Page 31 of Fighting for Irish
“Are you serious? You mean I’m free?”
“You won’t have to worry about them anymore.”
The perpetual fear she’d lived with for so many months finally melted away, leaving her feeling almost weightless. “Irish, that’s great news!” She paused in her celebration to study his solemn face. Her brows drew together with her uncertainty. “Irish? What’s wrong?”
“I asked you if there was anything I needed to know about the situation before I went there. You said I knew everything.”
“You did.”
“Really? So the fact that you and your ex worked for Sicoli, what, just slipped your mind? Still,” he said in a low voice, “I never figured you for a drug pusher.”
“A drugpusher? I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about! Lenny gambled with Sicoli’s money and lost it. That’s why they were after us.”
“But that was only part of the story, wasn’t it, Kat? The part you left out was that the twenty Gs he gambled and lost came from you selling Sicoli’s meth.”
She stared, jaw slack and eyes wide, dumbfounded by his accusation. As he pushed off the counter and crossed the room, she continued to plead her case. “This is insane. Those guys probably just said that stuff so you wouldn’t help me or something.”
Picking up his riding jacket, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. As he walked back toward her, she met him halfway at the kitchen table. “I’ve never worked for Sicoli, and I’ve never had anything to do with drugs.”
“Drop the act, Kat.”
He opened the paper and slapped it down on the table between them, his blue eyes cold. With reluctance, she lowered her gaze. The paper was a contract for employment with the Sicoli Syndicate and at the bottom, right below Lenny’s, was her signature.
“That dirty, rotten bastard,” she forced through a clenched jaw. “He must have forged my signature. If I ever see him again, I’m going to kill him.”
“Why would he forge your signature for something like that?”
“I know exactly why. It’s classic Lenny. After we weren’t a couple anymore, I always suspected he had worried I’d walk away from him one day, but he’d looked at us like we were the modern day Bonnie and Clyde or something. We were a team that worked well together, and he knew he could trust me. So by forging my signature, if things ever went bad, I’d be just as invested in solving the problem as him. Otherwise, I could leave and he’d be left to deal with his consequences all on his own.”
Irish didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t react. Kat didn’t know what that meant, and frankly, she no longer cared. Sure you don’t. “Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.” She turned and grabbed her clothes off the couch before heading to the bathroom. While changing out of the borrowed clothes and into her work skirt and T-shirt that she’d thankfully washed while he’d been gone, she reprimanded herself for thinking he could actually be different than any other man. They never saw her for what she was. Only for what they wanted to see.
She yanked open the door and almost walked right into him. “What are you doing, Kat?”
“I’m going back to my apartment and tomorrow I’m leaving this Podunk town just like I planned. I appreciate what you did, but I’m not going to stand here while you look at me like I’m a piece of trash. I get enough of that from everyone else.”
She sidestepped him, gathered her purse and shoes by the couch, and set her course. She’d rather take her chances with a pissed off alligator than spend another minute in that cabin.
…
Aiden deserved a thorough beating.
Before she could leave, he rushed to meet her at the door. “Kat, wait.”
She’d opened the door only a couple of inches when he caged her from behind and pushed the door closed with the flats of his hands. “Don’t go.”
She stood ramrod straight, tension evident in every muscle. Chunks of red-gold hair skimmed the pale skin of her neck, tempting him to nudge it aside and replace it with his lips. The faint smell of lilacs curled through his body, fueling his desire from the inside out.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
Because I want you in my bed. Beneath me. Wrapped around me so tightly I forget why I can’t have you.He was so fucked. It was dangerous for her to be with him, but it was even more dangerous for her to try and skip town until he could pay off the Wonder Twins. He hadn’t considered she’d still want to leave.
“I don’t want you to, for one. And it’s late,” he tried. “Stay the night; give your head time to clear.”
Her voice held the telltale tightness of attempting to hold in emotions. “Call me crazy, but I’d rather not stay in the company of someone who thinks so little of me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, kitten,” he said, turning her around to face him. Her normally rosy lips were now shades of rubies and swollen. Auburn lashes had gathered into wet spikes from the hurt she refused to let stream down her face. Even when flayed open with hurt, the beauty of her face was flawless. “Look, I’m no good with words, but I shouldn’t have said any of that stuff.”
She responded with only silence and stillness. Say something, asshole. Fix this.
