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I left her for a moment to retrieve the well-stocked first-aid kit I kept in the bathroom. Though my family had a doctor on its books, I still preferred to deal with things myself if I could. Answering other people’s questions wasn’t something I liked to do. Even though the doctor knew to keep his mouth shut, he was more for things like bullet or knife wounds than scrapes to the head.
I returned to Ivy with the items I needed. Some rubbing alcohol, a couple of plasters, and cotton wool pads. It wasn’t exactly fancy, but it would do the job. She sat there with her hands primly linked in her lap, watching me carefully.
“Do you want another shot of that vodka?” I asked her.
She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not planning to stitch me up, are you? It’s only a small cut.”
I surprised myself by laughing. “No needles involved, promise.”
I tipped some of the rubbing alcohol onto the cotton wool and then used it to dab away at the wound on her forehead. It didn’t look too bad—definitely didn’t need stitches—but the position it was in, with her hairline meeting the injury, made it harder to clean.
Ivy sucked air in over her teeth.
“You’re doing great,” I told her. “Just a little more. You can take it.”
She lifted her gaze to mine, her blue eyes widening a fraction. Her lips parted, and a tension that hadn’t been there only seconds before I’d opened my mouth appeared between us. An invisible magnet suddenly drew me to her, and I had the urge to claim her pretty mouth, to nip and suck at her lips, and drag her body hard against mine.
What had been the reason for her reaction? Had she liked it when I’d praised her?
I was tempted to say something else, but I couldn’t complicate things like that, could I? I needed to stay focused, and trying to fuck my enemy’s daughter was only going to muddy the waters. Besides, after what she’d been through that evening, I highly doubted she’d want another man pawing over her.
Doing my best not to meet her eye, I finished up and laid a plaster across the cut in a strip so it would catch the worst of the blood.
“There,” I told her. “All done.”
She gave a small smile. “Thanks.”
“You know, you shouldn’t go out without either friends or your father’s men as protection.”
She set her lips in a line. “Why? You were out on your own. You didn’t need any protection.”
“You know why. I only came to help because I heard you cry out. What if those men had spiked your drink so you weren’t able to shout and I’d found you unconscious in the alley after they’d done what they wanted?”
“So I’m not supposed to go out in case someone spikes me? How about men just don’t spike women instead?”
There was real anger in her tone, a fire to her. I guessed I should have expected that—she’d grown up in the Gilligan household after all. I reminded myself that they were my enemy. The ones responsible for my father’s death.
“I’m not saying I disagree with you, but we both know that’s not the world we live in.”
“A fucked-up world,” she muttered.
I wasn’t going to disagree with her there.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
She gave a one-shouldered shrug.
“Did your family set off the bomb that killed my father?”
“I don’t have anything to do with things like that.”
I pointed a finger. “That wasn’t a no.”
“How can I give you a yes or no answer when I don’t know myself? My father doesn’t want me to be involved in the business, not at ground level anyway. He has my brothers for that. He’s pushing me to go into law or politics, something that might help things higher up.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“I don’t know what I want to do. I haven’t really been given the chance to work things out for myself yet. We don’t talk about feelings in our family. Too much testosterone. You’re expected to stay quiet and deal with things with your fists or a knife or maybe even a gun. No one wants to hear a woman whining, as my father would say. Wasn’t it the same in your house?”
