Chapter 22
LEILA
He’s still damp. That’s the first thing I think as I stare at him, shirtless, with the white towel wrapped low around his hips, low enough that I can see those cuts of muscle dipping beneath it.
His abdomen is still shining with damp droplets of water clinging to his chest hair, and I can’t tear my eyes away from him.
He goes very still, his gaze locked on mine. I can’t imagine what my facial expression must be right now, but I can feel the air thicken between us, and I see his jaw tighten, the muscle in his cheek leaping.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” he says finally, and I try to respond, but all that comes out is a sound very like a squeak.
“I—” I can’t think of anything to say. Ronan looks at me for a moment longer, then walks to the closet, reaching for a robe.
I feel a flash of disappointment as he turns his back to me and shrugs it on, dropping the towel once his backside is covered.
When he turns around again, the robe is fully closed.
“Everything is fine in Boston,” he says, as if that’s what I’m thinking about, and not how I could clearly see the line of his cock beneath the towel.
“Rocco is still pushing his boundaries, but nothing that we can’t handle.
My hope is that he’ll start to back down, and then I’ll be able to decide how I want to move on my terms.”
I nod. My mouth still feels dry. “That’s… that’s good,” I manage finally, and Ronan pauses.
“How’s your mother?”
I blink, feeling as if I’ve been dashed with cold water. “She’s fine,” I manage, thinking of our conversation in the library. “She’s doing better day by day, it seems like.”
“Good.” Ronan crosses to the fireplace, reaching for a glass from the bar cart. “I’m glad to hear it.”
The conversation feels stiff, awkward. We’re ignoring the elephant in the room, but it’s infiltrating every breath, it feels like.
“She thinks you’re a good man,” I blurt out suddenly, the words forming on my lips before I can stop them. “I told her… about you. And she thinks that. I do too.”
Ronan freezes, his hand on the bottle of whiskey on the bar cart. “Neither you nor your mother know very much about me,” he says finally, his voice hardening. “Or what it means to be what I am.”
“I’ve slept with you.” I don’t know where my bravery is coming from, but suddenly I feel as if I can’t stop talking. “You took my virginity. I married you. I think I know—”
“Enough?” he interrupts. “You think you know enough?” He turns toward me, crossing the space between us, and suddenly the air fills with the scent of pine and the warm scent of his skin.
I gulp, frozen as he looms over me. “Remember, I came home with blood on my fingers. Leila. And that’s not the first or only time it’s happened.
Just the first time that you were there to see. ”
I can’t breathe. He’s so close to me, so physically overwhelming, so impossibly male that I feel as if I’m melting under his gaze. I reach up without thinking, my hand touching his bare chest in the open V of his robe, and I feel him flinch as if I’ve burned him.
His hand grabs my wrist before I can explore further, his eyes darkening with a warning that’s impossible to miss. “Stop,” he says, his voice hard, and I feel a quiver run through my entire body at the rasping burr of it.
“Ronan, I—”
“You don’t know,” he says flatly. “You don’t know enough about anything.
Not enough to know who I am or what you should think of me.
I helped you because it was the right thing to do.
I married you out of necessity. And if looking at you makes me so hard I can’t fucking think…
” His jaw tightens, and he lets go of my wrist, pushing my hand away from him as he does so.
“Then that’s just a problem I’ll have to learn to live with, until this marriage is over. ”
He pivots on his heel, stalking away from me and back into the bathroom, the door closing hard behind him. I stare after him, my pulse hammering in my throat and my head spinning, and I know I’m supposed to leave. I know he won’t want me to still be here when he comes out of the bathroom.
I retreat, because I don’t know what else to do. He looked so angry for a moment there, and not even with me… with himself, maybe? There’s something more to this that I don’t understand.
Of course there is, I tell myself as I go to hide out in the library for a little while.
There is, because he’s right. I don’t know him as well as I should.
He hasn’t even told me the truth about his last wife.
And I feel a quiver of fear in my stomach, wondering if that has something to do with the things Ronan said.
You don’t know enough about anything… to know who I am or what you should think of me.
