The Real Deal: A Dublin Nights Novel

by Sahin, Brittney

  He hadn’t aged much since I’d been gone. Handsome as ever. Less broody, and I was pretty sure I had Holly to thank for that.

  But I’d lost so much time and . . .

  My throat constricted, and my chest grew heavy.

  I pulled back and stopped dancing. “I’m gonna grab some air if you don’t mind.” I kissed both his cheeks. “And before you ask to join me, or worry about me, I’m fine.”

  I would be, at least. Eventually.

  His brows knitted, concern apparent, and that was the last thing I wanted tonight.

  “I promise,” I added and fixed a killer smile to close the deal.

  “Yeah, uh, okay.” He left my side, taking hesitant steps, and I made a beeline for the outdoors.

  The terrace had multiple heaters, but the dress was sleeveless, so I was still cold. I hugged my body as I walked to the edge of the balcony and marveled at the view.

  How many times had I visited Sebastian in Paris and stood in this very spot before Luca had taken me?

  He’d believed I was dead for so long, and a part of me had died on the inside. I had to figure out how to become me again.

  “I wanted to offer my apologies, I hope you don’t mind.”

  I stilled at the French-accented voice behind me. “Moreau?” I’d heard a lot about him. Luca had vented to me like I was his own personal therapist whenever he visited. If only I’d been able to talk Luca off the cliff of crazy, I could’ve come home sooner.

  “You don’t owe me an apology.” I wrung my hands together, brought them to my abdomen, and turned to face him.

  “What my nephew did to you . . .” His brows drew together with regret.

  “Everything okay?” Cole asked on approach.

  “I’m fine,” I finally answered, holding Cole’s eyes as if Moreau wasn’t outside with us.

  “You sure you’re ready for the challenge of leadership?” he asked Cole.

  I wasn’t ready. The idea of him filling Sebastian’s shoes scared me to death.

  “Everyone will be safe, right?” Worry moved through his voice, his focus on Moreau.

  “Oui,” he answered.

  “Then I’m ready.”

  Moreau nodded goodbye and left us.

  Surprisingly, it was the first time Cole and I had actually been alone together since my return. Even when Sebastian had been on vacation with Holly, someone had always been in the room.

  I might have done that on purpose, too nervous for whatever conversation needed to happen between us that I hadn’t been prepared for.

  He removed his tux jacket and hung it over my shoulders, and I tipped my head in thanks.

  “When Bree saw you tonight, I haven’t seen her cry like that since she told me about Derek cheating. I’d even pre-warned her she’d see you, but still.”

  Derek, I remembered him. Bree had been dating him before I left, and I’d never liked the guy. “Will Bree ever forgive me for taking off without saying goodbye?” I swallowed. “And will you?” The fight we’d had before I left, the guilt of it had haunted me for years.

  “Of course,” he said after a moment. “Both of us.”

  “I’m not sure if I deserve that.” My shoulders sagged. “I’m so sorry about the fight, and how I acted before and—”

  “Don’t.” He held a hand between us. “You don’t owe me any explanations. I’m so damn glad you’re okay.” He was even more handsome in his maturity.

  I reached for his arm, and his jacket slipped from my shoulders in the process. We knelt at the same time to grab it, our heads nearly colliding. “Thank you,” I said softly when he handed it back to me once we were both upright.

  I clutched the jacket between my palms. “Can we just stand here? Look at this beautiful view and not say anything?” I wasn’t ready to open up old wounds, not yet, at least.

  “For you?” He placed a hand on the small of my back, and I closed my eyes at the touch. “Anything.”

  * Continue to read a sneak peek from Cole & Alessia’s book, The Inside Man, which features Cole and Alessia in NYC before she left to find Sebastian.

  Preview from The Inside Man

  New York City - Six Years, Two Months Ago

  Cole

  “We’re just getting started tonight,” my buddy Jacob said while lifting his shot glass, “but here is to Xavier and having the best night money can buy.”

  The man of the hour, our friend Xavier, was not only celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday but the fact he had access to his trust fund. A hundred million. “Hell, yeah!” he said after downing a tequila shot.

  The nightclub was a millennial and trust fund kid’s wet dream. I was more into the low-key kind of places, but it was Xavier’s birthday, so I’d go wherever the boys wanted.

  Jacob stood and peeled his black tee off and tossed it. “There’s a pool with five hot girls dancing right in front of us, why are we not in there, too?” He smacked his palms together and kicked off his shoes.

  We were on the third floor of the club in the VIP area, which was reserved for people like us. Basically, rich arseholes. I wasn’t that bad, but the friends I had, well, they could be real dicks.

  Four guys from our party followed Jacob’s lead, including the birthday boy, and joined the women in the pool.

  The club was as eclectic as the people in it. Art attempting to rip off Picasso for sale on the black painted walls, Gothic chandeliers, and modern finishes, not to mention the massive triangle-shaped pool. And this was just the VIP level.

  The indoor greenery softened the place up a bit, but the light projections and state-of-the-art sound system blasting Latin music, along with the panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline, was a reminder I wasn’t in Dublin.

