In my bedroom he seemed too big to fit, larger than life. I packed as he stood awkwardly in my doorway looking at the posters and things I had decorating my walls. I felt very much like an overgrown teenager and wondered what his place looked like.
I’d find out soon enough.
I scratched a quick note to Jessica, let Knox pick up my bags and we left my building for what might be the last time.
“I’ll cover yer rent while we’re together,” he said, stacking my bags in the little spot behind the seats in Knox’s sports car.
“Why’s that?” I asked, a little startled at the thought of him supporting my need for a safety net.
“So ye don’t feel too reliant on me, kitten. I don’t want ye to think you have nowhere to go so you stay with me. If ye have a place you could be, but ye choose yer life with me, it’s more powerful than staying out of convenience.”
“It’s not convenient to love you at all,” I laughed as we drove through the city to an area I’d never been. “You’re complicated and have a crazy life and my entire world seems to be shook up right now. But I love you, and I’m staying with you because my heart wouldn’t survive anywhere else but here with you.”
“That’s me girl,” he said with a grin, shifted gears and burst through the traffic in his sleek car.
I felt the engine hum and loved the way he touched the gear shift, it was like he touched me, how he made me hum with desire.
I was in good hands.
Chapter Nineteen
Knox
“I don’t know if I can get the weekend off work,” she told me as we settled into my home. I wanted her to come with me to a small fight but an important one. A qualifier for the title championship in Vegas in the fall.
“I’ll talk to George,” I said, pulling her into my lap. We were on the couch in my office at the end of the house tour. I watched her the entire time as she assessed my home and tried to not be a little impressed.
She hid it well, but the widening of her eyes and her beautiful little mouth shaped in that surprised ‘O’ gave it away.
I was proud that I could give this to her, my bride.
“I know you could get me off work,” she said and knitted her brows together, “but it’s not fair. It would leave him short staffed at a bad time. The pub will be packed, it’s hockey play offs and the fight you’re in, plus there’s a golf tournament in town.”
I hid my disappointment well, although I wanted to smash my way into her life and make her obey me, I would treat her tenderly.
“That’s a damn shame, then,” I replied, my chest tightening at her need to be away from me. “I do admire yer dedication and loyalty to him though. It’s a rare thing these days.”
“I feel bad leaving him in a lurch, he’s like a father to me,” she said, looking down. “My own parents are long gone and I don’t have many people who support me unconditionally like he does.”
“I do,” I told her and pulled her face up to look at me. “I support anything you want to do, kitten.”
“Thank you,” she said with a shy smile. “I can’t believe this is happening…all of this.”
She looked down at her huge diamond ring again and my cock swelled with pride that I could provide that for her. I was proud of Lennon and proud to bring her into my world.
And right then I wanted to fuck her six ways from Sunday.
But there were things we had to do to prepare for next week’s wedding. As if on cue, Jake called from the front foyer, “Hellooooo.”
“In here,” I yelled back and pulled Lennon down for a quick kiss before we had to behave ourselves.
She sat upright but I held my arm around her waist so she couldn’t get off my lap. I didn’t want to lose that contact with her just yet.
“Hey, I have some legal stuff for you two to sign so we can get this wedding business on the move,” Jake said as he walked in. He didn’t react to Lennon in my arms…which was one reason why I kept him around. Nothing seemed to faze him.
“How did you have this all ready so fast?” Lennon asked as Jake sat down in the chair next to us and laid the papers on the coffee table.
“The first moment he told me about you I had everything drawn up,” Jake told her.
“Seriously? But I didn’t agree to all this until earlier today,” she replied and bristled, I could feel her body tense up.
“I knew from the minute I saw ye that ye were mine, kitten,” I growled and pulled her down harder in my lap. “There was no way I was gonna let ye get away. Jake knows me, and he was just doin’ his job.”
She relaxed and melted against me. “I guess I just want to think I had a choice in this.”
“You didn’t stand a chance against this guy,” Jake chuckled and Lennon looked down at me.
“What can I say?” I asked her and shrugged my shoulders. “I’m single minded in my pursuit of perfection. And you, my bride, are fekking perfect.”
She looked at me and laughed. “You, my husband, are one heck of a sweet talker but I’ll take it.”
I pulled her down for another kiss and we both ignored Jake for a few beats of our hearts. It was just the two of us until Jake cleared his throat and demanded attention.
“Sign here, here, here and here,” Jake told us both.
“What are these papers?” Lennon asked, taking the pen from Jake.
“These are the application for the marriage license, the prenuptial agreement and the legal agreement for the marriage arrangement.”
Lennon tensed up immediately when he mentioned the arrangement. I squeezed my arms around her and told him, “Never you mind over the last bit. If she ain’t marrying me out of love then no legal document is gonna protect me.”
“But Knox–” Jake started in but I cut him off with a dark look.
It was true though, I didn’t need protection against the woman who’d stolen my heart. She was mine and mine forever, there was no way around it.
She belonged to me, papers or rings be damned.
