Aiden opened the door, and Ronan half stepped, half fell inside. He found his way around a myriad of baby toys to a white sectional and dropped his ass down onto it.
“Whiskey, or rum?” Aiden held up two bottles.
“Where’s the whiskey from?”
Ronan raised his brows at him, but Aiden only gave him a look in return that told him he needn’t ask.
“Fine, I’ll take the whiskey.”
He looked around the room while Aiden poured. Aiden and Cassidy, of course, were in a suite, but it wasn’t that difference from his own room he found so shocking. What stood out were the wedding pictures, and the baby pictures, and the pictures of Aiden, Cassidy, and Bella with a beautiful older woman with long dark hair, all smiling on a coast somewhere. What stood out were the toys and the books and Aiden’s suit jackets flung over the backs of chairs. What stood out was the fact that the place looked like people actually lived there unlike his room with a bed and a suitcase.
Ronan’s only advanced warning he was about to be attacked was a quick blur of white rushing up on him. He blinked and tried to push the thing away, but it was slobbering all over his face.
“What the fuck!” Ronan stood up, but instantly fell over again.
“Harold! Get down!” Aiden came over, handed Ronan his drink and scooped the white fluff up off the sofa and into his arms.
“Is that a dog?” Ronan squinted, trying to make it out while it wriggled in Aiden’s arm.
“It’s Cass’s dog, and don’t tell her, but I kind of have a soft spot for him.” He walked over to the kitchen and pulled something out of a tin on the counter and fed it to the little mongrel.
Ronan sat on Aiden’s couch, drinking whiskey and watching Aiden play kissy-face with a dog. When had the world as he’d known it ceased to exist?
He remembered a very different Aiden, but then they were never all that close. In fact, he wasn’t close to anyone. Maybe that hadn’t been the best choice he’d ever made. Aiden came and sat beside him, dog placed on his lap. It was the strangest dichotomy.
“So why don’t you tell me what the real problem is, Ronan? You in love with her?”
Aiden’s proclivity for bluntness ordinarily suited Ronan just fine, but not tonight.
“Leave it, Aiden.” He growled and finished the whiskey.
“Mmm…no.” Aiden scowled at him. “I warned you off her. I told you it was a bad idea. Now it seems to have blown up in your face, and I want to know what the fuck is going on.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to know why the fuck her ex is here, but we don’t all get what we want, do we?”
“He’s here because Destiny’s mother is a damned busybody, and she got Oscar to bring her down here so she could stick her big-ass nose in Destiny’s business.”
Ronan tried to take in all that information, but what he mostly got stuck on was how Aiden had managed to gain the upper hand over him so effortlessly.
“So you got what you wanted, now I get what I want, or I’ll set the white terror loose on you. I’d imagined drunk off your ass as you are, it would be a trip to watch you try and defend yourself. Harold here has the fastest tongue on any coast.”
“Keep your damned dog off me.” Ronan got up and helped himself to more whiskey.
“Ronan, getting drunk isn’t going to help. It’s just gonna make it a bitch at work tomorrow.”
He came back to sit on the sofa, and feeling a small twinge of guilt for his attitude, he pet the little dog on the head as he walked past.
“Sometimes, Aiden, all a man’s got is his whiskey.” He held his glass up in a mock toast before taking a gulp.
“Funny, ’cause I thought you had a beautiful and damned sexy woman not too long ago.”
“Stop. You don’t understand. You don’t know what went on. So just stop.”
“I don’t, you’re right. What I know, though, is that I told you to stay away from her, and I told her to stay away from you, and neither one of you listened to me. I know for most of the summer, neither one of you had ever seemed happier. Oh yeah, you kept the affair quiet, but she was glowing, you were singing. That’s not just sex, Ronan, but what? You convinced yourself it was? When you started to realize it wasn’t, you freaked out? Or you just that much of an asshole that as soon as she took your bait, you pulled away from her?”
Ronan ran his hand through his hair and took another gulp of whiskey. It wasn’t that simple, and he didn’t feel the need to explain it.
