They blur across the page, out of focus.
“Mom,” I murmur.
“Hmm?”
“You know how you’re always saying you wish I could find a nice man?”
She sits up, propping herself up on her elbows. It’s like my words have punched through the haze of her illness for a few moments.
“Yes,” she says, staring at me, her lips twitching as though she’s preparing herself to break out into an ear-to-ear smile.
“I might have found one,” I tell her.
She sits up some more, wincing a little with the effort, and then brings her hands to her chest. “Oh, really? That’s fantastic. You must tell me all about him. When did you meet? How serious is it?”
“It’s very serious,” I tell her, even as the anxious, paranoid part of me wants to throttle these words to stop me from embarrassing myself. “At least, I think it is. It’s all happened so fast. But the moment I saw him, Mom, I felt like I’ve been waiting my whole life for him. I felt like he was the person I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. I knew I wanted to start a family with him.”
Tears glisten in Mom’s eyes. She paws at her cheeks and clasps her hands even tighter.
“This is wonderful,” she says, voice choked. “Absolutely magical. A family? What a gift.”
I nod, coughing back sobs of my own.
One of my mom’s greatest fears – she’s told me this many, many times – is leaving me behind all on my own. She blames herself for what my dickhead dad did.
And I know she wants, needs grandchildren.
“So,” she says. “Does this mystery man have a name?”
I swallow as nerves shiver through my body.
“Ryland Radley,” I say.
She narrows her eyes at me and the corner of her lips twitch. I recognize the expression from a hundred times during my childhood. It’s the same way she’d look at me when I lied and told her I hadn’t snuck a cookie for the jar.
“I don’t get it,” she says after a long pause.
“It’s not a joke,” I say.
“So you knew him before he came to save us yesterday?”
“No,” I tell her. “I met him yesterday, the same time as you.”
She brings her hand up, as though to run it through her luxurious gray-brown hair, and then lets it drop when she remembers it’s not there anymore.
Sighing, she says, “So how can any of this possibly be true?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Seriously, I have no idea. But the second I saw him yesterday, I just knew it. I felt it somewhere I’ve never felt anything before. Maybe it’s fate. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But we both feel the same way.”
Mom stares at me for a few long moments. I recognize this expression as well.
It’s like she’s trying to see through me, into my thoughts, trying to work out if I’m playing some kind of prank on her.
“You mean it,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And he feels the same? He’s said he feels the same? This isn’t just projection?”
“We talked loads about it last night,” I say. “We… we’ve kissed, Mom.”
“Have you had sex?”
“Mom.”
“What?” she flares. “This is all very unusual. I think I have a right to know.”
“No, we haven’t had sex,” I snap. “But he’s said he feels the same and I believe him. I didn’t, at first, because—”
“Because of your father,” she says. “Oh, Rosie, not all men are like him. He was exceptionally cruel. He was unique in that way. I don’t get that sense at all from Ryland.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “You’ve only known him a day.”
She laughs and shoots me a look.
I giggle, realizing my mistake.
“Okay, fair enough,” I say. “I guess that’s pretty ironic coming from me.”
“You know it is,” she giggles, and she sounds like the woman she was when I was a kid.
I remember that laughter, thinking my mom was as young as everybody else’s.
I was at a party when I was five or six, and that’s when I realized. It ached and shivered inside of me, this fact, this finality.
I knew I had to cherish every second as if it was touched by sunlight.
“I know you, Rosie, better than anybody. Isn’t that fair to say?”
I roll my eyes.
She’s got her lecturing voice on, the same one she used throughout all my childhood whenever she wanted to make a point.
“I’m just making a point,” she says, as though she’s reading my mind with that all-seeing smile.
“Yes, Mom,” I say.
“So I can see how happy you are. I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“Really?” I murmur, turning away at the compliment.
There’s something about my mom giving me such wonderful comments that makes me feel shy.
Tell me you’re sexy, Ryland roars in my mind, reminding me of last night. I own you. If I say it, it’s true. And I say you’re fucking sexy.
“Yes,” Mom says. “I don’t know if it makes sense, but he’s protecting us, he’s helping us. I know women these days can be proud…”
“Mom, come on,” I say, shaking my head. “This isn’t about that.”
“Let me finish,” she says, wagging her finger at me and making me laugh. “That’s not supposed to be funny, young lady.”
“Mom, you’re wagging your finger like this is a freaking stage play.”
“Okay, no finger then, smartass,” Mom chuckles, lowering her hand.
And I swear I can see her long luxurious hair cascading down her shoulders, the hair that was still pale brown when I was born. Sometimes, it’s like her illness slips away from her and the old mom glows through.
“I know women can be proud,” she says. “But my mother lived through the war. And she said to me, ‘Jackie, if you can find a rich man who will love you, never disrespect you, and always support you, then take him. But they do not exist.’”
“And what did you say?” I whisper, my chest aching at the words.
Ryland wouldn’t disrespect me, trick me, would he?
