Page 108 of For Her Own Good

Chapter 37

Lowry

This ismy second night in Chicago. I’ve been haunting Maeve’s house and I’m sure Denny wishes I would go the fuck away. I’ve got to be interfering, but Maeve claims I’m not.

I don’t want to stay here. I want to go back to Starla, claim my rightful place as her daddy and look after her. Cuddle her, spank her, hold her, challenge her, but mostly love her.

I may have lost the privilege, though, because the calls and the texts and the emails have stopped, stopped less than twenty-four hours after I left, actually, and haven’t resumed. I thought I’d be back in Boston by now or at the very least on a plane, but I’m not. I want some sort of sign, some sort of clarity and I’ve got none. Even Maeve’s wisdom hasn’t been able to shore up my reasoning. I’m a goddamn disaster.

I’ve been trying not to panic over what will happen to Patrick Enterprises, though distraction is a sizable job. At least Maeve’s gotten me some awfully good whisky and I’ve spent a good portion of last night and today drunk off my arse.

My God, am I a rubbish human being. Maeve won’t say so, but I know she must think so and is simply taking pity on me because of how pathetic I am. Which is very pathetic. And very Scottish, what with the whisky and the grunting, and I wish there were some moors for me to prowl about. God, I’m a misery. A human plague who has had far too much to drink and ought to go to bed but I haven’t slept since I arrived and it might be morning again already? Awfully hard to say.

Yes, there’ve been some nights when I haven’t been with Starla since we started… I don’t know what to call it. Fucking seems vulgar, relationship seems vague. Whatever it was, I felt complete for the first time in my life. Twisted up into knots, aye, but also as though I couldn’t expect anything else out of my whole entire life because everything I wanted had been handed to me in a Starla-shaped package. I simply adore that woman, and now I may have tossed it all in the trash in an effort to protect her. In an effort, let’s be honest, to protect myself. Perhaps I ought to call? Try to explain?

But I suspect I’ve been a right tosser with no more sense in my head than all my brothers put together, which is still less than a thimble-full. I could’ve talked to her, told her that Tad had accosted me in the parking lot, threatening her, threatening me, threatening us. Except I was so determined not to trouble her, not to add any more to her heavy load, not to have her blame me for the loss of that final hope at her father’s approval that I took it upon myself to try to save her when I know full well she’s smarter than I am. In general, yes, but particularly where business—whatever the hell that means—is concerned.

There’s a soft knock at my door and I nearly throw the bottle at it, but that would be a waste of the whisky I haven’t drained out of this bottle. Yet. I will, I surely will.

I make, I don’t know, some kind of noise that apparently lets Maeve know I assent to her coming in? Or perhaps she’s sick of having a soused Scotsman in her house and doesn’t give a goddamn what I want. Which would be fair. Completely fair.

In she comes at any rate, looking like she pities me but also like I’m close to being a nuisance, which is not a corner of the matrix any man cares to occupy.

“There’s something I think you ought to see. Are you too drunk to watch TV?”

“Is that even a thing, hen? Can ye be too drunk to watch TV?”

“If it is, I think you might be it.”

That’s…insulting. Or perhaps caring. Can’t decide which. Probably because I’m rather soused.

“What’s on TV, then? In the middle of the night?”

Her fine mouth pinches as though she can’t decide whether to tell me or not, but eventually decides this can’t get much worse and spits it out.

“It’s six in the morning in Boston, you degenerate. There’s been an announcement about Patrick Enterprises, all the financial channels are covering it and it’s going to rock the markets when they open in a few hours. Shall I turn it on?”

Starla’s on TV? No, surely Maeve would’ve said. She said an announcement about Patrick Enterprises. But from where I sit, that’s just as good. An avatar, a proxy for the woman I love who might never speak to me again because I’m a complete numpty.

“Yes, please.”

Maeve takes up the remote from the nightstand—issa bit odd to be staying in the guest room of a house that used to be yours, aye?—and flips to some high-up channel where a fancy-looking man and a fancier-looking woman are talking about…something.

And then I hear it: Patrick Enterprises. I know her. It. As Starla would say, whatevs. The point is, that means something. I try to focus through the whisky haze, and hear the fancy lady say, “In a move sure to rock the business world, Patrick Enterprises heiress Starla Patrick has sold a large portion of her shares to her late father, Jameson Patrick’s, archrival, Jerome Garrett. The sale was announced moments ago, and I’m sure I’m not the only one eagerly awaiting the details of the transaction. This is one of the more surprising sales of the past decade.”

She did it. Starla sold a fair portion of her father’s business to Jerome Garrett, much as she said she would. Much as she wanted to. I knew she could, and if she were truly determined, would, but…it’s still a bit of a shock to see the whole thing on TV. Nothing I ever do makes the evening news. Which is just as well. But Jesus Christ, Starla is important. Foolishly enough, I don’t think I’d grasped the magnitude of the situation until now. The pressure she must’ve been under, and adding to that an attack on a very personal, incredibly tender part of herself…

Guilt swamps me. Whatever cells in my body that haven’t been flooded with alcohol are now swollen with remorse. My strong and extremely capable yet also delicate girl, and I left her alone. Without another soul to rely on in the world, I abandoned her. Again. In an effort to not be the reason she lost the last shred of pride she’d gleaned from her father, but… Jesus, I’m terrible. And yet I have the same urge I had when her father died.

“Maeve, be a love and get me on a plane?”

* * *

Fair enough,Starla’s not answering calls, texts, anything else. She probably hates me and right about now, I’m hating myself. For a multitude of reasons, including the fact that I’ve had enough whisky in the past twenty-four hours to make an elephant intoxicated, and I’ve got the pounding headache to show for it.

I head straight to Starla’s from Logan, fully prepared to be turned away. Except that when I reach her studio door, it swings open and I nearly fall over from the wind.

I’ve met Holden before, in passing, and while he’s looked at me as though I were some sort of suspicious character, never has he looked at me as though he wanted to slit my throat. He is now.

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