“We understand, we just missed you.” Pulling away, Lottie squeezed his hand before passing him off to Braden, who pulled him in for a surprisingly tight hug.
“Everything okay?” Braden asked, his voice too low for the others to hear.
“It will be.”
“Anything I should worry about?”
“No. Nothing that will touch you or yours.”
“Fair enough.” When Braden pulled back, his smile was still in place, but it no longer reached his eyes. “We’ll talk when Lottie and I get back.”
“Sure.” He didn’t have many friends outside of his family. Couldn’t risk putting a target on the backs of people he cared for, or unwittingly letting someone close enough to spy on their dealings. But ever since he’d helped Braden and his brothers shut down an illegal virginity auction being run out of their club, Braden at least had become a friend. He was, Killian had realized with a sense of irony some time back, probably the best friend Killian had outside his sister and cousins, despite the distance they both deliberately kept between them.
“Good. Now.” Smile widening, Braden clapped him on the shoulder and turned him to face the woman standing next to Lottie, her eyes blank and a polite smile on her face as if she’d never seen him before.
And it was then he was hit with the sudden, horrifying realization of why she’d looked so familiar last night. Why, every time he’d looked into her eyes, he could have sworn he knew her.
Because he was right. He had seen those eyes before. Staring at him over a glass of whiskey, laughing at his jokes, full of exasperation at some new trouble his pretty little sub had gotten herself into.
He knew those eyes, because they belonged to a man he’d come to love like his own kin.
“Aria, this is Killian, one of my closest friends. Killian, I’d like you to meet Aria Elliott. My daughter.”
Fuck.
Chapter Twelve
Aria
Killian. There had to be a dozen, maybe hundreds of Killians in a city the size of Charleston, right? That didn’t mean?—
“Killian O’Rourke.” Smiling as though they were just being introduced for the first time and he hadn’t spent the night before railing her into a mattress so hard she saw stars, the man she’d come to know as Master O held a hand out to her. “It’s lovely to meet you, Aria.”
Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.
She’d lost her virginity to the head of the Irish Mob.
Thank god she’d been raised in ‘polite’ company so she could mask the complete and utter shock coursing through her body as she reached out to slide her hand into his. It was just as rough and strong as she remembered from their night together, and she prayed the heat suffusing her entire body didn’t show on her face.
“Nice to meet you too… Mr. O’Rourke.” Daddy. Your name is Daddy.
Fuck.
Heat flared in his eyes, and she wondered if he was also remembering what she’d called him last night. “Please, call me Killian.”
“If you insist.”
Apparently oblivious to the tension between them, Braden beamed and slid an arm around her shoulder. “Aria just graduated a semester early, and she’s off to law school in the fall. She’s studying to be a corporate mediator, so she’s been spending what would have been her final semester working alongside one of my good friends, Richard Williams, to learn more about the business side of things. Seeing how the sausage is made, so to speak.”
Something flickered across Killian’s face. It was there, then gone, too quickly for her to make out what it was.
Probably a reaction to finding out she was going to law school. Had to be a pretty nasty shock for a fucking mob boss.
“That sounds… intriguing.” Turning to Lottie, he held out a large card-shaped envelope. “My apology for missing the wedding yesterday. I was unavoidably detained.”
“Uh-huh.” Amusement twinkled in Lottie’s pale eyes. “Did you do something crazy like buy us a yacht?”
“Nothing quite so extravagant, but I think you’ll appreciate it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I promised Cordelia’s boy I’d have breakfast with them.” He bowed, ever so slightly in Aria’s direction. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Aria. Braden, Lottie, congratulations again. I have no doubt you’ll make each other disgustingly happy in the coming years.”
