting with a couple of my guys who handled security for the family.
“Rascal and his men will let me know as soon as they have eyes on the Milano brothers.”
Rascal was the best finder around. If someone was lost, taken, or voluntarily fell off the grid, Rascal and his men could find them. WitSec, CIA, and the Feds all around the world feared him, which was exactly why we kept him on the payroll.
“Good.” He nodded and dug into his plate with the energy of a man half his age. “I want to know every fucking thing they do in town, where they’re staying and exactly when they leave my city.”
“You got it.” My phone was never t
urned off, which meant as soon as Rascal’s call came in, I’d know it. “Consider it taken care of.”
“I have,” he said simply and returned to his meal just like the rest of us, soaking up the peace and quiet that could only be found when a group of men got together for a delicious meal.
“That was good, Uncle Patrick. I hate to eat and run but I promised Ma I’d help her around the house today.”
Patrick smiled. “You’re a good man, Rourke. Always looking after your ma the way you do. Tell Fiona I look forward to her lamb tomorrow.”
“It’s already marinating in the fridge.”
“You should all have a sister like mine,” he proclaimed with a satisfied smile. Patrick finished his food and stood. “I have a visitor coming in exactly one hour, so I expect you all gone in the next thirty minutes.”
The thought of what the old man was up to was enough to get us all on our feet and heading toward the door in under a minute.
That was just fine by me since I needed to get things ready for my last night with Layla.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Layla
There was something freeing about spending a few hours in the kitchen, baking my favorite batches of cookie bars so they’d be nice and soft by the time I came back home. A bunch of veggies were all set up in the slow cooker, ready to begin a lengthy cooking process that I would have very little to do with, which meant they would come out edible. And I’d have dinner for tomorrow along with lunch for a few days next week. It was nice, really. Helped clear my mind and steel myself for a night of nothing but sex. Nothing but a physical release.
No emotions and no goddamn stars in my eyes.
Okay maybe there were still a few lingering stars that sat on my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “Tell him how you feel.” Or crazy things like, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
I ignored the voices or at least I tried to. It was just that the idea of seeing Eamon again excited me.
This was a clear-cut case of my stupid heart trying to take the reins when I’d already decided that my brain should run the show. And that was exactly what I convinced myself of when I stepped under the hot shower spray to get ready for tonight. It was crazy to even consider broaching the subject with Eamon. He’d made it beyond clear earlier with his stars in your eyes comment exactly how he felt about me developing a case of inconvenient feelings for him.
His voice had been a low, cool warning. I’m not what you want, trust me. Except he was. For some reason I wanted the fucker, or rather my heart wanted him no matter how fucked up and mean I tried to make him sound.
I picked out my clothes for the evening carefully, making sure I looked good but not like I was trying to look good for him. I wasn’t.
Okay, maybe I was.
A pair of black jeans with a sheer black top would keep it simple yet sexy. Underneath I’d wear a lingerie set that would make him sorry to see me go.
My mind swirled with at least thirty different ways he might reject me, starting with laughter and ending with blind rage. The truth was I knew nothing about Eamon and most of what I knew came from the news and the few bits of information he’d actually shared with me over the past few days.
“No one has ever died from a broken heart.”
My mom used to say that to me whenever I’d cry over not getting my way and I smiled at the memory.
It was like she showed up to drop a dollop of wisdom on me just when I needed it the most. Mom was right, no one ever died from a broken heart, at least no one I knew. If, in some alternate universe, I told Eamon that I had feelings for him and he rejected me, it’d probably hurt like hell. But my heart wouldn’t stop beating and the world wouldn’t stop turning on its axis. I might cry a little and drown my sorrows in booze and junk food for a few days, but then, I’d get over it.
I’d move on with my life.
Easy peasy.
I grabbed my black shoes with the thick black ribbons around the ankles. They were guaranteed to drive Eamon wild and that was exactly the version of him I wanted for our last night together. So yeah, I would tell him.
The bell rang as I made my way down the hall and I smiled, thinking maybe I wasn’t the only one eager for tonight after all. The closer I got to the door, the more sure I was that spilling my emotional guts to Eamon was exactly what I would do. No matter what happened, I would do it.
I would survive it.
No matter what.
I pulled the door open with a smile that quickly died when I came face to face with a very large man with carrot red hair I didn’t recognize smoking a cigar.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi, Layla.”
He blew a puff of smoke in my face and I took a step back, gripping the doorknob in my fist.
