by Penny Reid
“Yeah. He does.”
“How do I prove that I don’t need to be coddled?”
Dan seemed to think it over before saying, “Just keep being you. He’s smart. He’ll figure it out.”
A new kind of warmth, which had very little to do with his hand on my leg, uncoiled in my stomach. It had everything to do with this man. This wonderful amazing man.
I love this man.
It wasn’t a realization or an ah-ha moment. More like, just an acceptance of fact, like knowing myself deep down and acknowledging who I was.
I am Kathleen Caravel-Tyson. I am good at delegating. I’m a little neurotic. I have brown hair and brown eyes. I like cheese too much. I rely on order and routine. I’m in love with Daniel O’Malley.
I trusted him. I trusted him implicitly and explicitly and I couldn’t imagine a situation where he’d ever break that trust. I loved him and I trusted him and I was happy.
“Thank you for believing in me,” I said before I realized I was speaking.
His smile was small as he lifted an eyebrow, glancing at me again. “Thanks for making it so easy.”
By the time we’d made it back, my skirt was at my hips, the first three buttons of my shirt were undone, and my heart was racing. Dan’s fingers were scant millimeters from the apex of my thighs, his jaw was tight, and he was speeding.
Taking a corner entirely too fast, he finally slowed to pull into the street parking spot across from his mother’s three-story house. As soon as he engaged the emergency break and cut the engine, he clicked the button for his seat belt as I undid mine. He helped me—i.e. pulled me—across the center console. I hit my head on the rearview mirror and banged my knee against the cupholder. I didn’t care.
Straddling his lap, hungrily seeking his mouth, I rocked against him, shivering at the heavenly feel of his hard against my soft.
A low sound vibrated from his throat, his fingers making quick work of the buttons at the front of my shirt, his mouth trailing hot and hungry kisses down my neck to my chest.
I rocked against him again, wanting—needing—the pressure, the friction. His twelve o’clock shadow scratched the swell of my breast as he pulled down the cup of my bra, tonguing my nipple and groaning.
I dug my fingers into the back of his head, holding him in place as white hot spikes of sensation streaked through me. “We need to—we need to go inside.”
But do we? Do we really?
His fingers slid into the back of my underwear, palming my ass, caressing and squeezing. “One more minute. Fuck, does this bra clasp in the front?” He groaned at the discovery.
“Dan,” I moaned, his teeth nipping my breast just before he swirled his tongue over the peak, sucking it more completely into his mouth. I couldn’t help it, I bore down on him, trying to open myself wider.
“Oh fuck.” His hips jerked upward and his breath caught.
“I want you.” I didn’t think about it, where we were, what I was saying. I wasn’t analyzing my breathing, my movements. I didn’t even allow myself to take stock of what I was feeling.
I just felt, allowing myself to be mindless.
Dan’s forehead came to the valley between my breasts. His hot breath panting and ragged as his hands came to my hips, gripping me, holding me still. “Why are you so fucking perfect? Why do you feel so fucking good?”
Fire in my lungs, I tried to move again, tried to redirect his mouth back to my breast. “Dan.”
He held rigid. “Kat, hold still. Please.”
“I need you,” I said, again without thought. “I want you to make me feel good. I love—”
A string of expletives left his mouth and he leaned his head back and away, his eyes were shut tight. “You were right, we need to stop. We need . . .” he shook his head as though to clear it. “We need to go inside.”
“Yessss.” I tried grabbing his wrist to force him to move his hand, but he was too strong. He wouldn’t budge.
“And take a cold shower.”
“Noooo,” I groaned, bending to kiss his gorgeous lips, and sucked the bottom one into my mouth. This was the one he’d been teasing me with earlier. I savored it before releasing him with a slow lick.
Now he groaned. “Maybe we’ll play a nice, friendly game of Monopoly.”
Frustrated—but not really frustrated—I began to laugh, my head falling to his neck.
