by Cassie Wild
Blowing out a breath, I lay there, my mood getting more and more grim by the minute.
It was fully light outside by the time I dragged myself out of bed. I killed another ten minutes taking a shower, then another ten brewing a cup of coffee. I only drank a few sips of it before dumping it out and cleaning up after myself.
I could waste another few hours here, but it wouldn’t change anything.
I knew what I needed to do, and it was time I got it done.
I didn’t go to my hotel.
First, I went to the store and bought a pay-as-you-go phone, loaded it up with minutes, then spent a good hour driving around the city as I used the car charger to power up the battery.
Once that was done, I headed down to the waterfront. I didn’t go to one of the popular walking or shopping areas, though. I’d been here long enough to locate some of the more off-the-beaten-track areas, and I headed to one I’d searched out just for this.
After parking, I climbed out of the car and walked around for a few minutes, pacing and rubbing my hands in a weak attempt to warm them. I wanted a cigarette. I’d quit smoking years ago. Too many of the men who hired me were in their fifties and sixties, and after listening to the heavy, deep coughing fits from two of them who’d been diagnosed with cancer, and after taking in the yellowed teeth of several more, I decided I was done. My decision to quit was strengthened even more by the nicotine withdrawal.
I didn’t like it when anything had that kind of hold on me, not even cigarettes.
But now I craved one.
Not the nicotine, really. Just the way a smoke had a way of soothing the nerves, even though it only lasted for a few minutes.
I could use that.
But instead of getting into the car and driving to the convenience store I’d passed a mile back, I pulled out the cheap phone and punched in Marcos’s number.
I didn’t question whether he’d answer.
In his line of business, he had business contacts springing up out of the woodwork—and people offering to sell his enemies up the river. He’d answer, give whoever was calling a minute to catch his interest before deciding if he’d stay on the line.
He’d take my call.
He answered with a terse, “Hello.”
“It’s MacTavish.”
“Cormac!” Immediately, his voice changed, full of that fake, boyish charm he used, right up until he decided it no longer served his purposes. “What’s the matter, my friend? Did you lose your phone?”
“No.” I faked a disgusted sigh. “I’m just being cautious. I think a guy who hired me a while back is pissed I couldn’t commit to a job he wanted me to do. His son works in tech, and I started getting some random calls. I turned it off and took out the battery for now.”
That was all bullshit. I didn’t want to risk Marcos—or some tech-genius associate of Jerrel’s—using the phone to track me over the next few days as I tried to settle the headache of this job.
“I’ll have to dump this one in a few days, probably. The guy already knows I’m in Philadelphia, so if he comes looking for me, don’t be surprised if I end up calling you from another phone in a few days.”
“Would you like me to handle the matter? I’d only need his name,” Marcos said.
“No. He’ll get the point I’m not interested. And it’s better off if you don’t get involved, I think. He’s got government contacts.”
I waited for some bravado bullshit about how Marcos wasn’t worried about the government, but they never came. He was still being watched very closely by the city of Philadelphia, and I doubted he was going to risk fucking up and going to jail until after his trial.
“As long as you are certain,” he said in a diffident tone after a few seconds.
“Yeah, I am. Most that will happen is that he sends his kid to try and intimidate me, and trust me…that didn’t work well for him last time. All he can do is throw money at me, and you throw a lot more than he does.”
Marcos laughed warmly. He could be a charming son-of-a-bitch.
“Anyway,” I said, once his laughter had faded. “I wanted to give you an update. I’m going to be spending a fair amount of time at the Downing estate over the next week.”
“Is that a fact?” Marcos didn’t quite manage to hide his eagerness, despite the bored tone he projected.
“It is.” The cold wind sliced right through me. Hunkering against my car, I turned my back to it and stared off at the steely, cold gray water of the Delaware River as it rolled by. It echoed the color of the sky overhead while the wind whistled through the stand of trees that surrounded my small area. “I’m having brunch with them this Friday. Then I’ll be going over again on Christmas Eve.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
His dry tone put my back up.
“I’ll have plenty of time to spend wandering around the place. Apparently, Seamus Downing lets all his people off for the week between Christmas Eve and the day after New Year’s. Both at the house and at his businesses. Must lose an awful lot of money for that.”
Marcos finally seemed interested. “There won’t be any employees around?”
“I don’t think so.” I kept my voice casual. “Might have some light security on his businesses. I mean, he’d be a bloody fool not to have something, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes.” In a thoughtful tone, Marcos murmured, “Yes, he would.”
A thought occurred to me, and I swore silently before taking a deep breath and striving for nonchalance. “Briar did say that he usually keeps extra guards at the house, though. That’s one thing he apparently doesn’t scrimp on. Maybe he’s had trouble there before. I can look into it.”
Marcos made a low murmur under his breath that could have been anything—agreement, skepticism, who the fuck knew?
Finally, he spoke. “Okay, Cormac. This is good information. Let me know if you learn anything worthwhile at the house, okay?”
