Chapter Thirteen #2
Knowing Carrigan was marrying another man was one thing.
Seeing her sit across the table from some douche who didn’t deserve her was something else entirely.
It made James see red. He’d wanted to snatch that little shit up and shake him for being so goddamn disrespectful enough to be late, let alone show up with evidence of another woman on his clothes.
When you had a shot at a woman like Carrigan, all others paled in comparison.
Except James didn’t really have a shot. All he had was stolen time.
He knew that—fuck, it was a truth he couldn’t escape—but the thought still soured his stomach.
He wasn’t sure if knowing she obviously wanted him as much has he wanted her made things better or worse.
Carrigan was the calm in the middle of the hurricane that was his life.
It didn’t make a damn bit of sense because half the time she drove him up the wall, but the second her hand slipped into his, the tightness in his chest loosened, just a little, and he could breathe again.
He led the way out onto the street and waited for her to text her driver. “He’s trustworthy?”
“As trustworthy as anyone is. Though if you kill me and dump my body in a ditch, he’s going to take it personally.”
James snorted. “Lovely, there are half a million things I’d love to do to your body, and not a single one of them includes pain, let alone death.”
“That’s… comforting.” She turned off her phone and dropped it into her purse.
It brought his attention to her clothing.
He’d been so focused on getting that asshole out of his presence that he had to step back and take a look at the long white dress she wore tonight.
It was different from the one he’d last seen her in—there was a definite Grecian feel to the way the fabric fell around her, but it was white and it covered more skin than it exposed.
“White is the last color I’d choose for you.”
She shot him a sharp look. “You don’t get an opinion.”
“Maybe not, but those tiny little excuses for dresses that you wear to the club are more you than this .” He pinched the fabric that fell from her hips, and lifted it a little before letting it flutter back into place. “What would you wear if you weren’t trying to play a role?”
“Maybe one day I’ll show you.” She moved past him, the dress giving her the illusion of floating over the ground instead of walking on it. “Where’s your car?”
“This way.” They strode around the corner to the tiny parking lot. He held the door open for her and then took the driver’s seat. “You up for a little drive?”
“As if you have to ask.” She ran her hand lovingly over the dashboard. “I could spend days in this car.”
He pulled out of the parking lot, picturing what a road trip with Carrigan would look like. Would she wear jeans? Maybe kick off her shoes and prop her bare feet on the dash? Would she laugh as the wind whipped her long hair around, her green eyes hidden by a pair of oversized sunglasses?
He liked the image. He liked the image too damn much.
He drove out of Boston, heading north. The falling night was clear and cold, and the roads were almost deserted.
From time to time, he glanced at Carrigan, but she’d pulled her knees to her chest and was staring out the passenger window, obviously lost in thought.
James wanted to know what she was thinking.
Fuck, he wanted to know everything . But he didn’t have a right to.
Beyond that, he had a feeling that she got even less time to herself than he did.
So he drove in silence and let his mind wander.
He’d been so focused on Ricky, he’d almost forgotten about the shipment of girls coming in soon.
Just thinking about it made him feel dirty.
Yeah, he wasn’t going to set them up as slaves for his own purposes, but that was a cold comfort.
Because it was just one shipment. There would be others that he couldn’t help.
Once the flesh peddlers realized he wasn’t in the business anymore, they’d take their merchandise elsewhere.
James seriously doubted whoever bought those girls would feel as sick about it as he did.
What if I kept buying them?
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
It wasn’t possible… was it? He couldn’t just buy the girls and then set them loose.
That’d be almost as fucked up as keeping them.
They’d each need to be offered a choice, and if they chose to go out on their own, they’d need their own start-up fund.
That’d drain resources that were already strained.
But if all his legit businesses started to see the increase that Tit for Tat did…
It was something to think about. The Hallorans put so much evil out into the world. Maybe it was time for him to start balancing the ledgers.
He glanced at Carrigan again. What would she think of the so-called plan?
Before he could think better of it, he said, “If you were going to buy up women from the flesh trade and set them free, how would you go about it?” He braced for her to look at him like he was out of his mind, but she just twined a strand of hair around her finger and frowned.
“That’d require a lot of resources if you wanted to make any kind of impact.”
“I know.” Resources he didn’t have access to without stooping to lows he promised himself he’d never touch.
She frowned harder. “And there’s the added complication that you’re just creating a demand for a very specific kind of product. You’d have to have something long term in place to take out the main players, otherwise it might actually contribute to the overall problem, rather than helping it.”
“I know.” He hadn’t thought that far ahead, but it was a valid point.
He could ship in all the girls he wanted, but he’d just be ripping more women from their lives if he didn’t cut the head off the snake, so to speak.
For someone who doesn’t want responsibility to begin with, you sure as fuck attract it. “I have something in mind.”
The night that his old man had been arrested had given him the idea. Someone on the other side had been in bed with the feds. While James wasn’t willing to go that far, he thought he could work something out where he threw them the information on the sellers he had and let them do their damn jobs.
If it had the added bonus of helping keep them off his back and out of Halloran business, well, he was okay with that, too.
“In that case…” Carrigan snapped her fingers.
“Nonprofit.” When he motioned for her to continue, she shrugged.
“They aren’t the simplest things to set up, and there’d be some serious challenges along the way—especially for a family like yours or mine—but as long as you kept the funds collected going exactly where they’re supposed to and aboveboard, it would be a valid option. ”
Maybe for her. She moved in the circles of society who liked to whip out their checkbooks for that kind of thing. In his neighborhood, most everyone was struggling just to get by. “Hmm.”
