Chapter 21 The Devil in the Details
THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
RONAN
It took me five minutes to slap on a Tom Ford three-piece that Shea said made me look like a gangster because of the subtle pinstripes, ten more to down two fingers of tequila, then twenty more to wait for Laney to finish getting ready for her first official night out as my wife.
My hands were still shaking, which was why I’d allowed myself a third shot of anejo.
Christ. I hadn’t had the shakes this bad since I was getting my first BJ and Krissy O’Leary made me hide in her closet when her dad got home early.
The question was why. I knew why I was scared then—I was fifteen, late on my growth spurt, and Old Clark O’Leary had a baseball bat he kept specifically for when he caught his daughter’s late night visitors.
This was just Laney and a Blackguard party. I’d been to dozens of them. And I knew her, even after just a few weeks of trading calls, texts, emails, even a letter or two.
Maybe that was the issue. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that this was, in fact, just another scheme to get what I wanted, there was a part of me that did genuinely like Laney Fisher.
As in turned-myself-into-a-fucking penpal liked her.
Wanted-to-give-her-millions-just-to-hang-around liked her.
Bring-her-to-my-secret-lair-and-wait-until-she-was-ready liked her.
What the fuck had happened to me?
“A fourth shot should answer that question,” I muttered as I poured myself another two fingers, then gulped it back. The burn down my throat barely registered. I was too busy wondering how I was going to deal when my horror show of a family put Laney through her paces, as I knew they would.
I could handle their abuse. But I had a sneaking suspicion I wouldn’t be able to take it if they turned it on her.
Fuck it. Fifth shot it was. Or maybe five and six combined, I decided as I let the pour continue.
“Do you always drink so much?”
“How—what?” I jerked, spilling tequila over my suit in the process.
The shot glass fell to the rug with a thump, but I managed to save the bottle.
“Jesus, baby.” I yanked off my jacket, then my tie and shirt, which I then proceeded to use ineffectively to dry my pants. “Are you half panther? Don’t sneak up on a guy like that.”
“Here, let me.” Laney appeared in front of me with a cloth she must have retrieved from the kitchen. She pressed it to my soaked undershirt in the brusque, no-nonsense way of a mother cleaning up after a child.
“Stop,” I said. “You don’t have to—oh, Christ.”
She had stopped, but then she’d looked up at me. And that was when I took in everything.
Her dress was nothing fancy, a simple gray thing that looked more like a slip than a gown, held up by straps I could probably rip with one finger.
She wasn’t one for a lot of makeup, but she’d lined her eyes with a bit of black that made the green glow like the jade earrings and matching pendant hanging just above the swell of her decolletage.
She’d chosen heels—God, the woman could wear them, too—but even with an added four inches, she was still small enough that she barely came to my shoulder.
Her hand still lingered on my chest, and her lips had fallen open.
“You look… like a goddess,” I told her honestly. “You look like a goddamn poem.”
Her swallow was thick. “I—thank you. You bought it.” She fingered the necklace. “This is one of my mom’s old pieces from the nineties.”
Mom. Mothers. Yes, keep thinking about that.
Think about parents and maybe grandmas too.
Anything to keep the pipe in my pants from bursting, or at least to keep you from tossing this perfect little nymph over your shoulder like a barbarian and having your way with her when you just fucking promised to behave.
I’d never fought so hard for self-control in my life.
“Um, Ronan?”
I blinked. Several times. Then forced myself to step away, because I honestly could not have her touching me one more second without ripping that dress off. “Ah, yeah?”
“Don’t you need to change?”
I looked down at my wet shirt and the tequila-stained ball of fabric in my hands. “Oh. Yeah. I’ll be right back.”
Ten more minutes and the fastest jerk-off in history later, I returned to the living room slightly sweaty but in a different pinstriped suit to find Laney calmly sipping a glass on the couch, looking like she belonged there.
My heart gave another hard thump. Then another when I saw the envelope she was holding.
“I—before we leave,” she said. “There’s something we need to discuss.”
I knew I should have had that fifth drink. “You really want to go over that now?” I checked my Patek. “The party started twenty minutes ago.”
When she smiled, it was adorably crooked. “Do you really care that much about being on time?”
Yeah, she knew me too, didn’t she?
I shrugged and sat down on the leather Chesterfield opposite her. “Fair enough. Did you sign it?”