“I told you, I came up here to get drunk. There was no invitation for a formal inquest.”
“No, what you said was you didn’t want anyone playing mom. Well, I’m planning to kick your ass in about two seconds, so I think I’m clearly out of mom territory.”
Ronan growled.
Harold yipped in response.
“Who names their dog Harold?”
“My wife.” Aiden’s tone was very clearly a warning.
Ronan chuckled and dropped the subject.
“I don’t want a wife.” At least he’d always said he didn’t.
“Then don’t get one. They aren’t something you happen along accidentally in the grocery aisle, and by the checkout you’re somehow legally bound. Honestly, Ronan, what’s with your fear of commitment anyway, parents have a bad divorce?”
“My mother’s dead. My da, he’s over in Ireland, runs a little pub that’s always in the red because he gives free beer to all his friends, and my da’s got a shitload of friends.” Talking about his family made him feel a little lighter.
“So, what’s the problem then exactly? I used to be the same way you know, surely you remember. I never thought I could do commitment and mundane and day in and day out same old same old, but damn…”
“Cassidy make you change your stripes then?”
“She didn’t make me change so much as inspired me to. She’s an amazing woman, and now she’s given me this precious daughter, I work my ass off to be worthy of them.”
Aiden didn’t say anymore, but he didn’t have to. Ronan understood that feeling. That night at the club he felt that need to be worthy unlike he ever had before.
“Destiny definitely deserves better.” He placed his glass on the coffee table in front of him. The liquor suddenly grew tasteless.
“Shouldn’t she be the one that decides that?”
“Stop using my own words against me.” He dropped his head back on the sofa and examined the ceiling. “Doesn’t really matter much if she’s getting back with the asshole, now does it?”
“I can’t see her getting back with him. She’s not stupid! I’ve overheard some of their conversations. I’ll be straight up with you. He’s doing some major brownnosing. He’s probably wakened up to what he’s lost. At least that’s what I’m hoping.”
Ronan felt a chill go down his spine and he sat straight up.
“Why? What else would it be?”
Aiden shrugged and calmly pet the little dog in his lap.
“I don’t know him, but when a man all of a sudden shows up acting like Don Juan when his ex has suddenly become successful…”
He left it there, but that was enough. Ronan picked up the implication.
“You think he’s after her hotel?”
“I don’t know, but I do know when they were married he was very controlling, and she told me that he hated that she’d done this, so why is he here acting like it’s the best thing since Walt came down here in the sixties to scope out land?”
Ronan’s head was beyond murky at this point, but his blood was beginning to boil.
“That bastard!” He stood up, thinking maybe he’d go introduce his fist to the ass’s teeth, but his head immediately spun, and he fell back down onto the sofa with a thud.
“You’re in no shape to do anything about it tonight, Ronan. Besides, I’ve been keeping my eye on it. I respect Destiny’s free will and all that, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let that asshat take away her dream.”
“I’m too drunk to do
anything about it.” He groaned.
“Yeah. You are.” Aiden let the dog go and he instantly rushed into Ronan’s lap.
“I’m not too drunk to drop-kick this cotton ball.”
Aiden laughed and took the dog back. “You wouldn’t dare. You don’t know my wife well enough, but if you did, you wouldn’t even joke. She’d have your balls in a vice faster than you could figure out what the fuck she was doing.”
Ronan smiled. “Sounds like a woman after my own heart.”
“Back the fuck off, Ronan.” Aiden’s tone threatened.
“Oh shut up. I’m in no shape to put the moves on your wife, not physically or emotionally.” Truth was, he hadn’t even looked at another woman since that first night with Destiny.
“Then what are you going to do? She’s not gonna take to your caveman crap now. You may have had her heart fluttering for a while, but you shut that off the day you ended it.”
“She was ending it.” Ronan’s heart still ached when he thought of that afternoon.
“And what, you just beat her to it? Some dumb-ass idea about salvaging your pride?”