Chapter Twenty
Lennon
It all felt like I was living somebody else’s life. Knox had left for Vegas that morning and I was currently getting ready for work. He’d left about a grand in cash for me to cover any extras, he’d said.
A grand. Like it was tossing me a couple pennies.
His wealth was beyond my comprehension. I’d spent my entire life with barely enough to get by, and here I was floating in a cloud of pure luxury.
I pulled on my clothes and called the number he’d left for a driver to pick me up. Jessica had been texting all day, but I’d been napping and hadn’t replied yet. It was basically all the same thing about me moving out and demanding pictures of the ring.
I stretched and stared at my hand as if it belonged to another person, the ring looked garish without Knox’s huge personality next to it. When it was just understated me, it was bigger than life.
God how I missed him. It had been such a short time I felt like my head was spinning. A couple weeks ago I would have told anybody that I was destined to die alone with a hundred cats in an apartment full of newspapers somewhere.
My coworkers and friends probably would have agreed with me.
But now.
Damn.
God damn. Knox O’Connor. I was going to be Mrs. O’Connor and I couldn’t fucking wait.
I walked down the front steps of the mansion Knox called home and waited for the car.
“Miss Lennon, please, Miss!” our matronly housekeeper Sylvie called after me.
“Yes?” I asked and looked up the steps at her.
“You don’t have to wait outside for the car. The driver will come up to the house to tell you he’s arrived. This looks bad, having you waiting outside like this in the pouring rain,” she huffed and puffed as she reached me.
I held out my hand and felt the tiniest drizzle. My hair was pulled back into a tight braid so it could get wet too.
“I love the fresh air, and it’s barely
enough to call it rain. It’s more like mist,” I told her with a smile.
“Mr. O’Connor made me promise to watch over you. If you catch a cold I will never live with myself,” she said, wringing her hands.
It was sweet how he cared so much for me that he’d station a housekeeper to keep an eye on things. “Oh look, here’s the car,” I said. “I’ll be more careful next time.”
“Please let me know when you come home, I will be sick with worry until I know I have you safe under the roof,” she told me, her brow knit in concern.
“I will, I promise,” I said and turned to walk down the stairs. I thought of something and turned back. “Are you here all the time or just when Knox is gone?”
“Not all the time, when Mr. O’Connor is here I can go home. There’s no way anything bad would ever happen with him under the roof,” she said with a sincere smile.
“No doubt,” I laughed and imagined his thick, muscled arms around me. I shivered at the memory and cursed the fact that he wouldn’t be home when I finished work. We hadn’t had proper time to fully break in his bed and the rest of the house.
I wanted him to take me on every surface possible; I wanted to mark the entire place as my territory.
It was so unlike me, it’s funny what loving a man like Knox would do to a girl like me.
I arrived at work right on time, slipped my apron on and avoided Kyle and Charlotte’s matching curious grins as I wiped down the counter.
Finally Charlotte couldn’t take it. “Where is it?” she demanded and grabbed my hand. Spotting the massive diamond she squealed and said, “Oh my god! It’s huge!”
“That’s what she said,” Kyle snickered.
I looked at him and said, “Oh yeah, I’ve said that more than a few times, if you know what I mean.”
His face screwed up and he said, “Oh, no, don’t go there.”
“Going there’s the only way I’ll survive this shift,” I laughed.
We’d always had a good joking friendship, from the first day I started and he’d convinced me there were left handed and right-handed beer steins.
It wasn’t my proudest moment, but since then Kyle and I had spent our time ribbing each other and making fun.
I would miss working at George’s, and I supposed it was only a matter of time before I had to quit. It didn’t feel right to take a job from somebody who truly needed it, and I had the feeling that Knox expected me to be ready for his beck and call.
I worked doubly hard, wondering if my guilt at falling into such a luxurious life made me want to make up for it to my coworkers for some reason.
Or maybe I just knew I wasn’t going to be around much longer and wanted to leave them with a good impression of me.
I restocked the bar, dealt with customers, cleaned the shelves, and attempted the monumental task of rearranging the store room where Knox had tasted my pussy for the first time.
I could have come just thinking about it, but I focused on my task instead.
Around nine I heard cheering and Charlotte’s voice calling for me.
“Lennon! He’s on! He’s on!” she screamed excitedly.
I dropped the broom in my hand with a clatter and rushed to the bar. George had turned every television to the channel broadcasting Knox’s fight and the crowd was rowdy as they interviewed the fighters.
Everybody cheered when Knox sauntered up to the interviewer and Kyle yelled, “Shut up! Everybody shut the hell up!”
They complied and George hit the volume button on the remote. Knox’s voice boomed out of the bar’s sound system.
“Fekkin right I’m gonna win, I gotta make this quick and get back to Boston,” he said, staring right into the camera.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” the sportscaster asked him, shoving the microphone into his face.
“I got me girl waitin for me, Knox replied. “We’re getting married.”
“You’re getting married? When’s the big event?” the sportscaster asked.
Knox looked right into the camera as if he could see me out there, my eyes locked on his and he said, “She’s gonna make me the happiest man on earth this Friday. So let’s fekkin win this thing so I can get back to her!”