“We could play something else.”
“Strip poker.”
He made a choking sound. “You’re trying to murder me.”
I laughed again, placing a kiss on his neck, and trying to calm my pulse. This was great. He was great. And I felt great.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, a wave of gratitude and warm fuzzy feelings flowed through me. “Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.”
His breathing slowed, his hands loosening their grip and sliding to my arms.
He cleared his throat before asking, “For what?”
“For so much. For everything.”
Dan encouraged me to release him and lean back. I did. He held my hands in his and kissed them, one at a time, his attention fixed on my knuckles.
“Let’s go inside,” he said, letting my hands go, his fingers moving to the buttons of my shirt and fastening them. “Personally, I think this is a good look for you.”
I smiled down at him, watching his progress. “My clothes are a mess.”
“You’re beautiful.” He finished with the last button.
“So are you.”
Dan lifted his gaze to mine, a small smile on his lips that wasn’t quite reflected in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, his shoulders giving a subtle shrug. “Nothing. I’m hungry, I guess. And I haven’t worked out today.”
He helped me shift back to my seat and I inspected him. “Do you work out every day?”
“Yes. Every day.” Dan rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms. “I like field work better than desk work, so I gotta be in shape. Plus, I like it.”
“Have you always worked out? Did you play sports in high school?”
He blinked a few times, staring out the windshield. “I started working out in prison. Never played sports in high school before I dropped out. I hated anything to do with organized socialization or the bullshit rituals.” He paused here to exhale a laugh. “Which is ironic because I joined my brother’s gang when I was thirteen, and that’s how I got these.” Dan gestured to wisps of black ink just visible above his collar.
“You got those when you were thirteen?”
“Not all of them. But, yeah, starting when I was thirteen. If you see a guy around here with these kinds of designs around his neck, he’s part of my brother’s gang.” Dan glanced at me, a self-deprecating smile on his handsome features. “I didn’t see the similarities when I was a dumbass kid. All I knew was, I wanted to belong to something and be important, respected.”
It was quiet. Quiet car, quiet street, quiet neighborhood. But more than that, it was still. I had an odd sense that we were treading water next to each other, as though in a tranquil lake beneath a starry sky, the cadence of silence manifesting as two beating hearts.
I didn’t want to break the spell by speaking. But my faith in him, and my trust, told me: this might’ve been the first of these moments, but it wouldn’t be the last.
So I asked the question I’d been wondering for a while. “What did you do when you were part of your brother’s gang?”
Dan’s chest expanded with a deep breath, his gaze falling away. “Lots of things. But what I was caught for doing was armed robbery.”
“Will you tell me?”
He nodded, his hand coming to the back of my seat as he angled himself to face me, his attention on my headrest. “We were robbing a house—not the first time—and we thought no one was there. I was smallest, still scrawny at seventeen, so I went in through the basement window. I let them in. Turns out, someone was home. That hadn’t happened before. The la
dy came out of her room, catching Seamus by surprise and he shot at her.”
“Oh no.” I covered my mouth.
“He got her in the arm.” Dan itched the back of his neck. “He freaked out, moving like he was going to shoot her again, and I knocked the gun out of his hand. Everyone ran, including him. I picked it up, thinking I didn’t want it to be found there with his prints. He’d just been released from jail—armed robbery of a package store caught on camera—and if he were caught again, he’d be up at Chucky’s Place for a long time.”
“What happened to the woman? Was she okay?”
“She needed stitches and was shaken up.” His mouth curved ruefully to the side. “My mom was wicked pissed, she was the one who turned me in.”
My mouth dropped open and it took me several seconds before I could form words. “Your mom turned you in?”
“Yep. Mrs. Zucker, the lady whose house we robbed, she saw me when I picked up the gun. She recognized me. She called my mom.”
“Mrs. Zucker didn’t go to the cops?”
“No. She was scared. She thought, if she went to the cops, we’d retaliate.”
