Page 58 of Heated Rivals
She was going to throwthatin his face? He crossed his arms over his chest. “Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.” He wanted to grab her, to shake her until some sense popped into that gorgeous head of hers, but he’d never laid a hand on a woman in anger and he sure as fuck wasn’t about to start now. Tying her up until she saw reason wasn’t an option, either. He was left with nothing but standing there and watching her get ready to walk out of his life.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that if she left now, it would be for good.
So he tried to be calm and rational. “Carrigan, sit down and we’ll talk this through.”
“Talking never did anyone a damn bit of good.” She stopped in the doorway, her knuckles white where they fisted the hem of her dress. “Good-bye,James. For good this time.” Then she was gone, disappearing as if she’d never been there to begin with.
And he just watched her go.
As soon as he heard the door close behind her, he slowly got dressed. It didn’t take a genius to realize what she was doing—making yet another personal sacrifice for her family. She’d said as much. She might even be trying to protect him, too. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she’d walked out without talking about it, without giving him a chance to find a way out of this mess.
She might care about him, but she didn’t trust him. And fuck if that didn’t hurt.
He rubbed a hand over his chest, knowing damn well that it wouldn’t do anything to combat the dull ache that started there the second she walked out of this room. There would be no more phone calls. She wouldn’t come running to him again, no matter how deep into shit she got. No, she was off to marry this Dmitri Romanov and sail away into the sunset.
Fuck.
He walked through the still mostly dark house, letting the memories wash over him. Play fighting with his brothers in the living room. Watching his mother knit in the rocking chair, looking more at peace than he ever saw her in Boston. The loud meals served around the tiny dining room table, while he and Brendan and Ricky all competed for her undivided attention. She’d always managed to make each of them feel like they were the center of her world.
And their old man… James touched the thickest scar running across his upper chest. He could feel the ridge of it through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. His father hadn’t dared touch them while she walked thisearth. He’d always thought that it was because her death broke the man, but now he wondered. Victor had been a monster for as long as James could remember. Had his mother been the reason he stayed his hand? The shield between her boys and their sadistic fuck of a father?
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to fit. He’d never seen her in a swimsuit. Whenever he thought about it now, he’d chalked it up to the summers that were never quite warm enough. But what if it wasn’t? His hands clenched. Had Victor hurt her as a proxy and then turned his attentions on his boys when she was no longer available?
His stomach lurched, and he had to close his eyes and concentrate on breathing. It was the past. Knowing that didn’t magically make the hurt go away, but it helped him focus. Right now he had bigger problems than worrying about if his old man beat his mother fifteen years ago.
Hewouldfind out, though.
In the meantime… James turned to the front door. He’d give Carrigan some time. Chasing her down now wouldn’t do either one of them a damn bit of good. She was freaked out and she had reason to be. As much as it stung that she didn’t believe in him enough to give him the chance to fix things, a part of him understood. A very small part. The rest wanted to track her down, but it would only make her run farther and faster from him.
No, he’d find a way around this, and then he’d come for her.
He walked out of the house and locked the door behind him. The first order of business was to get through the exchange tomorrow with those pieces of shit bringing in women. Then he’d deal with the messwith Carrigan.
It wasn’t like she’d be married in the next twenty-four hours, after all.
* * *
Sloan drifted up the stairs, moving down the hallway on bare feet, taking silent count. Keira had stumbled home sometime after one and was currently passed out in her bed. But she was safe. Cillian hadn’t come back from wherever he’d gone when he left this afternoon, but she suspected he was wherever he’d been spending all this time lately—most likely a bar. Aiden… well, Aiden was the easiest of her siblings to keep track of. He rarely left their father’s study anymore, except when business demanded it. More and more he’d taken up the mantle of leadership, and she sometimes wondered if she was the only one who could see how heavily it weighed on him. But he wouldn’t accept a shoulder to lean on because it would mean he wasweak.
She shook her head and walked into the formal living room. It was one of the few public rooms on the front of the house with windows looking down over the sidewalk. Not that she could see much between the trees and darkness, but it didn’t stop her from trying.
Carrigan hadn’t come home yet. She glanced at her watch, a diamond MICHELE that she’d gotten on her sixteenth birthday from her parents. Most days it felt more like a shackle than a way to tell time. Two a.m. Too late.
She knew something had happened at the wedding, but she didn’t know what. Not that she was surprised about her family’s unwillingness to talk aboutit—they never had been free with their information unless forced. All she knew was that it involved Carrigan and had whipped both Cillian and Aiden into a fury that still hadn’t abated two days later.
And now her sister had pulled another of her disappearing acts.
Sloan touched the glass, as if that would do something to draw her home and to safety faster. Things were happening too quickly, spiraling out of control. She sighed. Even though it had been banishment for all intents and purposes, she craved the simplicity of their house in Connecticut. When they were there, the drama and worries that populated daily life in Boston seemed worlds away. She could almost believe they were normal people who didn’t believe in arranged marriages and who didn’t do unmentionable things on the illegal side of their operations.
But it was a childish dream. Just like her hope for one day marrying a man she loved—and who loved her. And her wish to be a schoolteacher. And countless other things that had fallen by the wayside as she turned eighteen and had to face the facts—she was expected to marry a man of her father’s choosing, and to devote her life to making him happy and giving him children. There was no room there for a career of her own. And love? Love wasn’t even on the radar.
Movement below drew her attention to where Carrigan and Liam appeared from beneath the tree directly in front of the town house and hurried up the steps to the front door. A few seconds later, the sound of it opening and shutting whispered through the near-silent halls. If she hadn’t been waiting for it, she wouldn’t have known thatit’d happened.
Sloan walked back through the hallway to the top of the stairs, reaching it just as her sister did. “Carrigan.”
“Holy shit!” Carrigan jerked back, her hand on her chest. “I didn’t see you there.”
Which was the point. Her mother had already lectured her about how unseemly her nighttime wanderings were. So she made sure that Aileen didn’t know about them anymore. The thought of spending the night locked away in her room had panic fluttering in her throat. She was already locked up in every way that counted. She couldn’t be locked in physically, too.
