SAOIRSE
The idea of Connor taking me out on a date, arealdate, feels more than a little ridiculous. The other night at the club was one thing, but dinner? I can’t imagine how we’ll get through it without biting each other’s heads off, especially after the way we left things at the pub the other night.
Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t allowed to sit in on the meeting with the Dublin Kings. My father didn’t fill me in either, only told me that he’d suggested Connor take me out while we’re here in Dublin and that I wasn’t allowed to say no.
“This will be the final piece,” he’d said. “Meet him downstairs at eight tomorrow night.”
I don’t like being left out, particularly after so much was made about how necessary I was to this entire plan. It was my seducing Connor into marrying me that would be the lynchpin of all of it. It makes me think that the deal is done, that Connor has agreed to go back to Boston, and now my part in this is all but done as far as my father is concerned.
That it’s time for me to sit down and play the part of Connor’s happy trophy wife and let it all go on without me.
Not on your life.
I was told not to dress up, that it would be semi-casual. However, I still find myself sorting through the items in my suitcase, wondering what Connor would like, even though I hate myself for it. I don’twantto care, but every time I think of him, I remember the way his hands on my body make me feel, sliding over me, the heat of his mouth and the way it makes me feel alive, and I know I can’t help but care.
After we’re married, this will fade. It’s just infatuation with the first man who ever made me feel these things. There will be someone else.
Niall springs unbidden into my mind, and the way he’d stood over me outside the elevator, the look in his eyes. We’d talked casually on the plane—something that had apparently made Connor half-crazy with jealousy—and I’d been reminded how nice it was to simplytalkto someone. Since being with Liam and then Connor, it’s felt like every conversation is a battleground, a minefield. I hadn’t realized how exhausting it was.
But Connor was right about one thing, I shouldn’t let my guard down with Niall. He is Liam’s right hand, and I can’t trust him.
It feels harder and harder to trustanyonethe longer this goes on.
By eight, I’m dressed in dark jeans and the same loose linen top that I’d worn to see Connor that day after his meeting, with the black leather jacket thrown over it. I’ve never owned a leather jacket before, but I’m becoming rapidly attached to this one. It even still holds a faint scent of Connor’s cologne and his motorcycle exhaust, and I have to force myself not to hold it up to my nose and breathe it in before I shrug it on.
I can’t fall for him.I tell myself that over and over. But I can’t deny how my heart leaps a little as I step out of the elevator and see him waiting in the lobby, tall and ruggedly handsome in jeans and a black t-shirt with his own leather jacket.
“Dinner?” he asks with a grin, holding out his elbow almost gallantly. It’s so different from the practically feral man who pinned me to the wall in the hallway of that pub that I feel a little insane remembering it.
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I laugh, taking his arm anyway and trying to ignore the way the warmth of him seeps through the buttery soft leather or the way our arms look linked together, black on black, my slender arm over his muscled one.
“I don’t think either of us does,” Connor says wryly as he leads me to the door and the waiting cab outside. “Your father insisted on this date.”
“I’m sure he had to twist your arm.” I slide into the cab and look over, only to see Connor’s blue eyes fixed on mine piercingly as he sits next to me.
“Not at all,” he says quietly, holding my gaze for a moment as the cab pulls out into traffic, and I feel a slight shiver ripple over me.
“In fact,” he continues, leaning back and finally breaking eye contact, “I think it’s good that we’re going out tonight. It will allow us to go over the details of the meeting I had with the Dublin Kings.”
My heart leaps in my chest. “You’re going to tell me about it?”
“Didn’t your father already?”
“No.” My voice audibly tightens. “He said it wasn’t anything I needed to know.”
“Interesting.” Connor purses his lips. “He’s not happy with how it fell out, I can tell you that. What heishappy about is that I’m returning to Boston, and I expect he thinks he’ll maneuver the rest from there.”
My heart feels as if it might shudder to a stop. “You are?” I say faintly, hearing the blood rush in my ears. “You’re going back?”
Connor looks at me bemusedly, and I hate myself a little for not hiding my reaction better. “I am,” he confirms. “And I’m sure you can infer what that means for you—for us.”
“Aren’t you supposed to ask me?” I narrow my eyes at him, recovering my composure as quickly as I can, but Connor just smirks.
“You’re the one who came here to manipulatemeinto marryingyou,” he says wryly. “I hardly think there’s a question to ask.”
The cab stops in front of a large stone building, and Connor slips out, holding the door open for me as I follow. “I hope you don’t object to more pub food,” he says. “I’ve missed good Irish cooking. This one is a bit more upscale, at least.”
“Not at all,” I murmur, but my mind is racing a million miles a second, trying to take in everything he just told me so casually.