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The way he stroked his finger along his bottom lip had my senses stirring in a way they really shouldn’t.
Declan was thinner than the last time I’d seen him, he had a white pallor—like he was sick, which he was, and like he was in a lot of pain, which he was—and he was wearing basketball shorts and nothing more. The man I knew existed in expensive leather jackets and jeans that cost a month’s rent. If not that, then suits which made a mortgage payment look cheap. And I wasn’t going to lie, my art might be all about the anarchy, raging against the machine, but there was no prettier picture than this man in a tailored suit.
Who in God’s name needed porn when you had him all gussied up for work?
“If I tell you the truth, you won’t believe me.”
His words had me scowling at him. “Won’t believe you? Maybe you should give me a chance to figure out for myself whether I believe you or not, huh? Jesus, I’m not fifteen anymore, Declan. I have a brain, a rational one. I can think of—”
Before I could continue, my cell phone rang. When Caro’s face popped up on the screen, I grimaced. Declan, seeing it, grunted, and held out his hand for my cell.
A little agitatedly, I clutched my phone to my chest and asked, “What are you going to say to her?”
“Only what needs to be said,” was his calm reply.
I was a woman who’d been independent from the age of seventeen. Who’d raised a child alone in a family who thought unwed mothers should be sold off to convents to do the goddamn laundry, and their babies should be separated from them to be handed off to ‘good’, childless, Catholic families in the parish. I’d started a career that had made me millions, was a name to be envied in certain circles.
I did not need a man to look after me.
But the way the O’Donnellys did it, God help me, it twisted me up inside.
They didn’t coddle or overshadow. They didn’t overwhelm. There was just no shadow of a doubt in their mind that certain things were women’s work and other aspects were men’s.
Of course, that was going to get fucking irritating over time. I hated being pigeonholed. But damn, right now? With this investigation driving me batshit?
I slowly held out the phone for him to take.
One phone call to a traitorous FBI agent wasn’t me giving up my independence.
It was me letting someone who knew these people better than I did take charge.
“She clearly wants to talk, or she’d have hung up by now,” he noted, before he connected the call, put it on speaker, and as he raised his hand to his lips in the universal sign for silence, he murmured, “Why, Special Agent Dunbar, what can I do for you?”
The line throbbed with irritation. Seriously. I didn’t even know that was possible, but Caro had just proved it was.
“This is Aela O’Neill’s phone. I’d like to speak with her, please.”
“You won’t be talking to my fiancée again, Special Agent,” he said cordially, even as a wicked light danced in his eyes when I harrumphed at him.
He knew there’d be hell to pay for that later.
We both knew the marriage certificate was a done deal. There was no getting out of it for either of us. But that didn’t mean he could talk about it all blasé. Not without me giving him shit over it.
“Your fiancée?” Her voice cut off on a squeak of surprise, which, in turn, bewildered me. If she was into the O’Donnelly’s business as Brennan and Conor had made out on the drive to NYC, well… surely she knew how they rolled?
Kids outside of wedlock just weren’t the done thing.
“Yes. We’re engaged. Now, I’m sure you’re well aware of what that means. As rich as she was before, as powerful, she’s coming under the umbrella of my position.”
“What position is that, O’Donnelly?” she snarled. “A gangster? A drug lord? A kingpin?”
His lips twisted, but his gaze broke away from mine and he turned to look out the window beyond. “Such a low opinion of me, Dunbar. I mean, what did I ever do to make you think I was anything other than a legitimate businessman?”
“I’ll get you one day, you son of a bitch,” she sneered.
“No. You won’t,” he replied, his tone still calm. Declan of before hadn’t exactly had a fast burn temper, but he could definitely get riled up in a flash. It’d make sense if this would be one of those moments where his trigger was pulled. “There’s nothing to ‘get.’ I’m a legitimate businessman. I deal in imports and exports—”
“Spare me the BS,” she ground out.
