I laughed at her cheek. It was nice to have a normal conversation for once, even if it was just about cinema choices. Everything had been such a battle from day one, it felt good to just have a relaxed moment together. It made me bold enough to suggest, “Why don’t we see if we can find something we both can agree to? I saw you got us Netflix, and we haven’t even broken in the couch yet.”
Mira looked downright shocked, her mouth hanging slightly open at my suggestion. “What, so… watch a movie together? Here? Now?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t until I saw her reaction that I realized what I’d suggested. Dinner and a movie. Not only would this be the first time outside of meals and taking her to see her horse that we’d voluntarily spend any time together—it also sounded an awful lot like a date.
“Just a movie,” I hastily interjected. “No ‘Netflix and chill,’ I promise.”
She laughed when I crossed my heart. “Alright then. But I’m warning you, I’m a crier.”
* * *
She was.
Mira sobbed her way through what was meant to be a “great, romantic drama,” which I found so tedious I nearly dozed off midway through. She even cried through parts of the Jim Carrey comedy I put on next in an attempt to stop her tears and my boredom.
“It’s not sad!” I repeated for the fifth time when the credits finally rolled over the flat screen TV she’d bought for the living room—and which should have been at least twenty inches bigger—and she dabbed at her eyes with a much-used tissue and sipped more wine from the glass she’d been nursing through the past hour and a half.
“His wife left him,” she protested with a sniffle. “And he raised those boys all on his own.”
I didn’t manage to smother my eye roll. “That was at the start of the damn movie! I’ve literally never known anyone who could cry at a Jim Carrey movie. Is it that time of the month or something?”
Mira gave me a reproachful look from behind her tissue. “Three hours is your max capacity for not being a jerk, huh?”
“Pretty much. I’m going to put on Alien vs. Predator, and if you shed as much as one tear, our movie-deal is off the table. Got it?”
She wrinkled her nose at me, either at the choice of movie or my threat I didn’t know, but didn’t bite back. I took that as acceptance. A choice I soon came to second guess.
“I thought I said no action crap,” she moaned about fifteen minutes into the movie. “This is so boring.”
“I sat through The Notebook. I will hear no complaints. And if you’re bored, at least you’re not crying.”
“You’re such a jerk.”
“We’ve established that. Now, shush—someone’s about to have their head ripped off.”
Somewhat to my surprise she did quiet down, albeit with a semi-rebellious mumble, and I became so engrossed in the movie that it took me nearly forty-five minutes to realize she’d not said a word since. When I looked back at her, she was fast asleep, all curled up against the backrest of the couch with her head in an uncomfortable angle.
Her glasses still had salt stains on them, and a piece of her hair was stuck to the side of her face. I reached out to brush it away and she murmured in response.
“Mira?” I whispered, testing to see if she was awake. No response. She was still out cold.
I looked at her sleeping face and felt something odd stir in my chest. She looked so fragile and innocent, completely at odds with the snarky bitch I knew her to be. It made me want to protect her, even if there was nothing to protect her from at the moment.
I frowned, somewhat confused by the ridiculous notion. I’d only ever had protective feelings toward my family and, to some extent, my crew. And only when there was an actual threat to them.
Perhaps it was because she was under my care. She lived in my house, and it was my money that kept her warm and fed—even if she resented it.
I reached out to stroke her cheek without knowing why I felt the urge to.
She murmured again and pressed her face into my touch, much like a cat would. My heart took a couple of extra beats in response, but it felt good. Hmm.
As carefully as I could, I reached out to wedge one arm underneath her head and the other under her hamstrings, slowly shifting her until she was resting in my lap with her head leaned against my shoulder at a more comfortable angle.
She made small sounds of protests while I moved her, but seemed to quiet down quickly enough once I had her settled in my arms.
The press of her body against mine felt good too. She was warm and soft and solid, and she smelled like wine and woman. My cock stirred predictably, but I ignored it. Holding a woman like this, with no expectation of it turning sexual, was a new experience, and I found I liked it.
