“Thank you,” I said to her before turning my dark gaze on Cillian. “Can you give me and Mr. Brannington a few minutes alone?”
“Just take them into the kitchen,” Cillian said to her, before moving to the hallway.
As soon as we returned to the penthouse, I could sense how pissed off Reagan was. It was palpable, and it radiated off of her in waves. Her anger seemed to match mine in intensity, only our rage was over different things. The betrayal still stung, and nothing I’d done thus far had been able to tame it. Even something like going to Ciara’s room this morning expecting to find her, but only seeing Reagan sprawled across her bed instead. And this had been after I had told her she had her own room.
There was more to my anger than that, though. The sight of my wife with her T-shirt clinging to and falling just under her breasts while in shorts that had ridden up so high on her body that they might as well have been panties, upset me more than it should have.
It also aroused me, which was now the reason for said anger. This deceitful bitch had not only walked away from our marriage bed the very night of our wedding, but had also faked her death and withheld the fact that I had a child from me for years, and would have for an eternity had she not been caught. Any loveI had once felt for her should’ve been gone the moment I’d realized her betrayal. It was just hard to shut off the part of me that had dreamed of her survival for seven long fucking years.
I shouldn’t be getting hard at the very sight of her. I didn’t want to see her at all. In order not to scare my daughter, I needed to find a way to forget because a Brannington never forgave. Thinking about her, I realized right away that she was not in there, so I left the room and soon found her across the penthouse in the kitchen.
“Are you looking for anything in particular, Ciara?”I’d asked her.
“Donuts. We always have donuts on days without school. Do you have any?”
“No, I don’t have any, but there is a shop a block away. Would you want to come with me to pick up a dozen?”
“Yes,”she said as her entire face lit up. It was a sight I had never dreamed of seeing, but now one I never wanted to forget.“Be right back,”she called out before fleeing the room.
She ran down the hallway and reappeared a minute later with her shoes in her hand. After I helped her get them on, we headed to the local bakery I’d mentioned. There were some international chain type places in Dublin, but this particular gem was run by someone I knew very well. Or at least someone my grandfather knew very well.
“Cillian, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you in here. How has Ronan been?”the man asked me.
I smiled politely.“He’s still as ornery as ever.”
The man laughed, then noticed the child at my side.“And who is this?”
I wanted to proudly proclaim her as my daughter, but I couldn’t just yet.“This is Ciara, and she’s hungry for some donuts.”
“If you’re looking for donuts,”he said to her,“you’ve come to the right place. Come and show Leon which ones you want.”I moved down the glass case with my daughter, but I allowed her to pick and choose the selection.“And you have two left,”he said to her after placing the other ten in the box already.
“Do you have jelly donuts?”Ciara asked.“My mommy loves those kinds.”
“We have raspberry ones right here. Do you think she’ll like those?”he asked her.
Ciara nodded her head enthusiastically.“Those are her favorites.”
“One of mine too,”I said truthfully.“Can you throw a few extra of them in the box for us, Leon?”
“Sure thing.”
And a few minutes later, we exited the shop with not only the breakfast treats, but also some freshly squeezed orange juice before heading back to my place. I hadn’t even thought about Reagan waking up until we returned back and I saw her standing there with her cell phone in her hand. She asked Ciara to give us a moment, and I suspected by her clipped tone of voice that she intended to lay into me for taking our daughter out of this place as if I was some random person and not our child’s father.
As soon as we were far enough down the hallway, I turned and looked impassively at her. “What is it?”
“What do you mean ‘what is it’?” she asked me.
“Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of their daughter’s bed,” I replied flippantly.
“How did you know that I....Were you looking at...Actually, none of that matters.”
Reagan was flustered, and it reminded me of how she would get when we first had started talking to one another at school. She’d seemingly held her own with the most pompous kids in the class, but when it was just her and I, she would becomeoverly nervous, much like she was right now. I’d chalked it up to her innocence, but she no longer got a pass for that because she wasn’t innocent in any of this.
When I had thought she’d been murdered, she’d been innocent to that. Faking her death then stealing my child was the farthest thing from it, and no sympathy or fucks would be given where she was concerned because of it.
“What matters then, Reagan?”
“Shhh,” she said to me. “Quit calling me that. My name’s Row?—”
