And then there were the gifts. Several times a week another present would arrive at her door, each one so ridiculous she couldn’t decide whether he was having fun at her expense or trying to be romantic.
She would have guessed the former, except they were all so incredibly…thoughtful.
He’d added to her dinosaur collection with a stuffed T-Rex wearing a glittery green top hat. He’d sent her a flowerpot full of gold-wrapped chocolate—her favorite kind—and enough emerald green yarn for her to crochet him a William-sized blanket.
How had he found out enough about her to get her such personalized presents? More importantly, why was he bothering? They both knew the marriage was an in-name-only stopgap measure. No one had addressed the issue recently, but Bronte had to assume it was taking longer for Mr. Tanaka to sort out William’s citizenship issue because of his sketchy background. He hadn’t exactly been a boy scout.
When his cousins met him in Ireland, he’d been participating in and betting on the kind of fights that only happened in smoky bars and abandoned buildings. The kind with bare knuckles and very few rules.
A man like that might not appreciate being told what to do. Was that why he’d been trying to win her over? Was he crossing a line just to prove he could? Because he’d been told by his cousins to leave her alone?
No. That didn’t ring true.
His texts, the gifts, all of his appeals to her were too genuine. If she were only a challenge or a poke in the eye of authority, the gains he’d made wouldn’t have been worth his effort, since ninety percent of the time she’d done her best to ignore him.
But not always. Some nights she’d been weak and he’d sounded so lonely she couldn’t help but relate. Respond.
During those occasional slip-ups they had an unspoken agreement not to talk about the status of their relationship. Instead, they’d talk about nothing for hours at a time. Usually until one or both of them fell asleep still clutching their phones like a lifeline.
In the morning, the cycle would begin anew, with her ignoring and him persisting until he wore her down again.
She’d started looking forward to their silly conversations and his playful pictures. Craving more. But until today, she’d never been the one to initiate any kind of contact. She hadn’t even texted him that she was coming.
If you had, you could have saved Tasha the trouble.
She’d told herself she couldn’t take the chance that he’d get a member of his family or hers to stop her from showing up. He’d never asked her to visit. Not really. But she needed to be face to face for this conversation.
Stop lying and admit it. You want to see him because he’s getting to you. You miss him.
Maybe a little.
Thank God the rest of her family accepted the “spa trip with her friend Erica” excuse without too many questions. She’d made sure Austen knew who she was going with, which guaranteed she wouldn’t try to join her to see if they’d be interested in her skincare line. The pediatric nurse, her dramatic mood swings and her well-documented husband trouble was enough to put anybody off.
Bronte had been counting on that. And the distraction caused by the Irish invasion as the Finn and Wayne families merged.
They were both large and close-knit, so it made sense that they would start to blend after Hugo and Younger got hitched. Even more so once the matriarchs bonded in protest over the small civil ceremony that happened too quickly for them to plan a proper reception.
Ellen Finn and Cassandra Wayne wouldn’t be getting over that anytime soon.
Bronte didn’t blame Hugo. He’d been waiting longer than most of them knew for the man he loved. He wanted to lock that shit down, get married and start their lives together ASAP.
No one knew that Bronte had actually been the first in her family to skip out on invitations and orange blossoms for a Finn. They’d never even met William, and Bronte would never be impulsive enough to elope with a man who was practically a stranger. Her mother, who was famous for having extra sensory snoop-abilities when it came to her children, would have sensed it, right? But she hadn’t, which was both thrilling and a tiny bit depressing.
Of course no one suspected her. Bronte was, hands down, the most dependably average of them all. The registered nurse who, at forty-one, had never done anything unexpected, impulsive or remotely illegal. The good sister who took up the art of crochet instead of skydiving or krav maga, and always lived a raised voice or a stone’s throw away from at least two members of her family. She’d gone from her parent’s house to the Wayneplex with her siblings…then back to her parent’s.
She’d never even moved out of the neighborhood she’d grown up in. There was no reason to believe someone like that would keep something so important or salacious a secret.
But she had. For months.
And yes, it wasn’t technically a secret, since most of the Finns, her brother, Hugo, and half the police force knew about it thanks to her initial overreaction. But she’d never kept anything from her sisters before. From her mother. The fact that she had, as far as she was concerned, made her Mata Hari.
Yesterday it stopped feeling like a harmless rebellion. She’d made a late night call to Tasha, used the vacation days she’d been hoarding and rented a car. She’d even called Erica and talked her into backing up her story. That woman owed her.
She felt like she was in high school again, sneaking off to a concert without her parents’ permission. Something she’d only done once and felt so guilty about she’d confessed the next morning, practically grounding herself.
Now she was coming to give her inconvenient secret husband a piece of her mind for getting her caught up in the seedy underbelly of…whatever it was he’d been up to. Warning him that he needed to watch out for his fine ass would be a necessary byproduct of that plan, but needs must.
She couldn’t let their late night conversations or his cute stuffed animal deliveries weaken her resolve or make her forget what was between them was only temporary.
William wasn’t hers, not really. He was trouble.
