Page 93 of Beautiful Lies
“I eat. I was nervous with you.” My brows went up a notch. She seemed too ballsy to be nervous about anything. “I thought it was a date, okay? And I’d never…well, I’d never been on a date.”
I turned my back to her and tended to my omelet, feeling a twinge of guilt. She’d only been nineteen at the time, but I found it hard to believe she’d never been on a date. Not for lack of offers, I was sure of that.
“What’s the deal with you and Ava?”
I slid the omelet onto a plate, grabbed a fork from the drawer and sat at the island across from Keira. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so I inhaled my food, not answering her question. I was acting like a dick, but Keira’s appearance hadn’t exactly been a happy surprise and I was still trying to come to terms with it.
“My parents are in the Cayman Islands. They won’t be back until Tuesday. They don’t know I’m here. I left yesterday right after they did and drove for eighteen hours.”
I kept eating, turning over the information she’d given me. If she’d wanted to disappear, stealing her daddy’s Porsche hadn’t been the smartest plan.
“It’s just temporary. I won’t stay long.”
“Judging by the shitload of bags you brought, looks like you’re planning to stay awhile.” Tate had to bring Keira’s bags over in his pickup truck. How she’d fit all that shit in the trunk of a Porsche was a mystery, but it looked as if she’d packed everything she owned. The logos on her luggage matched the ones on her purse, and I didn’t know shit about designer goods, but even I recognized Louis Vuitton.
“I’m staying in Brooklyn. I’m not going back to Miami. I just meant that this living arrangement is temporary. Until I find a job and an apartment.”
I shoveled the rest of the eggs into my mouth, set the plate in the sink and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “Water?”
“Yes, thank you.”
I grabbed a bottle for her, set it in front of her and leaned against the counter, giving us plenty of space and an island between us.
“So…what do you want to know?” she asked. “Ask me anything.”
Her face was open like she had nothing to hide. So different than my mother who was not an open book and Ronan who was a sick, twisted motherfucker. “Tell me about your parents.”
She nodded as if she was expecting that question. “My mom hates confrontation. She doesn’t ask my dad any questions about his business because she knows she won’t like the answers.” My brows raised. Maybe Keira knew more than I’d suspected. “She adores him, and he adores her. Growing up, I sometimes felt like the third wheel. Like there wasn’t enough room for me.” She shrugged and let a curtain of hair fall over her face to mask the hurt. “Not the kind of love I want but that’s their deal.”
“And she does whatever he says?” For some reason, I still held on to a sliver of hope that my mother…ourmother…wasn’t a cold, heartless woman, all evidence to the contrary.
“Yeah. She’s too afraid of losing him. My father isn’t very good at sharing. He thinks he owns us.”
That didn’t surprise me. “What do you think of him?”
“I love my dad. He was always the one I went to first when I was a kid. Out of my two parents, he was the one who made me feel the most loved,” she said. “Maybe you find that hard to believe.”
Surprisingly, I didn’t. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that Maggie and Keira were Shaughnessy’s greatest weakness. Or that he loved them, in his own sick and twisted way, and would do anything to protect them.
“When I was a kid, I thought my dad walked on water and my mom was the most beautiful woman in the world,” she said. “It sucks growing up and finding out that they’re human and flawed. It’s like finding out there’s no Santa Claus.”
I wouldn’t know about that. When I was a kid, my dad had always been the bad guy and my mom had always been MIA.
“All my life I’ve been sheltered. Imagine my surprise when I found out normal kids didn’t have a hulking dude shadowing them and reporting on their every move.” She shrugged. “It just taught me to be more resourceful,” she said, with a wicked gleam in her eye.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what being more resourceful meant in Keira Shaughnessy’s world. Those ‘hulking dudes’ probably had their hands full, looking after her.
“Your turn. What’s your deal? For real?”
I narrowed my eyes and ran my tongue over my lower lip, debating how much to tell her. Fuck it. New and improved Connor. No more secrets. No more lies. “I’m a recovering drug addict. Heroin.”
She tilted her head and studied my face for a moment, not overly surprised by my admission. Like Killian, Keira had mastered the art of locking down her emotions and hiding behind a mask. “How long have you been clean?”
“I got clean a month before I met you.”
She arched her perfect brows. “So why were you hanging out with drug dealers in Miami?”
“How do you know I was hanging out with drug dealers?”