  I’d been living in New York since I was seventeen, but I’d always call Ireland my home and hoped to move back someday.

  “Holy shit.” My buddy Seth, still on the couch with me, flung the back of his hand against my chest. “Is that little Alessia Romano? When’d she get that body and those tits?”

  My stomach dropped at his words, and when I followed his gaze to find Alessia’s dress falling to her feet, I about jumped off the sofa. What in the hell was she doing there?

  She flung her dress, standing only in a tiny white bikini, one I had no clue she owned.

  “She’s your parents’ neighbor, right? Mind if I—”

  “No,” I seethed when she removed her strappy black heels and started down the steps into the pool.

  Jacob set his eyes on her almost immediately. Hell, every man and woman was looking at her gorgeous figure. She was only twenty and had no business being in a place like this.

  “Oh, don’t make her leave.” Seth grabbed my arm, but I yanked free of his touch and stalked straight for the pool.

  “Back off, Jacob,” I warned as he closed in on Alessia.

  I stood alongside the pool, hands in my pockets, my blood boiling.

  Jacob glanced at me before peering at Alessia who ducked under the water. He held his palms in the air in surrender, reading my mind.

  But when Alessia popped back up, I wanted to die. She flung her long wet locks to her back, her makeup remaining flawless despite the water . . . but it was the bikini top that had me biting down on my back teeth.

  A white scrap of material that glowed in the lights but also showcased her damn perky nipples. “Out,” I ordered, and she flinched.

  “I’m having fun!” She pouted.

  She was probably drunk, which made sense, considering her sober self would never have tossed her dress and designer heels so carelessly and entered the pool.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” I crouched to better see her eyes in the shit lighting. “You’re not twenty-one,” I said as if she’d forgotten her age. “Where’s your fake ID?”

  “You’re not my brother,” she said when a cocktail waitress in a bathing suit stepped into the pool carrying a tray of Jell-O shots, and Alessia snatched one.

  I sure as hell wasn’t her
brother, but HE was why she was in this feckin’ pool. Her desire to find the brother she recently discovered she had and never knew about.

  No luck yet in her pursuit, which was why she kept drinking and partying. Taking her frustrations out with the bottle.

  I extended my palm, hoping she’d give in to me. She set the empty plastic cup on the server’s tray, then reached for my hand, but instead, she yanked with the force of someone twice her size, and I went crashing into the water.

  “Damn it, Alessia!” I wiped the water from my face and swiped at my hair.

  “Welcome, brother,” Xavier said on a laugh, and Jacob clapped his thanks to Alessia.

  “Not funny,” I grumbled.

  Alessia stepped in front of me, my white button-down dress shirt molding to my skin. Her pink nail traced a line up the center of my chest, and she nibbled on her lip, the pink gloss somehow still there despite her dip beneath the water.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice huskier than I’d like it to be, and with her so close to me in that damn see-through bikini top, I had to do my best to keep my dick settled as well.

  Then she flung her arms wide and fell back onto the water, floating with her hair fanned out around her.

  “Please, get out.”

  She finally stood, but a darkness filled her gorgeous brown eyes. “My mother is dead. Father, too. No living family except a brother I can’t find and apparently doesn’t want to be found,” she shouted over the music. “What do you expect me to do?”

  I snatched her hand without thinking and placed it on my chest, my heart racing beneath her palm. “I’m your family. You won’t lose me, okay?”

  She was trembling as if cold, even though the pool was heated. Her eyes thinned as she studied me, then it was as if she flipped a switch, forcing away her emotions, because she said in a lighter voice, “I’m gonna dance.” She pulled her palm free of my chest and turned, but I secured a hand around her wrist and stopped her. “You can either join me,” she said in a low voice, which required lip-reading, “or you can let me go find some guy without a stick up his ass.”

  I’d throw her over my shoulder and carry her out kicking and screaming if I had to, but no, I had a better idea. With my free hand, I motioned for the nearby bouncer.

  “You wouldn’t.” A wave of fiery anger met her gorgeous irises.

  “Oh, I would,” I challenged. “Sir, this woman is underage,” I told him. “Fake ID.”

  “Miss?” The bouncer took my word since I was a regular thanks to my buddies who loved the place.

  He kept his eyes on her, and he was about to fall under her spell if I didn’t get her out of there, and fast. There was something about her that drew everyone’s attention, and it wasn’t just that she was smoking hot. She had an energy about her that made men lose their bloody minds. And it was why she needed me to protect her from arseholes.

  About every other day I considered stepping in line to be one of those dickheads, but I’d known her for nine years, ever since she was a kid, so how could I even go near that line?

  The bouncer pointed to the dress and shoes. “These yours?” he asked once she begrudgingly got out of the pool, and my friends booed both the bouncer for making her leave and me.

  “I’ll take care of her,” I told him.

  She snatched her dress and shoes and held them to her chest. She quickly spun around, nearly knocking me back into the water, then her gaze moved slowly down my wet shirt before her eyes journeyed to my face. “Don’t even think about walking me home.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sweetheart,” I said while taking hold of her elbow, “there’s not a chance in hell I’m letting you leave here alone.”

