Chapter 18
LIAM
The letter Rowan shoved against my chest burns a hole in my pocket. I didn’t write this, Liam.
She was so vehement, truth swimming in her eyes. I know this woman, intimately, despite the gaping five-year hole between us. She hasn’t changed that much. No more than five years changes anyone.
Which begs the question: if she didn’t write it, who did?
And the phone call, too. It was her. It sounded exactly like her.
Yet it’s another thing she denied. If someone set out to make me think Rowan betrayed me, what was their motivation?
To kill me? They almost succeeded, but if that’s the case, why didn’t they follow up when I survived?
None of this makes any sense.
Even if Rowan is telling the truth about the letter and the phone call, she still disappeared without a trace.
Why? And how?
My senses prickle, instinct firing like bullets from an automatic weapon, rapid and endless. Five years of believing something is a lot to unpick, and I’m not a hundred percent convinced of her innocence yet.
Should’ve set this in motion immediately, but my head’s been all over the place ever since I stole her from that pub. I’ve been off my game, but the calculating, dogged me is making a comeback.
I grab my phone and pull up my contacts, putting in a call to Kai.
“Hey, Mad Dog. How’s the captive?”
“A splinter in my fucking arse.”
He guffaws. “Shoulda known the coy, frightened act was bollocks.”
“Oh, she’s still playing that card like it’s the last one in the deck, but I’m wearing her down.”
“With what? A belt sander?” He laughs again.
“It’s in the toolbox, if she doesn’t give up this Erin shite soon.”
“Gotta hand it to the girl. She’s got balls.”
Yeah. That’s the problem. She always did.
It was one of the things that first attracted me to her.
She wasn’t afraid of me. Unlike every woman I’d dated to that point, Rowan stood up to me, put me in my place.
Fuck, it made me hard. It makes me hard now, just thinking about it.
Being a Mahoney, our reputation precedes us, and most people cower in our presence.
Rowan didn’t cower. She stood tall, challenged me, and I fell desperately in love.
When she did me dirty, I buried all those feelings, told myself women were for fucking and cooking and nothing more.
A lie I made up to cope with the fact my heart was a worthless lump of muscle in my chest, murdered by betrayal.
A violent tremor rips through me. If she’s telling the truth, then every hateful thought I’ve had for the last five years could be a lie.
Either she left and never looked back for reasons known only to her, or she was in some kind of trouble and chose to run instead of coming to me for help.
Rationalizing what she did and how I’m entitled to my feelings should make me feel better. It doesn’t.
“I need you to take on a project. Urgent. Everything else gets put on the back burner.”
“Shoot, boss.”
“Go back to the pub. Talk to the owner or manager or whoever is in charge. Find out everything they know about Erin Walsh: when she started work there, who her friends are, where she lives. If they don’t know, then find someone who does.
Use whatever resources and tactics you need to get the answers. ”
“Leave it with me.”
“Good. Oh, and Kai?”
“Yeah?”
“You have two days.”
He chuckles. “You’re all heart.”
I cut the call. Reflexively, my thumb traces the uneven ridge of my scar from temple to lip.
For five years, I’ve used this mark to anchor my hatred.
But if she didn’t write that letter or make that phone call, then this isn’t a badge of betrayal—it’s a brand on my face, my life, my heart left by a ghost.
Heart? What fucking heart? Except, since Rowan came back into my life, it’s like it’s been jumpstarted. Still stuttering, still finding a regular rhythm, but no longer dead.
It will be my undoing.
Despite leaving the deadbolt to Rowan’s room open, she hasn’t left it. Work is piling up, and if I don’t get my head out of my arse soon, Patrick will decapitate me. But despite the looming threat of my brother’s wrath, I’m outside Rowan’s room.
I grab the door handle, then pause. Honey not vinegar, remember? I knock.
“Come in.”
I push open the door. She’s dressed in loose-fitting dark blue jeans and a thick wooly, cable-knit jumper, sitting cross-legged on the bed, flicking through the book I ordered her to read.
Still hasn’t given up then? The thought makes me inwardly smile rather than frown.
With every small action, or inaction, she’s revealing who she really is.
“I’m taking Titan out for a walk. Would you like to come along?”
She blinks, the subtitles on her face screaming “What the fuck are you up to now?”
“Some fresh air will do you good. You’re too pale.”
“That’s the kidnapping, not the lack of Irish wind chill on my cheeks.”
There she is again. It’s like every hour that passes, another chip appears in her carefully constructed fake life, and it’s only been six days since I took her from that pub in London.
Then again, it’s a well-known fact that people can’t keep up the pretense of being someone they’re not for very long, and that’s under normal circumstances.
Add in five years of betrayal, a kidnapping, and being locked in a room with a bunch of strangers—and one former lover—and it’s little wonder the charade is crumbling.
Rowan’s a normal girl from a normal background. She isn’t built for subterfuge. It was one of many reasons I fell for her. She was different from the mafia wives and girlfriends I was used to being around. Apart from Sorcha, maybe. In another life, Sorcha and the Rowan I knew could be sisters.
Hmm… maybe letting those two spend some time together wouldn’t be a bad idea. Loosening the binds a little won’t make her too suspicious of me, but if I do a complete one-eighty and start being nice to her all the time, she’ll smell a rat.
