Stop pacing.”
Olivia spun on her heel to face Cillian. Ever since agreeing to the date, she’d been full of nervous energy. It was all well and good to say yes to him, but the next few hours stretched out before them, and she wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do to occupy themselves.
No, that was a lie.
She could come up with half a dozen solutions without even trying, all of which would probably reinjure his head. It didn’t help that he sat on the bed, watching her have her little mental breakdown. She made an effort to stand still. “What do you do for fun?”
Cillian barked out a laugh that made her jump. He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. That was unexpected.”
Which only served to make her feel more awkward. Olivia threw up her hands. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” She motioned between the two of them. “This isn’t normal.”
He laughed again, quieter this time. “What does normal look like?” When she balked, he held out his hand. “Sit down. You’re making me twitchy with all the pacing. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the absurdity of this entire situation. So humor me and tell me what normal looks like.”
She didn’t know. That was the problem. Olivia wasn’t sure she’d recognize normal if it hit her in the face. But she wasn’t quite willing to share with Cillian exactly how messed up her childhood had been, outstanding chemistry or not. She inched closer to the bed and perched on the edge, but even with three feet between them, she felt like a lightning rod to his storm, full of vibrating energy and impending boom. She pulled at the edge of her T-shirt. “You know—we’d meet somewhere normal.”
“We met at a bar.”
“Most relationships don’t start in a bar.” She realized what she said and shoved to her feet. “Strike that. I didn’t mean relationship. I just…” Not sure what she was trying to say, she charged on. “Maybe a coffee shop. You’d be behind me in line and say something witty, and I’d laugh and you’d spend the next ten minutes charming me until I gave you my number.”
She was almost afraid to look at him and see his expression. His silence said it all. “That’s stupid, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all. It sounds nice.”
Olivia faced him. “You’re humoring me.”
“Sit down.” He waited for her to obey before he spoke again. “I’m not. It does sound nice.” He carefully leaned back against the headboard. “So I charm your number out of you, huh? I must be pretty charming.”
She shot him a look. “In this scenario, yes.”
Cillian laughed. “Then I’d call you.”
She edged over to sit on the other side of the mattress against the headboard. It was such a silly thing they were doing, but after how intense the rest of the night had been, maybe silly was exactly what they both needed. “A call instead of a text? I must have made an impression.”
“More like I was determined to make the right impression. Texts are lazy, and you can’t get a good read on someone that way. So I’d call.”
She hadn’t spent much time dating…well, ever, really…but even she knew that was different from the norm. “I’d think you were a freak for calling, but I’d answer because I was intrigued.”
“We’d talk for a while, feeling each other out.”
“More like me trying to figure out if you’re a psycho.”
He grinned. “Or that. I’d say all the things a normal guy would say. You’d be reassured that I wasn’t likely to chloroform you and chain you up in my torture-slash-sex dungeon.”
“That’s…comforting.”
“It would be, yes.”
She laughed softly. “We’d set up a date at the end of the call.”
“Somewhere nice and public and nonthreatening.”
“Now you’re getting the idea.” She stared at the ceiling, part of her kind of weirded out at how well the conversation was flowing with him playing along. “Dinner, no movie. Movies are for people who are too intimidated by the thought of first-date conversation that they chicken out.”
“The conversation would be titillating.”
“You think so?” She rolled onto her side to face him, finding that he’d done the same. His bandage was a vivid reminder of why they were there in the first place. Olivia frowned. “How’re you feeling?”
“That’s not part of the game.” He yawned. “So we’d drink pretentious wine that neither one of us liked and order things that we could barely pronounce and, at the end of it, we’d sheepishly admit that we didn’t like either the drinks or the food, and we’d go find a food truck and laugh at ourselves.”
It was an attractive picture he painted. Normal and kind of sweet and something she’d never have the option of doing. She made a face. “Instead, you wander into my bar because your family’s territory encompasses it and we have a quick fuck in the alley.” She should regret it. She knew she should. There were thousands of dating books and columns out there advising women to withhold sex until they had some sort of commitment.
Except she didn’t regret a damn thing.
She’d seen what she wanted and she’d taken it. It might not have been the perfect version of events they were joking about right now, but there had been something empowering about it all the same.
“I like our way.”
She smiled. “I kind of like our way, too. Simpler.”
“Sweetheart, there’s nothing simple about either of us, but it’s pretty of you to say so.”
She glanced at the clock. There were a good two hours left before she could safely leave him. She propped herself up on one elbow and grabbed the remote. “If I remember correctly, there’s a Justified marathon going on right now. That should keep us occupied until morning.”
“An artful dodge.” He stretched carefully. “That’s fine. Retreat. But don’t forget that you already agreed to a date, and I fully plan on holding you to it.”
As if she was in any danger of forgetting.
*
Cillian came out of the shower to find Olivia gone. He’d expected as much, though she hadn’t said she was leaving. He sat on the bed and lay down to stare at the ceiling. What a crazy night. Getting his ass handed to him had been one thing, but everything that happened after almost made it worthwhile.
She’d said yes.