“That’s terrible.”
“That’s Seamus,” he said, as though terrible and Seamus were one and the same. “Anyway, I gave my brother back the gun, but he didn’t get rid of it. He put it in his room. So when I got picked up, my mom let them in the house and they found the gun with my prints all over it.” He shrugged. “I confessed, said I was alone, served three years of a seven-year sentence and that’s that.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” His eyes came to mine briefly, but then lost focus again, his voice distant. “And when I got out, there was my brother, saying I’d earned my place, proved myself.” An expression of disgust and loathing—whether for Seamus or for himself, I had no idea—claimed his handsome features. “Like what we’d done was no big deal, not just to Mrs. Zucker, but to our mom. To our family. Like we should be proud of ourselves, for how tough we were.”
“Is Seamus still—”
“As far as I know, he’s still running scams.” He shook his head, scoffing, his brows drawn together in an angry frown.
“And your mom puts up with it? With him? She turned you in to the police.”
He glanced at the ceiling. “If she had evidence against him, she’d turn him in. But she’s never going to give up on him, her heart is too soft. She’s always going to hope.”
“But you don’t?”
He breathed out. “I’ve tried helping him. I’ve given him money, given him a job. He stole from me, used the money to fund a scam. He’s come to me a hundred times, always with the same story, always with a promise to change.” He shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “At a certain point, you got to draw a line in the sand.”
I studied Dan, the hard line of his jaw, the stark, mournful look in his eyes and realized Seamus had broken Dan’s heart.
I was sure of it.
Maybe not all at once, or by doing any one thing. It had happened over a lifetime and it was possible—even though Dan claimed he’d drawn a line in the sand and had given up hope—Seamus was still breaking his heart.
I found myself wanting to punch Seamus in the throat and shove a hot poker up his nose.
Instead, I asked, “So what happened? You didn’t go back to your brother. What did you do when you were released?”
His mouth hitched to the side, and his eyes lost some of their melancholy. “Quinn.”
“Quinn?”
“Quinn used to do some work for Seamus—and a bunch of other bad guys—managing tech, security, computers, firewalls.”
“He provided tech support for criminals?”
“Something like that.” Dan rubbed his jaw. “When I got out, he’d quit running scams and was already in Chicago, doing his thing. But he had more business than he could handle. He offered me a job as private security for some senator’s son, to start.”
“But now you’re partners.”
“That’s right. I told him about some inefficiencies, dead weight—as far as I saw them—and made suggestions for improvement. He promoted me a few times until we became partners. We worked well together, building up the business. He focused more on the tech and investment side and I was the personnel and project guy—scoped the jobs, checked the clients, made the hires, staffed the jobs—that stuff.”
As he spoke and his dark mood seemed to lift, his usual matter-of-fact lightheartedness returned.
“Do you like it?”
“What? My job?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I like it. And I’m good at it.” His gaze flickered over me and he lifted an eyebrow, opening his car door. “Why? You planning on offering me a job?”
I laughed, but didn’t answer, hiding my expression because the thought had crossed my mind.
He walked around the car to my door as I exited. I pulled my big bag of documents and binders from the back seat and surveyed my clothes, finding myself disheveled.
Actually, I was a mess.
I touched my hair. It was big, wild, and fluffy. I probably looked like I’d been making out with my husband in our rental car.
“Why’re you making that face?” He closed my door and reached for my hand, glancing both ways before crossing the street.
“Do you think your mom is home?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“I need to change. I’m . . . rumpled.”
“You’re gorgeous. I hope you change nothing.” He grinned, his gaze moving over me, communicating his appreciation for my untidy appearance. Dan pulled keys from his pocket and began working on the locks, muttering under his breath, “She needs an alarm system.”
“She won’t get one?”