Yeah, that was pretty much it, but he wasn’t going to admit to it now.
“I’m a fuckup.” He closed his eyes as just how badly he’d fucked up started to come to him.
“Yeah, ya think? So, how are you going to fix it?”
He looked up at Aiden. Fixing it had never even occurred to him.
“What?” Aiden let the word hang in question between them.
The smug bastard was beginning to get on Ronan’s nerves. Aiden made an exaggerated gesture of frustration, throwing his arms in the air before asking, “Were you planning to just let her walk out of your life, you dumbass?”
“I hadn’t really planned anything.” He dropped his head into his hands.
“I see.” Aiden’s tone was harsh and judgmental. “Well, maybe that’s why you’re sitting here waiting on a hangover while Oscar Ramirez is having a romantic dinner with Destiny.”
Ronan turned his head. He couldn’t believe Aiden was actually baiting him. After everything that had gone down between the two of them, Aiden was the last person he expected to find on his side.
“What the fuck do you want me to do?” He stood up and made his way to the kitchen bar, wobbling as he went.
“I don’t know. What do you want to do, man? You’re clearly miserable. It’s self-imposed misery, so fix it.”
“So fix it?” Ronan mumbled beneath his breath. “Yeah, I’ll just do that.”
He went into the kitchen and poured himself the largest glass of water he could find. He needed hydration.
“Fuck, Ronan, it’s not brain surgery. It’s a woman. What do you want?” Aiden put the dog down and came to the bar separating the kitchen and living rooms and leaned into the kitchen.
The strange thing was Ronan wasn’t sure he’d ever thought about what he wanted. He was a doer. He took care of things, and he took what came his way, and he moved on. He never had expectations and never got attached. It was just how he was, but now he was questioning all that.
“I don’t want to lose Destiny.” That was the bottom line of it.
“Then don’t. You don’t have to propose marriage, you idiot, but you do have to tell her how you feel. From there, you guys can work it out. But I’m telling you, Ronan, she’s one hell of a woman, and if you don’t take this shot, I doubt she’ll go back with Oscar, but she won’t be single forever.”
Ronan finished the water and filled the glass again.
“I’ve never stayed in one place long enough to put down any real roots.”
“Maybe it’s time,” Aiden said simply enough.
Ronan sipped the water slowly, his mind reeling with fear, but spiraling with hope at the same time. Though he’d never admit it, maybe Aiden was right.
Maybe it’s time.
Chapter Nineteen
Destiny had very mixed feelings while she dressed. The gown was gorgeous, long, white, and made of crushed velvet. It was a little too close to a wedding gown in some aspects, but she pushed those ridiculous fears aside. As she stood looking in the full-length mirror, attaching the earrings Ronan had given her that wonderful night she spent with him, she couldn’t help but wonder if she were doing the right thing or not.
“Here, I notice you like to wear flowers in your hair”—Mrs. Murphy held out two tightly closed red roses—“I thought these would look striking.”
Destiny took the flowers and waited for some crass comment about her boobs, but none came. Mrs. Murphy, with Cassidy beside her, were too busy staring with unshed tears in their eyes to say anything apparently.
“You guys, this isn’t a wedding! Stop looking at me like that!”
She turned back to the mirror and pinned the flowers in at the base of her neck where she had intricately woven her hair into a knot.
“You look amazing, Des.” Cassidy smiled at her through the reflection in the mirror.
“My stomach is in knots.” She placed her palm flat against the offending organ.
“Whose wouldn’t be? You’re taking a chance, a huge one, on love and happiness and…”
“Great sex!” Mrs. Murphy cut off Cassidy’s romantic speech.
“Mrs. Murphy!” Destiny tried to look shocked, but she was simply coming to know, love, and accept the wonderful woman for everything she was. She hugged her and placed a kiss on her cheek, leaving a bright-red lip mark behind.
She met Cassidy’s stare and gave her a small nervous smile.
“It’s about that time,” Cassidy said flatly.
