Chapter Thirty-Six
REBEKKA
We spent yesterday curled up on Rian’s couch, ordering takeout, watching romcoms, and exploring each other’s bodies.
He didn’t go to any of his bars. He didn’t go to his family for Sunday lunch earlier.
He hasn’t left my side for more than a few seconds.
He even showered with me, which was quite the experience.
‘Do you want to get out for a while?’ He offers, handing me a coffee from the machine in his kitchen. It’s bigger than my kitchen—Anthony’s kitchen, I should say. But the luxurious cream and ivory theme running through it makes it feel cosy, warm, just like the rest of his home.
‘Did you choose the décor in here?’ I blurt, accepting the mug he hands me, blowing on it, and ignoring his question.
He glances at me quizzically. ‘No, why?’
‘I knew this place had a woman’s touch,’ I tease. ‘Who was she?’
‘Jealous?’ He’s positively gleeful as he puts his own mug on the ivory marble counter behind me, places his arms around my waist, and brushes the tip of his nose against mine.
I scoff. ‘Just curious,’ I lie. I am jealous of any woman who spent any time with Rian, because he’s the kindest, most considerate, not to mention the sexiest man I’ve ever been with. And to top it all off, he makes me laugh so often that my face aches from using muscles I’d forgotten I owned.
‘It was Zara. You know that’s her thing. This place was one of her first projects.’
Of course. I forgot that was Zara’s subsidiary of Beckett Enterprises.
Rian’s lips trail over my jaw to my earlobe, peppering kisses along the way. ‘But if you don’t like it, you can change it when you move in.’ He tips his head back to look at me, and although his tone is teasing, I’m not entirely convinced he’s joking.
‘I told you I can’t make you any promises,’ I murmur.
‘I’m not asking you to.’ He kisses me again. ‘But I want you to know you have options.’
I’m not sure I do, given the clauses in the contract our parents arranged, but I don’t feel like getting into that right now.
‘Thank you.’ The sound of a door banging along the corridor startles me.
‘Relax, it’s just Janet. She’s my housekeeper. She stops by three times a week. Why don’t we get out of here for a while? We could go for a drive? Grab a bite to eat if you like?’
I glance down at my skinny jeans and oversized cream sweater. True to his word, Rian sent Callaghan to my place to pick up some clothes, cosmetics and my laptop, but he went for practical as opposed to fancy. And he forgot to pick up my bracelet—worse luck.
‘You look perfect just the way you are.’ Rian can read me like an open book. Footsteps approach, and a red-haired woman in her fifties appears, wiping her hands on a soft cotton apron. Her kind eyes flick from Rian to me and warm immediately.
‘Oh, love, I’m so sorry—I thought you’d be at your parents’ for dinner.’
‘I normally would, but I got a better offer.’ He winks down at me. ‘Janet this is Rebekka. I’ve stolen her and am keeping her, and I’m not one bit sorry about it.’
Janet dissolves into peels of laughter.
I don’t actually think he’s joking.
Her mouth tips into a knowing smile. ‘Did you now? Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.’ She gives Rian a gentle, maternal swat to the chest. ‘About time you brought home someone nice.’
Heat blooms in my cheeks. Janet’s gaze rests on me for a beat—not the assessing kind, but the quietly approving kind you get from women who’ve seen it all. ‘Welcome, pet. You’re very welcome here.’
I step from Rian’s arms to offer a hand. ‘Nice to meet you. We’ll get out from under your feet—’
‘Don’t you dare on my account,’ she clucks, already opening a cupboard stacked with spotless supplies. ‘I’ll be an hour. You two take your time. I’ll leave a stew in the fridge and fresh sourdough by the bread bin.’
‘We were thinking of getting some fresh air,’ Rian says.
‘Grand. Scarves in the hall basket. And, missus—’ Her eyes soften on me again, a conspiratorial smile. ‘If the wind cuts through you when you get back, there’s a hot-water bottle in the press. Help yourself.’
‘Thank you,’ I manage.
‘Wrap up now—it’s frosty out,’ she says, and gives me one last, approving once-over that feels like a hug
Half an hour later we’re cruising through the Irish countryside in Rian’s midnight blue Porsche.
The engine’s low, decadent purr thrums through my spine.
We didn’t take a driver—Rian insisted he likes driving.
Correction: loves it. He handles the 911 Turbo S like it’s an extension of him—confident, precise, a little bit reckless in a way that makes my thighs press together.
His left hand owns the wheel, while his right settles high on my thigh, thumb stroking idly over my jeans. Heat unfurls under my skin. I lace my fingers through his when he isn’t teasing patterns there, our hands resting palm to palm, like we’ve been doing it for years instead of days.
The lights of the city fall away behind us, replaced by hedgerows silvered with frost and fields the colour of pewter.
