The Virgin Next Door (Stud Ranch)

She fell into a coughing fit that shook her entire body. He sat there helplessly, not knowing what to do.

He reached out for her arm but she batted him away. “You and your da ruined me.” Then she laughed and it was a dry, brittle sound. “Course he might not be your da at all. I hope you are the stablemaster’s bastard.”

“What are you talking about?” Liam asked, so loud she winced away from him. Shite. He ran a hand through his hair. But what she’d just— No, she was just confused. The nurses warned him this might happen. This wasn’t his ma at all. She didn’t m—

“Not that your da ever had the balls—” another long coughing fit “—to find out for sure if you were his or not. Didn’t trust himself not to disinherit ya and kick ya to the streets. And what a scandal that woulda been. His pride couldn’t have borne it.”

But when he’d run out of there and gone to his da’s office to get him to contradict Ma and tell him she didn’t know what she was talking about, his dad didn’t deny it.

They got in a huge row that ended with his da yelling, “As useless as ya are with your life and considering your whore of a mother, of course I wondered every day if you were even me son.”

Liam had always felt deep down his da didn’t love him. At least now he knew why.

“Congratulations,” Liam had said, yanking open the door to his da’s office, “You got your wish. I’m not your son anymore.” Then he’d slammed the door behind him.

They hadn’t spoken or had any contact since. His ma died a week and a half later, and Liam pulled up a map of the United States on his laptop, closed his eyes, and blindly put his finger on the screen. Couldn’t say he’d ever heard of Wyoming before, but he looked up jobs that would let him have a low profile and was on a plane the next day. Working on a horse ranch had a certain irony. After all, there was apparently just as much chance his real da was a nobody stablemaster as a billionaire media mogul.

“If you’d let me get a word in edgewise,” Ciarán said, red faced. “I could tell ya why I’m here.” He looked around the lobby where people were staring at them. They were making a scene. Something he knew Ciarán hated.

Liam smiled. “No, you know what? I think I prefer how we’ve communicated the past two years. Not at all.”

Liam knew he was being immature. But everything had been going so good. Calla and Mack, it was all—

“It’s time to end this charade and come back home where you belong.” Ciarán stood up straighter, speaking with that superior tone that always put Liam’s teeth on edge.

But he wasn’t a child anymore. Ciarán might have held him at an arm’s length his whole life, but it was Liam’s choice to do the leaving for once. He left Ciarán. Ireland. Everything.

And if Ciarán thought he had the right to just march right back in, he had another thing coming.

“You should go now.” Liam walked back toward the front sliding doors of the hotel. “You aren’t welcome here.” He looked past Ciarán to Brigid. “Either of you.”

Ciarán stared at him a long moment. Then he waved a hand. “It’s late and you’re pissed.” He strode not toward the door, but over to the elevator. “We’ll talk tomorrow, somewhere private, when you haven’t spent the evening swimming in Guinness. We’re staying in the penthouse.”

Liam bit his tongue. He wasn’t drunk. He’d only had a beer and a half earlier, over several hours. Unlike back in Dublin, he didn’t have to drink himself into a stupor each night so he could be numb to just how miserable his existence was.

“I’ll be just a minute,” Brigid called after Ciarán. Then she turned to Liam. He could still feel eyes on them from all sides. If he was really lucky, this little throw down would show up on TMZ tomorrow. As much as he hated that shite, he refused to go anywhere with either Ciarán or Brigid.

“Well, for a getaway, you certainly chose a place that’s,” she looked around, eyes lingering on a chandelier made out of antlers, “eclectic.”

“You can follow Ciarán back to your rooms and then out the damn door tomorrow. I don’t have a thing to say to you.”

Her eyes flashed hurt and she took a step toward him before stopping again, folding her arms across her stomach and looking down. “You don’t know how sorry I am for the things I said that day.” She looked up, eyebrows furrowed like she was stricken. “I wished I could take it back a hundred times. But I couldn’t find you to apologize and beg you—” Her voice broke and she took another step toward him.