“Yep.” Destiny drew a deep breath. “This could be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Could be,” Cassidy echoed.
Mrs. Murphy gave her a quick slap. “The girl needs a boost of confidence, not naysaying! Here”—she reached into her purse and pulled out a silver flask from a colorful handbag—“take a hit.”
Destiny thought about being shocked for a moment, but she just laughed and took the offered liquid encouragement from Mrs. Murphy’s hand. She took a swig, and it burned all the way down.
“Good Lord, Mrs. Murphy, what is that?” Destiny blinked away tears forming in her eyes.
“Irish whiskey…hundred proof!” She winked.
Cassidy was obviously trying not to laugh. Destiny glared at her, handed the flask back to Mrs. Murphy and took one last look in the mirror. The dress clung to her body like a second skin, outlining her body with every move she made. She hadn’t realized how much weight she’d lost over the last four months, happiness had been agreeing with her because it was falling off without any real effort. She simply wasn’t stress eating anymore, and looking now at her reflection, she was astonished at how her body had new definition.
With the gown, she wore silver, rhinestone-encrusted sandals, an emerald bracelet that Cassidy loaned her, and, of course, the earrings Ronan had given her. It may have been silly, but wearing them made her feel close to him, like somehow he was still watching over her. She missed him so much. Nothing had been the same between them since that night, or more, since the next day when Ronan had ended everything between them, but she wasn’t going to think about any of that now. She didn’t want to descend into melancholy, not tonight.
There was a knock at the door, and her stomach churned. This was it. She wasn’t sure exactly what she would decide, her heart was still raw, but Cassidy was right to encourage her to at least go and hear him out.
“Well, are you gonna get that or not?” Mrs. Murphy crowed.
“I’m getting it.” Destiny moved from the bedroom to the living room, so glad the boys were hanging out with Aiden and Bella tonight.
She reached for the door and pulled it open to see Oscar standing on the other side dressed impeccably and smiling at her.
“Oscar.” She smiled. They may have had their issues in the past, but over the past week, he was working very hard to put all that behind them. “Come in.”
She st
ood back and allowed him entrance and closed the door behind him once he was in.
“You look amazing, Des.” Oscar’s gaze roamed her body appreciatively.
His look warmed her, but it also pained her. Why couldn’t he have looked at her like that when they were married?
“Hey, Oscar.” Cassidy greeted him as she and Mrs. Murphy came through the bedroom door into the living room.
“Evening, ladies.” He nodded at them, then turned back to Destiny just as the door knocked again.
“I’ll get that!” Cassidy cried out and wasted no time going to the door.
Destiny’s stomach turned again, but she tried to focus. “What exactly did you need, Oscar?”
The second Ronan entered the room her entire body recognized him. She drew a deep breath, and on its release, every ounce of tension left her. She turned to him and smiled. He was dressed in a dark suit, a navy blue shirt that looked like silk from where she stood, and a grey patterned tie.
She grew wet and needy just at the site of him. It had been so damn hard to keep her feelings under wraps for the last month, and part of her was pissed at him for making her even have to try.
“I was just hoping we could sit down and talk. There were some things I thought important and as I’m leaving in just a couple of days…”
She turned back to Oscar. “That’s right. You’re leaving.”
She looked to Ronan. He was leaving, too.
Why did she only seem attracted to men who wanted to leave? Of course, in the beginning that hadn’t seemed like a big deal with Ronan, but now it was.
“Well, I can’t do it tonight, Oscar. Breakfast tomorrow?” She focused directly on him.
It was strange how little effect he had on her anymore. There used to be a time where she wouldn’t have denied him anything, a time where his approval and his desires were all that mattered to her. She used to be that way with her mother as well, but over the last week, she noticed that pull to jump through her mother’s hoops had diminished also. She had a new strength at her core that didn’t require her to run around seeking everyone else’s approval. She only wanted Ronan’s.
The Seduction of Destiny Rhode [The Seduction 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) Page 20