11. Lara
11
LARA
I’m pacing around the room when Rory walks in, knocking lightly on the door before opening it. I don’t know why he knocks. It’s not like I’m a guest here–I'm a prisoner.
Slightly annoyed, I huff out a breath.
“So? How’d it go?”
“He’s all for it.”
I go silent for a moment. I guess that part of me was hoping that Murphy would miraculously agree to let me go instead of me having to marry someone I don’t love.
I bite my lip. “So, what happens now?”
“We get married.” He shrugs, and I just stare at him until he continues. “And we try our hardest to convince my father that you’re loyal to the Murphys. He wants exactly the same thing to happen here that happened with Bree.”
“I’ll never be loyal to the Murphys.”
Rory nods. “I know that. But they need to believe that the tides are turning. You can’t be too gung-ho, though, it’ll be obvious that this is all fake. You’ll have to pretend to hate me for a while?”
“Pretend?”
Rory winces and frowns. “Do you really hate me?”
I shrug. “I have no reason not to. You have Murphy blood coursing through your veins.”
“I’m nothing like my father.”
I look him up and down. “Well, you’re holding me hostage, so that remains to be seen.”
“I thought I told you that you have to trust me for this. That we have to trust each other.”
“Trust is earned, Rory.”
“Then I’ll do everything I can to earn it,” he says in a low voice, making a shiver run through me.
Why am I reacting like this? I’m not interested in Rory. He’s a Murphy, for God’s sake. Maybe I just haven’t been around people in so long that I’m going crazy.
“What happens now?” I cross my arms over my chest.
Rory runs a hand through his dark hair. “I suppose you’ll move into my room.”
I balk at that. “We’re going to sleep in the same bed?”
He scoffs. “We’ll be married, Lara. Of course, we will. We have to make this look realistic.”
I let out a long breath. “You better not touch me.”
“God forbid,” Rory drawls, holding up his hands. “I don’t want this either, you know.”
“Then why are you doing it? Why are you helping me?” What is Rory getting out of this?
“It’ll take the attention off Bree. I want to keep her safe, and she’ll never be safe if my father is always after her.”
I swallow hard.
I know that Bree is happy, but I also know she lives looking over her shoulder all the time. I know from experience how hard that is.
“All right,” I say slowly. “Then let’s go. I desperately need a shower.”
“Of course.”
Rory leads me out into the hallway, and I look down toward the right wing.
There are probably six bedrooms on that side, and a big room that might be a library or an office.
“The whole left wing is used for storage?”
Rory nods. “My mother used to live in the left wing. After she abandoned us, my father blocked it off. Couldn’t stand to even walk into those rooms that were all hers.”
I raise an eyebrow, wondering what Murphy’s relationship was with his wife since they slept in completely different wings of the mansion.
My mother and father had shared a bed until the day she was killed.
They’d been madly in love.
I can’t imagine Niall Murphy feeling that way about anybody.
I want to ask why his mother left them, want to probe, but I don’t. I just have to get through the next few weeks, and then we can go our separate ways. I don’t need to get to know Rory Murphy. I just need to pretend.
He opens the door and moves out of the way to allow me inside.
The room is huge, just like the one I was staying in earlier, but it’s almost like a teenage boy’s room. There are posters of motorcycles and girls in bikinis on the wall, and a four-poster bed in the corner. I run my finger along the bookshelf, and it comes away dusty.
“I haven’t stayed in this room since I left,” Rory mumbles in way of explanation. “I got out of here the moment I turned eighteen.”
I hum, sitting down on the bed.
Rory goes into the connected bathroom and brings me a towel and a cloth.
“There’s body wash and shampoo and conditioner on the rack in the shower.”
I nod slowly, looking around. I can’t wait to get under the hot spray of the water, but I feel as if Rory and I need to talk things out first.
“What does your father want out of this?”
Rory groans and sits down. “He wants revenge. On top of that, he thinks this will draw your father and brothers out. It’ll force them to make a move to negotiate for your safety.”
I bite my lip. I hope that my brothers aren’t swayed by this news. I hope they don’t make a move. I hope they trust me to get out of this on my own.
“So, it’s not like the war will ever be over,” I say quietly, my voice flat.
“I don’t know.” Rory sighs. “I’m not used to this life, Lara. I don’t know the ins and outs of it. I can’t tell you that the war will be over. All I can tell you is that I’ll do any and everything to keep you safe.”
I look at him, into his blue eyes. He seems so sincere. And I can tell that he doesn’t have much experience in this area. He’s really not part of this life. He’s an accountant, for God’s sake.
I lick my lips to wet them. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Rory doesn’t respond, and I stand up, heading into the bathroom. After just a couple of minutes, before I’ve even undressed, Rory knocks on the door.
I open it, and he pushes clothes into my arms. It appears to be a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt of his.
