I look her over. She’s young. Early twenties. She has a pretty dress on, now stained with mud. She looks like she crawled out of a shipwreck and decided to go to a gala.
“Maeve,” I say, my voice low and dangerous. I’m angry—mostly at myself, but it’s easier to aim it at her. “What did I tell you about running off alone?”
“Sorry, Daddy,” she whispers into my neck, her small hands clutching my coat.
I turn my gaze to the girl. I expect her to be scared. Most people are when I look at them like this. I have ANGER written all overmy face, too many scars, too much ink peeking out from my collar, eyes that have seen too many things die.
But this girl? She doesn’t even flinch.
She stands up, and I realize she’s tiny. Her head barely reaches my chest. But she stands with her shoulders back, her jaw set in a way that is almost… defiant.Oh?
“You,” I say. “Who are you?”
I mean it to be a dismissal. A 'get out of my way before I decide you’re a witness' kind of word.
She crosses her arms. Her dress is ruined, her knees are covered in dirt, and she looks like she’s been through a war. But she doesn’t move. She doesn’t look away.
“Me?!” she snaps.
I blink. It’s the first time in years someone has snapped at me. My men behind me stiffen, the sound of their leather holsters creaking in the silence.
“You have a lot of nerve,” she continues, and her voice is rising now, fueled by what looks like pure, unadulterated indignation. “Actually, no. You don’t have nerve. You have a massive, glaring lack of common sense.”
I shift Maeve to my other hip, stunned into a rare, heavy silence. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she says, stepping closer. She smells like rain and some kind of floral perfume that’s fading fast. “You’re walking around with your suit and your expensive watch and your ‘do-not-touch-me’ attitude, and you can’t even keep an eye on a five-year-old on your own child? Do you have any idea how close she was to falling? Do you not care about your daughter?!”
“I have people for that,” I say, the words coming out more defensively than I intend, and I grit my teeth in annoyance.
“Oh, you have ‘people’?” She lets out a sharp, hysterical laugh that contains zero humor. “Well, your ‘people’ suck at their jobs. And you suck at yours. You don’t get to outsource parenting, especially not when there’s a two-hundred-foot drop involved. What were you doing while she was trying to pick a weed on a crumbling ledge?”
She pokes a finger toward my chest. She doesn’t touch me, which is good, because my men might have actually reacted, but the gesture is enough to make my pulse jump.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she says, her eyes flashing. They’re a bright, piercing brown, like whiskey held up to the light. “She’s a child, not a briefcase you can just leave in the lobby. If I hadn’t been here, you’d be looking for a body, not a daughter.”
I stare at her.
My brain is trying to process several things at once.
First, she’s fucking beautiful. Even covered in mud and wind-whipped, she’s the most arresting thing I’ve ever seen. Her skin is like cream, flushed pink from the cold, and her hair is a chaotic halo of dark ringlets. The teal silk of her dress is damp, clinging to the curve of a high, firm chest and the swell of hips that look like they were designed for a man to sink into. Her face is all sharp angles and soft edges—a straight, stubborn nose and a mouth that looks like it was made for sinning.
Second, this girl is currently shredding the ruthless head of the Irish Syndicate on a public path. And third, that I don’t want to kill her.
Usually, when someone talks to me like this, they die in the next minute.
But looking at her, this messy, vibrant, furious creature in her ruined silk, I just feel… fascinated. It’s like watching a small bird try to take down a hawk. She’s completely unaware that I could have her disappear before the sun sets, and that lack of awareness is the most refreshing thing I’ve encountered in a decade.
“Are you finished?” I ask. My voice is quieter now. More controlled.
“No, I’m not finished,” she scoffs incredulously, though she seems to be losing some of her steam as the adrenaline starts to dip. Her lower lip wobbles for a split second before she bites ithard. “But I have better things to do than explain basic human decency to a man who clearly thinks his time is more valuable than his kid’s life. Take her. Go back to whatever it is people like you do. Buy her a toy so you don't have to talk to her.”
She turns on her heel, her ruined dress swirling around her legs, and starts walking back toward the resort.
I stand there for a long beat, the wind whipping my hair across my face.
“Sir?” Kieran asks, stepping forward cautiously. “Do you want us to…?”
“No,” I say, cutting him off. I watch her go. She has a slight limp, probably from the slide on the grass. She looks exhausted.