A lot.
* * * *
Chapter 18
Mira
The violent urge to puke out my guts ripped me from my sleep, as it had for the past many days now. I rolled out of bed and ran for the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time.
It took me more than twenty minutes before my stomach finally settled down enough that I realized I was wearing the same clothes as I’d been in the night before, rather than my sleep attire.
I frowned at the toilet seat as I rested my forehead against it. Come to think of it, I had no recollection of going to bed last night. The last thing I remembered was the boring alien movie Blaine forced me to watch. I must have fallen asleep on the couch. Which begged the question—how had I made it from the sofa to my bed?
The only logical explanation made me pull my head back up with surprise. Blaine must have carried me. Huh.
A dry heave made my contemplations come to a halt as I crouched over the toilet again, but nothing came up this time. Probably because my stomach was completely empty.
Maybe I should bite the bullet and go see a doctor. If it was a stomach bug, it was really persistent. And perhaps I should also stop having wine with dinner—it probably wasn’t helping things.
When my stomach finally settled down again, I cleaned my teeth and changed into fresh clothes before I went downstairs to forage for my usual breakfast—crackers and ginger ale. To my surprise, Blaine was in the kitchen when I came down, sitting by the counter on one of the bar stools and eating a bowl of cereal. If I hadn’t felt so queasy, I might have appreciated the way his chiseled chest strained against his T-shirt or his triceps flexed when he lifted the spoon.
“Morning,” I grumbled as I shuffled to the cabinet that held my stash of crackers.
“You look like shit,” he said. Just what every girl wants to hear first thing. “Are you sick again?”
“Still.”
His dark brows pulled into a frown. “I’ll get Rob to make you an appointment with our doctor. Are you too ill to work today? I just got a call about a meeting this afternoon.”
Despite how poorly I felt, I perked up at that. I missed using my brain, and there was only so much sudoku a girl could play before going bonkers. Sitting in on business meetings might not be as stimulating as seeing patients, but it beat hanging around the house all day.
“Yeah, I should be fine in a couple of hours. Can we go look at some shops after? There’s this artisan confectionery shop I’ve been dying to go to.”
A hint of a genuine smile played over Blaine’s sensual lips. “Perhaps. We’ll see if you’re feeling well enough.”
I made a grimace at him as I sat down with my box of crackers. “Yes, Dad. And I’ll also clean my teeth and look before I cross the road.”
Blaine laughed and patted me on the shoulder before he got up to put his bowl in the dishwasher. “Be ready at three—I’m getting Rob to drop you off.”
I stared into my box of crackers in silence for a while after I’d heard the front door close behind him. After he gave me Walter, my wonderful Lipizzan gelding, I knew things had changed between us. Nothing was said, but it felt different. Calmer. Like we had a mutual respect and understanding.
It was what I’d wanted
, of course—to gain his respect and with it, his trust. But I hadn’t expected it to feel like this. Like everything just fit into place, somehow.
Perhaps it was my frustrating, physical attraction to him that made it seem like something deeper, just because we got along now. Yeah, that was probably it—my mutinous ovaries trying to make it out like there was more going on between us so they could get a chance at throwing themselves at him again at the earliest convenience.
Traitorous little bastards.
I grabbed a cracker and stuffed it in my mouth, savoring its bland saltiness and the immediate, calming effect it had on my nausea.
Getting along with Blaine was a vital next step in my plan. I had to keep my goal in mind, or I would never be free again.
But why did my heart suddenly cringe at the thought of betraying him like that?
* * *
“So Blaine says you’re sick. You look okay though—what’s up?”
I glanced at Rob out of the corner of my eye as he navigated the big Range Rover through the city streets. There was something oddly endearing about having the burly bodyguard seemingly concerned about my health, even if it was a somewhat surreal experience.
