A breath shuddered through his chest, but it did nothing to ease the mounting tension. He struggled to soften his voice. “He shouldn’t be here.”
“But it’s your sister’s day, and she wanted him here.” She smoothed the pads of her thumbs over his temple, with each sweep drawing the dangerous parts of him back into his quivering body.
“Why would shewanthim here, though?” Shauna hadn’t been immune to Brennan’s abuse. Surely she remembered the bruises and the refrigerator full of beer and little else.
Lily shook her head, the tiny movement drawing him back into her orbit. “Maybe she looked him up while drunk. Maybe it was last minute. Who knows. You’ll have to ask her yourself. Preferably when you’re not on the verge of shoving your fist through his skull.”
Kieran lifted her hands from his face and kissed each of her palms. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this, Lily.” How was he supposed to breathe knowing that his father had every opportunity to tear down each wall he’d built to protect his family? What if they welcomed Brennan back into their lives? After everything they’d gone through together.
She guided one of his hands to the silken blue fabric covering her waist, pulling him from his thoughts, and she maneuvered his other hand into holding hers. “Then do what you know you’re supposed to do tonight.” She rested her free hand on his shoulder. “Dance with me. We’ll figure everything else out after.”
Kieran slid his hand around the curve of her back, pulledher in until her chest was flush with his and bowed his head, resting his brow against hers.
Amid the chaos of the evening, Lily’s presence in his arms was the only part that made sense.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
The door of their hotel room swung shut, closing out the buzz of chatter in the hall as well as the lingering wariness that had loomed over the reception after Brennan appeared.
There’d been no separating Danny from his father once Shauna gave the all clear. That boy’s inner child was still desperate for his father’s love and willing to withstand Kieran’s ire to receive it. But Maeve took Kieran’s side. The Sullivan siblings spent the reception divided—Shauna and Danny bending like broken vines toward the slip of light Brennan gave them, and Kieran and Maeve standing strong like moonlit blooms.
A deep sigh drew Lily’s attention from her study of the white-framed door. Kieran stood beside the bed, shrugging off his suit jacket and tugging at the knot in his bow tie. He was too large for the small room. His broad shoulders seemed tucked in like one of the many trinkets adorning the old inn. A queen-size bed was scooched in at an angle into the corner of the slope-roofed room. A vanity littered with Lily’s makeup and brushes sat below the window and a dresser stood opposite the bed. A cozy private bathroom equipped with a standing shower was beside the door to the hall. Overall, there was barely room to move.
“Are you okay?” She set her clutch atop the dresser and slipped off her heels, leaving them tucked along the wall.
His waistcoat joined his jacket on the back of the chair by the vanity. “Yeah. I double-checked that Maeve and Saoirse and Danny are all locked up. Told Maeve to jam the chair under the door handle once I left.”
“I didn’t ask about them.” Lily stepped forward and took over for Kieran’s distracted fingers. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as she slipped each button free and opened his shirt. “Areyouokay?”
The soft black fabric came away in her hands, and Lily placed the shirt with the other pieces of his tuxedo. Standing there with his ribbed undershirt tucked into his dress pants and his tattoos on display, Kieran oozed confidence. Someone could never look at him and all his success and guess his past, yet there it was, lurking right beyond their door.
“I’m okay, Princess. Just tired. Haven’t had to play protector from my father in a decade.”
His hands closed around her waist, and he drew her in, breathing deeply when he trailed his nose across her collar and up her neck.
Closing her eyes, Lily leaned into his embrace. Kieran could make her forget the entire world. She wanted to be that for him, too.
“If you protect them, who protects you?”
A chuckle rumbled through his chest, and he leaned back enough to quirk one eyebrow. “You think I became a professional fighter because I had someone to protect me?”
The truth of his words sank in her skin—heavy like a bone-chilling cold. “Was there really not anyone?”
“There was Daideo.” He reached one hand between themand thumbed the golden medal he wore outside the gym. “He’s the only reason I had any sense of right and wrong, or what love was supposed to be like. But he died when I was ten.”
“And he gave you this?” She took a hold of the medallion, turning it in the light. A winged man wielding a sword shimmered before her.
“For my First Communion, yeah. This is St. Michael the Archangel. Protection’s sort of his gig.”
A man who’d died nearly twenty years ago and a medallion. That was all Kieran had in the world. The lines of Lily’s lips curved downward, and she laid her hand flat over the medal. Beneath the base of her palm, his heart beat strong.
“I’ll protect you.”
His tongue darted out, a rebuttal at the ready. Then, as if thinking better of it, he settled on kissing her forehead instead. “Whatever you say.”
“Hey.” She tipped her chin up and met his dark eyes—such a rich, beautiful brown. Deeper than the silt of a sleeping riverbed. “I can protect your heart.”
If he let her. She swallowed down her nerves and held his gaze.No pasts, they’d said that first day.No feelings.But that had changed. They had changed. The truths she’d told and the secrets he’d shared. The way they’d bared themselves to one another.
