“Then I’ll come back to New York, too.”
“I don’t know…” I turned to look at Ronan, only to find him watching me. “Is it safe for her to go back to New York?”
“My man Jacob is there,” Eden said from the back seat. “He can come back with her. He makes every place safe.”
“He’s there? Where?” Ronan asked, looking at Eden in the rearview mirror.
“London. Your safe house is not the secret you thought it was. He wanted to watch her,” Eden said, and I could hear her shrug. “I figured it wasn’t a bad idea. You guys leave leverage that can be used against you everywhere you go.”
Ronan turned his head to look at me. And for a moment his face revealed his emotions. Volatile and dark. And in the lack of real warmth between us, those feelings felt white hot. And as much as I wanted to reach out my fingers and warm myself against him, I knew it was false.
He seemed warm because I was so, so cold.
He turned his eyes back on the road. “I’ll have arrangements made for them to get back to the States.”
“Instructions will come to you for how you can get back to the city,” I said into the phone. “Eden Morelli left a man looking after you at the London apartment,” I said. “He’ll come back with you. He looks—”
“Like a goddamn accountant,” my sister said.
“He’s not. He’s absolutely not.”
“No shit,” Zilla said. “When I get back to Bishop’s Landing, I’ll come to your house. I gotta warn you, it’s pretty trashed, but we can fix it back up.”
I closed my eyes, thought of that stupid shower I’d built. That backyard I’d tried to turn into something I could call my own. And none of it mattered. It wasn’t a home. It was just a place.
“It’s not my house anymore,” I said. “It’s not safe.”
“Then you can get to my apartment. I’ll take care of you for once.”
Until we figured out what everyone wanted from us, my only safe place was beside Ronan. The ties that bound us together were varied and never-ending.
“I’m staying with Ronan.”
“Ronan Byrne? The fucking kidnapper? The killer?”
Husband.
But I kept that to myself.
“Poppy? What are you doing?” she whispered into my silence.
The answer, like it had been through most of my life, was simple. “I’m doing what I have to to survive,” I told my sister, with more edge than I should. “I’ll be in touch when we’re in New York. Be safe, Zilla. I love you.”
“Oh, Poppy. I love you too and please, please be careful with Ronan. You can’t trust him.”
Like I didn’t know that. Ronan would keep my body safe and incinerate my heart. Trusting him would be my worst mistake.
“I’ll be okay,” I said. I waited until Zilla hung up and then I pressed the phone to my lips and closed my burning eyes, missing my sister but unable to feel it with the ache of everything else in my body.
“Poppy?” Ronan asked, and with my back still to him, unwilling to show him anything else when I’d already shown him so much, I tossed his phone at him over my shoulder. I heard it thunk against the dashboard. Being childish felt good. And I was never childish. It had always seemed selfish to rail against the things I couldn’t control. But right now? Oh…I felt a real temper tantrum coming on.
“We’ll be at the airport in an hour,” he said in a quiet voice. What was there to say to that? What was there even to feel about it? I kept my mouth shut and tried not to cry.
“Here.” From between my seat and the door appeared Eden’s hand and a pretty silver flask. “You need it more than I do.”
I grabbed on to that flask like it would keep me from drowning. And I drank.
CHAPTER TWO
The jet was sleek and modern. The smiling attendant checked us in, got us settled. She wore a black pencil skirt and a black button-down shirt and she looked somehow sexy and professional at the same time.
“Mr. Byrne,” she said to Ronan, her voice pitched low. “Welcome aboard.”
He paid her little to no attention and still I managed to be jealous. Which wasn’t fun. Or reasonable. “I would like a drink,” I said to her.
“Of course.” She smiled at me. “What kind?”
“One with booze.”
“Champagne,” Eden said. She sat next to me on the long banquet seating, the white leather smooth and expensive beneath my legs. “We’ll have a bottle of champagne.”
Ronan walked through a doorway into a back bedroom. Despite the ambient noise of the jet, I heard a shower turn on. At some point in the day—between breakfast and getting married—he’d been sprayed with blood. It somehow worked during our savage ceremony, but now that we were heading back to civilization, that madman who’d told me he’d worship my body with his had to be put away. Replaced by that stone-faced killer he’d been before. If it weren’t for the bloodstained cloth in my back pocket and the giant ugly ring on my finger, it could have been a nightmare.