“I’ll buy you some new clothes.” He sounds almost embarrassed.
“This is fine.”
He looks at me for a moment longer before shutting the door slowly.
I take a deep breath, putting down the fresh clothes and peeling off my old ones, which feel covered in fear-sweat and anxiety.
I don’t ever want to see that outfit again.
Naked, I turn on the water as hot as I can stand it and step inside, letting the pressure of the spray massage my sore muscles.
I moan because it feels so good.
I’ve been so dirty and roughed up that it feels amazing to stand under the water. I stand in the shower, just letting the water beat down on my head and shoulders for a long time before I wash my body and my hair.
By the time I’m done, the water has almost run cold.
I take my time towel-drying my hair and looking at my bare face in the mirror. The makeup I had worn to the wedding has long since caked on my skin and smeared under my eyes, so it felt good to have it off.
The clothes that Rory gave me swallow me whole, but I manage to cinch the drawstring of the pants to keep them up.
It’s good enough for now, and the fabric feels soft and comforting.
When I step out of the bathroom, fresh and clean, Rory sits on the bed, staring at me. I startle, putting a hand to my chest.
“Have you been sitting there the whole time?”
He nods. “Have to keep an eye on you.”
I snort. “So, you don’t trust me, either.”
“Not yet,” he says quietly, looking up into my eyes. “Trust is earned.”
“Fair enough.” I don’t expect Rory to trust me not to run away. God knows I want to. I just want to be back home with my father and the rest of my family.
“I want to take you on a tour of the mansion.”
I blink at him. “A tour? Why?”
“You’re going to be living here for a while. And I want everyone to see you as my wife, not as a Burke. You’ll be safer that way.”
I shiver slightly. “Will I have to meet your father?”
Rory grimaces. “Eventually. Not today.”
My shoulders relax slightly. “All right. A tour it is, then.”
Rory takes my hand, and my skin heats up as I pull away after he tugs me into the hallway.
“You’ve seen the left wing. It’s mostly storage and rooms we don’t use.”
I nod, looking around the mansion.
It’s not as ornate as my father’s, but it’s nice. There are statues of wolves at the bottom of the stairs when Rory leads me down them.
“The right wing has my room, Bree’s old room, and Dad’s master bedroom. His office is at the end of the hall.” He hovers his hand over the small of my back, not quite touching, to lead me into the foyer.
Pictures of the whole family adorn the walls, a smiling teenage Bree and Rory in one of them, with Rory’s fingers making a “v” above her head.
I smile at the picture. “You two seem close.”
“We were,” he says softly, making me think that something had changed.
But I don’t push.
Next is the dining room, with a huge, medieval-looking table that I assume Niall sits at the head of. It can easily seat fifteen people.
“Do you have a lot of dinner parties?”
Rory laughs. “Not exactly. But a lot of the men eat dinner here. Like a twisted idea of a family.”
I get that. My father’s men are like family to him, too, even if they’re not actually related to us.
He opens the door to the kitchen, and I peer inside.
It looks a lot like ours–two ovens, a big kitchen island, a sink, and a flat-top.
“I’ve never cooked, here,” Rory admits. “The chef always cooks for us.”
“You don’t cook?”
He grins. “I do. When I can. I mostly eat out, if I’m honest, because work is consuming most of the time.”
“I can’t even boil water, so I’m impressed.”
He closes the kitchen door and leads me out onto the terrace.
Flowers bloom all over the place, and it smells delightful.
“My mother had a green thumb. And after she left us, Dad hired a gardener to keep it up.”
“My mother loved to garden, too.” I murmur.
Maybe Rory and I have more in common than I thought.
Pain flashes across his face, so quickly that I nearly miss it.
“Are you okay?”
He nods. “I’ll show you the pool and pool house.”
We walk up the hill toward the pool house, which stands a few hundred yards from the pool. It’s a full house on its own, probably two bedrooms. It’s even bigger than our pool house.
The pool is one of those salt-water ones, lagoon style, and the water looks inviting. I can’t help myself from sitting down at the edge of the pool, dipping my toes in the water.
“We keep it warm in the winter and cold in the summer,” Rory says close to my ear.
I turn to look at him. “It’s lovely.”
It would almost be nice, sitting here with him, looking off into the sunset over the top of the pool house, the way the colors of the sky reflect in the water.
If this wasn’t all fake, of course. If I wasn’t here against my will.
“Regarding the wedding,” Rory starts, and I turn to look at him blankly. He clears his throat. “Is there any colors that you’d like?”
I scoff. “I don’t care. It’s not like it’s real, anyway.”
Rory looks back up at the sky, nodding wordlessly.
This isn’t the wedding I've dreamed of ever since I was a little girl. This is a means to an end. “You can take care of all of it.”
He bobs his head again, agreeing, and we just sit there in silence for a long while.
Chapter Twelve