  She shot me a menacing glare that quite possibly was the cutest one she’d sent me lately, and I’d been on the receiving end of quite a few since I kept “raining on her parade of fun” as she kept telling me.

  She leaned in close. “Bite me.”

  Damn did I want to, starting with her nipples. “Get dressed. You’ll freeze to death outside,” I said instead.

  “Don’t you have another woman to bother?” she asked once her dress and shoes were back on, her voice a touch more relaxed.

  “No, you take up too much of my time.” I couldn’t hide the sarcastic tone of my voice even though I’d wanted to come across as serious.

  She swayed to the side as if she might fall but then waved to someone in the pool and smiled. “Maybe I should go home with one of your friends?”

  I looked back at Jacob, and he was sending her an air kiss.

  “No.” I motioned for her to leave, but she didn’t move.

  “You know, I’m not a virgin, so if you think I—”

  “Alessia,” I hissed. “You need to go to bed.”

  “With you?” She angled her head, her brows lifting.

  “I’ll stay on your couch to make sure you don’t fall down and get hurt since you can barely walk right now.” I urged her to move again and tossed a hand over my shoulder to let the guys know I was leaving, and they booed again.

  “I’m not that drunk,” she said with a touch of sass in her tone that her words always carried when she’d been drinking. “Just a little too much champagne.”

  We grabbed our jackets from the coat check, and I hailed a taxi.

  I’d come in Seth’s limo, and Alessia no longer had a driver. She let them go. She was in the process of selling off all her father’s assets, too. She’d come to me for help to ensure she didn’t get taken advantage of when she relinquished his business holdings, and I hadn’t put up a fight with her about it. I knew she had no desire to run his empire, but I also didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life.

  One thing we had fought about—dropping out of Columbia three weeks ago. She hadn’t given me any warning, either. I’d give her until Christmas to come to her senses, and then I’d push her to return to school.

  I’d opted for silence until we were inside the lift in her building. She’d been swiping through images on her phone the entire ride over, and I didn’t feel like getting into it with her within earshot of the cabbie. “This isn’t like you,” I finally spoke up.

  “I always party,” she snapped without looking up at me, her phone still clutched in hand.

  “Not like this,” I said glibly. “This isn’t you.”

  She spun to the side and lowered her arm. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”

  “You’re my best friend,” I admitted.

  We hadn’t started out that way, she’d been too young when we met, but when her mother died in a car accident because some arsehole ran a red light, I’d been there for her.

  I’d always wondered why she hadn’t become closer to my sister, but Alessia and I had just clicked. When she was sixteen, she’d joked we were like a puzzle and fit.

  But ever since she turned of legal age, I could feel myself tensing up whenever she was around.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore.”

  “That’s the alcohol talking,” I said when the doors parted.

  She remained still, and I had to shoot my arm out to keep the doors from closing. “Alessia.”

  “Don’t,” she whispered and hurried past me, but I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to face me. “Are you high? You promised me you’d never do that and—”

  “No,” she snapped. “I keep my promises.”

  “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind.” She forcefully jerked her arm free and rushed into the hall.

  Only two penthouses were on the top floor: hers and my parents’. Of course, she’d hired a realtor last week and placed her house for sale. Where the hell did she plan on going when she sold the home she grew up in?

  By the time I got my thoughts together, she was already inside her place, and the door was locked. I had a key but if she’d secured the deadbolt at the top of the door, I was screwed.

  Thankfully, she’d been too drunk
to do it. That, or she really did want me with her.

  I tossed my jacket and keys once inside and locked up.

  She was in her bedroom on the second floor, stripping out of her dress. Heels already off. “I’m wet and cold. If you don’t want to see me naked, get the hell out.”

  I went back into the hall because I did want to see her naked, damn it. “You decent?” I called out a minute later, and when she didn’t respond, I peeked into the room.

  She was curled up in her blue suede armchair by the window, which overlooked the city. Pale pink cotton pajama bottoms with a long-sleeved button-up top. Thank God she’d opted for comfort over sexy. Although the woman could wear anything and look hot.

  “Go away.” She kept her knees tight to her chest, her eyes on the window.

  I was wet and cold, too, but I didn’t want to risk leaving her place to go to my parents’ to get a change of clothes. She might decide to bolt the top lock. And my parents’ two Yorkies would bark and alert them to my presence if I did head over, and then they’d demand answers as to why I’d shown up at midnight soaking wet.

  I brought my back to the wall near the door, and my gaze cut to the king-sized bed. A plain silver comforter free of frills. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  “I hate that you even asked me about being high.” Disappointment moved through her tone. “I know I haven’t been acting like myself since Dad died, and I discovered he’d kept a brother secret from me all these years, but can you blame me?”

  “No.” I crossed the room to stand closer since her voice had softened. Less angry and more sad. “Your dad made a mistake, but it’s quite possible your brother doesn’t want to be found.”

  She tipped her chin, and her eyes locked with mine in steely silence.

  “Why won’t you tell me his name?”

  Her silence was a knife to the heart, and what scared me was how damn worried I was he was the reason she was selling her house and had dropped out of school.