Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 92734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
He slid into the driver’s seat of his cherry red ’70 Chevelle and sighed. His life would be a whole lot less complicated if he could let the specter of his night with Carrigan O’Malley go. She hated his ass, and for good reason. Spending more time chasing her was courting more problems than he had resources to deal with. Life was too tenuous right now to throw something like this into the middle of it—the whole thing could erupt like a bonfire at the first spark of trouble.
* * *
Carrigan huddled in the back of the cab, trying not to shake. James motherfucking Halloran. She should have known better than to risk going back to the same club he’d taken her from, but it had been a test. Avoiding that location meant she was afraid. Carrigan had learned a long time ago that every time she refused to face her fear, it got more powerful. A fear left unchecked took away her control.
And control was one thing she didn’t have nearly enough of as it was.
Why the hell was he there? In the months and months of her frequenting that club, she’d never once seen him there. And she would have seen him. James was the kind of man who stood out, even in a crowd. He exuded danger that even the most oblivious idiot could pick up on—every time she’d seen him, even in the most crowded room, he had a good six inches of empty space around him. People might not realize why they gave him a wide berth, but she did. Because he was the kind of man who did very bad things without hesitation. A predator.
The fact that he was big and blond and gorgeous in a rough kind of way was only the icing on the cake if a woman was into that kind of thing. She’d been exactly that kind of woman the last time they’d met, and she’d like to say she’d learned from her past mistakes. James Halloran was a man she needed to avoid like the goddamn plague.
She’d bet what little freedom she had left that he’d never been there at the same time she was. As tempting as it was to chalk it up to a coincidence, it was too damn much to believe he’d been there tonight by chance. Which meant he’d been looking for her.
She shivered. Taking the album was a mistake. She’d known the second she opened it and saw its contents that he wouldn’t rest until he had it back in his possession.
If she had half a brain in her head, she’d send the thing back to him and good riddance. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she shook her head. As questionable as it was, she wasn’t ready to give up that pawn—especially since it was important enough for him to seek her out.
He said he’d been thinking about that night.
He lied.
He had to have lied. The sex obviously didn’t mean shit to him since he’d thrown her in a trunk less than ten minutes afterward. Not to mention that every remaining member of his shrinking family had been all too happy to threaten to kill her—and worse. They would have done it. She wasn’t naive enough to think they wouldn’t have.
Hell, her own father did worse than that to people who crossed him. There was no reason to believe James would have suddenly developed a conscience and played white knight to her damsel in distress. Yes, he’d stepped aside and let her and Callie go when they were sneaking out. He might have let them escape, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have stood by and watched her tortured and killed if his father commanded it. Her body burned at the memory of how he’d kissed her, of the look in his eyes when he’d growled that they had unfinished business.
Stop it.
Which was why it was so incredibly unforgivable that her brain kept circling back to him in the intervening months. She could claim Stockholm syndrome until she was blue in the face, but it wasn’t the truth.
The cab pulled up in front of her family’s home, saving her from following that train of thought any further down the rabbit hole. James Halloran was the enemy, and she’d be every bit the stupid bimbo her father thought she was if she forgot that.
Carrigan paid the driver and climbed out of the cab. She made it all of three steps when she realized what she’d done—she’d come home wearing her clubbing clothes when she was supposed to have been at church, praying for her father’s immortal soul. Goddamn it.
“Rough night?”
She startled, nearly tripping over her heels, and spun to face the male voice. It took all of a second to recognize who it belonged to. “Cillian? What the hell are you doing lurking out here?” The middle child of seven—and third boy—Cillian had lived as much a charmed life as possible under their circumstances. He’d always been kind of an idiot, but he’d never had to face the same things she and her sisters had. Or even that Teague and Aiden had. There had been no one requiring him to grow up, and so he’d happily played at being a Lost Boy.