He was gone in the next moment.
I shoved the phone in my pocket and stared out over the water. The wind blasted me yet again, but I didn’t seek the shelter of the car. Not yet.
For what I was doing, I deserved some kind of punishment. Freezing my ass off wasn’t much of one, but it was a start.
My belly was full.
Too full considering the way my head was pounding. It probably didn’t help that I’d let Briar talk me into a mimosa. Champagne didn’t seem to be my thing, but I didn’t have time to sit down and let it wear off.
Daria and Isabel were out in the back garden. They’d invited me, offering to show me around, but I’d excused myself.
The rest of the Downings were in one of the family rooms.
The three of us who weren’t part of the family had politely stepped out to give them some time alone after Seamus had put in a family video of the last time they had a family Christmas before Briar’s mum died.
I didn’t even know if they’d noticed me leaving.
I hoped not.
If they had, at least I had a plausible reason for my absence, because both Isabel and Daria were gone too.
And I’d damn well rather be biding my time in the halls of a nice warm house than outside in a garden. It wasn’t like there were flowers or anything to see right now anyway, were there?
Thanks to the tour Briar had given me the first time I was there, I was able to make a beeline for the room I wanted to check out, and I went straight there, walking as fast as I could without outright running.
I doubted I’d have too much time, even though they’d all been good and distracted.
The good news was that Seamus’s office contained the kind of fancy shit that would fit into plenty of fancy museums, including a collection of old weapons. I once worked a job for a man who’d been a professor of medieval history—as well as a small-time drug dealer—and he liked to talk. As in talk my fucking ass off. Still, I’d learned some interesting things from him, and I could identify a few of the pieces I’d seen, so if anybody came in, I
’d claim I’d come in here to look at the weapons again. The floors were hard polished wood, so unless somebody was trying to sneak up on me, I’d hear them before they got too close.
The big problem was that Seamus might not mind putting priceless antiques on display, but he wasn’t quite so free with any useful information. I checked the drawers of the elaborate mahogany desk, but it looked to be a custom piece, and although I tried to jimmy the locks, I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t half bad at picking the typical lock, but these were more than that. I might have been able to do it if I wasn’t worried about leaving any signs, but that was the last thing I wanted to do.
Frustrated, I moved away from the desk.
A sour feeling settled in my stomach as I roamed the room, but there was nothing I could find anywhere in there that might work to satisfy Marcos.
Fucking Marcos.
I was coming to hate the prick more and more with every passing day.
And myself too.
The Downings were no saints. That was just the truth. But they’d been decent enough to me, and they clearly loved Briar.
And she loved them.
Whatever I did, I was going to cause her pain, and that knowledge was eating a hole through me.
Fifteen
Briar
I slid out of the family room, teary-eyed and with a knot in my throat.
At some point, Cormac, Daria, and Isabel had all left, and while I understood, I wished Cormac had lingered. I wanted to lean against him.
Normally, I would have just gone to my father and let him wrap one of his big arms around me, but I was still uncertain about how I felt regarding all the things he’d been hiding from me.
Plus…I just wanted Cormac.
It was a crazy thought, but I wanted him more and more, and all the time.
I heard some noise coming from the kitchen and walked in there just as Isabel and Daria closed the door that opened out to the backyard. “Is Cormac with you?”
Daria shook her head, grinning wide. “I don’t think his blood is thick enough for this kind of weather, Briar.”
“Mine sure isn’t,” Isabel said with a shiver, rubbing at her arms.
“You’ve been living up here for a couple of years,” Daria teased.
“And you grew up in Russia.” Isabel stuck out her tongue.
I grinned at the two of them then glanced around. “Okay, I guess I’ll go find him. Hope he didn’t get lost in this place.”
“Oh, I imagine he’s fine,” Isabel said, her voice unusually neutral.
I shot a look at her, wondering if she was hinting at something.
But her pretty face was blank.
Shrugging it off, I left the kitchen and started searching the house.
I found him studying a huge brocade display of the family crest outside Dad’s office. He glanced over at me and smiled, but I couldn’t help but notice the line between his eyebrows.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“Bit of a headache.” He slid me a droll look. “I told you that mimosa was a bad idea for me.”
He’d given me a bewildered look when I passed him the fruity drink. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed it on him. Wincing, I reached up and cupped his face in my hands. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.
I might have even bought it, but his eyes were just…off. Peering into their dark depths, I studied him more closely. There was certainly signs of strain, especially in the lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes, but it wasn’t just that.
“Are you okay?” I asked him again, even more softly this time.
“I’m fine.” He jacked up a shoulder in a shrug that seemed too forced to be natural. He closed his eyes, and when he looked at me, some of the strain was gone from his face. “I…I don’t know, Briar. Maybe it just hit hard, seeing you and your family watching videos of all of you with your mum…” He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “I couldn’t keep watching. You know how long it’s been since I’ve seen my family…” His voice faded into the night, and after a moment, he looked back at me. “It hit harder than I would have thought.”