She turned to face him fully. “Are you seriously considering something like that? I thought you guys dealt in the sex trade.”
“Sex trade is different than slave trade.” He knew he sounded furious, but it was hard to rein it in when he’d worked so fucking hard to get them out of it, only to have his brother trying to drag them back to hell. “I got us out of the involuntary flesh trade.”
“And now you’re thinking about getting back into it for different reasons.” Even in the moving shadows of his car, her green eyes saw too much. “You could make a serious difference, James. Even if you did it on a small scale, every person you save is a miracle.”
He couldn’t have her looking at him like that, like he was some kind of white knight or hero or some shit. He wasn’t. He was just a man who’d done more bad than good, a man who wanted to balance the scales in any way he could. “It probably wouldn’t work out anyway.”
“James…” She trailed off and turned back to look out the window. “I was going to offer to help, but I can’t promise anything with my current situation.”
Which was the exact thing he’d brought her out here to help her forget. Great job, asshole.
He took the exit for York, and wound down to the little seaside town.
It was a summer tourist spot, so it was nearly deserted this time of year, and the evening hour only added to that.
Which was perfect. He didn’t have the patience to deal with other people right now.
All he wanted was some one-on-one time with Carrigan away from Boston.
He parked next to the beach and climbed out of the car.
She was out before he could come around to open the door for her, and she wasn’t looking at the ocean behind them. Instead, she was focused on the house at his back. “I know this house.”
If she’d spent any time looking at that album, she would.
“It was my mother’s.” The only thing that had been hers and hers alone in her marriage with Victor.
He didn’t know how she’d managed to pull that off, but he was grateful.
She’d brought them up here—just her and her boys—for a few weeks each summer every year while they were growing up.
She’d passed it to James when she died.
He ignored the dull ache in his chest that always came with thoughts of this place.
Some of the happiest times of his life had been spent in this little town, but they were all because of her.
She could have taken them to a shack in the middle of the woods with no running water, and he still would have been in heaven.
“I haven’t been back here in something like twelve years.” Not since he’d come up here after he turned eighteen to set up a maid service to clean the place out once a month after his mother died.
He looked over when Carrigan took his hand and squeezed. “We don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.” Her shiver belied her words. She wasn’t dressed for the frigid winds coming off the water.
That got him moving more than anything. He kept a hold of her hand as they crossed the street and walked up the steps.
The place still looked the same as it had when he was fourteen.
He’d paid for repairs out of pocket as they came up—most recently it had been the roof that needed to be completely replaced.
James unlocked the door and stepped back to let Carrigan precede him.
They moved through the entrance to the living room and kitchen, turning on lights as they went.
It was like stepping into the past, the cheery beach decorations and bright colors still almost painful after all this time.
She stopped in front of the mantel and touched a painting of three boys playing on the beach.
None of their faces were visible, but he had no problem recognizing which was which.
“Your mother?”
“She said painting calmed her thoughts and she needed all the calm she could scrape up in a houseful of boys.” The bittersweet ache in his chest unraveled a little.
His old man didn’t talk about Elizabeth Halloran, and James had learned pretty damn fast after her death that to bring her up was as good as asking for a beating.
But his brothers didn’t want to talk about her, either.
It seemed like the pictures of her had disappeared overnight—as if she’d been a figment of his imagination all along and he was the only one still clinging to it.
This beach house was the only place left untouched, the only one that still bore the stamp of her years in this world.
James sat on the couch and ran his hand over the knotted afghan draped over the back of it.
The thing had more holes than yarn. “She tried knitting, but she was terrible at it.” He smiled at the memory of her cursing up a storm as she finally threw it across the room.
And how he’d picked it up and brought it back to her and told her that it was the most beautiful thing he’d seen. He’d been maybe all of ten.
“You don’t have to…”
“I know.” He looked around the room again, seeing the ghosts of so many good memories that he’d locked away. “I didn’t bring you out here to whine about my poor dead mother. This was just the one place I figured we could both sit down and breathe for a little bit.”
“So you didn’t bring me up here to seduce me.” She smiled as she sat next to him. “I’m horribly disappointed.”
“I think I could sneak in some seduction.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her to sprawl across his chest. It felt right to have her here in this place with the wind howling around the house and the memories of a time long gone around them. “Come out with me.”
She arched her eyebrows. “I hate to be the one to point this out, but I am out with you.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He paused and tried to figure out the best way to go about this.
She hadn’t signed on for anything, let alone anything beyond sex.
But seeing her sitting across the table from that kid tonight had really struck home how fucked up their situations had been since they met.
He wanted a slice of normalcy, even if normalcy wasn’t normal .
“Carrigan O’Malley, I’d like to take you on a date. ”
Her eyebrows rose. “A date.”
“Yeah. The whole nine yards.”
“But not tonight.”
“Nope.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “Tonight I swept in and crashed your date with that idiot—you’re welcome, by the way—so it doesn’t count.”
Her lips twitched. “You are a very strange man, James Halloran.”
“Lovely, you have no idea.” He kissed her, soft and slow, taking his time because neither of them had anywhere to be, and fuck if he’d rush this.
For the first time, he had her in a house with walls between them and the rest of the world—not the backseat of his car or, worse, the goddamn storage closet in a club.
She went soft as he traced the seam of her lips with his tongue.
He pulled back, framing her face with his hands. “Come to bed with me.”