For that, I received a look as she removed the document from the envelope and set it on the coffee table between us. “Of course I didn’t sign it. This document is ridiculous. But I don’t think I should be going anywhere as your, um, partner before we understand what’s going on here.”
Partner, she said. Not wife.
I wasn’t sure why that irked me, but it did, even if I’d used the term myself not too long ago.
“First of all, you’re already my wife, regardless of whether you sign any contracts,” I said as I poured that fifth drink after all. “Second of all, I don’t know if you noticed, but that contract is mostly for your benefit, not mine.”
“It’s not in your interest to know if double penetration is a hard limit?”
I nearly spat out my drink. “Christ. Liam put that in there?”
This time Laney was the one to look shocked. “Someone else knows you asked me that?”
“Liam’s my lawyer. And my best friend, but in this capacity, my lawyer.” I took a large gulp of my drink. “I just asked him to add the list with some basic preferences. Although, since you mentioned it, is it?”
She frowned. “Is what?”
“Is DP a hard limit?” I wasn’t sure if I was serious, but now I needed to know.
Every single inch of Laney Fisher’s skin turned the color of Eve’s apple. “I—what—you said—” She swallowed hard and pressed a hand to her chest. “I guess I don’t know.”
Fuck. Me.
My heart was racing like a thoroughbred itself at the thought of Laney in the center of the most delectable sandwich on the planet.
I cleared my throat. “Well, then. I suppose you should check the maybe box.”
What even was this conversation where we were talking about sex options like lunch orders? Do you prefer your chicken sandwich with a side of coleslaw or an extra serving of dick, Ms. Fisher?
I finished the rest of my drink.
“Anyway, the sex stuff isn’t really what I—I mean, it’s really just a consent form, so it’s fine, but—Ronan, you can’t give me millions of dollars just to spend six months with you.”
I looked up with a different kind of surprise. “Are you mad about that?”
“I’m—I don’t know.” Her voice pitched a bit higher. “You don’t find this kind of unreasonable?”
I followed her gesture to the papers on the table, then looked back at her. “I—no, not really.”
It was like I was speaking Farsi. “How can you say that?”
I shrugged. “It’s what you deserve for dealing with my obnoxious self and the even more obnoxious family members you’ll have to endure for the next six months. Honestly, you could ask for ten times that. Twenty times that. I’d pay it.”
“Ronan, you don’t need to pay me for being married to you!” she fairly shouted. “I’m not a broodmare. I don’t have a freaking purchase price!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I never said you did. And that’s not what this is.”
She was getting red in the face again, and not from being sweetly embarrassed or turned on. She also looked slightly out of breath, and I didn’t like that at all.
“Laney.” I moved to the couch where she sat and reached out to rub her arms, trying to calm her. “Hey. It’s just a negotiation. Breathe, baby. It’ll be all right.”
She batted my hands away. “I’m—I’m fine. Just give me a second.”
She sat on the couch doing the same breathing exercises she had gone through in Vegas. She still hadn’t told me exactly what her diagnosis was, but clearly she needed to have it cared for. All the more reason to get her to take the fucking money.
A few minutes later, her breathing had regulated, but her expression still burned with questions.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought we understood each other. You said you wanted to give us a real shot at marriage. I was okay with accepting some help with the shop and seeing a doctor out here. I was even okay with the idea of going back to school. But this,”—she waved at the pile of papers—“this makes it feel like a formal arrangement. Like, I don’t know, you’re trying to buy me.
Like it’s a matter of convenience. What is it you really want? ”
I picked up her hand and started toying with it. She didn’t wear polish, but kept her nails neatly filed, and her long fingers were elegant and unadorned except for the simple gold band.
Tell her.
Liam’s voice echoed in my head. He’d lectured me earlier today, just like he lectured me when he was writing the stupid document.
My family already thought I was idiotic for getting married without a proper prenuptial agreement.
Dad had insisted on a postnuptial agreement, but he hadn’t insisted on what was in it.
How could I explain that its contents were both a proverbial finger to my father and his control issues, but also a gesture toward the real purpose of this marriage.
Tell her about the company, I could hear Liam saying. Tell her about the board. Tell her that you need this marriage to be real enough to convince a room full of sharks that you’re stable enough to run a multi-billion-dollar empire.
Tell her that when you get their votes, she’ll need to go home. Back to Seattle.
I never considered myself a coward before that specific moment.