“Just a lot of nausea and throwing up. It comes in waves—right now, I’m fine and dandy.”
“Mmmhm,” he hummed. “Does it come at any specific times?”
“Usually the mornings. Why, do you need to know to book my appointment with the doctor?”
“Yeah,” he said, not taking his eyes off the road. “It’ll help. Okay, love, looks like we’ve landed.”
I ducked my neck to look out the front window just as we drove underneath a big professional-looking building and into its parking basement.
“Blaine’s got an actual office?” I asked, somewhat surprised by the grandness of the location. Somehow, I’d expected us to drive up to a seedy motel room with stains on the carpets and the blinds pulled.
Rob chuckled. “Yeah, the Steels like to keep up appearances for the law and such. We do most business meetings here. At least, the pleasant ones.”
I shuddered at the implication that the “less pleasant” business meetings needed to be somewhere else—somewhere the law wouldn’t know about.
Rob parked up and waited for me to fumble the seatbelt off so he could escort me to the elevator. He pushed the button for the fifth floor and, when the doors opened a few moments later, stepped out as if to check the floor was clear of threats. Then he nodded to me and waved a few fingers at me, motioning for me to join him.
I smiled broadly at him. “You’re taking your bodyguard duties very seriously, huh?”
He snorted. “Love, if something happens to you under my watch, I’m dead. Can’t leave the missus as a widow with two wee ones, now can I?”
“I’m sure Blaine likes you a whole lot more than me,” I said, patting his arm reassuringly. “You’ll be fine, even if some rival family suddenly decided to burst through the Steel’s office building and kidnap me for no apparent reason.”
Rob gave me a long glance. “Yeah. Sure. I guess you don’t know what happened to the two men who were on guard duty the night you decided to slip out?”
My heart gave an uncomfortable lurch. I hadn’t even thought about it. “W-what do you mean? What happened to them?”
“Nothing they won’t recover from,” he said, giving me a small shrug. “But then, they didn’t let someone snatch you—you went off by your own choice. Don’t underestimate him, love. He’s fiercely protective of you, and has a bit of a nasty temper.”
I opened my mouth to ask him what the heck he meant by that, but just then Blaine walked through the door leading into the hallway and I lost my train of thought. He’d changed into a black, tailored suit that fit him like a glove and a blue striped tie, and I was completely taken aback by my own body’s reaction to the sight.
My heart sped up, making my pulse hammer in my throat, and my traitorous ovaries seemed to melt in my abdomen, making my nether region clench with sudden and intense desire. To my excruciating embarrassment, I felt my panties start to dampen.
For fuck’s sakes! He was just a man in a suit. Okay, an incredibly handsome and sexy-as-hell man, but still. There was no excuse for my body to react this way at the mere sight of him.
“Thank you, Rob. I’ll take it from here. You go home to your family, I’ll drive her home later.”
It wasn’t until he spoke, his voice unusually gruff, that I realized his forehead was locked in a deep frown and his gray eyes seemed darker than normal. Clearly, he wasn’t happy about something.
“Sure thing, boss.” Rob nodded at us before retreating to the elevator. When the doors shut, Blaine turned to me.
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” I croaked, willing my body to calm the heck down.
He put his hand on my shoulder, which didn’t exactly help matters, and guided me through the door and into a lavishly decorated waiting area, complete with a busy-looking secretary in her mid-forties.
“I had no idea you moonlighted as a respectable business man,” I joked in an attempt to alleviate my own discomfort at his closeness. Even through my clothes, I felt his hand on me like an electric pulse that heated my skin and made my heart pound heavily behind my ribs.
Blaine didn’t answer, but stepped back and motioned for me to shrug out of my coat. I obeyed, and he helped me out of it and handed it to the secretary, who seemed to magically appear by his side the moment he held out his arm.
“I’ll have to warn you that this might not be a very pleasant experience for you,” he murmured once she’d disappeared through another door with my coat. “When my father set up this meeting, I didn’t realize who the contact would be.”