He sat up so fast the room spun around him, but the queasy feeling in his stomach was nothing to the crazy pounding in his chest. She’d agreed to go out with him. He grinned. Hell if that didn’t add a silver lining to a seriously shitty night.
But he had things to take care of before he could even think about setting up a date to do Olivia justice. Their joking last night was just that—joking. He would never be that douche who took a date to some snotty, pretentious restaurant. Especially this date. She deserved a plan for something special.
But right now, his first priority had to be letting his family know where he was. It was tempting to just catch a cab home and slink up to his room while hoping no one noticed his newest fashion statement, but that was the coward’s way out—something he would have done a year ago. Now it was time to face the music and deal with the consequences. He couldn’t tell them it was Halloran men who’d attacked him, but he had to let them know he was attacked. He grabbed his phone. Here goes nothing.
Aiden picked up almost immediately. “Where are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Since you’re calling me, I got that. So I’ll ask again—where are you? I know you’re fucking irresponsible sometimes, Cillian, but you missed a vital meeting this morning. Father’s pissed.”
He looked at the bedside clock and cursed. The Erickson meeting. He’d completely forgotten about it. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. I don’t care how things were when we were kids—I can’t keep covering for your ass while you’re out being a dipshit. It’s time to step up like you’ve always said you would.”
He gritted his teeth. “I understand. I need a car.” He rattled off the hotel name and street.
Aiden cursed. “Goddamn it, Cillian. I hope she was worth it. You have our father to answer to.”
It was damn near impossible to keep from snapping back, but a year ago, his brother’s assumption that he’d blown off his responsibilities to party would have been right on the money. No one seemed to have noticed that he’d changed after Devlin’s death, that he wasn’t the same asshole who put himself before anyone else. But he understood. All of his siblings were so wrapped up in their own dramas and miseries, it was a wonder they realized he wasn’t where he was supposed to be in the first place.
Their father…Time only seemed to be adding to the weight Seamus O’Malley carried—a weight Cillian had never recognized until he started carrying it himself. It didn’t make the man any less of a bastard, but there was a level of understanding that had never been there before.
He took a deep breath. “Then I’ll answer to him. Send the car.” He hung up.
After using the bathroom, he stared in the mirror. One eye was blackened and, as he suspected, the bandage wrapping his head made him look like some soap opera trauma victim. “Sexy.” It was a wonder that Olivia hadn’t shoved his ass in a car and taken him to the hospital despite his arguments.
He owed her.
Hell, more than that, he actually liked her. He wanted to know more about her—about her past and her plans for the future. It might have started out because she was so different from any woman he’d met, but that superficial attraction wore off right around the time his head hit the brick wall.
When was the last time he’d had an actual connection with a woman?
He wasn’t sure he ever had. Not really. There had been girlfriends in the past, but they were after the same thing he was—as much sex and booze and bad decisions that a person could manage on any given twenty-four-hour period. He’d always reasoned that he had to live it up because the shackle of family was going to snap around him eventually, but looking back, it was clear that he’d been running in the only way he knew how. If he drank himself stupid, he didn’t have to think about how little freedom he really had—or what he might be asked to do once he was brought fully into the fold.
Well, he was there now. As the one running the O’Malley finances, he now held secrets worth killing for, and hell if part of him didn’t enjoy it. He liked working with the numbers and manipulating them to his family’s benefit. He didn’t even really have a problem with the fact that most of it wasn’t strictly legal.
He just couldn’t forget that it was familial politics that contributed to Devlin’s death.
That was unforgivable.
The one thing he wasn’t sure he could get past. Not that he had a choice.
He washed his face off as best he could and threw on his vest and jacket without bothering with the shirt underneath. It was ruined, and the bloodstained fabric would bring more attention than skipping it altogether. Once he was more or less presentable, he headed downstairs. This early, there was no one out and about—which was the reason they’d scheduled the Erickson meeting for this time. He was going to catch hell for missing it.
And rightfully so. He didn’t have any business wandering into Jameson’s last night in the first place when he knew there was an early morning meeting the next day. It didn’t matter that he didn’t drink anymore—the emotional hangover was almost worse than one driven by alcohol. He hadn’t cared about that, though. He’d been too wrapped up in seeing Olivia again.
She was a distraction, and one he couldn’t afford right now, but he wasn’t about to let her go until they explored this thing between them. Especially since she’d actually agreed to a date.
Cillian walked outside as a black town car pulled up. The front window rolled down to show Liam. Huh. Apparently Aiden wasn’t too pissed if he sent his most trusted muscle to scoop him up. Liam looked him up and down. “You’re a mess.”
Or maybe his brother just wanted to get the lectures started early. He sighed. “Rough night.”
“So I see.”
He started to get out, but Cillian waved him back into the car. “I can open my own door.”
“From the look of you, I wouldn’t trust you to wipe your ass by yourself today.”
Considering how shitty he felt, he didn’t blame the man. He just climbed into the backseat and did his best to relax. There would be questions, and he had to be prepared to answer them. His father would want to know why he’d gone to a hotel instead of back home, and if he didn’t have a good reason, there would be even more hell to pay. He couldn’t exactly say that he’d had an amazing woman playing nurse for him and he hadn’t been willing to let that go.
