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Chapter Seventeen
LIAM
“Come here, horsey horse.” Liam held out his hand and approached his mare for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few hours. “Come on. You can do it.”
Just like every other time, the horse watched him sideways as he came toward her. Then, right before he got within touching distance, she bolted to the opposite side of the circle pen.
“Fecking Christ!” Liam took off his hat and hurled it at the fence.
And immediately his da’s voice was ringing through his head.
“How is a son of mine so goddamned worthless?” his da shouted, storming into his bedroom with some shite gossip magazine in his hand.
Liam had been nursing a hangover and grabbed his pounding head. “Can you keep it down, da? I’m still langered somethin’ awful.”
Well that just seemed to set his da off. “I will not keep it down. You’re a twenty-four-year-old man still living with his father. You barely graduated and only because I donated an extremely generous endowment to the university your senior year. You have no skills, no ambitions, and are an embarrassment to the O’Neill name! Look at this.” His father pointed at the headline on the front page above the picture of Liam being hauled away in cuffs by the Garda. “Playboy Billionaire Arrested for Brawling…Again.” Then he opened the magazine and began reading. “Liam O’Neill, son of Prism Media Group mogul Ciarán O’Neill was yet again caught brawling in the streets of Dublin, this time outside a pub in the—”
Liam flopped back on his bed and pulled his pillow over his head to muffle the sound of his father’s voice.
The next second his da had ripped the pillow away. “You listen to me when I’m speaking to ya, ya useless, poxy little shite. I pulled meself up from nothin’ to give you everythin’ you could ever want—
“Don’t give me that shite,” Liam said, launching off the bed and getting in his da’s face. “Everything you’ve ever done in your life has been for yourself. Not for me or ma. Christ knows you scraped her off quick enough so you could go scuttle women half your age. Not that I imagine havin’ a ring on your finger stopped ya from gettin’ your knob polished by skanks all around the world on those business trips you took all the time even when ya were married.”
That was when his da punched him so hard he was knocked to the floor.
“Hey there.”
Liam spun around and put his hand to the back of his neck as he saw Calla standing just outside the fence behind him. Shite. The only thing worse than failing so bad at this was having a witness. Especially Calla.
“Xavier mentioned you were having a little trouble with her.” She gestured behind him in the direction of his mare.
“It’s been two days and she won’t even let me touch her.” Liam shook his head, squinting in the setting sun at the mustang. “She’s banjaxed, I’m telling ya. The organizers have to recognize that some horses are just too far gone. If I had meself a nice foal from a reputable breeder, well, I know I’d really be getting somewhere. But this one—” He shook his head again. And realized that, shite, he was rambling. Like an insecure idiot. He was never insecure around women.
They’d barely had time to spend more than ten minutes together alone since driving home from Denver. The last two days, Calla had spent almost all her time not doing morning chores with her mustang. Yesterday he’d hoped to have some time with her after dinner, but when he got downstairs after cleaning up, Mel told him she’d borrowed their truck to go visit her dad in a nursing home.
He hadn’t known her dad was even sick. Then he realized exactly how little he actually knew about her. Which made him feel like a selfish scumbag. It was an uncomfortable sensation. He wasn’t used to all these… feelings.
Wanting to shag a girl, sure. But, like, comforting someone with a sick da? He’d considered staying up to see Calla when she got back. But then he tried to imagine how that would go.
Sucks about your da… So, wanna go up to my room and let me make you feel better?
That was something the old Liam might have done. And now that he was trying to be a better version of himself?
Staring at Calla now, trucker’s hat on her head, in a loose tank-top and jeans—obviously not concerned with primping or showing off her figure to its best advantage to lure him in—well, he still didn’t have any fucking idea what to say to her. In the circles he’d lived in most his life, appearance and status were everything. Calla broke every rule he’d always lived by.
Calla just smiled and leaned over to slide through the fence posts and into the pen with him and the mustang. “I’ve been watching a little while. You’ve been really patient.”
“Oh.” He lifted his hand to the back of his neck again. The last thing he’d expected was a compliment. He felt like a huge fuck up. “Thanks.” And then he blurted, “I heard about your dad yesterday. I’m really sorry.”
The smile faded from Calla’s mouth and she looked into the distance. “Yeah.” She was quiet a moment and then seemed to shake herself out of it. “So. About the mare. What’d you name her?”
“Satan’s Mistress.”
Calla laughed. “Aw, poor baby.”
Liam didn’t know if she was talking about him or the horse.
She came a little closer. “You’re doing good but maybe I can share a little technique that will help.”