My heart ached in my chest. I curled my arms around his waist and moved in. “You know, you can always fix that.”
The sun was starting to set when we ended up at my place. The sunset had the soft gold edge to it, and the air was bitter and sharp. Still, I managed to talk Cormac into coming onto my small patio with me where we stacked logs into the metal firepit and then cuddled together on the outdoor couch under a blanket I kept in an all-weather storage bin.
His quiet mood got to me, and I couldn’t quite break through, and while I was tired of trying, I wasn’t quite ready to give up. Pulling my phone from inside my coat, I located one of my favorite playlists.
Putting it on repeat, I set it on the small table next to me and got up, wrapping the blanket around me and tugging on his hand. “Dance with me.”
“It’s fuckin’ cold out here,” he said, but a faint smile curved his lips.
Rising, he moved toward me. I fixed the blanket until it was wrapped around both of us. Cormac hooked a corner of it in one hand, anchoring it, while I did the same on the opposite. We swayed to the music, staring at each other.
A thought, totally out of the blue, occurred to me.
“Did you ever find a decent place to stay?”
He cocked his head, eyes narrowed slightly. “What brought that on?”
“Well…I don’t know.” I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear, feeling a little silly as I did the mental math in my head. No, he hadn’t been in Philadelphia all that long, but certainly, he’d been around long enough to find a place to stay, right? “I guess I just realized I never got around to asking you.”
“I’ve been bouncing around from one place to another,” he said, his eyes holding mine only for a few seconds before he looked away, almost as if he was embarrassed. “I’m staying with friends right now. Just haven’t found any place that’s a good fit.”
The wind whistled through the trees, and I shivered, instinctively moving closer to him. Pressed chest to chest, we were as close as we could get with the layers of clothes separating us.
I licked my lips.
His gaze dropped to my mouth, and my heart skipped a beat. The idea in my head faded, lost in a rush of heat. I pushed it back, focusing back on the matter at hand. All I wanted to do was lean against him, taste his mouth with mine and tug on his hands until he understood that I wanted him touching me.
“And what about your…job?”
His dark eyes shot immediately back up to mine. “My job?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Yeah. Whatever you were doing for the Castellanos.”
Somehow, he’d pulled a mask on, and I hadn’t even realized it. I couldn’t read him now. “It’s over and done. Only took a few weeks.”
“Does that mean you have to go back to Miami now?” I asked. The idea of it filled me with an ache. An unpleasant one.
“Why would it?”
“Well, I mean…” I licked my lips again, uncertain now and not liking it. At all. “I mean, you work for their family, right? Don’t you have to be back down there to do that?”
“Ah…” He smiled. If it wasn’t for the faint glow coming from the frosted light near my back door, I wouldn’t have been able to make out the humor in his eyes. “Thing is…I’m sort of a free agent. Like in football. I bounce around and take jobs from anybody I want.”
“Oh.” I seemed to be saying that a lot tonight. Pursing my lips, I turned this new information over in my head and tried to determine how I felt about it.
I decided I liked it. If he wasn’t some sort of permanent Castellanos employee, it definitely made things easier on me. Maybe it shouldn’t matter, not with my brother being married to Isabel, but in my gut, I knew it did.
“I guess that means you’re planning on staying here a while?”
He hooked his hand around the back
of my neck, his thumb sinking into the muscles and rubbing them. “I’m thinking ‘bout it. See, there’s at least one good reason to stay.”
Heat suffused my face as he stared at me.
Some crazy idea formed in the back of my head, and before I could quash it, I found myself opening my mouth. “What about moving in with me until you make up your mind?”
“What?”
I hadn’t seen him surprised too often, but I realized I’d just successfully and completely stunned him.
Cormac stopped dancing so abruptly, I almost tripped over his feet. He steadied me, eyes locked on my face.
“What?” he said again.
“You heard me,” I told him with a nervous laugh. “I mean, there are times when you spent half the day here anyway, easy. So why not just move in?”
“Briar, I…look…I don’t want to take advantage—”
I cut him off with a kiss. “Maybe I want you to. And maybe I want to take advantage of you.”
We ended up sprawled on the couch, leaving the blanket, our coats, and clothes in a trail behind us, one that stretched from the kitchen all the way through the house into the living room.
I had one sock on, and Cormac fought to push his boxers down as I tumbled him down with me onto the couch.
We were both laughing as he settled between my thighs, but the laughter faded as he reached up and cupped my face in his hands.
The look in his eyes stole my breath away. I’d never had anybody look at me the way he did. I’d never realized a man could look at a woman like that—like she was the center of everything.
“Briar,” he murmured, dipping to press his lips to mine.
At the same time, he shifted his weight, and I felt the heavy press of his cock nudging against me.
I arched up, yielding to him with a moan. He came inside me, hard and heavy and thick, filling me and chasing away all the emptiness. I reached up, clinging to his shoulders, my nails sinking into his flesh.
He pressed his brow to mine, and we stared at each other.
