33. Lara
Rory’s getting dressed when I wake up, and I frown up at him, blinking sleep out of my eyes.
“Where are you going?”
“Just meeting up with Duncan, discussing cancelling the next few shipments. It’s going to take time to turn everything over to Bree, and I’ve got to tie up some loose ends.”
I keep frowning as he leans down to kiss me.
“So, I’ll be here alone all day?”
He chuckles. “Not alone. Raquel will be here, and I’ll be back in a few hours.”
I huff out a breath. “Okay, fine , but hurry back.”
He smiles down at me fondly. “Of course. Who could stay away?”
Rory kisses me again and then leaves the room.
I stretch my arms over my head, wincing when I feel my sore muscles from last night. It doesn’t bother me. I like it when I can still feel him the day after.
My mood has dampened significantly since yesterday, though, and I know why. After Rory ties up these loose ends, there’s no reason for me to be here anymore.
My da and my brothers will come and get me, and Rory will go back to his life as an accountant. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.
The thought makes tears burn at the backs of my eyes, but I don’t plan on staying in bed crying all day.
I groan and stand up, dressing quickly in a one-piece swimsuit and a pair of shorts. I plan on doing a few laps. Hopefully, it’ll keep my mind off everything.
I guess Rory may still be in my life peripherally, since his sister is married to Declan. But I almost think that will be worse, just seeing him on holidays, maybe at my nephew’s birth. I wonder how it will feel, seeing him a couple of times a year. I wonder if whatever he feels for me will still be there if we don’t get to see each other.
I take a deep breath, pushing away those thoughts. I head downstairs, and Raquel’s in the kitchen, eating eggs and toast.
“The chef decided to stay,” she tells me, sliding an empty plate toward me. “Thank God. I can’t cook for shit.”
I laugh, sitting across from her and filling my plate with a spoonful of scrambled eggs, a piece of toast, and a couple slices of bacon.
“I’m glad you decided to stay, too.” I smile at her while I take a bite of my toast.
She shrugs. “I don’t really have anywhere else to go right now.”
I gape at her. “What about your wife?”
“We’re not exactly on speaking terms.” She picks at her eggs. “Got in a fight a few days ago, and she won’t take my calls.”
“Oh, man. What happened? You seemed so happy.”
“I was. She wasn’t.”
She’s still looking down at her plate, poking around the eggs.
“Raquel.” I take her hand across the table. “You can talk to me. I’m here for you.”
For now , I think, but I don’t say it. It's not the right time to complain to her.
She looks up at me. “She didn’t want me working for Niall. She always said he took advantage of me, of my kindness, and maybe she was right.” She sighs. “And I’d tell her that if she’d just talk to me.”
“Maybe she just needs some time.”
Raquel nods, still looking down in the dumps.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m moving in with my family again,” I say miserably.
She pouts. “Why would that make me feel better? You’re my only friend.”
“I don’t want to go.” I finish my breakfast and sip coffee, hoping that the caffeine might perk me up a little.
“Then why are you going?”
I shrug. “That's always been the plan. Rory and I only got married to protect me from Niall, and well, I don’t need that protection anymore.”
“Rory’s crazy about you.”
My eyes shoot up from my plate to hers. “He is?”
She snorts. “Please. It’s obvious. I’ve already told you he has feelings for you.”
“He does. I know he does, but I don’t know if It's enough.”
“Have you asked him?”
I shake my head, flushing. “I’m too afraid of what he’ll say.”
“Well, there you go. Rory probably thinks you don’t want to stay.”
“That’s crazy. Of course, I want to stay with him.”
“Enough to leave this life behind?” Raquel tilts her head as she asks, clearly curious.
I swallow hard. That’s something I haven’t considered. I could ask Rory if I could go with him. Change my whole life. Become an accountant’s wife.
But I’d have to leave my family behind. I know that Rory doesn’t want to be a gangster. It’s not like I need to be one either. But could I deal with only visiting my family now and again?
“I don’t know.” My words are an almost whisper.
