Closet? Clothes? Was this man ever going to make me feel anything less than reeling?
“Get dressed,” he told me. “I’ll be waiting downstairs. And Laney?”
I turned. “Yeah?”
The grin turned rakish and even more devastatingly handsome. “Wear something hot. I want to show off my beautiful wife.”
21
THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
RONAN
It took me five minutes to slap on a Tom Ford three-piece that Shea said made me look like a gangster because of the subtle pinstripes, ten more to down two fingers of tequila, then twenty more to wait for Laney to finish getting ready for her first official night out as my wife.
My hands were still shaking, which was why I’d allowed myself a third shot of añejo.
Christ. I hadn’t had the shakes this bad since I was getting my first BJ and Krissy O’Leary made me hide in her closet when her dad got home early. The question was why. I knew why I was scared then—I was fifteen, late on my growth spurt, and Old Clark O’Leary had a baseball bat he kept specifically for when he caught his daughter’s late night visitors.
This was just Laney and a Blackguard party. I’d been to dozens of them. And I knew her, even after just a few weeks of trading calls, texts, emails, even a letter or two.
Maybe that was the issue. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that this was, in fact, just another scheme to getwhat I wanted, there was a part of me that did genuinely like Laney Fisher.
As in turned-myself-into-a-fucking penpal liked her.
Wanted-to-give-her-millions-just-to-hang-around liked her.
Bring-her-to-my-secret-lair-and-wait-until-she-was-ready liked her.
What the fuck had happened to me?
“A fourth shot should answer that question,” I muttered as I poured myself another two fingers, then gulped it back. The burn down my throat barely registered. I was too busy wondering how I was going to deal when my horror show of a family put Laney through her paces, as I knew they would.
I could handle their abuse. But I had a sneaking suspicion I wouldn’t be able to take it if they turned it on her.
Fuck it. Fifth shot it was. Or maybe five and six combined, I decided as I let the pour continue.
“Do you always drink so much?”
“How—what?” I jerked, spilling tequila over my suit in the process.
The shot glass fell to the rug with a thump, but I managed to save the bottle.
“Jesus, baby.” I yanked off my jacket, then my tie and shirt, which I then proceeded to use ineffectively to dry my pants. “Are you half panther? Don’t sneak up on a guy like that.”
“Here, let me.” Laney appeared in front of me with a cloth she must have retrieved from the kitchen. She pressed it to my soaked undershirt in the brusque, no-nonsense way of a mother cleaning up after a child.
“Stop,” I said. “You don’t have to—oh, Christ.”
She had stopped, but then she’d looked up at me. And that was when I took in everything.
Her dress was nothing fancy, a simple gray thing that looked more like a slip than a gown, held up by straps I could probablyrip with one finger. She wasn’t one for a lot of makeup, but she’d lined her eyes with a bit of black that made the green glow like the jade earrings and matching pendant hanging just above the swell of her decolletage. She’d chosen heels—God, the woman could wear them, too—but even with an added four inches, she was still small enough that she barely came to my shoulder.
Her hand still lingered on my chest, and her lips had fallen open.
“You look… like a goddess,” I told her honestly. “You look like a goddamn poem.”
Her swallow was thick. “I—thank you. You bought it.” She fingered the necklace. “This is one of my mom’s old pieces from the nineties.”