Page 581 of Lodestar

“All set?” I asked her when her attention shifted to her phone.

She hummed. "Kat was just telling me that Shay is a great babysitter."

"So long as she's focused on his pretty face and not the thirty-strong security team the kids have on them..."

"Oh, she's completely unaware of the guards," she assured me. “Grail is waiting in the wings. She told me that he’s arrived but I haven’t seen him yet.” She leaned into me, her spine touching my chest, giving me her weight in more ways than one. Star didn’t lean on anyone.Just me. “I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I, Conor?”

“I think we can officially say that no geriatric is safe around you,” I said lightly, “but yes.”

“I didn’t kill Dagda,” she mumbled, and was that…? Yes, it was. A soft blush danced on the arcs of her cheeks. “And the majority of the old people in Manhattan are safe.”

“For the moment,” I teased, brushing another kiss to her temple.

“It always stuns me that you can joke about this stuff.”

“Prefer me to cry?”

“No. But, how come you don’t want Dagda to atone too?”

“Are you pouting?” I snorted at the mention of the fucker who was simultaneously the man who’d killed my father and Aidan’s new deputy in the ECD. “It’s not like he’s in Aruba, Star. He’s based in a country where it is always raining. A perpetual storm cloud over his head can be my retribution.”

“Some people enjoy the rain.”

“It isn’t a tropical island. It’sIreland.”

“Blasphemy.”

My lips twitched. “I suppose. If you’re Irish. Which neither of us is.”

That stunned a chuckle out of her and had her pulling away from my hold. “Your da just turned in his grave.”

“That he did.” I settled my chin on her shoulder. “I miss Da but I know that he was sick, and he’d have been a terrible patient. I find comfort in that. Plus, Dagda is at our beck and call. It’s not a small thing to have a man of his skills on our payroll. It gives Eoghan some slack too.”

“Not tonight.”

“Nope. Not tonight.”

I pressed a hand to her belly and encouraged her to lean her weight on me once again. “I love you.”

She sighed. “I don’t deserve you.”

“At least you know that.”

Her snicker made me grin. “Charming.”

“I keep it real, Star. That’s my job in your life.”

“Oh,that’syour job.”

“Uh huh. It’s why you want me to stick around until we’re worm food.”

She clicked her fingers. “You caught me?—”

“Star! Conor!”

Anton’s voice acted like a bath in liquid nitrogen as it came from about forty feet across the room. The tension infected her limbs until she was frozen solid. At least, it felt that way. From the outside looking in, she didn’t react.

At all.

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