Page 173 of Dirty Eoin

He looks up at me in confusion.

“Dylan said you mentioned that I’d had a regular female visitor keeping me company. He also overheard you mentioning to one of your colleagues that she was my very own Florence Nightingale and that her one-sided conversation had aided me on my road to recovery.”

His hands stop.

“It must have been Ava. I’m told my wife attended on the first day then never returned. Or should I say ex-wife.”

There’s a quiet knock at the door. Tim and I both look toward it at the same time.

Jaine.

How much of that did she overhear?

If she heard anything, she gives nothing away. Her eyes drift slowly over my exposed torso and my dick twitches. We can end our relationship. We can end our marriage. But how the fuck do we put out a fire that refuses to stop burning?

“Tim. How are you?” She smiles widely at him.

“I’m good, Jaine. You look… different.”

He looks her up and down and laughs. It’s not in a leering way. If it had been I’d have ripped his throat out by now.

She’s wearing a navy suit. A skirt this time, instead of pants. My eyes drift unwittingly up her long legs and beyond until they reach her face, and our eyes connect.

Her face is flushed as a result of my blatant admiration. Her bruising has gone. No visible reminders of what she went through with Malky remain.

On the outside at least.

Neither Ma nor Jaine have divulged in any great detail what they went through at his hands and during their time in captivity, but given the state Jaine was still in days later, I figure it wasn’t a pleasant experience for either of them.

Neither do we know what they discussed during the time they spent alone together, but whatever it was has enabled them to reach an amicable truce and move on. They’ll never be close. They’ll never be friends. But it’s clear they do now share a mutual admiration for each other that wasn’t present before.

The only positive from the negative.

She drags her gaze away and turns her attention back to Tim.

“What can I say? Your job calls for scrubs and mine calls for ridiculously priced tailor-made suits,” she jokes.

“You two know each other?”

There’s a pause as she glances at him. It’s a look that sayslet me handle this. Her gaze connects with mine once more, her expression now impassive.

“We met once and spoke once on the phone.”

I don’t miss the look of relief that crosses his face. What are they hiding? Because I don’t believe a word of that. And he’s calling her Jaine, yet he refuses to call me Eoin.

She interrupts my thoughts.

“My last message didn’t require a response, but as I was just leaving and you hadn’t replied, I thought I’d make sure that everything was okay before I left. Roisin has gone out and Fergal’s with her.”

“Thank you for your concern, Miss Jones. It’s better late than never, I suppose. I’m fine. As you can see, I have Tim.”

I regret both the abrupt tone and my condemning words as soon as they leave my mouth. They sound bitter.

They taste bitter.

Maybe that’s because Iambitter at her lack of care and compassion. That she shed no tears and showed no concern over the sorry state I was in. While there’s every likelihood that Finian was targeted because of my dropping the ball over his parentage, I still stepped in front of a bullet with his name on.

Her expression remains impassive.

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