Page 80 of Her Irish Savage

“Bargain? You gave her a feckin’ pair of sunglasses. You have no idea what angle she’s really working.”

I shake my head. “Her deposits have shown up like clockwork. Just one more, and we’ll be done.”

“Sell the feckin’ Picasso.”

“You heard Alix. I can’t sell it without getting the law involved.”

“You can’t sell itpublicly.”

“The Gala’s in three weeks, and I need my ten mill before that.”

He scowls, but he can’t contradict me. Even Diamond Freeport has its limitations.

I try to change the topic. “What do you think it’s worth? The Picasso, and those maps? The books and jewelry and everything else Da hid away?”

He makes a sound between a sniff and a snort. He knows exactly what I’m doing, distracting him from Rónnad. But he agrees to be led away from the raw topic. “Depending on what Q meant bya lot of jewelry?” he asks. “You might be looking at a billion dollars.”

I count the zeroes in my mind, but they make no sense. They’re a magic spell. A fairy tale. I wave my hand over the fruit tray and my coffee. “So I can afford to get us both refills on coffee?”

Patrick sits back in his chair. “Do you have any idea how much a billion is?”

I shrug.

“Let’s say you put a million pennies in a stack. They’re almost a mile high. But if you stack abillionpennies, they’d go all the way from Boston to Chicago.”

I laugh. “And you just happen to know that off the top of your head.”

“I’ve thought a lot about it. That’s what I get, working for a feckin’ billionaire.”

I don’t think he says it to remind me Braiden Kelly is his boss. After all, we both know he’s sworn to Philadelphia. The past six weeks have been temporary. This—whatever we havebetween us—will end when I take the Old Colony throne. Once I defeat Uncle Aran, Patrick has to head back to his real job.

Unless I can convince him to change his mind. Once I’m Queen, I’ll need a Warlord, just like Braiden. Patrick can be part of my Council.

I just have to convince him he wants to stay. That he wants to work for me.

Sliding my ass forward on my chair, I stretch out my foot until the toe of my boot nestles between Patrick’s legs. At the same time, I pluck a slice of pineapple from the fruit tray and bring it to my mouth, extending my tongue to catch a drop of golden juice.

“Mmm,” I moan, just loud enough for him to hear over the plane’s engines.

His fingers close around my ankle, tight enough for me to feel through the leather of my boots.

The flight attendant chooses that moment to return from the plane’s tiny galley, carrying a tray with silverware and glasses and two huge snowy napkins. I pull my foot back quickly, balancing on the edge of my seat like a proper young lady. The attendant shakes out my napkin and places it on my lap.

Patrick snatches his own napkin from her fingers. Covering himself, he shifts in his seat, grimacing in obvious discomfort. I fight to smother a laugh as the attendant returns with a charcuterie board and a basket of bread.

I make a point of eating very slowly. I purse my lips a lot more than necessary. I use the tip of my tongue to test my food.

Patrick’s eyes narrow with an unspoken promise.

There’s nothing he can do to while we’re six miles in the air—not with the flight attendant standing guard just inside the galley. But after we land in Boston, our driver meets us at the charter terminal. As soon as we’re secure in our rented limo, behind a privacy screen and tinted windows, my Daddy makes me pay for taunting him.

Three times, he makes me pay, because he knows exactlywhat to say, exactly how to make my body melt under his touch. I’m still recovering from his last lesson when his burner chimes with a message.

Swearing fluently in a mix of English and Irish, he tugs his phone from his pants pocket, which would be a lot easier to do if his zipper wasn’t tented like a circus big top. When he glances at the screen, his face shifts to unreadable stone. “There,” he says, before he finally shows the phone to me. “You won’t have to deal with her, ever again.”

The message is from Rónnad. She’s delivered the last of her promised money.

I wait. We both do, for some final demand, for a threat to expose our business arrangement, for something that explains why she made it so easy to collect the money I needed.

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