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“So,” Seamus coughed nervously as he undid the apron about his neck and chucked his dirty rag. I followed suit. “What was all that about?”
Bailey raised a brow at my brother, her bright eyes narrowing slightly. “What was what about?”
Seamus cleared his throat. “The whole, umm, you know…offer.”
Bailey pursed her lips. “Eavesdropping now, are we?”
Seamus shrugged unapologetically.
“She offered me a job,” Bailey exhaled. “The Dashkov corporation needs a PR manager, and she’d thought it would be something I’d enjoy since I’m not going back to my old job.”
I cocked my head. “You aren’t?” That came as a surprise to me. She’d loved being an investigative reporter. Bailey had worked hard to get where she was, and whenever she would talk about her job, her eyes would light up.
“No.” She shrugged a shoulder nonchalantly. “Honestly, with everything with Lina, it made me wonder how much of my work was what got me my position and how much of it was Lina pulling the strings to put me there. Investigative reporting was nice but…” She trailed off, her eyes searching ours as she bit her lower lip subconsciously. “Kind of hard to be an unbiased investigative reporter when yourboyfriendsare the heirs to the biggest Irish Mafia boss on the West Coast.”
Bailey had whispered the wordboyfriends, her voice unsure as it rolled over the word.
“Well, we certainly aren’t your boyfriends, wildcat,” Seamus snorted. Bailey’s face fell, and it made me want to punch the fucker, despite knowing what he was going to say next. “I’d say we’re well past that.”
41
We sure as fuck were well past being “boyfriends.”
I didn’t give two flying hillbillies if she thought differently. That was the way it was. I’d spent the last two weeks going out of my mind trying to find her and fix the shit we’d landed ourselves in. I hadn’t slept, I’d barely eaten, and I’d nearly lost my mind with worry that we might not get her back.
Boyfriends.I snorted. No fucking way.
“Really?” She eyed us both skeptically, and that was enough for me to lose my shit. “Seamus.” She squealed my name when I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder like a goddamn caveman.
“You coming, bro?” I looked back at Kiernan, who was caught somewhere between wanting to laugh and trying to figure out what the fuck I was doing. When he saw the clear determination in my face, he smirked and nodded his head, trailing after me as I took the stairs two at a time up to our apartment.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Seamus?” Bailey’s hands slapped at my back. “Put me down, you neanderthal.”
I chuckled, letting Kiernan open the door before I slid in and marched us back to the bedroom. Setting her down on her feet, I slowly began peeling her layers of clothing off, starting with her shirt. She didn’t try to stop me.
“You listen to me, and you listen well, Bailey Eriksen,” I growled out her new last name, my gaze never leaving hers as I continued to divest her of her garments. Everything but her underwear. “I went through hell looking for you. Wondering what had happened to you. Every time I closed my eyes, all I could hear were your screams. Every night, I conjured up the worst things they could have done to you. I searched and searched without sleep, without food, because I care for you. Because I love you.”
I let that last statement hang in the air for a moment.
“You can’t love me,” she whispered almost brokenly. “We haven’t known each other that long. Four weeks isn’t enough to fall in love. Hell, it’s more like a week and a half if you count the fact that I was held captive for two of those, and the other days were spent spying for you.”
I slapped my hand against her ass, causing her to jolt.
“You don’t get to tell me if I’m in love or not,” I hissed at her. “There isn’t a timeline for this sort of shit, wildcat. Call it love at first sight if you want to, but I know how I fucking feel.”
“He’s right,a stóre.” Kiernan spoke up from behind me. “You can’t tell us how to feel about you, and we understand if you don’t feel the same way. But you need to know this isn’t some fleeting emotion. I love you, and I’m not saying that lightly, Bailey. We’ve never once uttered those words to anyone outside of our family.”
I nodded my head in agreement. “When I first saw you, I knew I never wanted to let you go,” I told her. There was no doubt it would take some convincing on our part to show her we meant what we said. Bailey didn’t believe words; she believed the actions that came along with them. We could tell her we loved her all we wanted, but if we didn’t show her how we felt, we might as well have been blowing hot air, in her opinion.
“You gave me away,” she muttered sadly. “You set me up and let him take me.”
“That was the biggest mistake of our fucking lives, Bailey,” he choked. “Neither of us suspected what he would do. We’d planned to come for you after we ruined him. I never suspected…” He swallowed audibly. “I—” I nudged him.
“We will spend the rest of our lives showing you how much we love you,” Kiernan promised her. “We’re hard men, Bailey. We plan and plot and kill. We sell drugs and weapons. We’re not good men, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of loving you.”
“You can’t expect us to change what we do,” I continued. “Or who we are. But we’re willing to make concessions for you. We’ll open up. For you. But out there, in the world, we have to be what we are.”
Bailey needed to hear this. She needed to know that we would always be who we were raised to be. Leaders. Killers. We wouldn’t change that, but there were things we would change. No more women. No more extreme partying. She would be it for us. We’d open up for her in ways we never could with other women.
