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She looked like she was about to argue against that too, but her lips pressed together and she stayed silent. God, he wanted to slide his tongue over the seam of her mouth, to taste her again and revel in her response.
Stunned by his reaction to her, Oliver stumbled back a step. He didn’t stop there, going straight up to his room and through it, to his bathroom. Running the ice-cold water in the tap, he splashed the numbing liquid over his face. Straightening, he confronted the wall—not the mirror. He’d removed every single one of those the day he’d moved in.
He’d have to replace them eventually—after all, he was only renting this place from his friend, a fellow academic—but he couldn’t stand seeing the damage, the scars. The internal mutilation was so much worse. His focus, his stamina—hell, even his eyesight at one point—had been wiped out by one drunken loser.
The man whose sister he wanted like no one else.
The sister he’d use to find and end Kyle Yarrow.
Chapter 7
Okay…
Addison watched him take the stairs two at a time.
He’s just going to leave me here alone? A stranger who showed up on his doorstep?
Somewhere upstairs, a door slammed shut.
Guess he wasn’t too concerned that she was a thief.
Retracing her steps to the foyer, she picked up her bag and rolled her sunflower-patterned carry-on suitcase inside before shutting the door.
Oh boy.
Maybe coming here was a bad idea, but at least she wasn’t alone in Ireland. Roman—and his wife Mandy—had landed with her. She should have taken their advice and looked for Kyle in Dublin while they cabbed here to speak to Oliver, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty.
She moved to the closest window and drew the blackout drape open. Bright light flooded the space, illuminating polished wood floors and peach-colored walls. The dining room and kitchen lay to the right. To the left, just past the staircase, a short hallway led to her assigned bedroom. The house had been decorated in shades of peach, orange, and green—she doubted they were Oliver’s colors of choice.
She considered pulling back the rest of the curtains. The direct light would help with the creepy-crawlies settling on her skin from being alone in a strange home with her brother’s enemy. The man she’d kissed more than once. And yet flooding the place with daylight might bring him back downstairs, and she wasn’t ready for another standoff just yet.
Rolling her suitcase behind her, she followed the peach-and-green runner.
Directly across from her bedroom, the bathroom and laundry rooms appeared to have been added to the house at a much later date. When she peeked inside the bathroom, an uneven patch of wall marked the space where a mirror should have been. It looked as though someone had ripped the thing out, frame and all.
Her heart twisted. It had to have been Oliver.
As she entered her bedroom, she switched on the overhead light. An apricot duvet covered the small bed, a white desk and chair next to it. A carved armoire gleamed with a fresh coat of sage-green paint against the side wall. An antique tall case clock took up a corner. Her home for… who knew how long.
The room had been shut down for a while. The stale smell gave that away. But the bed looked clean, the sheets immaculate. She’d still have to launder them tomorrow to wash out the must.
Leaving her suitcase next to the bed, she reached for her phone unconsciously before remembering that Oliver had taken it.
At least she had managed to text Roman an update. He’d tear the world apart to find her if she went missing. That much was reassuring.
Crossing to the window, she drew aside the ruffled peach curtains and tossed it open. Crisp air—moist from the recent rain and scented with herbs from the garden just below—washed over her face.
Maybe staying was a terrible idea. But without doing so, she’d never find Kyle.
Or make good on what she’d promised in exchange for Oliver’s address.
Chapter 8
The disc in the hall ceiling glowed a pale orange.
Candlelight would be brighter, thought Addison on her way to the kitchen through shadows that seemed to grow and multiply on each other. Did the man replace all lights in the house with the dimmest bulbs possible?
The kitchen was even darker. Refusing to stumble around in the pitch black, she circled the perimeter, pulling back curtains and opening the windows. Fresh air and the sounds of chirping birds filled the space that had just been as quiet and dark as a mausoleum.