The exact kind of trouble that was currently standing on the sidewalk in front of her, squaring off with another man while a skinny blonde clung to him like a slutty barnacle.
“Feck off now,” William growled, anger thickening his accent. “Walk away or I’ll give you the fight you’ve been asking for. Same goes if you step foot on this property again.”
“This is Collins’ property, not yours,” The man slurred belligerently, obviously drunk in the middle of the day. “You can’t tell me shit. No ignorant busboy is gonna tell me how to treat what’s mine.”
The older man reached for the blonde but William sent him spinning to face the brick of the nearest wall, his arm twisted behind his back. “The lady asked for help and my boss, who does own this place and everything in it, told me to take out the trash. That gives me all the rights I need.”
“Let me go, damn it. You’re breaking my arm.”
William released him with a grimace of disgust, his temper on a tight leash. “I barely touched you and I don’t like repeating myself. Leave. Don’t come back.”
The drunk noticed his “lady” hanging on to William’s shirt and swore, staggering away without another glance in their direction.
Good lord, she must be having a hot flash, Bronte thought weakly. It had to be why she felt so warm, since she didn’t find that sexy at all. At. All.
Damn.
“You’re officially my hero,” Skinny Blonde gushed, leaning into him as if she might swoon at any second.
Oh hell no.
Watching William extricate himself from the clinging vine in one smooth, subtle motion was the only thing that held her back from making a scene.
“All part of the service,” he assured her with an easy, absent smile.
“For that kind of service you can call me Jean.” She reached for him again. “I’ve noticed you at the bar but I didn’t know you had that in you.” She smacked her lip
s, eyeballing his chest as if it were on the menu. “You were so…aggressive. It gave me all sorts of ideas.”
Bronte was getting a few of her own. Of the violent, hair-snatching variety.
“Do you have your phone? Your purse?” William ran his hand through his hair, shifting uncomfortably as he changed the subject. “The cab should be here any time now.”
“Are you free tonight, Willy?” The tramp didn’t know when to give up. “It looks like I’m single for the moment, but even if I wasn’t it wouldn’t matter. My old man can be a bear when he drinks, but he doesn’t mind sharing.”
And she was done.
“Willy isn’t free tonight, Jean. And in case you didn’t notice, he’s not interested in what you’re selling. Why don’t you just say thank you for the rescue, have some self-respect and move on?”
Skinny Blonde spun precariously on her heels and narrowed her eyes on Bronte, reminding her that she’d dressed for comfort on the long drive. Wearing a stretched out college sweatshirt and scrub bottoms that had once been a bright, cheerful shade of blue, she clearly didn’t register on the feminine threat scale for Paris Hilton’s trailer park twin.
“I don’t know who you are, ma’am, but you really need to move along and mind your own business.”
William, who’d started grinning as soon as he heard Bronte’s voice, winced at the woman’s tone.
She did not just ma’am me.
Oh yes she did.
“But this is my business, Jean. I’m his wife. And I’m sorry, but I’m not into sharing.”
Chapter Two
He didn’t know why Bronte was here, but only a fool questioned a miracle when it landed on his doorstep. His Nightingale was close enough to touch after three long months of separation.
Before he’d made a conscious decision to move he was beside her, slipping an arm around her waist to keep her from disappearing.
His fingers flexed and he swallowed a hungry moan. She was here. Right here in the edible flesh and, it seemed, ready to fight for her husband’s honor.
I’m his wife.
And a damn sexy one, at that.
He’d woken up dreaming of her again, not knowing what the day had in store for him as he marked another X on his calendar. Maybe fate was on his side, since he shouldn’t have been here this afternoon for her to run into in the first place.
Why was she here?
For the last week he’d been working nights at the bar while Pat’s grandson was marking something off his bucket list—deep-sea fishing off the coast of somewhere tropical—so the request for help during the early lunch rush was unexpected.
He’d been clearing tables when the barely sober couple walked in and started scaring the regulars with their dodgy behavior. This was an oddly rare occurrence, despite the restaurant being attached to a pub, but it was one that was right up William’s alley. He’d grown up in and around bars of far less repute than Pat’s.
He’d moved closer without thought and got there in time to stop a single blow from landing, leading the duo outside to a smattering of applause from the watchful blue hairs in the crowd.
William always did have a way with the ladies.
Part of him was disappointed he’d managed to avoid a scrap. He was restless, impatient, and sick of waiting for his time here to wind down.
It wasn’t that he was miserable in Baltimore. He had a flexible job that had him filling in wherever he was needed, so he rarely grew bored. He’d managed to befriend Murphy, the owner of the local boxing club, who’d given him a place to blow off steam and swap stories. Between that and The Collins’ easy acceptance, he’d lucked into something good here, he knew. But it wasn’t home, and he wasn’t any closer to winning over his wife, so a good brawl with the gobshite would have done wonders for taking the edge off.
Reining himself in the way he had to since he’d come to America wasn’t something he was used to, but for the most part it had been worth it.