I looked up at him, suddenly feeling less eager about this whole arrangement. Who on earth would make Blaine Steel seem so on edge? Was there some rival mafia trying to encroach on their territory or what? “What do you mean?”
Again, he didn’t answer me, but once again he put his hand on my shoulder to lead me to to what I assumed was the door to the conference room. My suspicions were confirmed when we stepped through into a room dominated by a large, oval table. Four chairs were set out, two of them empty. In the two closest to the door and with their backs to us sat two male figures, waiting.
When the one furthest to the right turned around to look at us over his shoulder, my heart dropped.
No. No, no, no.
I fought back the bile that rose in my throat when I recognized him. As if on cue, the man at his side turned, and I had to bite my tongue to swallow a whimper.
The last time I’d seen my father and my eldest brother, Michael, they had threatened me with torture if I didn’t marry the mafia son they’d picked out for me.
The time before that…
It was only Blaine’s hand on my shoulder that allowed me to stumble to my chair and sit down as if someone had cut the strings that held me upright. And there they sat, two of the three men who haunted my nightmares even to this day. Right in front of me, with only the table between us for protection. I clutched at the chair’s armrests until my knuckles turned white and focused on breathing deeply and evenly.
They couldn’t hurt me. Blaine wouldn’t let them. They couldn’t hurt me, they couldn’t hurt me…
“I understand from the briefing my father gave that we are to hash out a deal involving the transportation of goods between Ireland and England, correct?” Blaine said from his seat by my side. He flipped open the folder in front of him, all business and in control. If I hadn’t been fighting tooth and nail to keep my looming panic attack at bay, I might have appreciated the change to his normal persona.
“Yeah, that’s correct, son.”
My father’s lilting drawl made a shudder run up the length of my spine. Just breathe. Just breathe.
“I was unaware that your connections in Dublin ran deep enough for such an arrangement? I see no problem with hashing out a deal for the Belfast port, but
do you have the necessary hold further South?” Blaine said.
“With your help, we can secure Dublin no problem,” my father rumbled. “That’s part of what you got your wife for, isn’t it? In return for your family’s backing, you got my only daughter.”
I could sense Blaine looking at me, but I was too busy staring at the table to return his gaze.
He was silent for two long seconds, and then I felt a light tap on my left hand that was still clutching at the arm rest. “If you’ll excuse us for a moment.”
I found the strength to get up when he put his hand on my shoulder, as if he somehow transferred some of his strength into my muscles by the warmth of his touch. I didn’t see anything but the carpeted floor in front of me as he led me back out of the room, past the secretary and into the quiet hallway by the elevator.
Only when we stopped did he take his hand off my shoulder again.
“What did they do?”
“What do you mean?” I could only manage to raise my voice slightly above a whisper, as if my ingrained terror constricted my vocal cords. It didn’t matter, though; the hallway was so silent he heard me just fine.
“The second you saw who we were meeting, you started shaking like a leaf. And you look like you’re about to barf. Add a hideous, white dress and you look exactly like you did in the church. You’re obviously terrified. So I’m asking you, what did they do?” There was a low, threatening quality to Blaine’s voice and a tone of no-nonsense, but I shook my head. I couldn’t. No one could know.
“I can’t,” I finally managed to croak. I looked up from the floor to plead with him, to make him stop pushing, but the sight of anger in his eyes made the tears I’d managed to keep at bay until now finally spill over.
“You can’t? You’re a goddamn shrink. Talking about whatever makes you this scared should be the one thing you’re good at, woman. Fuck, you know about my shit. You know my demons are there because of my family. You think I’ve told anyone else anything about that? So tell me what had you clutching at that poor chair like it was a life rack just at the sight of you Dad and brother. You owe me that much.”
I Need A Bad Boy: A Collection of Bad Boy Romances Page 69