Ripple (Persy & Sully) (Seaside Valleria #2)

by Marianne Knightly

  His eyes narrowed. “I’m on a break. I wanted to see if maybe I could catch you on yours. Maybe we could talk.”

  Maybe we could talk. Hadn’t she heard that before? Heard it from her family just before they sat her down and laid blame or shame on her head. Heard it from her ex, who’d done the same. Heard it from the people who knew her, knew her grief, but still did the same, too.

  Whenever someone had said they should talk, what they really meant was: sit down, shut up, and listen because they were right and she was wrong, no matter what it was.

  She wasn’t putting up with that shit anymore. Especially not from Sully, who seemed to think changing the nature of their relationship was his choice, not theirs.

  She’d already had one man make that decision before. She wasn’t going to let another make it now.

  “You want to make time to talk now? Maybe it’s time for me to dump this load of dishes on your head instead.”

  He smiled, as if amused by her—the jerk!

  “You can try it, but you wouldn’t get very far.”

  The princes, she reminded herself. It wouldn’t do to throw a fit in front of the future king. Not to mention she might scare Liliana.

  Liliana. A little girl.

  Another girl’s face, twisted in fear with tears of distress, flashed through her mind. She pushed away the vision, no longer sure if it was her memory or her guilt.

  Either way, little girls should never be scared.

  “Persy, honey, what’s wrong?”

  She looked up, startled to see Sully had moved close and his face was tense.

  Damn it. She hadn’t meant to think of what had happened, and now Sully had seen something on her face. “N-nothing’s wrong. Get out of my way and leave me alone. We’re. Done.”

  He ignored her declaration. Again. “What’s wrong?”

  He wouldn’t get that part of her. She’d given it to someone before and they’d trampled all over it. She’d shared with Millie and Hector in a weak moment. It had been safe to tell them, but it wouldn’t be safe with Sully. She couldn’t be vulnerable with Sully, or he’d walk all over her, like another man had done before. “I’m working and you’re bothering me, that’s what wrong.”

  He watched her for a few moments. “Then we’ll talk after work.”

  “I’m busy.”

  His eyes flashed. “Like hell you are. Doing what?”

  She gave him a fake smile. “None of your damn business.”

  “Persy—”

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  They both turned to see Hector standing there, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. “Everyone’s tuning into the show, in case you were wondering.”

  She glanced around and saw faces hastily turning away. Great.

  She still had to serve these people, and they were probably bad-mouthing her or assuming there was a problem and it was her fault.

  She whipped around to face Sully. This was all his fault.

  It was his fault people were looking and pointing fingers.

  His fault that people were blaming her.

  His fault. Not hers.

  Not her fault.

  It wasn’t her fault.

  It wasn’t her fault!

  Her eyes drifted to the side, as she remembered a scene from her past.

  “It’s all your fault, Persy. It’s your fault she died!”

  “It’s not! You heard the doctor. This happens, and there’s no explanation for it.” It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault.

  “It’s all your fault!”

  No! It couldn’t be her fault. She couldn’t live with herself if it was her fault.

  It couldn’t be her fault.

  Could it?

  “Persy, are you all right?”

  Her eyes drifted back to the present, to Sully. The scent of the pub—aged wood mixed with the scent of Frannie’s cooking—filtered in.

  The pub. The people. The customers.

  All watching them.

  All watching her.

  Blaming her.

  Her breath was heaving.

  Too much. It was too much.

  Not her fault. Not her fault.

  Him.

  It was his fault.

  It was his fault.

  “You, you, you jerk!”

  Without realizing she was doing it, without even thinking, she slapped Sully across the face.

  The entire pub went still.

  She stared in disbelief at her hand, which was getting red and tingling.

  She glanced up at Sully, whose face was turned to the side. He rubbed a hand over his cheek, then stared at her.

  She heard a crash nearby. “Oh my God.”

  She lifted both hands to cover her mouth, then realized the crash had been her dropping the tray. She looked at the wreckage of glass and food remains at her feet. “Oh my God.”

  She barely noticed Hector calling off the Royal Protection agents who’d begun to approach them.

  What had she done?

  Hector sidled close to her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. His voice was soft. “Persy, you all right?”

  She could feel it, that dry, clawing feeling in her throat when tears were near.

  She’d slapped him. She’d slapped him.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Persy, why don’t you sit down?”

  She shook her head, almost violently. “Not here.” Not here with all these people.

  “The office, then.” Hector was leading her away. She heard him mumble something to Sully and they made their way through the pub.

  Hector stopped at the bar to speak to Daley. “Give everyone a free drink, then get them out quick, yeah?”

  They moved past the princes’ and Millie’s booths, Hector stopping briefly at both, but she didn’t pay attention. She closed her eyes because she couldn’t bear to see Liliana’s face. What if she’d scared her?

  Little girls should never be scared.

  Sully still felt the heat of her hand on his face. Why’d she do it? Had he been pushing too hard? He hadn’t thought so, but he’d be the first to admit it if he was wrong.

