Page 21 of A Dark Mafia Christmas

When the last guests leave,I offer to tidy up and tell Sinead and Patrick to go to bed. I’ve never seen so many dirty glasses. I fill the sink with soapy water and start scrubbing the glasses that are already piled up on the drainer while Fianna gathers more from the other rooms.

“What are you doing?” Emmett comes in and opens the dishwasher. “That’s what this is for.”

“It’s fine, I like washing up.” It’s true. Water has a soothing effect on my spiraling thoughts whenever they feel a little out of control.

Emmett rolls up his sleeves and starts clearing the table of food. Fianna wanders in and out with more glasses and used paper plates which she tips straight into a black sack. We work in comfortable silence, but I can’t stop the thump-thump of my heart. Emmett and I haven’t had a moment alone since we got here, and I get the feeling he has something to say.

Sure enough, he escorts me to my room and waits for Fianna to go to her own room after we say goodnight.

When the door clicks behind her, he opens the door to my room and pulls me inside. We both stand by the door, facing each other, his hand warm and heavy on my arm. I wish he wasn’t so goddamned hot because I can’t see past the blue eyes, the broad shoulders, and the perfect white teeth, but he doesn’t get to manhandle me like this.

I wrench my arm free.

He speaks first. “What was that all about?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dancing all night?”

“It was a party. It’s what people do at parties.”

I don’t know what he wants me to say. I mean, he’s made it quite clear that this isn’t real—I don’t need reminding of that again, thank you very much—but he’s looking at me like he’s angry that I didn’t spend more time with him.

“Anyway.” I break the silence because it’s unnerving me, and my blister is stinging, and I want to sleep. “What’s the big deal with Ronan?”

He watches me so intensely I can’t look away. “I don’t like him.”

That much was obvious.

“It’s family stuff.”

“Okay.”

He hasn’t moved so why does it feel as if his lips are closer to mine. My breathing grows shallow, and my heart chooses now to skip a beat.Great!

“Can you let my granny down gently with the ring tomorrow?”

He pulls away, opens the door, and then he’s gone without so much as a backward glance.

The good night’s sleep I was so desperately hoping for is screwed. I’ve known Emmett O’Hara for twenty-four hours, and already it feels as though we’ve experienced a lifetime of shit that’s going to keep me awake at night. It has nothing at all to do with the fact that the asshole is so hot he could melt butter with his smile.

Nothing at all to do with it…

Ugh! I step out of the dress and drape it over the back of the chair in front of the dressing table, knowing that I’ll probably never look that sexy again.

And the asshole didn’t even notice enough to make a move.

I climb onto the bed—literally—and pull the comforter up to my chin. Now that I’m in bed, my brain is determined to replayeverything that Emmett said today. Every smile that I happened to catch when he wasn’t watching, every gentle nuance of his voice when he spoke to his mom and grannies, every accidental touch we shared before he clenched his jaw and went all alpha male on me.

I bury my face in the pillow and let out a silent scream. Why couldn’t he have been a ninety-year-old with a walking stick and a silver-haired wife at home? He would have beaten the thug with his stick and sent me on his way.

Instead, I got rescued by the handsome prince with a chip on his shoulder.

Just about sums up my luck.

I must doze off at some point because when I wake up, the smell of fried breakfast is wafting into my room through the gap around the door.

I’m ravenous. Yawning, I throw back the covers and wince as I put my foot on the floor and open up the blister on my heel. Fantastic! Now I have to go downstairs and ask my fake future mother-in-law for a Band-aid and remind Emmett that I’m nothing like the women he usually dates.

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