My heart cries, Never, never, never.
But my reason snaps at me that I don’t know him. I only just met him.
“I told her she was talking rubbish,” Mom snaps. “I believed, back then… and I still do now. I still believe. There’s still love out there for me.”
“Of course there is,” I whisper, blinking back a hot tear.
“If you think you can trust this man,” Mom says fiercely. “If you believe, if you know… then don’t look for a reason. Just embrace how you feel. But you have to know, Rosalind.”
“Mom,” I say, rolling my eyes again, feeling like they could roll right out of my head when I hear my full name.
“You have to know,” she says firmly.
Her jaw hardens and she stares meaningfully at me.
I know she’s thinking about my dad, about what happened to her. She doesn’t want the same to happen to me.
It’s like she’s looking through me, at that possible future, thinking about ways she can end it.
“I know, Mom,” I say.
“Do you know or do you know?”
Do I know what she’s saying makes sense, or do I believe I can trust Ryland Radley, this impossible stranger?
“I know,” I say, and even I don’t know which one I mean.
My heart and my soul flare with instant fusing devotion at the thought of him. But I can’t just erase what my dad did, the hate he imprinted on me through mom. Despite my certainty, there is uncertainty, too, and it makes no freaking sense.
It’s not fair.
I love him. I’d never say that aloud.
But if this isn’t love, this burning in my gut, this brightening of my soul every time I so much as think of him…
If my body flooding me with loyalty and devotion and trembling vol
canic need…
If none of that means love and everlasting commitment, then what the heck does?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ryland
I move my finger around the glass of whisky, and I think about what it’d be like to grab the glass and smash it against Vito’s head.
Violent instincts pulse in me, primal and dangerous, every part of me alight with the need to fight or fuck.
It’s a dangerous cocktail, meeting the woman of my dreams and then having to talk to these mobbed-up lowlifes.
Just a couple of days ago my biggest concern was feeding big old Chopper.
“Well?” Vito says.
He asked why I packed a bag and drove them away from the apartment building before I took them out. It’s a stupid question, but his eyes are hazy with cocaine, his movements are twitchy. The goons at the rear of the bar are the same as if they’re all amped-up on the same stimulants.
Cocaine makes men think they’re tough.
It makes them forget respect.
“It’s not your place to question how I do things, Vito.”
His men stir at the back. Vito flinches, leaning back as if he’s just realized how close he’s sitting to me.
He knows I could dart my hand up quicker than a whip and latch onto his neck. He knows I could squeeze and crush his tendons and his bones and his life out of him.
He knows I’m Ryland fucking Radley, and my old man was Bucky Radley.
“I…” He clears his throat. “I think I have a right to ask.”
He’s whining because he knows the steroid sacs he calls muscles won’t stand up to one of my fingers. He knows I could dismantle him, grab my gun, and drop these men like we’re in a goddamned Western.
If you touch her, I roar at him silently. I am going to fucking end you. She is mine.
“That’s my business. Is there anything else, Vito?”
“Wait a sec,” he snaps. “We ain’t done here.”
I stare at him silently.
He stares back at me, but he sees certainty and I see fear.
His eyes widen and it’s like he’s crying at me to stop doing this, stop challenging him.
There’s nothing more dangerous than a sensitive mob guy.
Except maybe an angry hitman.
“If you’ve got something else to say, say it,” I snarl.
He grips the edge of the table and glares at me as though he’s going to say something, as though he’s going to act tough. But we both know there’s nothing he can say or do to me.
His father and I made a deal.
They can call me any damn thing they want.
But I’ll bring more good to this world than bad, and if that means demolishing their little social club, then so be it.
“Don’t push your luck, Ryland,” Vito snaps.
“Only a foolish man threatens me,” I growl.
“Who’s threatening?” Vito rushes to say, holding his hands up in a prey-like way, a though he’s scared of what I’d do if he even dreamed of disrespecting me. “It’s an honest question, that’s all. Got a guy who says he saw you pack them into your car and drive away, and the girl – that Rosie – she was smiling.”
A cord of hot tension moves through me when he uses her name, my chest pounding with the suggestion of an eruption. My mind floods with blood-red vignettes and my fingers start to twitch, getting ready for a killer’s work.
“What, nothing to say?” Vito growls. “How can you explain that? Why would she be smiling?”
I stand up, looming over him.
The men at the back – the identical-looking bastards in their blue suits with their gold watches – bristle and reach for their weapons. But I can see fear glinting in their eyes, the same look a deer gets when it sights a wolf in the dark.
They know who I am.
And even if they somehow killed me here, they know it’d be the end of them.
“You can’t behave this way toward us,” Vito snarls, bolting to his feet. He has a juvenile whine in his voice, like a kid who’s never been told no. “I won’t let you.”
I turn away from the table, my senses keen, heightened to an animalistic level, alert to any twitching alteration in the atmosphere of the room. I’ve been in too many fights not to sense them coming, like a stink in the air, the implication of all the things that could happen shiver beneath it all.
