Page 23 of Bargain with the Irish Devil

My skin gets tight. Does Miranda know? Would she care?

There are pictures from the wedding, a huge, expensive affair that happened less than a month after their divorce was final. Interesting, considering something like that would take at least a year to plan. Miranda said he paid more for her to sign and go away—because he had a deadline.

Even if I’m not sure why it matters, I’m relieved she took back her maiden name. He’s tall, blond, and has blue eyes. He also looks at least ten years older than his age. I could see how a woman would think he was appealing. His middle is soft and has been since before they were married. The man sat behind a desk all day, and it showed.

I spend an hour in my home gym every day, lifting and using the gym bag more for stress than because I gave a shit about having a six-pack. However, Miranda definitely liked what she saw.

The new woman is a cheap version of Miranda. Her tits are fake, as are her teeth and hair. All paid for by him. Miranda wasn’t exaggerating when she said he molded the woman into what he wanted. A blonde with blue eyes, she’s only an inch shorter than him. I bet he thought he upgraded. Idiot. I’ll wait to find out how the divorce goes before I decide if I’m going to kill him or not.

Valdez, ever helpful, lets me know if I want the man dead that he’s willing to provide it as a service. Interesting. He runs what will likely become the largest private security firm in the world. While he has hackers who can find out what a person had for lunch one day ten years ago, they also perform special operations like killing a head of state, snatch and grabs of powerful people, and even saving hostages—that the government didn’t want their fingerprints on. He has boots on the ground in every country in the world—except Antarctica—and including America.

Of course, he’s going to have men willing to kill a civilian. It’s simply that he’s never offered the service to me before.

My phone rings, keeping me from finishing the file. If it were anyone but Aoife, I’d let it go so I could keep reading. “Yes, darlin’.”

Her chuckle is a balm to my soul. “Well, I thought you should know since you men always make such a big deal of it. She will be indisposed, so I hope you’ll tell me to do more to take care of her.”

What the hell is she talking about? I flick back to the camera. Miranda isn’t at the desk. “What?”

“I had to send her up to bed with a heating pad and go back out to get some things for her. Poor thing was most upset, worried about the dress, and embarrassed that she had forgotten the time. Then she railed against your high-handedness in keeping her here.”

It finally clicks. Fuck. I’m not a teen. A woman on her period doesn’t bother me in the least. But with how uptight Miranda is, I’m positive it will make a difference to her. “You won’t be letting her out now, will you?”

“Of course not. I trust you won’t hurt the girl. If I want kiddos to tend to before I’m unable to enjoy them, then I need to let you talk her around. Another thing. She mentioned she liked to read, so I showed her the library. She was a kid in a candy store. Colm almost buckled under the weight of carrying them up to her room.” She chuckles.

My jaw tightens at the picture Aoife paints of what a future could look like with Miranda. It does something crazy to the center of my chest that it’s not far off from my own thoughts. Aoife, as a stand-in granny, would be a sight to behold. “Ensure you go with her request for dinner. If you don’t feel comfortable making it, let me know, and I’ll pick it up.”

“Already done. An order has been placed at the Sabatini club. I ordered you the veal you love.”

“Thanks.” I end the call and stare at my phone for a hard minute.

The knock at the door pulls me out of my head. “Yeah.”

Shannon opens the door. “Hey, Boss. Finn said to ask you now. I was hoping to get some time off. My sister is having her baby in a few weeks. Hoping to see her and the family for a week or so.”

I lean back and study him. Shannon has worked for me for almost five years. Like all my men, he was sent over from Ireland by the old men. In the last year and a half, he’s been to Ireland more than all the years combined. The excuse is family every time.

America might expect their people to work eighty hours a week and exist on only two weeks off a year. Companies in Irelanddidn’t. So I don’t. I’ve done my best to give my men time off so they don’t get burnt out and resentful—thinking they’d be better off back in Ireland.

If there were anyone stupid enough to steal from me, it would be Shannon. Except I can’t fucking see it. I’ve watched the tapes from the gambling rooms so many times my eyes felt like they were melting. Then I put more cameras in and watched some more. Still, I found nothing.

What I want to do is clean house of everyone working in the gambling rooms. But if I do that, everyone will know people thought they could and managed to steal from me. The respect would be lost entirely. They would see the deaths as what they are—overkill for a dented pride. And the next to be hired would try it again.

I shake my head. “You’ve only been back from Dublin all of two months. I can’t give you the time. I need you here. Maybe in another month or two.”

His eyes are big and round, the same way they were when I took the ledger from the gambling room. There was still a page and a half left, he gasped out at me when he asked why I was taking them.

When I told him that they would need to be changed out sometime during the night and it would be more efficient to start a new book before the night got busy, he accepted it.

“It’s just, my mam is going to kill me for not going. You know how mams are.” Realizing what he said, he goes red. “Maybe you could look at James. I know he’ll be a good hire. I’m willing to vouch for him.”

James is a friend of his he’s made since coming to Chicago. Sending an eyebrow up at him, I stare at him until his head goes down. If the men don’t come to me through the family of men already here, they come through the men in charge in Ireland. It’s too much of a risk to trust men from here in America. I didn’t care how far their family went back. “No.”

“Okay. Um, all right. I’ll be getting to work.”

“Good.” My phone rings, and I answer.

Aoife relaysthe day with Miranda and says, again, how much she likes Miranda. She takes the manicotti with sausage from Sabatini’s she ordered for her dinner and tells me to be extra nice to Miranda as she indeed has a tough time of the month.

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