He shook his head, turning the last deadbolt. “No. She’s stubborn, says it’s a waste of money, that she’ll forget to use it.” Pushing into the house, he held the door open for me. “I believe her, because she usually forgets to lock the door. I keep telling her to lock the front door. How hard is it to lock the front door?”
“I keep telling her the same thing,” a voice answered.
Dan and I stopped abruptly, spotting Seamus leaning against the wall at the end of the entryway. I heard Dan breathe out a loud, aggravated breath as he walked around me and snagged my hand, shutting the door behind us.
“Not in the mood. We’re going to bed. Lock up when you leave.”
“I don’t have a key.” Seamus’s eyes were on me as we passed. “And I’m not here for you.”
Dan, shoving his keys in his pocket, stopped at the foot of the stairs. “If you don’t have a key, how’d you get in?”
Seamus’s stare sharpened on me, and he lifted his chin in my direction. “You never told me your name. What should I call you?”
“My name is Kat.” I slipped off my shoes, releasing Dan’s hand to pick them up.
“You’re not going to call her anything, because you’re never going to talk to her.” Dan glared at his brother; his dark mood had returned.
Now knowing about the brothers’ history, Dan’s statement didn’t strike me as domineering or him ordering me around. He hadn’t forgiven his brother and I didn’t think it likely he ever would. Not unless Seamus made some serious changes.
As things were, Dan didn’t want Seamus to be a part of his life. I understood, respected, and supported his decision.
Turning to Dan, I placed a kiss on his cheek. “Come upstairs. We’ll play Monopoly.”
“Yeah.” He smirked, stealing a kiss. “Let me see this bozo out.”
“Kat is short for Kathleen.” Seamus pushed away from the wall and the movement drew my attention. His eyes were still on me and something about them, about him, sent a shiver of discomfort racing down my spine.
The room fell silent for a beat, Dan and me watching Seamus as his boots scuffed against the floor on his way to us.
Dan—very, very slowly—placed his hand on my thigh, guiding me behind him. “What do you think you’r
e doing, Seamus?”
“I just want to talk to her. Can’t I talk to my sister-in-law? Ask her some questions. Get to know her. Learn all about her hopes and dreams.”
I felt Dan go stiff and he stepped more completely in front of me. “You know.”
For the first time since we entered, Seamus’s eyes left mine. “You married a fucking heiress, Dan. A. Fucking. Heiress. She tell you that? Did she tell you who she is? Do you know how much money this bitch is worth?”
I sucked in a breath, startled by the venom in Seamus’s tone. Of course, it was only a matter of time before Seamus found out. But what I didn’t understand was why Dan’s brother made my past, who I was, sound like a betrayal.
Dan flinched but took a threatening step forward. “You shut your goddamn mouth.”
“The bitch is using you.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, and if you call her that one more time, you’ll be shitting teeth.”
I placed a hand on Dan’s shoulder. He shook me off while placing his hand on my hip, gently pushing me back.
Eyes full of defiance, Seamus lifted his left hand to his hip, his right hand slowly sliding behind his back. “You’re too fucking stupid to see what’s right in front of you and the kind of payday this bitch could—”
I jumped back, covering my mouth with my hands, because Dan punched his brother in the face.
And then he’d punched his brother in the face again, and throat, and side, and kept on punching. For Seamus’s part, he landed a few blows, but he’d been caught by surprise.
Also, Dan seemed to be more motivated.
I’d witnessed fights before. I’d been targeted twice when I lived in a tent city west of Chicago; those encounters had resulted in my fair share of bruises, cuts, and cracked ribs. I’d learned to run. At the first sign of trouble, I ran. Always. I was small. I didn’t know how to fight. I was always running, sometimes all night. By the time I was incarcerated, running had become a deeply ingrained habit.
That had been a very long time ago. A lifetime ago.
Now, watching the brothers destroy their mother’s living room, I didn’t run. I couldn’t. It was like watching a car accident, or being in one. I was so shocked by what I was seeing, the violence, I couldn’t move.