“Maybe I’ll come and have a look at your place sometime,” he says.
I turn my head slightly, sighting the men out of my peripheral vision.
Even with my back turned, the men flinch.
Vito’s hand trembles near his hip, as if he thinks he’d have enough time for gunplay when I start to dismantle him and his goons.
“My estate is off-limits,” I growl, telling him something he already knows. “You know what happens if you break that promise, Vito.”
“You think I’m scared of you?” he cries. “I’m Vito Franzese. I’m the prince.”
I grunt out a laugh.
“Sure, tough guy,” I say, striding for the door.
“I am a tough guy,” Vito yells at me as I pull it open, pacing out onto the street. “And maybe one day I’ll fucking show you.”
I curse myself as I walk across the street toward my sedan.
A smart man would’ve groveled back there. Would’ve stooped and begged and did whatever it took to calm Vito down, to placate him, so he wouldn’t lose his shit and invade my life.
Even if I have contingency plans if he ever breaks his word, that doesn’t mean I want to use them.
That will mean attention I don’t want, and right now the only person I want attention from is waiting for me back in my home.
I walk down the hallway, waving a hand at the hidden camera. I wonder if Rosie has stayed awake and is watching the tablet like I told her to.
I wouldn’t have worried about it before I left to visit that so-called prince, but now my protective need is even fiercer.
She meets me at the door, her finger to her lips.
My insides go tight and gnarled. She could so easily open those lips and start sucking on that pert little finger.
“Mom’s asleep,” she whispers. “I think Harold is, too.”
I chuckle quietly, striding over to her.
“It’s only just gone four and the whole house is asleep, eh? Maybe fate’s trying to tell us something. It wants us to be alone.”
She smiles radiantly, lifting her hands and grabbing onto the back of my neck. Her warmth travels through me, making parts of me burn and other parts tight with the need to do more than hold her.
“How did the meeting go?” she asks anxiety dancing across her eyes.
It went well, I want to roar. Don’t worry about it. You never have to worry about anything.
But the idea of lying to her settles like acid on my mind, eating through to the core, telling me it’s wrong.
I sigh and give her an outline of the meeting.
Her mouth falls open when I tell her about Vito’s veiled threat.
“Do you think he’s going to come here? Or send someone here?”
“Even if he does,” I say, “they won’t be able to get inside these walls without me knowing. They’re too tall and sheer to climb and, even if they try, I’ve got sensors that will alert me.”
I smooth my hands down her hips and squeeze her there, the perfect fullness of her.
“Let’s not worry about that. We’ve got each other. They wouldn’t dare cross me.”
“They’re the Mafia, Ryland,” she whispers. “You saw my neighborhood. People talk in places like that. Everybody’s got a cousin or a friend who’s a criminal. The mob – Vito Franzese especially – don’t let people get away with disrespecting them. That’s what I’ve heard.”
I squeeze her harder, pulling her against me, enveloping her so she can feel shielded by me. It’s the way I’d hug her if I had to take a bullet for her, turning the broadness of my back against the attack.
�
��I’d do anything to keep you safe,” I growl. “There’s no line I wouldn’t cross. You don’t have to be afraid. I need you. I need you to have my babies.”
She giggles, but there’s a sad shiver in the noise, as though a sob could just as easily break through the crackling tension in her breath.
“That should sound crazy,” she whispers.
“Stop worrying about what things should be,” I smirk. “Start savoring how they are right now. I’m going to savor this perfect body of yours.”
I slide my hands around to her ass, feeling the eagerness of her as she pushes against me, arching her back so I have better access to that wet, needy slit.
It’s like she can’t help it. Even as her naïve virginal eyes flit downward, her body responds to me, shaping against the pressure of my touch.
“My mom…”
I grin like the crazed wolf I am and then remove my hand.
Taking a step back, I let out a shivering growling sigh, the sort of sigh a bear makes when he’s interrupted mid-meal.
“I don’t want to talk about Vito or the mob or anything that isn’t you or me,” I snarl. “Go to your room. Get changed into the dress I left for you. And meet me in the main dining hall. I’ll have Harold cook for us.”
“Won’t he mind?” she asks.
I smirk, nodding down the hallway.
Harold is standing there, a little sleepy-eyed from his nap. He runs a hand through his tufted hair and then stands up straighter.
“Afternoon, sir,” he says. “Would you and the lady like something to eat?”
Rosie giggles and smiles at me, her whole face lighting up.
“That’s so freaky.”
“What is?” Harold asks.
“We were just talking about whether or not you’d mind making us some food,” Rosie laughs. “And then you just appeared.”
“A good butler knows when he is needed, ma’am.”
“I thought you were a nurse?” Rosie asks.
“I’m both,” he says. “I specialize in in-home care. Let me see if your mother needs anything, and then I will make you both a lovely meal. I have a little request for her, come to think of it.”
“You’re a good man, Harold,” I say with feeling.
Maid for the Hitman: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance Page 8