“I guess it’s something you’ll have to think about.” Raquel stands up. “And you’ll have to talk to him. Actually find out what he wants, even if it ends up hurting you.”
“You should take your own advice,” I point out. “Leave her a voicemail if you have to. Tell her how you really feel.”
Raquel nods. “You’re right. But in the meantime, do you want some mimosas by the pool? I can make those, at least.”
“Oh, I thought you’d never ask.”
We head out to the pool, and Raquel mans the poolside bar, making a big pitcher of mimosas and filling up two champagne flutes.
I start to feel better after the first one, wiggling out of my shorts and jumping into the pool. It feels good to do a few laps, the water and the exercise seeming to stretch out my sore muscles.
As I swim, I can’t stop thinking about what Raquel said.
Would I leave it all behind for Rory? It’s not like I’ve ever been particularly interested in my father’s business. In fact, I’ve kind of kept my head in the sand when it came to the particulars of the clan.
But my family is so close-knit. After all, I’ve been living with them my whole life. I’ve never really lived on my own. Even in college, I commuted.
After Ma died, it seemed like my family needed me as the eldest daughter. But things are different now. In all the time I’ve been away, nothing fell apart.
Maybe I could go with him. Start a new life. Not be known all over town as Patrick Burke’s daughter. Instead, I’d be Rory Murphy’s wife.
Rory, true to his word, comes home while Raquel and I are still out at the pool. I’m working on a pretty good tan when his shadow falls over me.
I peer up at him from over the tops of my sunglasses.
“Honey, I’m home,” he teases, and I give him a smile back.
He grabs my hand, pulling me up into a standing position.
I bump against his chest, and he laughs.
“Too many mimosas?”
“Only a couple.” I don’t even feel tipsy, mostly because I’ve been so nervous.
I have to ask Rory what he wants. I have to confess to him that I want to be with him, no matter where, no matter what.
I can only hope that he wants the same future as I do.
Once we get back into the house, I immediately take a shower, not wanting to smell like sunscreen and salt water. I half-expect Rory to join me, but he doesn’t.
I towel off my hair, throwing the used towel into the laundry basket.
Rory lounges on the bed, his robe having slipped open.
A tantalizing view of his tanned chest and abdomen makes me want to climb on top of him, but I shake it off. I can’t get distracted by sex right now.
I crawl onto the bed, instead of straddling him just sitting next to him. I bite my lip.
“Everything okay?"
I can’t stop the question that’s been burning in my mind ever since his father’s death.
“Will you go back?”
Rory blinks at me once, twice. “What?”
“Will you leave town again? Go back to your apartment, to your job?”
He shifts on the bed, looking away from me. “Do you want me to?”
“No! Of course not. I want you here. With me.”
His eyes snap to mine. “Then why did you even ask me that?”
I huff out a breath through my nostrils.. “I don’t know. I just thought...”
He grabs my wrist when I trail off, pulling me closer and kissing me roughly.
I squeak into his mouth, heat rushing through me at how he’s manhandling me.
“You thought wrong.”
He flips me over on the mattress effortlessly, and I can’t help but let out a little giggle, despite all the horror that has happened to us lately.
“I love you, honey.” He tugs off my shorts, tossing them to the ground, and I lean up and wiggle out of my top. “Don’t you know that by now? Haven’t I told you enough?”
“No,” I breathe. “Not enough. Never enough.”
“I love you," he murmurs, kissing up my calf, my thigh.
I shudder when he plants a kiss on my inner thigh, sucking lightly to make a mark there.
He breathes across my clit, and I cry out and arch my back, but he stops, looking up at me from between my legs with a slight frown.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you going to go back to your normal life? Do you want a divorce?”
I almost want to laugh at the ludicrous suggestion, but instead, I just shake my head.
“No. No, I still want to be Lara Murphy.”
“Forever?”
He plants more kisses on my other inner thigh before brushing his nose across my clit, and I breathe out a sigh of his name.
“Always. Always, Rory,” I promise, my voice firm and fierce, and then he finally presses his face against my core, lapping at my clit before latching his lips around it, sucking lightly until my thighs are trembling.