  Maybe he had been pushing. In the past, he’d only come by the pub on the nights she’d closed and he was off shift. Today was the first time he’d come in the light of day. Thinking on it, he had been interrupting her work, but he hadn’t thought of it that way. He’d just thought they could both take their breaks together, but maybe that had been crossing a line.

  Damn it. He needed to talk to her. Find out what had happened and why she’d slapped him. Even if she was pissed about him stopping by, he didn’t think that equaled a slap. Hector asked him to give her a few minutes, but that was a few too many for him.

  He looked around and saw several people averting their eyes and their camera phones.

  Great.

  All he needed was a video of his face getting slapped to show up online. He was a cop, for God’s sake. That kind of shit could ruin his career.

  He lumbered over to the bar and slid onto a stool. He set his elbows on the bar and then leaned forward, his hands delving into his hair. From his periphery, he noticed Millie getting up and taking a little girl to another booth—shit, royalty was here; no wonder people had their camera phones out—then she started helping Daley manage the crowd.

  He was a cop, a fucking trained observer, yet he hadn’t noticed the Royal Protection agents or the royalty in the room because he’d been so focused on finding Persy.

  He wanted to blame his ma for this. She was the one who’d called him not an hour ago, asking him when he was coming home to Ireland, and telling him that a girl he’d dated once—Siobhan O’Malley from down the street—had just gotten engaged, and wasn’t it nice she found someone steady and ready to settle down?

  Translation: his mother thought he was immature and not ready to commit. One of his sisters bugging him about this last night, then his mother this morning. A man could only take so much, and he�
�d had this shit nearly every day since he’d come to Valleria. He’d gotten it before, back in Ireland, but it had never been as bad or as often as this.

  Yet hadn’t he committed to Persy last night? He’d done it not because of his family, but because he wanted her, and maybe even needed her. Maybe he hadn’t committed like Siobhan’s man, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a step in the right direction.

  Then again, based on the fact that Persy had just slapped him, maybe his family was right, and he wasn’t ready for a proper relationship.

  He closed his eyes for a second, but all he could see was Persy’s face. It had moved from fiery and irritated to depressed in a flash. What had caused it? What had triggered it? He’d only seen that face once before: when she’d once asked him to stop in bed and threw him out.

  What she didn’t know was that, even though she’d asked him to leave, he’d kept watch on her house all night, just in case she’d needed something. She hadn’t called him or needed him, and that had hurt more than he thought it would. It hadn’t looked like she’d reached out to anybody else, either; no one else had come by her place that night, though she might have called someone. When she hadn’t reached out to him, however, it had stung.

  Remembering that, he realized that he was being selfish, worrying about his feelings when she was clearly in pain. He had a mother and sisters who’d always reached out to him, and they were women like Persy, who knew how to take care of things themselves. Yet, his family asked for help all the same.

  Persy never did.

  The stool next to him clattered and he knew it was Hector without opening his eyes. “How is she?”

  “What happened?”

  Sully opened his eyes, smoothed his hair, and turned. Hector was standing, one elbow leaning on the bar, the other in a loose fist at his side. “You gonna do something with that hand?”

  “I should. Jesus, what did I tell you? I told you I’d kick your ass if you hurt her.”

  He just shook his head. “Threaten me later. How’s she doing?”

  Hector pursed his lips for a few moments, then his hand relaxed a little. “Shook up. What happened?”

  “I swear to Christ, I don’t know. One minute we were talking, sparring like we did last night, the next she was someplace else.”

  “I get you.”

  He blinked. “You do?”

  Hector shrugged. “I’ve seen it happen. Not as much with Persy—only saw a moment here or there, nothing like today—but Millie gets those. Remembers painful shit from her past.”

  Sully twisted on the stool, his torso now facing Hector’s. “What do you do?”

  “Hold her ‘til it goes away and remind her it’s the past. It’s not her present and it’s not her future. She won’t live through it again.”

  “That work?”

  “Sometimes.” Hector grinned. “But if it doesn’t, I get creative.”

  He caught sight of Millie carrying a broom and dustpan in one hand, gloves in the other.

  Hector turned to see what he was looking at, and his eyes narrowed. “Babe, you’re not cleaning up glass.”

  “I’ve done it before. It’s no big deal.”

  “Babe. Daley can do it.”

  She pointed at the floor with her glove-filled hands. “But I’ll just—”

  “Babe.”

  “Don’t ‘babe’ me.”

  “I got it, Millie.” Daley rounded the corner of the bar and came towards her. “I can get it.”

  “I know you can, but I was just—”

  Hector gave her an even look. “Baby, you know we appreciate you jumping in like this, but maybe it’d be better if you checked on Persy.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, of course I will. But I thought she might want time alone.”

  Sully spoke without realizing he was doing it. “Go to her. The last thing Persy needs is to be alone right now.”

  Her eyes flitted between him and Hector before she nodded, handed over the supplies, and made her way down the bar and into the back hall.

  Sully watched her go and caught sight of the princes. “Your royal friends see everything?”

  Hector shrugged. “Probably. Why?”

  He saw the youngest princess—Princess Liliana, if he was remembering correctly—bouncing up and down in her seat. “The princess see anything?”