“Don’t blow smoke in my face, asshole!”
He sighed and sucked in another breath. “It’s your lucky day little lady.”
Something about the guy didn’t seem right and it wasn’t just that he looked rough, with about four days worth of stubble on his cheeks or the slightly sweat stained t-shirt he wore. It was the twitchy way he had about him, the uneasiness that sat on his shoulders.
“I don’t have time for your games,” I barked at him. With a roll of my eyes I slammed the door in his face.
Correction, I tried to slam the door in his face, but his big meaty hand reached out and grabbed it, pushing it back hard enough that the edge smacked me right in the face.
“Son of a bitch!” I shrieked, a shock of pain streaking across my nose as I fell to the floor.
“Shoulda just played along bitch, now I’m gonna have to hurt ya.”
Goddamn that hurt like a motherfucker! My nose hurt so bad my eyes watered, as blood streamed out of my nose. I tried to crawl away, still feeling stunned but the big guy grabbed my ankle.
“Get off me you fat fuck!” I snarled. I turned and kicked him square in the face. Blood started oozing from the edge of his mouth, and while I knew it wasn’t enough of a blow to faze him, it still felt good to get a nice shot in.
“Come here, bitch!”
His eyes were full of rage as he stood back up and shot a creepy grin at me. His mouth was bloody but that seemed to only piss him off. I knew I was a goner if I didn’t get away.
He was still between me and the only door out of my apartment. How was I going to get away from this thug?
I struggled to my feet and reached for every ashtray, vase and beer mug decorating my apartment from all kinds of holidays and vacations, throwing each one at the big oaf as I tried to put more distance between us.
“Get! Out!”
Nothing I threw at this guy even slowed him down and I was running out of ashtrays. I chucked a lamp at him in desperation and darted down the hall, locking the bedroom door behind me.
My eyes searched the room. My queen-sized bed sat in the middle with a pink and yellow comforter. On the right was a small pine nightstand a night lamp and to the left a matching chest of drawers. It was a standard two-bedroom apartment, which meant there was no master bathroom, no other means of escape. Just the balcony through the sliding glass door.
I was just about to head for the balcony when I heard a loud crash and saw that he’d kicked my flimsy hollow bedroom door completely off its hinges.
“You fucking bitch, get back here!” His dark eyes glared at me full of anger and hate. Complete terror washed away any confidence I had. My body went limp as he grabbed a fistful of my hair and started dragging me back down the hallway.
The pain was intense as he ripped my hair out by the roots. But I wasn’t going down like this. I took a deep breath and started kicking and screaming for help!
“Let me go!”
“We could’ve done this the easy way, bitch,” he hissed, as if I owed him something.
I refused to make it easy for him to snatch me. I squirmed and kicked and screamed, whatever I needed to do to slow him down.
“Help!” I screamed. “Somebody help
me! Call 911!”
He grabbed at my mouth and I sank my teeth deep into his hand until I tasted the unmistakable metallic flavor of blood.
“Dumb bitch! Be quiet!” he shouted over me, but I refused to shut up. I continued screaming my head off. I knew my neighbors weren’t the type to get involved but they had no problems calling the police for every little peep of noise they deemed too loud.
I screamed, “Help! Help!” as loud as I could, before a heavy crack on the back of my head turned out my lights and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Eamon
Tonight would be my last night with Layla. For some fucking reason I was nervous. Sitting inside my living room staring at the roaring fire, I wondered what in the hell the sexy blonde had done to me. I didn’t do a lot when it came to women, just a few nights of pleasure and maybe a bauble or two before we’d call it quits. There was no commitment, no relationship, and no chance at anything more.
I liked it like that. No strings attached.
But somehow the girl had gotten under my skin and I wanted more. Goddammit, how in the hell could I possibly want more? What the fuck did more even mean? Did I want a relationship? Hell no. But I wasn’t ready to let her go yet.
I would eventually, because that was how things worked. I’d always got out before they got that look in their eyes, the one that said they were dreaming of happy endings and white picket fences.
I didn’t do any of that shit.
“If she ever fucking gets here!” I stood at the bar and poured more whiskey into a crystal tumbler with one half moon cube of ice and knocked it back like a shot. Layla was already an hour late and it occurred to me that since I’d pissed her off this morning, she might not show up at all. But then I dismissed that thought. Even angry, Layla would honor our agreement if for no other reason than she loved her no good loser of a father.