All too soon, the car stopped on Chestnut, its familiar trees no more comforting now than they’d been since he was old enough to know what his fate held. Christ, can you be any more melancholy? Your life is good—better than good. You always knew there were going to be sacrifices made and danger looming.
Yeah, he just hadn’t realized his brother would be the one to pay the price.
It was more than Devlin, though. Missing him was a near-constant ache, but it was nothing compared to the fear of something happening to another one of his siblings. He could comfort himself by saying Teague and Aiden knew the score, and even that Carrigan was no wilting flower. But Sloan and Keira? He didn’t know if he could survive something happening to them. They weren’t innocents—no one in the O’Malley family was—but they deserved better than to be a casualty of a war they weren’t even allowed to fight in.
He climbed the steps to the front door and into the town house. It was eerily silent. He looked around. Nothing. So there was his choice—his father’s office or his room to clean himself up a bit. Cillian looked down at himself. His suit was dark enough to cover up the blood spatter, but it still looked like he’d slept in it. Combined with his bandage…Yeah, Father wasn’t going to be impressed.
The bedroom it was.
He started for the stairs just as heels clipped through the hallway. He froze, and that was all the time it took for his mother to come around the corner. She stopped short, her green eyes going wide in a rare show of surprise and then horror. “Cillian?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” It was exactly as bad as it looked.
She set aside the vase she was carrying and rushed over to him. “What happened? Does your father know?”
“I haven’t seen him yet. There was a brawl down at the pub.” He wasn’t in love with the idea of perpetuating their belief that he was a worthless party boy, but it was better than the alternative. They have enough reason to hate the Hallorans. I’m not going to give them one more—not when it might draw a line in the sand that Carrigan would be on the other side of. “It’s nothing—didn’t even need stitches.”
She moved around him, carefully poking and prodding until she was once again in front of him, her hand pressed against her mouth. It struck Cillian that Aileen O’Malley was getting old. Oh, she had years left of the beauty she was renowned for, but she suddenly seemed…fragile. He’d never thought of his mother as fragile before. There had always been something so ironclad and unchangeable about her.
Except she’d gone and changed while he wasn’t looking.
He tried for a smile. “It’s really okay, Mother. Just a few punks with more beer in them than sense.”
“You’ve got to be more careful. If anything happened to you…” She seemed to realize she was in danger of showing too much, because she straightened and threw her shoulders back. He’d seen his sister Carrigan make that exact move more often than he could count. Worried or not, they didn’t make O’Malley women soft—at least not most of them. Aileen frowned. “Go get cleaned up before you talk to your father. He’s not pleased.”
No, he wouldn’t be. Cillian nodded, wishing he could say something to comfort her, but anything that came out of his mouth right now would be a lie at best, and cold comfort at worst. “Will do.” He started up the stairs, wanting to take them two at a time to get away from the uncomfortable realization that his mother was mortal.
“And Cillian?”
He stopped halfway up and turned to face her. “Yeah?”
“This has to stop.” She pressed her lips together. “I can’t have another—”
Devlin.
“I know. It will. This is the last time.” But even as he said the words, he wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. He didn’t exactly go looking for trouble, but that didn’t stop trouble from finding him. And there was something about Olivia that screamed trouble. If he was smart, he’d send her a thank-you bouquet and leave well enough alone. Whatever was in her past had affected her deeply, and he wasn’t without his own skeletons in his closet. Throwing the two of them together might not do anything, but he was too jaded to believe that. There would be fireworks—both good and bad.
He walked into his room and headed for his second shower of the day. Doc Jones be damned, he couldn’t meet his father with his hair filthy with matted blood, and putting on the same dirty clothes after the last shower had negated its effects as far as he was concerned. He kept his head out of the direct spray as much as possible, but in the process of cleaning, he still managed to reopen the cut.
Cillian watched his blood circle the drain, letting the water beat against his back. He had to get his shit together. Now wasn’t the time to let thoughts of Olivia and the pending date distract him. He’d screwed up with missing that meeting this morning, and he’d have to be held accountable. With a curse, he shut off the water and toweled off. It was a whole hell of a lot harder to wrap his head without help, but he managed. Barely. Once he was sure he wasn’t dripping blood anymore, he went to his closet and got dressed slowly, piece by piece.
His clothing was just another indulgence, but one that had a purpose beyond spending insane amounts of money. Or at least it did now. Before, it was all surface value—he had the money, and spending it on clothes was fun. Now, he was all too aware of how people looked at him, summing him up based on his appearance. He didn’t regret the tattoos, but the suit combated the instinctive judgment that some people had. How could he be a hooligan if he was wearing a ten-thousand-dollar three-piece suit?
Just a mask. He grimaced. Maybe, but it was a good mask. Putting on a suit made him feel like he was ready to face the world—like he was more than just a leaf being helplessly blown on someone else’s wind. He finished buttoning up his vest—pinstriped blue to match the blue suit and gray dress shirt—and shrugged into his jacket. He was as ready as he was going to be.
Time to face the firing squad.