“That’s a shitty-ass promise.” But she still crawled back into his arms. He barely had time to relax when she spoke again. “Keira is going to start taking Krav Maga lessons.”
“I’ll arrange to have an instructor brought to the house.” His little sister knew how to shoot—he and Teague had made sure all their sisters did, even if Carrigan and Keira took to it better than Sloan. They had men whose whole job was to keep them safe, but it was always possible that the time would come when they’d have to defend themselves.
He’d never considered some kind of martial arts. Aiden knew how to fight, but there was nothing formal about it. He was a goddamn brawler.
“Wrong. You’ll arrange to have Mark—or whoever—escort her to her classes several times a week.”
As much as he didn’t like the idea of his sister traipsing out into Boston with any regularity, Charlie’s tone said that she’d go to the mat for this. He wanted to know why. “You took her there today.”
“Yes, I did.” She hesitated, and he found himself holding his breath to see what she’d say next. She rewarded his patience by shifting away enough to meet his gaze. Her expression was as frank as he’d ever seen, stripped of the artifice she’d been wearing like a second skin since agreeing to pose as his fiancée. “I’m prefacing this by saying thatit’s not an invitation to delve into my past—it’s just to give you some context. Understand?”
“Yes.” He agreed too readily, but Aiden was hungry for more of her. He knew what he’d read, but reports failed to do Charlie justice. He wanted to know every part of her mind the same way he was beginning to know her body.
She gave him a suspicious look but finally said, “I had plenty of training—as you can imagine—but after my attack…I’d never felt so helpless as I did in those first few months while I was recovering. I was helpless and terrified that someone would decide to finish the job, and I spent too much time hiding away.”
The actions sounded familiar, even if the cause wasn’t the same. She could have been describing Keira. “I’m with you so far.” He deliberately didn’t think about what he’d like to do to the men who’d hurt Charlie badly enough to instill that fear in the first place.
“Eventually, I started training again out of spite. I hated that I’d been weak, and wanted to do anything to combat the chance of that happening again. It was about control, which I’m sure you can appreciate.” She traced the vein that ran along his forearm. “Keira feels helpless and scared, even if she would rather cut you than admit it. The partying is just an escape, but she’s always going to wake up and find herself sober and have to start the whole process over again. Krav Maga isn’t going to magically fix everything that is wrong in her life, but it will give her an outlet that she desperately needs.”
She snuggled into him again. “You should have seen her going after that punching bag. She needs this. I know it’s dangerous to have a schedule that requires her to leave the house, but that’s what your security people are for. They can figure it out. Dmitri Romanov”—she choked a little on hisname—“doesn’t seem to want to hurt her at this point, so the danger is as low as it’s ever likely to be.”
Aiden fought down his knee-jerk reaction to reject the idea out of hand. The truth was that Keira needed help, and though he’d never have imagined that she’d find a champion in Charlie, their relationship was developing into something resembling friendship. He stroked his hand over Charlie’s hair. “You feel strongly about this.”
“You have no idea how irritating I find you and your siblings acting like fools around each other. I get it—you’re big bad mafia people who have a boatload of issues—but you’re letting your relationships with them be poisoned for no goddamn reason. It’s a fucking tragedy.”
He tried to see it from her point of view. Charlie had no siblings. Her mother was gone. Her father had essentially disowned her, though they remained in regular contact, so Finch had to love her—as much as the man was capable of loving anyone. But that didn’t mean he was a good father to her. By all accounts, he was just as shitty a dad as he was a person in general.
It made sense that Charlie had come in, taken one look at Aiden and his siblings, and wanted to fix things. “Some things can’t be fixed.”
“And some things aren’t as broken as you might think. How can you tell the difference?”
She had him there. Aiden rolled her onto her back and propped himself up on his forearms. “Would it make you happy if I tried to mend things?”
“My happiness is irrelevant. I’m temporary.” She rolled her eyes. “But yes, it would make me happy if you’d at least try. You can send me thank-you flowers when you realize I was right all along.”
Fuck, he liked this woman. Somehow she’d managed to survive all the terrible shit life had thrown her way. Aiden kissed her, slow and searching. When he finally lifted his head, they were both breathing hard. “I’ll talk to Liam about setting up a detail for Keira so she can start training.”
Charlie’s blue eyes danced. “And?”
He nipped her bottom lip. “And I’ll call Carrigan and see about setting a meeting up. Happy?”
“It’s a start.”
Carrigan was the easier of the two fences to mend. Which was saying something, because she still hadn’t forgiven him for siding with their father when she chose James Halloran. Aiden had tried to force her hand, which had created a fracture between them that he didn’t know how to broach.
Truth be told, he hadn’t even tried.
He slid off Charlie and stood. “Get dressed. I don’t know aboutyou, but I want to catch a couple hours of sleep in my own bed tonight.” Her laughter chased him into the bathroom, where he disposed of the condom.
Who would have thought that when he sought out Charlie Finch, she’d end up being the kind of woman he’d never realized he might actually need?
Theirs wasn’t a love story for the ages. Their differences ran soul-deep despite the fact that they were melding together just fine for the moment. But she’d never stop being a cop.
And Aiden had no choice but to stay on his path.
Chapter Seventeen
Aiden waited until Charlie’s breathing evened to climb out of his bed. He pulled on a pair of pants and stopped at the door. He was tempted to look back and see her there tangled among his sheets, her face relaxed in the way that only sleep seemed to be able to manage. He didn’t. What he had to do to put the next stage of this shit show into motion required him to harden his heart against hurting her, despite what they’d shared in that hotel room mere hours ago.
