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I mean, they didn’t say or else. They’d been too classy for that. It was all a bunch of legal jargon, though. But it essentially meant or else. And I didn’t have or else money, so I had taken his name off before the lawyers were even out of my driveway.
That Teddy.
I mean, sure, maybe he wasn’t even going to come. He was an uber-rich businessman. I was sure he had a million fancy functions to attend. The chances that he was going to come out for cheap pizza and Chinese seemed unlikely.
And, even if he did come, who was to say he would have any idea who I was. Or what I’d done. Guys like him were, surely, quite litigious. They threatened to sue all the time. It was practically a daily thing, right? What were the chances he would even remember the little website that had, innocently enough, mentioned his name and involvement with an arms-dealing biker club?
“You alright?” Donovan asked as we got out of the SUV, his attentive gaze picking up on the tension in my features, so I worked to relax them, set my face into indifferent lines.
“Yeah. Fine,” I insisted, then reached to grab my sister’s hand and half-drag her into the house with me.
“I know, I know,” Triss said as soon as we were in our room with a closed door, holding up her hands. “But, come on, Maeve. The chances of him remembering you are slim to none. I mean, you never actually met him,” she reasoned.
That was true.
I’d only been in contact with the lawyers.
“And while Maeve isn’t exactly a common name, it isn’t rare either. So you could be any Maeve. Maybe just… don’t volunteer our last name.”
“Why would I do that anyway?” I reasoned.
“Well, if he introduces himself all proper: Hi, I’m Theodore Kane!” she said, dropping her voice low.
“No one does that,” I insisted. “But I won’t be that stupid. You need to be careful too.”
“If he even comes at all,” she said, shrugging. “What are the chances, right?”
Apparently, pretty damn good, that was what the chances were.
Because no more than an hour later, a fancy black car was idling out front of the gates. Then a driver—yes, as in, like, a chauffeur—got out and opened the back door.
Then there he was.
Theodore Kane.
He was the old money kind of rich. You know, the kind where he could literally just buy up buildings daily and still somehow not go through his family’s exorbitant wealth.
But, somehow, to this club… he was just… Teddy. A friend. And it really ate at me that I didn’t know how he’d come to be friends with a bunch of outlaw bikers.
Not that I could ask now, what with the whole trying not to draw too much of Teddy’s attention to myself thing.
I moved through the house, going back into the kitchen where I started throwing together some drinks since everyone had decided to hang out by the pool for a while.
I braced myself for the introduction as I brought out a cooler full of sodas.
“Oh, and this is my sister,” Triss said from inside the pool. Thankfully, this time she was wearing a bikini, not her birthday suit. “Maeve,” she added, and if you didn’t know her well, you would have missed the slight tension around her eyes as she smiled.
Teddy’s gaze moved in my direction, giving me a nod and a friendly smile. “Nice to meet you, Maeve,” he said.
“You too,” I agreed, praying that my tension wasn’t all over my face.
It was Levee who saved me then.
“Maeve, you lovely thing you, can you be coerced into making more of that punch?” he asked, all charm. “I can pay you. In money, books, sexual favors…”
If he heard the slight growling sound coming from Donovan, he pretended to ignore it.
I, however, heard it. And I guess I’d read one too many steamy romances featuring jealous and possessive alpha men, because a part of me melted at the sound of that growl.
“I guess I can whip some up,” I agreed. “And you can pay me in books,” I told him, then moved off toward the kitchen, grateful to be alone for a moment, to be away from Teddy and all of my fears about him.
“He was joking,” I said when I heard the door opening and closing as I gathered the various juices I needed to make the punch.
When I heard nothing, I turned to look.
And there he was.
Not Donovan.
Teddy.
I knew before he even opened his mouth to speak.
He knew.
He absolutely knew.
Shit.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
“Maeve,” he said, nodding a bit. “I believe we need to talk,” he said, waving toward the kitchen table.
And, really, did I have any choice but to follow his lead?
Anxiety coiled around my stomach, then snaked upward until it wrapped around my throat, making it feel like I couldn’t draw a proper breath as I sat down with Mackie, the macaw, behind me, his feathers all fluffed up and his head tucked into his back, catching a little cat nap before dinner arrived, and he went on a mission to snag some off-limits food.
