I want him anyway. No matter what I thought, no matter what his reasons were, couldn’t I be selfish, too? Couldn’t I just indulge in this? I’d dreamt about it for so long.
If that makes us bad, fuck it. We do bad things daily. He was right. Ethan, Dona…him. They all did whatever they liked and dealt with the consequences later.
I’m going to do this. I sat up on my bed, shifting to sit against my headboard. I wasn’t going to expect anything. I wasn’t going to delude myself into thinking that this was something…more. I was just going to have fun…be bad…for as long as he was willing to be bad with me.
Reaching over to the bedside table, I grabbed my cell phone to see whatever Darcy had wanted…except he didn’t want anything.
Wyatt asked Dad and me to check out a lead about Ivy in Dallas while he deals with things here in Chicago. We’ll only be gone a few days. Luv you. – Darc
“A lead? What lead?”
I hadn’t heard anything, and Wyatt hadn’t said anything—not that we were focused on that at the moment.
But why him and Dad? I instantly felt the goosebumps all up and down my arms. He sent them away. Before he came to see me, he made up some bullshit lead to send my brother and father away.
He’s serious. When he came to me, he already knew what he was going to do.
“Sly, charming, smooth-talking son of bitch,” I muttered, shaking my head. How many women had fallen for him because of that mouth of his?
Fine. If he was willing to do this with me, he needed to know I wouldn’t let him control me. I wasn’t going to be like the others.
No matter who he dealt with in the past, there was no other woman like Helen Badass Callahan.
He rocked my world, threw me off my axis.
Tomorrow I’d do the same damn thing.
It was the polite thing to do, right?
I let the monster out? No. The moment he kissed me, he did...he just didn’t know it. Yet.
FIFTEEN
“When I'm good, I'm very good,
but when I'm bad, I'm better.”
~ Mae West
HELEN
“Aren’t you a little bit old to be hunting down gangsters, Dad?” I asked, lifting my heels out of the display case before taking a seat on my Sherwood sheepskin settee.
“These old jokes are getting old,” he muttered, and I could hear Darcy laugh in the background. “And to answer your question, dear young daughter, I am the right age to be hunting gangsters…aren’t you too young to be going around calling people gangsters. You sound very lame, Helen.”
Darcy must have busted his gut because the laughter got louder.
“Darcy, shut up! And, Dad, don’t call me lame!”
“Don’t call me old.”
I rolled my eyes even though I couldn’t help but smile, too. “That’s a little immature.”
“Just as you enjoy teasing your brother, I enjoy teasing the both of you. So if I’m immature, so be it, the joy is worth it.”
“Enjoy your gangster, Dad. Love you! Bye!”
“Love you too, Chipmunk —”