I glanced at my phone, which still lay silent on the coffee table.
Maybe I didn’t need to be so hard on him for not answering my silly little texts.
Maybe, like me, he wasn’t good at flirting either.
No, that was wrong. He was very good at flirting—he did it with me every chance he got, to the point where I doubted it meant much to him at all.
Maybe it was the opposite problem, then. Maybe it was that when words actually meant something, he didn’t know what to do with them. So, even though he used the word “wife” like a costume he had me try on, “husband” meant something to me, lighthearted or not.
Ronan, quick as he was, undoubtedly knew it. Maybe that explained the sudden silence.
“Anyway.” Simone stood, ready to leave almost as quickly as she had come. “I didn’t mean to impose. Brendan just had a quick meeting with his realtor to sell his apartment, and I wanted to take a second before we left to say hello. Let you know that if you ever need to talk to someone about… what it’s like… I’m just a phone call away.”
“Are you leaving Boston so soon?” I found myself wishing she could stay just long enough for me to get my thoughts together and come up with the questions I knew I would have.
But Simone was shaking her head as she went for the door. “No, we have to get back. Chores to do. Bread to bake. Birds to find.” She slipped me a piece of paper with her number scratched on it along with an address in Vermont. “But we’ll be back for the reception, I’m sure. In the meantime, come visit if you want. My door’s always open.”
“Thanks.” I fingered the paper. “I just might do that.” If only out of morbid curiosity and the desire to see one of Ronan’s siblings milking a cow. “Wait.”
Simone stopped, the door open, with a kind smile. “Yes?”
I bit my lower lip, thinking. “Any advice for someone new to all of this? The family, or maybe the life they inhabit?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m the best role model for blending into their world, but…” Simone tapped her lip, thinking. Then she nodded. “I’d say it’s easy to get sucked into everything they’ll ask of you. Ronan is supposed to be the new face of the company, which means you’ll be the face of his personal life. It will feel easy to lose yourself in that, so I would tell you to carve out time for self-care. Identify the things that calm you down and bring you peace. And don’t let go of them for anything.”
“And if they won’t let me do that?”
She looked a bit sad at the idea. “Again, I might be the wrong person to ask. I wouldn’t let go, and I ended up taking their son with me. I don’t know if Niall would let that happen again.”
“Maybe it’s not his choice,” I said impulsively. Almost protectively.
Oddly, it wasn’t the idea of anyone holding me back that bothered me so much. I had come here of my own accord, already drifting in a life that had seemed aimless since Mom’s death. For want of a better direction, this one seemed to work.
But Ronan wasn’t like that. He actually seemed to know what he wanted separately from his family, whether it was a private world of books or the right to marry whom he wanted, when he wanted, regardless of his father’s approval.
I bristled at the idea of anyone trying to take one bit of it away from him.
Simone eyed me a bit more curiously, and her smile was touched by melancholia and hope. “Maybe. I hope not.” She leaned in to give me a squeeze, and I found myself hugging her back. “Goodbye, Laney. And good luck.”
26
BLOOD, BUBBLES, AND ONE HELL OF AN EPIPHANY
RONAN
Ineeded to hit someone. Hard.
It was ten minutes past nine when I finally left Blackguard headquarters. The rest of my day had been spent in meetings. Meetings to acquire this company. Meetings to sell three. Meetings to break up two others.
It was repetitive, it was meaningless, and most of all, it was boring. And I had to endure it all with Bas Huntington and Niall Black exercising their constitutional rights as executive board members to sit on each one like Statler and fucking Waldorf, criticizing every damn flaw they could find.
How had Brendan done this for as long as he had? Sure, I’d done the dirty work for who knew how many years, but I was also the one who had the freedom to talk back, make inappropriate jokes, and run his mouth if only to stave off the monotony and the pain of being Niall Black’s son.
No more.
I had a brand-new respect for my eldest brother, if only for his self-control. They called him the Black Prince, but really, he was a man of steel. For the first time, I wondered if it wasn’t justSimone that made him want to abandon his inheritance—maybe she just gave him an alternative to blowing his brains out.
“Home?” Mac asked as I slid into the back of the Rover.
