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Chapter Eight
Tam
After I’d discoveredwe’d been ripped off, I’d had no choice but to go to my father and tell him. Unsurprisingly, he’d been pretty fucking unhappy about the situation. Samuel Cornell was still head of both our household and our business, and even though he was in his sixties now, he was a force to be reckoned with. I’d always looked up to him, and even though I was in my thirties myself now, I still wanted to make him proud of me. I wanted to report back a job well done, not that we were suddenly down several hundred thousand pounds. Though it hadn’t cost us anywhere near that much to have the money printed and shipped over, it was what we would have made once the dodgy cash had been washed. Now some other fucker had our money and would be laughing about how they’d got one over on the Cornell family.
That made me as furious as losing the money itself.
I’d gone back to the port and, with the help of Murphy and Damon, had beaten up our contact there. Most people crumbled after a few fists to the face, and the threat of having body parts cut off, but he hadn’t. Something told me he was telling the truth, and I trusted my gut instinct on that. I’d let him go, but not without first taking his mobile phone and making sure he didn’t have a second burner hidden somewhere about his person or in his car. If my gut was wrong, I didn’t want him warning anyone that we were coming.
By the time I’d got back to the house, my fists had been raw, and my clothes and face spattered with blood. I’d almost forgotten about the woman asleep in my bed. I was so tightly wound up, I didn’t dare let myself anywhere near her. Perhaps I was wrong in that. Perhaps I should have climbed on top of her, covered in another man’s blood, and held her down by the throat while I fucked her hard. Surely then she’d have gone running back to her father and that would have been another problem dealt with.
But despite myself, I couldn’t do it. I pictured her lying in the bath, her tits and long legs frustratingly hidden by bubbles, and her striking red hair floating in the water, and I’d figured that I’d have been doing myself a disservice by getting rid of her quite so quickly. She’d willingly come to live in my house, and even though she only wanted to become my wife because her daddy had told her that was what she needed to do, she hadn’t refused.
I was still filled with utter fury at the death of my brother. How little did she think of herself to allow herself to just be handed around between us like a stray dog? Harvey hadn’t slept with her, though, and, as far as I’d been aware, he’d been happy to marry her. Had he really been saving himself for their wedding night? If so, he’d been doing it for her benefit, and I knew for a fact he hadn’t been sitting at home on his own every night, waiting for the wedding. I’d been in clubs with him where the women had been draping themselves over him like cheap jewellery, and he’d always take at least one, if not more of them, home with him. Maybe he’d seen Hallie as being different—had wanted to treat her as his wife instead of some whore. I could understand that. Potentially, she might have been the mother of his children, had he not been murdered, so he might not have wanted to fuck her face and arse like he did the women he picked up.
I, however, was different. I had no intention of making her my wife, and there was no way in hell I’d bring children into this fucked-up life of mine. So I guessed that meant I could fuck her any which way I liked.
I stared down at her motionless form beneath the duvet. She wasn’t asleep. No one was that silent when they were sleeping. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing. Was she holding her breath, sensing me standing over her, wondering what my next move would be? I’d just come in the shower, so at least that knot of tension had released from me. Besides, it was now so late it was practically morning again, and I needed to get at least a couple of hours sleep. As soon as I woke, I’d need to get back to work to try to figure out who the hell had ripped us off.
I pulled on a pair of clean grey jogging bottoms, threw back what appeared to be ‘my side’ of the bed, and climbed in. Beside me, her body was taut with tension, and I smirked in the dark. If she wanted to pretend to be asleep, she was going to have to try a lot harder than that. If I hadn’t been so fucking shattered, maybe I’d have messed with her for a bit, but oblivion claimed me the moment my head hit the pillow.
***
SUNLIGHT POURED BETWEENa gap in the curtains.
Fuck. What time was it?
I reached for my phone. Almost nine. I’d slept too late. Remembering the girl in my bed, I twisted to look over my shoulder. The spot where she’d been was now empty. Had she snuck out of bed the moment I’d fallen asleep and gone to spend the night in a different part of the house? Or had she just got up early? I reached my hand across the sheets, but they were cool to the touch. She’d either moved or been up for a while.
I rolled over, so my head was on her pillow, and inhaled the scent of her. Yes, she’d definitely slept in these sheets. It was strange having a woman’s scent in my bed. While I’d fucked plenty of women in this house, I didn’t normally bother bringing them up to my bedroom, and on the occasions where I had, they’d definitely never slept here. I didn’t need the hassle of some bird thinking she’d got her feet under the table.
Of course, now I had one who thought she was going to end up marrying me. It was like I’d gone from nought to one hundred in three seconds.
I got out of bed, gritting my teeth against the twist of pain in my thigh—it was always worse first thing, and the level of activity last night had aggravated the old injury. I necked a couple of pills and went to the bathroom to take a piss and brush my teeth, and then headed downstairs. I hadn’t bothered to put on a t-shirt—why should I have to in my own house—and just remained in the grey, drawstring jogging bottoms I’d worn to bed. As I made my way down the stairs, I listened out for any sign of my new houseguest. Sure enough, music was coming from the kitchen. She must have put on the digital radio I had in there.
I paused in the doorway, leaning my hip against it, and folded my arms across my bare chest.
Hallie was listening to some pop shite that I barely recognised—I preferred the grunge music of the nineties myself, give me Pearl Jam and Nirvana, and Soundgarden any day of the week—but she seemed to be enjoying it. She had her back to me, and her hips undulated from side to side, her shoulders and her tight little backside wiggling. She sang along, and despite myself, a smile tugged on the corners of my mouth. Her voice was terrible, but she was making up for it in enthusiasm and that sexy wiggle she had going on.