The sky is a pale winter wash, low sunlight catching in the black lace of bare branches.
The Sugar Loaf rises on the horizon ahead.
Outside the window, the air looks cold enough to bite.
Inside the car, the chemistry sparking between us could start a fire.
I glance up to look at him—because I can’t not—and find him already looking at me from the corner of his eye, mouth tipped in that sinful, secret smile. Busted. My pulse does a little victory dance anyway.
‘Eyes on the road, Mr Beckett,’ I murmur, failing at stern.
‘Impossible when you’re in my passenger seat, sweetheart.’ He squeezes my fingers, brings our joined hands to his mouth, and kisses my knuckles. It’s the smallest, gentlest graze, but it thrills me almost as thoroughly as everything else he does to my body.
We slip off the main drag, climb into Wicklow—long sweeping bends that show off exactly why he wanted to drive.
Heather-dark hills roll to the horizon. A black lake flashes between stands of fir, a sheet of hammered steel.
Sheep dot the fields like stray clouds. The whole world feels hushed, as if it’s conspiring to give us this pocket of peace.
‘You warm enough?’ he asks without looking, like he already knows.
‘Perfect,’ I say, and mean it. I press closer, slide my hand under his forearm, just to feel the flex of sinew and strength as he turns the wheel.
It’s absurd how cherished I feel for simply existing next to him. He’s so thoughtful, braking early for corners so I don’t lurch. He adjusts the music or temperature if I even flinch.
We trade stolen looks like contraband. He catches me again and laughs, low and quiet, that boyish curve of his mouth making me melt in the seat.
‘I can’t actually believe you’re here,’ he says, voice roughened by honesty. ‘In my car. In my day.’
‘Ditto,’ I whisper.
The road dips, curves, then opens onto a long, sweeping driveway flanked by granite pillars. Perfectly clipped lawns slope away to terraces, and a broad, glass-fronted facade catches the pale winter sun—the Ritz-Carlton at Powerscourt.
Rian pulls up and kills the engine. ‘Lunch?’ he says.
‘Sure.’ All the sexercise has given me an appetite.
He gets out of the car and rounds the bonnet in three long strides, opening my door before the valet can blink. He offers his huge hand, and I slip mine into it, that ever present electricity pulsing between us.
Inside, we’re greeted with warmth and marble and that faint, delicious hotel smell—white lilies, beeswax, and crisp linen pressed within an inch of its life. He rests his palm at the small of my back as we cross the lobby.
‘What if someone recognises us?’ I hiss into his ear.
‘We’re old friends, out for lunch.’ He flashes me a smile that would comfortably assure anyone in a ten-mile radius that we’re so much more than old friends out for lunch. ‘I’ll ask them to seat us somewhere private.’
The hostess greets us with a smile that lingers on Rian. If she recognises Dublin’s playboy bar owner, she hides it well. He pulls out a hundred euro note from the back pocket of his jeans and presses it into her hand discreetly. ‘If you could seat us somewhere private, we’d appreciate it.’
‘Of course, sir.’ She pockets the note and beams at us, guiding us to a table all on its own, tucked into the corner of the room by the window.
The mountains are laid out like a painting.
Rian helps me out of my coat, drapes it over the chair with absurd care, then settles opposite and immediately reaches across the linen to claim my hand again like he can’t bear the distance.
‘Hungry?’ he asks, eyes glinting.
‘Always.’ The back of my throat tightens with something I refuse to name in a dining room.
‘If you keep looking at me with those fuck-me eyes, I’ll have no choice but to put you up on the table and eat you like dessert,’ he warns.
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Try me.’ He arches a single eyebrow, then glances down at the menu open on the table in front of us.
When the waitress returns, he orders champagne without consulting me, then immediately checks—‘Is that alright?’
‘It’s more than alright.’ This is the best Sunday I’ve had in years.
‘You’ll have to drink most of it,’ he shrugs as the waitress returns with a bottle of Beckett’s Black Label. If the waitress had any idea she was serving a Beckett herself, she’d probably collapse. She pours two glasses, and Rian hands me one the second she leaves.
He lifts his glass. ‘To us.’
Damn, us sounds so fucking good on his lips.
‘To not worrying, and seeing how things unfold,’ I remind him, tipping my flute against his.
He watches me like it’s his new favourite hobby, thumb brushing my knuckles under the tablecloth, gaze flicking to my mouth, then back to my eyes.
He reaches across the table to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear like it’s his job.
His hand lingers at my jaw. The look we share says everything we’re still too careful to say out loud.
‘What?’ I ask, because I need him to speak, need the sound of it.
‘Just… this,’ he says softly. ‘You. Us. It feels… right.’
For the first time in three years, four months, and three weeks, I feel at peace.
And then my phone rings.