Page 63 of Naughty Irish Liar

I didn’t take my eyes off the doorway. My whole torso felt empty and on fire at the same time. “Yeah?”

“Why the hell are you still standing there? Go and fix it, boy, or Christmas this year is going to be a sorry state of affairs with Catie tossing bread rolls at the pair of you.”

I couldn’t laugh, but it gave me hope I’d be at the Christmas table at least for Catherine to be pissed at.

My biggest—most important lie was coming to an end and I had to face reality head on if I was going to get what I wanted—craved.Needed.

“Jon, you might want to take Emma out for lunch if you don’t want to hear my methods of persuasion.”

Emma chuckled delighted.

“Remember that’s my daughter, Ronan.” Jon scowled.

I couldn’t wait another second, not to soothe ruffled feathers, not when my girl had already spent sixty seconds with the thought I was betraying her.

“You told me to wait, to be patient, to give her time to come to me. I’ve been both more than any other man would be, Jon. That’s my girl up there and I’ll do anything I have to, to get her on side again. Go out to lunch or turn on loud music.”

Un-fucking-caring I was basically telling him I was about to fuck his daughter under his roof, I swallowed any doubt simply because I refused to believe she was done with me over something stupid.

Leaving him cursing me out and being appeased by his wife I took the stairs two at a time. My chest twisted.

Whatever she thought she heard, she’s half right, but all wrong too.

I’ll happily set my pride aside to beg her to listen. It’s a long time coming and today is the day. Not the day I intended but here it is nonetheless and da would tell me to face any problem head on and work my ass off to get the result I wanted.

I couldn’t lie or cheat my way out of this.

I rolled my neck at her open bedroom door like a boxer going into the ring. At least she hadn’t locked me out, I thought. Though a closed door wouldn’t keep me from her.

Stepping over the threshold, I closed the door behind me and found her sitting like a statue on her little-girl bed. It looked like her parents never changed the room when she moved out. Pictures stuck on cork boards, a few posters and a pink bed spread told me I’m glad I restrained myself when she was sixteen or I really would have felt like the pervert I was for wanting her too young.

I took up position in front of her. She had yet to look up and I wanted to tug at her chin to make her see me.

Patiently I used the time to fold back my shirt sleeves. I was a sly bastard because I saw her sneaking glances. She had a thing for my forearms she’d told me more than once. She liked to kiss the veins and I wasn’t above using what I needed to.

I slipped my hands into my front pockets, rocked on my heels.

“Did you give me the task of organizing the Patrick’s Day event because dad asked you to? Did you think I’d fail? Was everything a lie from the beginning?” Her voice cracked so tiny I felt the punch of it in a place that never existed until a pair of green eyes gave me their attention.

And nothing was the same after that.

“If you’re not going to talk you can get out,” she hissed, and I swear on my family name I would make those tears I see right. She’ll know everything.

I would have opened a vein and let my lifeblood pour out for her if she hadn’t added. “I thought we were falling in love, Ronan. And it was all fake.”

Something in me snapped.

A knife coiled through my control severing it to a tattered thread and when I stepped forward I had no notion I was grabbing her until I swallowed her gasp.

Pressing Catherine down into her childhood bed with my feet on the carpeted floor, I laid half over her and kissed all my frustration into her mouth, feeling how soft she was up against all my hard.

She might hate me, but her lips opened immediately and let me in. Her tiny moan was my undoing. My belly rose up in rebellion that my bratty girl would ever doubt again just how I fucking felt when she was under me, over me, on top of me.

I might have lied, but she steam-rolled right into my life and hadn’t given me a moment’s peace since, unless I was touching her and then it was pure heaven.

She gave me fucking heaven.

Me, a low-class conman from Dublin, who knew more about the graft than how to be a decent man and she gave me a special smile that made me king of the world. King of her world.

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