I stay in the library for a long time, until I feel sure he must either have gone elsewhere in the house or to sleep. When I make my way back to our bedroom, I see his shape under the covers, lying on his side on the very far side of the huge mattress, facing away from me.
I change in the bathroom and slide under the duvet on my side, and I swear I feel him tense as I do, even with all the space between us. But he says nothing, his breathing even and quiet, and I close my eyes as I try to force myself to sleep.
—
Ronan is up and nowhere to be seen when I wake the next morning. I don’t see him until later that afternoon, when my mom and I are in the sitting room, sipping tea and chatting idly. He walks in, and I feel every part of my body go on high alert from the simple fact of his presence.
This man completely undoes me, and there’s not a fucking thing I can do about it.
"Sorry to interrupt," he says, but his eyes are on me, not my mother.
"I was wondering if you'd like to go out to dinner with me tonight, Leila.
There's a pub that serves the best fish and chips I can recall having, and I thought.
.." He runs a hand through his hair, looking almost nervous. "I thought you might enjoy seeing the town at night. And… I’d like to make it up to you for how… terse, I was with you last night. I’m sorry. "
I feel my mom’s eyes on me curiously, and I blink at him, startled to hear the apology. “I—”
“I think that’s a lovely idea,” my mom says brightly, and I shoot her a sideways look that clearly says you’re not being subtle.
But the truth is, I want to say yes. I want to go. I want to spend an evening with Ronan away from the confines of whatever gorgeous home I’m cooped up in. This would be like we were two normal people, out for dinner together, and the idea is more enticing than it should be.
We’re not normal, and we never will be, any more than this will ever be real. But I want to pretend, even though I know I shouldn’t.
“The nearest town isn’t Dublin,” Ronan continues, almost apologetically. “It’s nothing all that fancy. But the atmosphere is… authentic."
“That sounds nice, though,” I say quickly, and I see his lips tug up in something approaching a smile. “I think… yes. I’d like that.”
I go upstairs to change and linger far too long in front of my closet, trying to decide between something comfortable and casual, and something more flirty and date-like.
The former would send the message that I understand what this is, just a casual night out for fun, without any expectations of it being real, but deep down, that’s not what I want.
I want Ronan to look at me and want it to be more, even if it can’t be.
I want him to want me as badly as I want him, even if he never gives in and touches me again.
It’s December, so it’s going to be cold and wet out, but I opt for a knee-length forest green sweater dress with a slightly full skirt.
I pull on a black faux leather jacket over it, a pair of Docs sturdy enough to handle any slippery ground or icy cobbles, and spend far too much time fixing my hair before I slap on some mascara and a berry lip stain and call it good.
I look good. I know that. And I can’t wait to see the expression on Ronan’s face when he sees me.
He’s waiting downstairs when I come down—he must have changed in his office.
He’s wearing dark jeans and heavy boots with a cable-knit dark blue sweater, and his hair is styled back, his jaw dusted with the slightest bit of stubble.
My heart swoops in my chest as I see him, and when he turns and I see his eyes heat at the sight of me, my stomach does the same.
“Ready to go?” he asks. “I’m driving, although we’ll have security following us, of course. They’ll make themselves as invisible as possible.”
I smile at him, trying not to betray the effect he’s having on me. “Let’s go,” I say brightly, and we head out to the car.
A little over half an hour later, we’re driving through a small Irish town that looks like something out of a postcard. The streets turn to cobbles, lit up by old-fashioned streetlamps as Ronan looks for parking, and the buildings are all brick and stone, pubs and shops lined up next to each other.
“Have you been here often?” I ask as Ronan pulls into a parking space in front of a stone-walled pub with large windows glowing with light and a sign that reads "O'Sullivan's" in Celtic script.
“Not in a long time,” he admits. “I had my first beer here when I was a lad. Drinking age is younger here,” Ronan explains, “and younger still if the bartender looks the other way. But it’s been years.”
It might have been years, but something warms in my chest at the thought of Ronan bringing me to a place that has meaning to him. He comes around and opens my door, and as he takes my hand to help me out, I feel my heart flip in my chest again at the warm, broad touch of his palm.