Sorcha, on the other hand, can get her to lower her guard just by being Sorcha.
I don’t have to let her in on my plan to use her to achieve my goal.
Sorcha’s a social butterfly with a gazillion friends.
One word from me, and she’ll gladly take Rowan under her wing.
And those layers will melt away like that burgundy dress did from her skin the last night we fucked.
Christ, I have to stop thinking about her body in that fucking dress. These days, my dick is hard ninety percent of the fucking day. Okay, not ninety percent. I’d probably be dead or in the hospital, but it’s a fucking lot. Too much.
“Titan likes you. Come for her?”
A flicker of delight flashes across her face. Rowan always loved dogs, but she told me her parents wouldn’t let her have one when she was a kid.
“Okay.” It’s a muted response for my benefit.
She doesn’t want me to think she in any way wants to spend time with me when she’s not forced to, such as mealtimes.
It’s another lie. If Rowan didn’t write that Dear John letter or make that phone call, that means she didn’t set me up that night either.
If she’s telling the truth—and I’m not willing to entirely believe her just yet—then she wasn’t responsible for the scar on my face and the weeks spent in rehab. Something else made her run and cut off all contact with me, and I intend to find out what.
I wait while she laces up her boots and shrugs into a calf-length puffer coat.
She leads the way downstairs, keeping a good two feet between us, like she’s afraid of getting too close.
But the scent of Sorcha’s floral shampoo trails behind her.
It’s wrong. It’s not what Rowan smells like.
I’ve already sent Maeve to that specialty shop in Dublin to find the exact strawberry scent she used to use—the one that lingered on my pillows and skin for days.
I won’t tell her I bought it. I’ll just leave it in her bathroom and wait to see if she chooses to smell like my Rebel again.
I put on my coat and whistle to Titan who comes bounding down the hallway, tongue lolling, and gives a loud bark.
“If you look any goofier, you’re getting retired. Stupid fucking dog. Some terrifying beast you are.”
She barks again, then nestles her head against Rowan’s hip, vying for attention. Rowan smiles down at her and immediately complies, stroking the top of her head, then bending down to give her a kiss.
Fucking lucky Titan. Dog deserves to be in a pie, especially if she’s going to suck up to every stranger we bring here. She fell for Sorcha after two point five seconds, too.
Women. They always stick together.
I lead Rowan and her new best buddy to the back of the house.
It’s February, so the temperatures are freezing, but for the first day in a while, the wind isn’t blowing a gale.
In silence, we walk the path that leads through the gardens and out into the orchard.
The trees are still bare of leaves, and a few rotten apples from last season lie on the ground.
Titan strides ahead of us, nose to the ground.
“That’s always been a mystery to me.”
Rowan twists her head in my direction, tension pulling at the tender skin around her eyes, likely because she’s trying to work out what shot I’m preparing to fire next. “What has?”
“If dogs have such sensitive noses, why the fuck do they need to skirt the ground with their snouts to smell anything?”
There’s a pause before Rowan laughs. My insides twist. God, I’ve missed that laugh. Hearing her laugh for Darragh and not for me made me lose my fucking mind.
Careful. There’s still no hard evidence to support her defense on the letter and the call. She’s proven herself a liar over and over again. If I don’t keep my wits about me, and my brain rather than my dick in charge, I’ll lose sight of that fact, and that cannot happen.
“It’s a good point. I don’t have an answer.”
We slip into silence again. As we get warmer from walking, Rowan unzips her coat and her scent hits me.
Cinnamon and unmistakably her. My lungs drag it in like I’m starving for air and this is the first real breath I’ve taken in years.
God help me. It’s the same smell I used to bury my face in when I was inside her, the one that clung to my sheets, my clothes, my skin.
My jaw tightens until it aches. I remind myself that this is the woman who cast me aside for reasons she won’t reveal.
The amnesia story I briefly believed is shite.
But attraction doesn’t care about secrets or betrayal or logic.
It slides past my defenses and digs under my ribs, flooding me with heat and want and the ghost of trust I thought I’d burned out of myself.
My pulse stutters, my traitorous body leaning a fraction closer before I force it back in line.
I cannot afford to forget that she ran out on me without explanation. No matter how good she smells or how much her laugh feels like home, or how badly my dick wants to push her to the bed of leaves scattered on the ground and fuck her until the pain of her betrayal eases, if only by a fraction.
This is the line in the sand, the one I cannot cross until the whole, ugly truth is revealed.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I snap. “Titan, house.”
I whip around and stomp back through the orchard. Rowan could choose this moment to run, but she won’t get past the wall-mounted electric fence and the armed security patrolling the perimeter. I almost want her to run so I have a reason to chase her.
She doesn’t run. She catches up to me, and her hand brushes my arm. I snap out of reach, the burn from her touch as real as if I’d held my bare flesh over an open flame.
“Liam. What happened? What did I do wrong?”
I don’t reply. I can’t… because if I open my mouth, I risk showing my hand. I keep my face hard, my steps resolute, my heart locked behind years of discipline.
Whatever she did—or didn’t do—I’ll find out soon enough.