Just as I’m about to go over the edge, he delves two fingers inside of me, angling them up as I rock my hips against his hand.
I gasp when I come around his fingers, and he grunts against me. “That’s it, honey. Go ahead.”
Before I am even done pulsating, he removes his fingers and guides himself inside me, thrusting his hips forward as if he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.
His hair falls over his eyes as he looks down at me, pumping his hips.
“You’re mine.”
My eyes, which I’ve squeezed shut in pleasure, pop open to look at him.
“I’m yours,” I agree, rolling my hips to meet each thrust.
Rory groans, throwing his head back and taking hold of my hips to rock me against him. By the time he spills inside of me, I’ve reached a second orgasm and am halfway through a third.
I tremble while he collapses on top of me, kissing along my throat and jawline as I laugh.
He huffs out a breath against my throat, lifting his head. “It feels like I shouldn’t be this happy. That I don’t deserve it.”
I frown, cupping his face in my hands and glaring at him. “Of course, you deserve it, Rory. You’re a good guy. You saved me.”
“But look at all the people I didn’t save.”
“You couldn’t save them, Rory. Some of them weren’t meant to be saved. You did what you had to do. You’re not a killer, not really. You just defended yourself, protected me.”
“I still took lives.” He covers his face with his hands after he rolls off me.
Frowning harder, I take his wrists and pull his hands away from his face.
“You saved me. Without you, I’d be dead. Is it worth it?”
“You’re worth everything,” he says, and there’s such earnestness in his eyes that it makes my heart ache.
“Then that’s all that matters. I love you, Rory, and I’m grateful to you. Grateful for you.”
“I’m grateful for you, too, honey.” He takes my hand in his and brings my knuckles up to his lips to kiss them. “So, we stay married?”
“We stay married. Nothing changes.” I snuggle up to his side.
“Oh, things are going to change.” He looks up at the ceiling, but his eyes are blank. He finally sighs. “I should go and talk to Duncan.”
“We’ll talk to him together.”
He smiles, sitting up on the edge of the bed before heading to his closet to get dressed.
“Thank you. I’d like that. I’ll have to break the news to him that it’s time to end my involvement.”
“He’s a friend?”
He nods. “He was my best friend when we were kids. I kind of reconnected with him after coming back to town.”
I hurriedly dress in the clothes I’ve thrown on the floor and follow him to Duncan’s room.
Rory raps on the door, and Duncan opens it quickly, his eyes widening when he sees me in tow.
“Oh, hello.” He smiles, and it doesn’t seem like a forced one.
I smile back. “We haven’t exactly been introduced. I’m Lara.”
He nods. “Duncan.”
Rory glances between the two of us nervously, as if he’d thought we wouldn’t get along. I guess he knows better than me what lies his father has spread about me and my family.
But Duncan seems relaxed, or at least relaxed given the circumstances.
“The cleaners took care of your… of the body,” Duncan says quietly, and Rory gives a curt nod.
“It’s time to hand everything over to Bree.”
Duncan blinks at him. “Are you sure? Rory, you don’t want?—”
“I don’t want to be boss,” Rory says bluntly, clapping Duncan on the shoulder. “If you want to run things, that’s all right by me. You’ll just have to talk to my sister.” He laughs. “I’ll even put in a good word for you.”
Duncan’s eyebrows draw together. “Rory?—”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.” Rory looks at him seriously. “Unless you have a problem with the Burkes taking over our territory.”
Duncan swallows visibly, his eyes flickering to me and then back to Rory. Then he shrugs. “I guess it doesn’t much matter who runs things. I was born an Irish thug, and I’ll die an Irish thug.”
Rory grins. “Aye. But not anytime soon.”
Duncan roars out laughter and pulls Rory into a hug, and I stand there smiling at the two of them.
It feels like there’s life in this house for the first time since I’ve been here, feels like some deep evil has been swept away.
And even if Rory seems shaken, I can feel that he’s going to come out of this. I can feel that he’s going to take this in stride and become a better man for it.
I just know it.