Page 45 of Stolen Rebel

I play my trump card. “Please. Call it an apology.”

“Or you could go with an actual apology.” There’s a gleam in Sorcha’s eye that tells me she’s loving every moment of this.

“Liam never apologizes,” Darragh pipes up. “If he ever does, the world will probably come to an end.”

“Fuck off,” I snap.

“See?” Darragh flips his hands, palms up. “Textbook.”

The next time I’m alone with that fucker, I’m taking his head off. I turn my attention back to Rowan. “Will you come to the pub with me?”

She places her knife and fork together and pushes back her chair. “I’ll go put my boots and coat on.”

I listen for her footsteps on the stairs, and once they fade, I plant my hands on my hips and face my family. “You are all fucking traitors. I am trying to get to the truth and, yes, take Sorcha’s advice to switch to a more… friendly approach. Don’t look so smug, Sorcha.”

“What?” She paints this innocent look on her face. “I’m not being smug. I’m glad I could help.”

I grunt and stomp out of the kitchen to grab my coat, too. They don’t even wait for me to be out of earshot before the laughter starts.

Fuckers. I hate them all.

Chapter 23

LIAM

“Ready?”

Rowan tugs her bobble hat lower over her ears and nods. She’s wary, and who can blame her? I haven’t exactly covered myself in glory since I snatched her in London, left her languishing in a warehouse before bringing her to Ireland where I locked her up for several days. She used to look at me with adoration, and now her eyes flit away from mine, unwilling to lock gazes. It’s either the Erin persona she’s clinging to with the tips of her fingers, or the feisty no-nonsense woman I used to know is gone for good.

Fuck, I hope to God it’s the former. That I can break. That I can make disappear with the right strategy and enough time to knock out every brick in the wall she’s erected.

Sorcha’s words have been circling my mind all day. I cannot think of a single scenario where another man is scarier than I am, to Rowan at least. I doubt it’s true, but she believes it, and until she shares what it is she’s so scared of, there isn’t much I can do.

There’s barely any wind tonight, so although it’s cold, we’re not battling a force nine gale and wind chill that shears the skin off your face. There’s a direct route to the pub, but I’m taking the indirect route. There’s somewhere I want to take her first.

We’re both out of breath by the time we reach the top of the hill. The moon illuminates the lake below, casting white streaks over the water.

She’s shivering, and before I can stop myself, I reach out to tuck her scarf tighter around her neck.

The wind bites at my face, making the sensitive scar tissue on my cheek ache with the cold. It’s a dull, pulsing reminder of the gap between the younger me who used to come here and the broken man standing here now.

My knuckles graze the sensitive skin beneath her ear, and she doesn’t flinch, she stills. I focus on the way her eyelashes sweep against her cheeks, the tiny crystals of frost clinging to her hair, how pink the tip of her nose is. Here and now, under the Irish moon, there is no kidnapping and no betrayal, no lies or pretense. There is only the response of her skin jumping under my touch, and the way my heart beats for her.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

She pulls in her lips and nods. I study her profile. The slight bunching of skin around her eyes, the muscle twitching in her cheek, the way she’s locked her jaw to stop a sliver of the truth from spilling out.

“I used to come here with Rowan. We’ve had sex right here in the spot you’re standing on.”

She kicks at something invisible on the ground. “I thought you believed I was Rowan.”

“Oh, I do. But you don’t.” I exhale through my nostrils, my breath swirling around me in the bitter cold. “I was thinking about your amnesia.”

“I never said I had amnesia. You said that.”

Irritation crawls into my bloodstream. I don’t have the patience for this, but as the aggressive approach hasn’t worked, tamping down my anger at this fake fucking story is worth a shot. Won’t be easy though.

“Okay, let’s assume for a second that your name is Erin, how do you explain the fact that you look exactly like my former girlfriend Rowan? And I don’t just mean resemble. I mean exactly. And before you try that doppelgӓnger shite again, don’t.”