Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
This is why I’m not sleeping.
“Have to go to a charity dinner tonight,” I tell her, scratching at my nose.
“I know. Cavin told me about it.”
“When did you see Cavin?” I ask her.
“I go to Erin and Cavin’s on the regular to work, you know. He mentioned it was tonight. Wasn’t too keen on having to wear a tux.”
“Aye. Kiss me so I taste you the whole night, will ya?”
And she does.
Then someone’s at the door. There’s a quick knock, then the doorknob’s turning—
My hand is on my gun before the door opens.
“Declan, no—”
Erin stands in the doorway. She blinks, staring at the two of us. Bridget, with her hair disheveled and her lips swollen, and Christ, her shirt’s still halfway pushed up from when I slid my palm up to cup her tits. And me, holding a fuckin’ gun and sporting a boner.
“Declan,” she says. “Put the gun away.”
I do, then turn to the side so she doesn’t see me adjust myself. Fuck, that was way too close.
“We got ambushed at Lickety,” I mutter. “Don’t come into Bridget’s without fuckin’ knocking, Erin.”
“It’s customary for sisters to go into each other’s homes unannounced, Declan,” Erin says, crossing her arms on her chest. “What’s not is for engaged men to be in a single woman’s apartment alone.”
“Leave it, Erin,” Bridget says. “Please.”
“I was just heading out,” I tell her. I feel like an arsehole for leaving Bridget to deal with this, but it doesn’t seem like Erin wants to talk to Bridget about why I’m here.
“Right, then. Let’s get some work done,” she says, stepping past me. “See you tonight at the charity dinner, Declan?”
“Aye.”
The dinner I’m taking Valentina to.
Sorry about that. Everything okay?
Bridget
We need to be more careful. It’s alright though
The function is at some hotel. The kind of charity dinner the family attends because not attending makes a statement, and we’re in the habit of making the residents of Ballyhock like us.
So I’m in a goddamn suit, and I’ve shaken hands with precisely seven people whose names I couldn’t tell you.
Valentina arrives at half eight.
She finds my eyes across the room and walks over to me. “Nice affair they have here.”
I almost choke on the word affair, but I pull myself together. She stands tall and lovely in her own sort of way, like a building you admire but don’t actually want to visit, and greets me with a placid kiss on my cheek and her hand on my arm.
“Drink?”
“Wine, please,” Valentina says, the same as she’s ordered at every opportunity she’s had with me since I met her.
So I do what I have to. I get the drinks and make the introductions.
I do my fucking job, wondering, as I do a million times a day, how I can possibly extricate myself and my family from this engagement. From tying my life to this woman whose family will wreak fucking havoc if they discover I have a pregnant girlfriend.
Is that what she is? It feels so fucking trite when she’s so much more.
My girlfriend. My everything.
My dirty fucking secret. Shite.
An hour later, Colm finds me at the bar. “Got a text from Cavin,” he says. “Says he’s been trying to reach you, and you haven’t answered your phone.”
I pat my pockets.
I don’t have my fucking phone. Christ. I must have left it in the car. I hate not having my phone. What if something happened to Bridget? What if she needs me? “Must’ve left it in the car,” I say.
Colm watches me as I head for the back door and out to the car park. There it is, gleaming in the overhead light on my front seat. I find it quickly, power it on, walk around the car, and scroll. Nothing from Bridget. I let out a long breath.
That’s when I notice the silhouette to the right of my car, next to the open door.
Valentina. She’s standing a few feet away, holding something in her hand. It takes me a second to realize what it is, and then I stifle a groan.
Bridget’s jumper, the one she left on the passenger seat three days ago, an oversized thing she’d pulled off because the car was warm. I’d meant to bring it up to her and hadn’t—just left it on the goddamn seat.
“This isn’t mine,” Valentina says, her brow knit together.
“Uh, no.”
A beat of silence passes between us as she folds the jumper, her lips pressed together, and I push my hands in my pockets.
“I’m not an idiot, Declan. This belongs to your ‘best friend,’ doesn’t it?”
I don’t respond, which is damning enough. Christ. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.
“I don’t care,” she says in a low voice. “Do you understand? I don’t care who she is. I don’t care what she is to you. That’s not my business, and I’ve already made it very clear there’s no romance between you and me.” Her jaw tightens. “What I’m telling you is that you are fucking marrying me. Because if you don’t, my father will give me to that insufferable douche from Prague.”