Alarm floods her face as she eyes my brother.
‘This is win-win for both of us,’ I whisper in her ear. ‘I promise, I’ll take care of you.’
She stares at me pensively for a long beat. Silence stretches between us as she weighs up my offer.
Finally, finally her head tips forward in a reluctant nod.
It’s impossible to bite back my grin as I drape a protective arm around her shoulder and pull her against my chest. ‘Ciaran, this is Aoife, my fiancée.’
4
AOIFE
So much for out of the frying pan, into the fire. It’s more like out of the fire, into the flames of hell, but hell is my only option right now. I just agreed to marry the most dangerous man in Dublin within twenty minutes of smashing into him like a runaway train.
‘Fiancée?’ Ciaran’s thick black eyebrows wing up. ‘Congratulations. I wasn’t aware you had a…’ his espresso coloured eyes dart to mine, ‘girlfriend.’
‘I didn’t.’ Dominic shrugs, casually, like this isn’t completely fucked up. ‘Aoife’s father tried to force her into marrying Rory Kavanagh. Now she’s marrying me instead.’
‘By choice?’ Ciaran asks tentatively.
‘Of course,’ Dominic snaps. ‘What do you take me for?’
Choice is a bit of a stretch.
It’s either go along with this madness or go it alone on the streets.
Dominic’s brother shakes his head disbelievingly as he turns his attention to me. His pupils drag over my face first, then my outfit.
I take him in, warily. He doesn’t radiate the same intensity as his brother, though they share the same colouring and features. He’s wearing a white shirt splattered with small scarlet stains.
Wait—is that blood?
Alarm sends every hair on my body spiking to attention.
Seeming to sense it, Dominic pulls me in closer and presses a tender kiss to my temple, like we really are engaged, like he genuinely cares about me, like we didn’t just meet twenty minutes ago. His ease with our situationship is almost as terrifying as the blood.
‘Pour yourself a drink,’ Dominic says jovially to Ciaran, motioning to the bottle of Becketts Gold on the bar. ‘This is a celebration after all.’
Either he’s an exceptionally good actor, or he really is comfortable with our newfound arrangement.
Both are worrying on so many levels
‘Are we seriously doing this?’ I whisper.
‘We’re seriously doing this, baby.’He flashes another wolfish grin that does nothing to reassure me.
Baby.
The rumours were obviously true. The man is clearly a complete psycho.
But if I walk out of here now, where the hell else am I going to go?
I don’t exactly have a lot of options.
I could spend the next few months sleeping on the streets, running, hiding, constantly looking over my shoulder. Or spend them hiding out with a man who promised to protect me. A man who swears he won’t touch me, even though the way his eyes linger on my body makes me think he might want to.
Ciaran reaches for the whiskey, pours himself an inch, and then tops up our glasses.
