Chapter Thirty-Nine Lila
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
LILA
Two weeks later, Tiernan and I went to check on one of his gambling joints on our way to a restaurant. He took me on a date three times a week, explaining that I needed to feel like a teenager and let loose. As soon as we walked inside, he led me downstairs to his office.
“Wait here.” He kissed my lips and headed upstairs to the cardroom.
I shook the rain off my coat and hair, watching the miserable weather through the window. The clouds were gray, dense, and pouring rain.
I settled into his plush recliner and rummaged in my coat’s pockets, realizing to my annoyance that I forgot my phone in the car. Pregnancy brain was a real thing. I was beginning to forget all kinds of stuff.
With a sigh, I took the stairs up to the cardroom in search of my husband. I found him leaning over a blackjack table, monitoring a heated game of cards. To his right were a few Irish soldiers, filling him in on something. And to his left was none other than…Becky.
My heart exploded at the sight of her, heat spreading across my body, down my arms, making my fists curl. It was the first hit of real, potent, red-hot jealousy I’d ever experienced, and I was so consumed with it, it robbed me of my breath.
She rubbed her fake tits against his arm, whispering into the shell of his ear.
I watched their lips hawkishly.
“Was it something I did?” I could practically see her whining. She wore a black leather miniskirt and a red strapless heart-shaped corset. Tall boots and puffy hair with so much spray I hoped she’d die of gas emission.
“Becky, you’re a prostitute. Were you expecting a ring and a honeymoon in Paris?” Tiernan’s eye never wavered from the green fuzzy table.
“I thought I was your favorite.”
“This is why you’re paid to fuck, not think.”
“You never come here anymore.” Her bottom lip rolled sulkily.
“Fintan’s running the place just fine.”
“The girls don’t like him. For one thing, he never uses their services. And his nosy girlfriend loiters around, always in everyone’s shit to make sure he doesn’t drink or gamble.”
“I’m off the market.” Tiernan parked his elbows on the table.
“Till when?” she pressed.
“Death and beyond.”
His words didn’t pacify me. The fact that he was talking to her at all made me want to bash his head against that table.
I took a step forward and cleared my throat.
Tiernan’s eye snapped to me in a flash. His pupil dilated as he took notice of me.
“Darlin’.”
Darlin’, my ass. His exchange with Becky reminded me of her existence, and the fact that he brought her to our home, had put her in my dress, and screwed her in my kitchen.
I turned around and briskly made my way to the exit.
He was beside me immediately, his stride quicker than mine.
He was talking to me, but I didn’t look to see what he was saying.
The door was manned by two Irish soldiers, and when they saw us approaching, their boss at my heel, they blocked my way outside.
One of them put his hand on my shoulder to push me back into the club.
Tiernan responded by twisting his wrist and breaking it in one smooth, frighteningly practiced move.
“Fatal mistake,” I saw his lips move. “Nobody touches my wife.”
Rolling my eyes, I pushed through the door and headed to the car. A puddle lay at my feet between the Mercedes’s passenger door and the curb. I took one look at it, then at my velvet Jimmy Choos, and sighed.
“I hate you, but not enough to ruin these perfectly good shoes.” It wasn’t anyone’s fault the weather decided to act up this week. Not even Becky’s.
Tiernan shouldered off his peacoat and splayed it on the ground beneath me, so I didn’t tarnish my pink pumps.
Finally, I speared him a pissed-off glare, stepping onto his jacket.
“The wool of your stupid coat got stuck in my heel.”
My husband’s cold, flat mask melted momentarily. He somehow understood exactly what I was doing and why I was doing it. We had an audience.
Becky. His soldiers. His clientele.
He needed to sacrifice his pride to restore mine.
“My bad, sweetheart.” He slung my arm over his shoulder and took a knee, literally on his knees for me, as he lifted my leg. He rested my knee on his muscular thigh, rubbing the fuzzy wool from my heel with his thumb.
“Next time I’ll wear cashmere.”
“You make sure you do that.”
I could feel the stares of the entire club burning a hole in the backs of our heads as they watched on in bewilderment.
“Why did you speak to her?”
“She’s an employee.”
“She wanted to fuck you.”
“So? People want shit they can’t have all the time.”
“You fucked her in our home.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked sincere.
“In my dress.”
“I wanted her to be you. I knew I couldn’t touch you, but the thought of having anyone else was rather…unexciting.”
“And then there was that stupid receptionist.” I narrowed my eyes.
“She was just bait. I never touched her.”
“You’re a horrible person.”
“Yes, but I’ll make a damn good husband if you let me.”
“I don’t know if I could ever forgive someone who’s been this cruel to me.”
“That’s fine, I’m not that person anymore.” He shrugged. “You turned me into someone else completely.”
Beyond his shoulder, I spotted Becky, puzzled at the sight of me standing on my husband’s designer peacoat, giving him shit.
“Do you want me to fire her?” he asked, his eye searching mine. “Say the word, and I will. I’ll fire all of them. Every single woman under my employment. There’s no one else, Lila,” he said. “There never really was.”
Pacified, I licked my lips. “No. I’ll never take away someone’s job for no good reason. And my ego is not a good enough reason.”
“I’ll make sure Fintan deals with this club,” he promised. “I won’t ever see her again.”
“Just promise me you and Fintan treat these girls well.”
He looked surprised and a little annoyed. “Of course. They get paid in cash. Crazy tips.”
“And the clientele?”
“Adhere to the club’s rules.”
I studied him with a pout, watching as the wait turned him inside out.
“You can take me to the restaurant now.”
When we drove off and I saw Becky loitering at the entrance, shooting me a furious scowl, I made sure to flip her the bird.