The people at the fight went wild and I swear I saw more than a few women in the background wearing sour expressions.
Charlotte and Kyle both clapped me on the back and congratulated me, the group around the bar asked me a million questions all at once.
“Show them your ring,” Charlotte said, tugging at my hand.
I stretched it out and looked at my finger, narrowed my eyes and gasped.
It was gone.
The symbol of our love, the hundred thousand dollar beautiful diamond encrusted band of platinum…was gone.
I thought I was going to faint, I looked back up to the television where Knox was pummeling his opponent to the ground and finishing the fight in well under a minute.
His face was a mask of raw animal savagery and his fists were covered with blood as he jumped around triumphantly.
My hands trembled as I looked at Charlotte, hoping she’d have an answer.
Her face was frozen in horror.
I turned to Kyle and he offered me a small reassuring smile. “Well I guess this is where we find out how much he loves you.”
“I guess,” I replied, terrified to find out.
Chapter Twenty One
Lennon
“Whatdoyoumeanyoucan’tfinditohmygod!” Charlotte screeched in my face as I searched the shelves under the bar where I’d been cleaning earlier.
“I mean I can’t find it!” I yelled back, tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Check the shelf behind the tequila,” Kyle told me as he poured beers for some customers. The place was packed and Kyle was handling most of the customers as Charlotte basically stood behind me freaking out and I searched for the ring.
I did some mental figuring. It had been eighty six grand for just the diamond, the setting and the diamonds encrusting the band must have put it well over a hundred grand easily.
Knox was never going to want to speak to me again.
I felt panic racing around my chest so fast that it made it hard to breathe. I started to pant and felt the room spinning around me as I tried to stand up.
My legs turned to jelly and I dropped to the filthy floor behind the bar. My last thought before losing consciousness was how gross it was that so many peanuts had fallen under the edge of the bar and we’d apparently never cleaned them up.
I didn’t know how long it took but the darkness was shattered with ice cold water to my face.
I sat up, sputtering and angry, to find George’s terrified face staring at me.
“What the fuck, George!” I exclaimed.
“We didn’t know if you were going to wake up,” he said, “and I didn’t think an ambulance would be good for business. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“Why?” I asked, feeling groggy but okay.
“You have quite a nasty cut on your forehead that needs to be looked at. It might need stitches.
“You’re joking, right?” I asked and lifted my hand to touch my head.
It came away red and sticky with fresh blood.
“We stopped most of the bleeding but you’ve left your mark on our floors,” George smiled and glanced down.
I followed the direction of his eyes and saw a large rust colored stain on the rough hewn wooden floorboards.
“Oh my god, I’m sorry,” I said, “I’ll pay to have it removed.”
“No way, it adds to the charm of the place. And when you quit, I can point to it and tell new girls that the last one bled for this place,” George grinned. “Now let’s get that head looked at.”
Charlotte was busy flitting from table to table and Kyle was handling the long line up at the bar. People were staring at me with a mixture of awe and disgust. I suddenly wanted to get the hell out of there.
I grabbed my purse and let him help me to his truc
k. We drove to the nearest hospital and I tried to ignore the emotions that were whirling around inside me.
Fear that Knox would hate me for losing the ring, anxiety over how I was going to pay for this visit, and disgust at my weakness. I hadn’t ever fainted in my life, why the hell did my body decide to do it now?
The emergency room wasn’t too busy so we only had to wait a couple hours or so. I tried to pass the time on my phone, but realized I had left it behind at the bar. I killed time reading outdated fashion magazines instead.
Even three years ago they were gossiping about Knox’s dating life. I stared at the tiny photograph of him with some impossibly tall supermodel heading into some movie premier and wondered if she had lost him a hundred grand in a matter of days and maybe that’s why she wasn’t on his arm to this day.
We got a little room in the back and George announced he was going to find the cafeteria to get himself some coffee. He asked me if I needed anything, but the pain in my head made everything seem unappealing as hell.
George returned and we resumed our waiting, with me drifting in and out of sleep and him sipping his coffee and reading some battered detective novel he’d found in the waiting room.
A few hours after we’d arrived, George announced that he had to get home. It was in the middle of the night and the doctor still hadn’t seen me, so I told him to go, I didn’t mind.
In fact I did mind, I didn’t want to be left alone on the paper covered hospital bed under the harsh florescent lights, but I couldn’t expect George to stay. He had a family of his own.
If only Knox was there with me. But then I’d have to tell him about the ring and he might leave me forever.
A few moments after George left I heard the door open.
“Did you forget something?” I asked without opening my eyes.
“Ye, I forgot me heart right here with you, kitten,” Knox said.
My eyes snapped open and exclaimed, “Knox! How did you know I was here? I thought you weren’t coming back until Sunday.”
“When I heard ye hurt yerself, I called my pilot and had him bring us home,” he told me, rushing to my side. He stroked my cheek and said, “I didn’t realize it was this fekking bad. I should never have left yer side.”
IRISH: a Bad Boy Fighter Romance Page 7