  Hector glanced over, then back. “If she did, she doesn’t seem traumatized by it. My guess is Millie kept her distracted while everything was going on. By the way.” Hector straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. “The future king of Valleria would like to meet you. He just signaled for me to bring you over to him.”

  Christ. He’d just have to man up and do it. A future king could get him fired—both here and in Ireland—with a snap of his fingers. If Prince Alexander felt he was in the wrong with what had just happened, he could make that happen.

  “There a reason he wants to meet me?”

  “He doesn’t need a reason. Come on.”

  When Sully had first arrived in Valleria, he’d been trained on how to act around royalty. With such a large royal family—nine children of the current king and queen, the extensive extended royal family and, of course, Prince Lorenzo living in Masillia—it was expected that he might see or even meet them at some point, even if he was just additional protection during a formal royal event. He’d learned how to address them, how to bow just right, and how to react in various situations.

  He’d had no trouble the first time he’d met Prince Lorenzo. It hadn’t been under the best circumstances—he and Hector had just taken over the bar, and the previous owner had been an asshole about it, even hurting Millie in the process—but Prince Lorenzo had been kind. He’d even insisted that he be called simply Lorenzo, without the title, or Captain, his title from the army. Meeting him had been easy.

  Meeting a future king, however, was an entirely different matter.

  Hector stopped at Prince Lorenzo’s side of the booth and the little girl bounced on the seat, her arms outstretched.

  “Uncle Hector!”

  Hector gave her a grin, plucked her up, and hitched her on his hip. “How’s it going, Liliana?”

  “I’ve got a cousin! And she has bright green eyes. And she has pretty hair like Auntie Ari-Ari-Ari—”

  “Arianna,” Prince Lorenzo chimed in.

  “That’s what I said. And she’s always smiling. And she likes to laugh. And guess what?”

  Hector was smiling flat out. “What?”

  “I make her laugh, too!”

  “That’s great.” Hector shot Prince Lorenzo a quick glance, who nodded. “Do you want to go see if we have any ice cream in the kitchen?”

  Her little fisted hands shot up in the air. “Ice cream!”

  Hector put her down and took her hand before they walked away.

  Sully turned to Prince Alexander and bowed, then did the same to Prince Lorenzo; when he rose from the bow, both princes had risen from their seats.

  “Alex, this is Officer Ronan Sullivan. Sully, this is my eldest brother, His Royal Highness, Prince Alexander Robert Louis Santoro di Valleria.”

  The corner of Prince Alexander’s mouth tipped up. “You didn’t have to use my entire title.”

  “I know how fussy you are about these things.”

  “And I know how fussy you’re not.” Prince Alexander turned to him and held out his hand. It was rare for a royal—or at least for the current King Gabriel—to shake hands, and the gesture was usually only reserved for heads of state. Prince Alexander was more informal than his father, but Sully recognized it as the sign of respect it was and shook his hand.

  “I always enjoy meeting an officer, whether they be Vallerian, Irish, or anything else.”

  “It’s an honor to meet you, Your Highness.”

  “Have you enjoyed your time with the Masillian Police Force?”

  He nodded. “Yes, Sir. It’s been a wonderful experience and I’ve learned a great deal.”

  The prin
ce seemed to be assessing him for a few moments, but Sully didn’t squirm.

  “You’ll be heading back to Ireland soon, will you not?”

  “Yes, Sir. My assignment here was only for one year.”

  “Ireland’s a beautiful place. I have not yet had the chance to go; perhaps on a future royal visit.”

  “Ireland would love to welcome you, I’m sure, Sir.”

  “My wife has rarely been abroad but for the trips we’ve taken together. Would you recommend she also visit Ireland?”

  Heat prickled under his skin. This was a test, he was sure of it. He hoped to Christ he passed. “Of course, Sir. I do believe Her Royal Highness Princess Rebecca would very much enjoy Ireland. It’s a country full of strong woman deserving of respect, as I’ve heard Her Highness is.”

  The prince crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t have a problem with strong women?”

  He spoke without hesitation. “I was raised by one, Sir, and raised alongside two others, those being my sisters. Beg your pardon, Sir, and certainly no offense intended for Her Highness”—the prince rolled his shoulders back, shit!—“Strong women, I’ve found, often have a soft spot underneath that requires a great deal of care and attention. Only a man strong of heart, as well as of strong mind and body, is up to such a task.”

  After a heated silence, the prince spoke again. “That’s an astute observation. Do you see yourself as such a man?”

  Not right now, he didn’t. “Sir, only the woman can answer that.”

  The prince uncrossed his arms. “A good answer.”

  He almost sighed in relief; it seemed as though he’d passed the test.

  Prince Lorenzo grinned. “That means my brother and I won’t hurt you for hurting Persy.”

  Rather than respond to that—which could turn things against him—Sully focused on someone else. “Was Princess Liliana startled by the noise?”

  Lorenzo shook his head. “Millie distracted her. She heard the crash of Persy’s tray, but not the slap. We’re good.”

  Thank Christ. She didn’t seem upset a few minutes ago, but he was glad for the confirmation.

  Prince Alexander turned to his brother. “I do believe we still have some things to discuss. Perhaps we should do so back at the castle.”