24. Declan
24
DECLAN
O livia was still tense. Over the past few nights, I’d become an expert in Olivia’s body. And right now she was hard and braced, where I wanted her soft and relaxed. Olivia and I hadn’t exactly fought just now. But she’d put up a barrier between us when I’d snapped about Seamus.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one damn bit.
Everything about that family was poison. The urge to whisk her away from the O’Rourkes and their toxicity felt powerful, primal.
“Come to Prague with me,” I said.
She rolled over on her back so she could look up at me. Christ, she was beautiful like that, with her breasts bare for me, and her red curls spread across the pillow around her like some kind of wild angel.
“You mean on your business trip?” she asked.
“Catie asked if she could go with me earlier today. I think it’s a brilliant idea.” I ran a fingertip under the swell of her breast. “But I wanted to see what you thought first.”
A smile lit her whole face. “That sounds wonderful. I’ve never been to Prague.”
“You’ll like it,” I assured her. “You both will.”
I’d make sure of it.
Olivia smiled up at me, her eyes bright with happiness. I had a powerful urge to kiss her, but I knew if I did, I wouldn’t stop. She’d made it clear she’d prefer a good night’s sleep over a late-night tryst this evening, and I needed to respect that. Especially because of the inherent power imbalance in our relationship.
It didn’t feel like a power imbalance, though. The longer things went on between us, the more I realized that while I had the money, she had everything that actually mattered. Hell, I’d gone to a fucking O’Rourke party, just to make her smile.
My palm rested on her stomach, as low as I’d let myself go tonight. She looked up at me from under her eyelashes, and my cock swelled.
“Right,” I said roughly. “That’s settled. Good night.” I dropped a kiss on her forehead and stood to go.
Olivia’s mouth fell open in surprise. “I thought…you really only wanted to go swimming?” She looked pointedly where my tracksuit bottoms did nothing to disguise my hard-on.
“You said you needed sleep,” I said, trying to sound patient and unbothered when really what I felt was grumpy. Christ, she was making this hard.
“And…you’re giving it to me?” she asked, understanding dawning.
I nodded, the movement jerky. I was torn between wishing she’d put a shirt on and praying she wouldn’t. “I’ll give you anything you want, Olivia.”
“Well,” Olivia said, her voice husky. “Suddenly I’m not feeling so tired.” She crawled to the edge of the bed, hooked her fingers in my waistband, and tugged me close enough so she could free my aching cock. She leaned in, her eyes never leaving mine, and placed a kiss on the tip.
“God, Oliva,” I said, my hands in her hair. She smiled up at me with wicked promise.
“Yes?” she purred, but gave me no time to say anything. She rolled her lips down my hard length, the warmth of her mouth enough to make me to lose my sanity. I closed my eyes and surrendered to the feeling of her lips, tongue, and fingers on my flesh.
It was heaven.
But it wasn’t enough.
I tightened my fingers around her hair and drew her back, my length slipping from between her lips with a wet sound. “You come here,” I demanded, throwing her on top of the mattress.
“I’m right here,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I breathed out, already climbing on top of her, “yes, you are.”
I lost all track of time for hours. I only looked up and realized it was midnight when Olivia nudged me out of a pleasant doze as she lay, cozy and sated, nestled in my arms. “Your phone’s buzzing,” she said sleepily.
I reached for my discarded tracksuit bottoms and tugged them over so I could silence my phone. That’s when I saw the text message from Thomas.
O’Rourke gave up on selling the second property. Too much red tape . He’s moving on to another option. Not the mansion yet, but if we can find a way to delay this sale too, we’ll have him.
I sat bolt upright in bed, a thrill of adrenaline shooting through me. This was it. We almost had him. Go at him with everything you’ve got, I responded. Spare no expense.
“Who’s that?” Olivia asked. “Don’t they know how late it is?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her, when I remembered how our last conversation about the O’Rourkes had ended. “No one. Work stuff.”
“Being a billionaire cannot possibly be worth it,” Olivia joked, but the joke didn’t quite reach her eyes. She could tell I was keeping her distanced from this on purpose.
I tossed the phone aside and reached for her. “It wasn’t until I started sleeping with the staff.”
Olivia laughed as I covered her body with mine and proceeded to distract us both.
I woke up with a pounding in my head, then I realized the pounding was on the door.
“Miss Olivia?” Catie called through the door. “I can’t find Uncle Declan.”
Olivia glanced at the clock and swore. “We overslept,” she hissed. “Quick, get behind the bed.”
“I’m not going to hide like a teenager?—”
“Yes you are, Declan Byrne. I swear to God…” Olivia shoved me off the side of the bed, and I hit the ground with a thump.
“Your door is locked,” Catie informed Olivia, like it might have been an oversight.
“One second, sweetheart,” Olivia said, hastily pulling clothes on and motioning me to scoot out of sight.
I grumbled but acquiesced, sliding under her bed.
