Her lips curved in a soft smile. “No, I wouldn’t want that. What if they ask me about us? Things about how we met? We don’t know a thing about each other.”
“Tell them we met a few months ago at the soup kitchen. Keep it simple, you forgot your scarf and I chased you down to give it back. That’s what happened last night.”
“You followed me to give me my scarf back?” her eyes widened.
“Yes, I saw you’d left it behind and Paul had told me your name so I ran after you.”
“You almost died for a scarf,” she murmured, her eyes overbright again with tears.
He wanted to say ‘I almost died foryou,’ but he didn’t want her to keep thinking about that.
“Keep our dating history very easy, very casual. Dinners a few times a week, coffee dates. You’ve never been to my restaurant so don’t say you have. If they ask why you don’t know much about my family, just tell them, I wanted you to myself.”
She smiled a little. “Alessia actually said something similar to that earlier.”
“See? It won’t be too hard. If you need more info, you have my cell phone. Call or text Jared. He can tell you anything you need to know about me until I get out of here.”
“Right, Jared. Okay. I think I can handle this. IhopeI can.”
“You’ll be fine.” Angelo squeezed her hand and then drew it gently toward him so he could press his lips to the back of her palm. Then he watched her go.
What are you running from, Kara Gallagher?
She was a puzzle, that was for sure. But a puzzle he was going to enjoy solving. He wanted to learn everything about her, and the wonderful places that knowledge might lead. He would understand the sorrow in her eyes and perhaps, he would heal whatever had wounded her. A small selfish part of him knew he wanted to do this because she fascinated him. He wanted to know her taste, to know the feel of her in his arms, the way she might gasp his name as he brought her exquisite pleasure. Only time would tell if that was a future that would come to pass.
Cormac Callahan leaned back in his chair as he studied the mountain of paperwork his predecessor had left behind. The books were a fucking mess, but he would get them sorted out.
He’d finally taken over the gun and drug trade in New York and Dublin from Sean O’Brien. Cormac had started working for O’Brien when was nineteen and had been chomping at the bit for his chance to run things. He had bided his time for nearly twenty years, waiting for Sean O’Brien to die so he could take over—because Lord knew he was never going to retire.
The money and power that came with taking over was what Cormac had expected, but in the months leading up to O’Brien’s cancer diagnosis, he’d been offered an unexpected bonus from his old boss.
O’Brien had come into the office one night, his breath stinking of Guinness. Cormac was going over the latest gun inventory that had been delivered to one of their many warehouses, and O’Brien had slapped him on the shoulder, taking a seat beside him.
Then he’d told him a story. A wild story of how twenty-five years ago, he’d seduced a woman with the most beautiful red hair and how the woman, when she’d found out who he was had fled Ireland taking his unborn child with her. Obsessed with the idea of a child taking over his empire someday, he’d done everything to track down the woman and her baby and learned she’d crossed the ocean to New York.
“Can ye believe it? Me? A father!” O’Brien had crowed.
Everyone in Dublin knew that Sean was unable to have kids after injuries from a gunshot wound which had resulted in a surgery that had made it impossible to father a child.
“How the devil did ye manage that?” Cormac had demanded. “Ye shoot blanks.”
O’Brien’s expression softened. “I met a bonnie lass a few weeks before that night I was shot at the docks. I found out a few months after she left that she was with child. But I’ve kept it to myself all these years.”
“Why?” Cormac demanded.
“Because I couldn’t find Fiona or her child. What was the point in telling anyone about it, if I could never get them both back.”
Cormac had a glimmer of an understanding them. “You loved her, didn’t you?”
His boss had chuckled darkly. “As much as I can love anyone, I suppose. But the child is mine. I want my business taken over by someone with my blood in their veins.”
“So you have a son?” Cormac had guessed.
O’Brien had laughed, but then that mean look had come into his eyes, one Cormac knew all well. “She had a girl, a bleedin’ girl, Cormac. What’s a man to do with a girl, I ask ye?”
Cormac had laughed. There was only one use for women, and O’Brien knew it just as well as Cormac did.
“Well, ye could give her to any of yer men,” Cormac said.
