Page 94 of Wicked Ruin

I do, then turn to the side so she doesn’t see me adjust myself. Fuck, that was way too close.

“We got ambushed at Lickety,” I mutter. “Don’t come into Bridget’s without fuckin’ knocking, Erin.”

“It’s customary for sisters to go into each other’s homes unannounced, Declan,” Erin says, crossing her arms on her chest. “What’s not is for engaged men to be in a single woman’s apartment alone.”

“Leave it, Erin,” Bridget says. “Please.”

“I was just heading out,” I tell her. I feel like an arsehole for leaving Bridget to deal with this, but it doesn’t seem like Erin wants to talk to Bridget about why I’m here.

“Right, then. Let’s get some work done,” she says, stepping past me. “See you tonight at the charity dinner, Declan?”

“Aye.”

The dinner I’m taking Valentina to.

Sorry about that. Everything okay?

Bridget

We need to be more careful. It’s alright though

The function is at some hotel. The kind of charity dinner the family attends because not attending makes a statement, and we’re in the habit of making the residents of Ballyhock like us.

So I’m in a goddamn suit, and I’ve shaken hands with precisely seven people whose names I couldn’t tell you.

Valentina arrives at half eight.

She finds my eyes across the room and walks over to me. “Nice affair they have here.”

I almost choke on the word affair, but I pull myself together. She stands tall and lovely in her own sort of way, like a building you admire but don’t actually want to visit, and greets me with a placid kiss on my cheek and her hand on my arm.

“Drink?”

“Wine, please,” Valentina says, the same as she’s ordered at every opportunity she’s had with me since I met her.

So I do what I have to. I get the drinks and make the introductions.

I do my fucking job, wondering, as I do a million times a day, how I can possibly extricate myself and my family from this engagement. From tying my life to this woman whose family will wreak fucking havoc if they discover I have a pregnant girlfriend.

Is that what she is? It feels so fucking trite when she’s so much more.

My girlfriend. My everything.

My dirty fucking secret. Shite.

An hour later, Colm finds me at the bar. “Got a text from Cavin,” he says. “Says he’s been trying to reach you, and you haven’t answered your phone.”

I pat my pockets.

I don’t have my fucking phone. Christ. I must have left it in the car. I hate not having my phone. What if something happened to Bridget? What if she needs me? “Must’ve left it in the car,” I say.

Colm watches me as I head for the back door and out to the car park. There it is, gleaming in the overhead light on my front seat. I find it quickly, power it on, walk around the car, and scroll. Nothing from Bridget. I let out a long breath.

That’s when I notice the silhouette to the right of my car, next to the open door.

Valentina. She’s standing a few feet away, holding something in her hand. It takes me a second to realize what it is, and then I stifle a groan.

Bridget’s jumper, the one she left on the passenger seat three days ago, an oversized thing she’d pulled off because the car was warm. I’d meant to bring it up to her and hadn’t—just left it on the goddamn seat.