“What are you doing here? Do you live here with him?”
Louise turned back to me, her eyes taking me in. “No, I do not. I come by and clean for him sometimes, not that he needs it. He’s rarely here.”
“I didn’t even know he had a place,” I said. “Until he locked me in here.”
Her eyebrows rose for a moment before she continued putting food in the pantry. “You must have annoyed him if he doesn’t want you at the clubhouse with him. Have you been slutting around with other members?”
I ground my teeth at the remark. She knew of my reputation, as I did of hers. She’d been no different, getting pregnant to a club member when he was married with children. Alex was the illegitimate child of Peter O’Leary, one of the former enforcers under Donald’s reign as Prez. He’d never been treated well, until he befriended Cooper and Casey. The three of them had been inseparable, and when Sheridan and I joined their group at school, it was the five of us getting into all sorts of shit.
That’s how I’d fallen in love with Alex, even at that tender age.
“No, he just…thinks he’s doing me a favour, I guess.”
“When it comes to you, Orla, that boy is blind.”
I know she didn’t mean for it to be a compliment, but it did funny things to my insides to hear that.
“He’s just helping me,” I offered, trying to convince myself of that very same thing. “I got into some trouble overseas.”
Louise let out a half chuckle, half breath of something else I couldn’t figure out. What I did know was she was pissed off that I was here. “Of course you did and he camerunning to rescue you, as he always did, no matter the cost to himself.”
I wish I could say she was wrong, but she wasn’t.
“What you would do if you loved him would be to let him go. You’re no good for him, you never were. You broke his heart because you wanted someone with more money, who was more popular. He left Kilkenny because of you, and I never got to see my boy. Now he’s settled again and here you are, throwing your skanky ass around again, pulling him back down.”
My chest felt like I had an elephant sitting on it.
“You won’t though, will you?” Louise continued. “You’ll flash that trashy body around him-”
Alex appeared in the doorway, his anger evident on his face. “Get out.”
Louise backed up, surprised by his arrival. “Alex…”
“I said, get out. I didn’t tell you to come here and do this. I told you I would come by tomorrow, and yet here you are, insulting my guest.”
“Alex…I didn’t-”
“I won’t ask again, Louise. Remove yourself from my home.”
Her eyes were on me then, and I saw the fury there before she trudged toward him to leave.
“You may want to let yourguestknow that aiming a gun at your mother isn’t exactly the way to win your heart.”
Bear’s eyes moved down to the gun in my hand, but he didn’t say a word as we waited for the door to be closed behind her.
“I’m sorry,” I offered to him, putting the gun on the bench. “I heard the door open and no one called out. I knew it wasn’t you.”
“You don’t have to say sorry for defending yourself, Or. She had no right to come here unannounced, nor did she have any right to say those things about you.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Nothing I haven’t heard before.”
I made a move to leave, but his hand caught my arm and he pulled me back to stand in front of him.
“She was wrong,” he said, his finger under my chin holding my gaze with his own. “She always has been wrong about you.”
I wanted so desperately to reach out and kiss him, to have his lips on mine, crushing them with his own. His hands roaming down to my ass to squeeze it.
I wanted to be wrapped up in Alex O’Leary for hours in that big bed as he made me feel human again. But if I did that, I’d fall irrevocably back in love with him againand I couldn’t do it to myself. I’d only just recovered last time.