Even if the cousins initially looked on him with suspicion, they’d accepted his brother and sister readily enough. Given them a roof and the benefit of the doubt.
And he’d been growing on them as well, he knew, though marrying Bronte had lost him some ground in that regard. In their minds, he was the git who’d taken advantage of Hugo Wayne’s sister to gain his green card.
He’d gotten a black eye from his bride and been shuttled off by his family for his trouble.
At first, he’d resented the hell out of their interference, but in retrospect he couldn’t blame them. He was all too aware he wasn’t good enough for the likes of Bronte Wayne. Not yet.
His family would never believe him, but he hadn’t planned to whisk her off like that. Not that their future wasn’t set in his mind from the instant he’d seen her, because it was. But as luck would have it, she’d been the one to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
I’m his wife.
Bronte thought she was putting on a show for their audience. Saving him from an awkward situation. He was all for playing her damsel in distress if this was the end result.
Who knew being claimed by a woman would make him this hard?
“Mrs. Finn,” he murmured, enjoying her surprise when he pulled her flush against him. Her breasts pressed into his stomach and he slid one hand down to the sweet curve of her hip, knowing he was taking advantage of the situation, but needing to touch her just the same. “I’ve been thinking about you since I rolled out of bed this morning.”
“Wh—you have?”
He nodded, enjoying her confusion. “You woke up missing me too, didn’t you? It feels like it’s been months since I’ve had you in my arms. I think we should fix that right away, don’t you, darlin’?”
He didn’t give her another chance to respond, skimming his mouth lightly over hers. Her lips parted on a gasp and he accepted the unconscious invitation, instantly deepening the kiss. Hazelnut and Bronte. He groaned, tugging at her jaw and angling his mouth to take more.
How the hell had he walked away from this?
Leaving her that last day after coming so close to having her should have nominated him for sainthood. She’d been willing and so responsive, but he’d known as soon as the fog lifted she’d come out swinging harder than before.
She hadn’t been ready, so he’d done what she wanted, what everyone wanted, and walked away. He’d given her time to get used to the idea of them being together. To come to terms with the fact that he meant them both to keep their vows.
He wasn’t sure he had the strength of will to let her go again.
The small, greedy sounds she was making were sealing her fate, his fingers tightening instinctively on her hip, torturing himself as he rocked her against the erection straining the zipper of his jeans.
More, love. Give me more.
He forgot everything but the need to claim his wife. His scattered thoughts raced desperately, seeking a solution as she slid her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, one leg lifting to wrap around his thigh.
Jesus, yes.
His apartment was only a few blocks away, but he knew there were rooms above the pub for family. If none of the Collins clan were home, he and Bronte could finally start that honeymoon he’d been dying for. He palmed her ass and lifted her onto her toes, ready to carry her if he had to.
A horn honked loudly, causing them to break apart, eyes wide with lust and confusion.
Honk!
William slowly turned his head to see a white-haired man leaning out the window of his cab and eyeing them curiously. “Pick up?”
Hell.
William was reluctant to let Bronte out of his arms, but his sense of responsibility had him stepping away and gesturing toward the blonde. “Yes, um, that is… This young lady needs a ride home.”
He’d forgotten all about her, and her tense expression told him she knew it. At his glance, she slid her hair behind her ears, wiping off some of the mascara that streaked her cheeks as she forced a smile.
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br /> “Such a gentleman,” she said before frowning over at Bronte. “Are you really married? To her? How did that even happen?”
He guided her away from the bristling Bronte and into the back of the cab. “That’s a story worth telling, but you haven’t got time to hear it.” He winked at the driver. “Begging was involved, but as you can see, eventually I wore the stubborn beauty down.”
William stood, closing the door and nodding to the now smiling man. “Take her wherever she wants to go.”
As long as it’s not here. He let that go unspoken, but he could see the message had been received.
When the cab pulled away he took a fortifying breath and turned toward his other half. Her arms were crossed and her expression told him their moment for slipping upstairs and finally slaking their mutual lust had passed. For now.
“So Willy.” Her full lips pursed and he tried not to imagine biting them so he could focus. “Does that happen a lot? Grateful women in need of rescuing from drunks at the bar throwing themselves at your feet?”
He sliced his hand through the air in denial and shook his head. “God no. Believe it or not, that was a first.”
Her expression was clearly skeptical.
“Truly. This respectable establishment is tame compared to Finn’s, and I thought a pub couldn’t get more low key than my cousin’s.”
“Please.”
“Would I lie?” He ignored her eye roll. “You’d think it was a church serving pints instead of sacramental wine, unless you count big talk about the Ravens and their wife-snogging tendencies as sins.”
He saw her lips twitch and sent her a wicked grin. “Once or twice they’ve gone absolutely wild and pulled out the karaoke machine. But I think I’m to blame for that. I may have reminisced about how you serenaded me on our wedding night. Did you make it my special ringtone? The way you threatened to a few weeks ago?”
He was tempted to slip his phone out of his pocket and call her to find out, but her glare warned him not to try.
“You’ve told me most of this before today, remember? Why the hard sell now?”
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