At least there were no dust bunnies. I’d have to give my cleaning crew a raise.
I heard the door open and saw Catie’s stocking feet burst into the room.
“Let’s go get you breakfast, hon,” Olivia said, trying to usher Catie back out of the room.
“I need to find Uncle Declan,” Catie said. “So I can ask him something.”
“Okay,” Olivia said. “Let’s leave my bedroom so we can go look for him.”
Silence fell while Catie thought about that solution. Then she clearly came up with a better one. “Or I could ask you instead.”
“Sure thing,” Olivia said, her voice increasingly harried. “Let’s go down to breakfast and talk about it.”
“I already made myself breakfast,” Catie announced. “I had ice cream.”
I would have been impressed with Catie’s stubbornness, if I wasn’t trapped under a bed naked.
“That’s not…” Olivia trailed off, clearly regrouping. “Okay, Catie, what do you want to ask me?”
“Can Imani come over to play?” she said.
Who’s Imani? I thought.
Olivia must have looked equally confused, because Catie elaborated. “I met her at story time at the bookstore.” She kept talking, explaining that the playdate with Thomas’s daughter was okay, but she didn’t share Catie’s interest in bugs. “Imani likes bugs. And books. So I have decided we can be friends.”
That sounded like solid, straightforward logic to me.
But Olivia reacted like it was some sort of big emotional breakthrough. “Oh, honey . I’m so glad you decided you wanted to make friends.”
Something in my chest twisted. Catie hadn’t wanted to make friends?
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Olivia said. “I’ll see if Molly knows Imani’s parents, so we can ask her over. But if that doesn’t work, we’ll just ask her over the next time we see Imani at story time. Do you know what you want to do with her? Maybe a tea party here at the house? Or a beach day at Salthill?”
I coughed, reminding Olivia that I was still here, before she got too deeply into planning mode.
“You know what, let’s talk about it over breakfast,” Olivia said brightly.
“I already had?—”
“Ice cream is not breakfast,” Olivia said, firmly steering Catie out of the bedroom.
After they left, I showered and dressed and sent a few pressing work emails. Then I went downstairs to check on Olivia, who was doing breakfast dishes while Catie colored in the next room. She and I needed to have a conversation.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, keeping my voice low enough so Catie wouldn’t overhear me. “What happened to ‘always tell kids the truth’?”
Olivia scrubbed at a frying pan. “There’s a difference between lying to a kid who asks you a direct question and simply neglecting to tell them about an adult subject they haven’t even thought to ask about.”
I crossed my arms. “So if she asks about us, you’ll tell her the truth?”
“She won’t ask about us if we’re discreet,” Olivia countered. She looked cheerfully prim and professional, wearing the mask she’d worn when I’d first hired her.
I didn’t like it.
I moved closer to her and took her by her shoulders, forcing her to face me. “Olivia, why is it so important to you that she doesn’t find out we’re dating?”
She chewed her lip. “Kids don’t deal well with instability. I don’t think it’s a good idea to introduce your romantic partner to your kid, unless you think it’s something that could last.”
The knowledge that this thing between us was only temporary hung unspoken between us. There wasn’t much potential for long term. Not unless Olivia uprooted her whole life. I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it. I was used to being a realist, so why the hell was I indulging in what was just a fantasy?
Maybe , I thought, because I want this to be more than just a fantasy.
“You said light and fun,” she reminded me, searching my face. “Unless you changed your mind?”
I felt like I was standing on a cliff, with the ocean crashing on dangerous rocks far below. If I said yes , and she wanted the same thing…
But what if my yes scared her off before I’d had time to line up business opportunities for her and convince her to stay? No, that couldn’t happen. Sure, maybe I was acting out of fear…but Olivia was far too precious for me to risk it all in a roll of a dice. You didn’t get to build a tech empire by being reckless, and the stakes here felt even more important than anything I’d ever faced in a boardroom… I needed to be smart.
I needed to buy some time.
“I promised you light and easy,” I repeated. “Just like you wanted.” I forced a smile and let my hands drop from her shoulders.
This time she was the one to take a step closer to me. “Why do you want to tell her?”
“Other than the desire to avoid hiding under a bed in my own home?” I grumbled. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “I suppose I’m worried about the secrecy. What if it comes out by accident, and she’s hurt or confused that we kept it from her?”
I couldn’t help but think about the looming secret I was keeping from Olivia. The secret I still didn’t know how to tell her about.
Olivia studied me. There was something going on behind her eyes that I couldn’t read. Slowly she said, “I think it’s okay to keep a secret until the other person is ready to hear it. Would you agree?”
“I would,” I said. “But I think that logic is easier to swallow when you’re the one keeping the secret.”
Olivia looked away, returning to the pan in the sink. “We’ll tell her if she asks,” she promised.
I hoped she’d feel the same way when I told her the truth about who she’d been confessing her anonymous online secrets to. I turned and walked away, my heart heavy.