Page 95 of Fearless Sinner

At least she distracts me for a few hours. When she leaves my thoughts attack me again.

Cillian comes home a little while after and the moment he kisses me, I get sucked into that bubble where it’s just him and me and time has frozen.

Asking about a future I’m not supposed to have questions about doesn’t feel appropriate.

The same thing happens the next few nights and before I know it another week has passed. I try to shove my concerns to the back of my mind but I feel even more worked up than ever.

Being with him is like fanning the flames of a fire. They only grow stronger and stronger, and even when that fire burns down to nothing, leaving ashes, one kiss from him awakens the fire like a rising phoenix.

Now it’s Monday again. At least I was able to keep myself busy at my school.

After I went to see Mom I spent the day there with the design team I hired. I’m having the mirrors fitted this week. The rest of the month will be spent laying the flooring. I’m hoping to have the school ready to launch by September.

I have a great day watching my dream unfold but my spirits deflate when I arrive home and get a message from Cillian letting me know he’ll be working late.

I don’t think the work has to do with the bank. It’s nearly ten so it must be the other kind of business, which makes me worry because I know nothing about what’s going on. That’s a whole other matter I hate.

The fact that there are always guards around me, at the restaurant and stationed outside my mother’s hospital room, puts my senses on high alert.

At least they keep enough distance to allow me my privacy, and when I’m home they stay outside guarding the doors—back and front.

I decide to wait downstairs and watch TV so I don’t fall asleep and can hear him coming home. But ten o’clock comes, then that turns into eleven. And suddenly it’s midnight.

There’s no sign of him.

I keep checking my phone, but there are no messages. All kinds of things are going through my mind, but I don’t call or message just in case I do something wrong. Like in the movies when someone is hiding, and a phone call comes through letting the bad guys know where you are.

Half an hour later I decide to head upstairs. I’m on my way to our bedroom when I notice his office door is ajar.

I’ve never been in his office before. I never thought to go inside. Cillian has never said I couldn’t go in there, but I figured it would be off limits.

I’m guessing that the door was left open because Trish, our maid was here earlier before I got back.

I walk up to the door to close it and the leathery scent of furniture polish hits me along with an idea.

Why don’t I go in?

This room may hold some of the secret parts of Cillian that I don’t know. I doubt there will be anything wildly obvious lying around for me to see if the door is open, but it could be a start.

I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

What if it’s something to do with Seamus? He was never too approving of me. Suppose he got Cillian to agree to just being with me for six months?

The thought angers me, and I go in.

The automatic lights come on and I look around me. Everything is in place and there isn’t anything suspicious.

Dad used to say that sometimes when things look extra clean that is suspicious enough. It’s a way of hiding things in plain sight.

But how do I know what’s being hidden?

I walk around the desk and pull out the drawers. They all hold stationery and uninteresting things like extra paper for the printer.

On my left is a shelf of books and on my right a sofa area where I imagine Cillian meeting with clients he can’t be seen with in the outside world.

My imagination is running wild here. But this is what happens when you don’t know anything. You end up making your own assumptions and drawing your own conclusions from the air.

I move to the bookshelf when I notice one very old book placed the wrong way. In this entire office that’s the only thing that looks out of place.

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