Page 79 of The Bossy One

Olivia took a deep breath. She clasped and unclasped her hands like she was nervous.

I gentled my voice. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

“I think you should consider being a little nicer to Seamus O’Rourke,” Olivia said.

“What?” I felt like I’d been slapped.

“He’s been trying to get in touch with you to talk about something, but you’ve been ignoring his emails. What if it’s important?” she said.

“Fuck him,” I snarled.

Olivia flinched.

I hated that I’d made her flinch, but I was doing all I could to control my temper. Why did she keep bringing Seamus up? Why didn’t shelistento me?

“I need you to understand,” I said, my voice deadly serious. “I will never, ever have anything to discuss with that man. The whole family is rotten and needs to be stopped.”

“You can’t mean that,” Olivia said. “I know Seamus’s father is horrible, but surely you wouldn’t judge a man by his last name.”

“I would, and I do. I swear to you, Olivia, one day I’ll buy their damn mansion and raze it to the ground,” I said. “So that they can feel a fraction of the pain they’ve inflicted on my family.”

“But—”

“No.” I stood and stormed upstairs to my office, not bothering to clear the table. I heard Olivia’s steps chasing after me.

“Declan, wait. What if the thing he has to tell you affects—”

I whirled at the top of the stairs and looked down at her. “This is none of your business, Olivia. Why do you even care?”

How could you take his side over mine?I wanted to demand. But I wasn’t ready to expose that vulnerability, not even to her.

Olivia opened her mouth, then closed it. Maybe she’d realized she didn’t have a good answer. Maybe she had one, but wasn’t willing to share it with me.

I wasn’t sure which option was worse.

Olivia blew out a breath and shook her head, like she was trying to take a step away from our argument. “I need some air,” she announced shortly. “I’m going on a drive.”

My blood ran cold at the idea of her driving when she was upset. It hadn’t been that long since Olivia had called me from the side of the road after her accident.

“No,” I ordered.

She crossed her arms. “I said I’m going on a—”

“And I said no, you aren’t.”

Her mouth gaped open. “Excuse me?Did you seriously justforbidme from doing what I want?”

“No, I mean…” My hand clenched and unclenched on the railing. “Let me drive you. Or have Molly pick you up. Hell, call a cab since you clearly have some weird hang-up about using my driver. I don’t care, just please… please don’t drive when you’re upset. If you had another accident, I couldn’t…” My pulse was hammering in my throat. I fought off images of my da in the morgue, of Olivia in shock after she’d driven my car off the road, of Sinead crying alone in rehab while she told me about her own close call.

Some of what I was feeling must have shown on my face because Olivia’s voice gentled. “I’ll be fine, Declan,” she said. “I promise. But I can’t live my life hemmed in by your fears of the past.”

This time I was the one who flinched.

Was that what I was doing?

Olivia climbed the stairs until she could take my face in her hands and give me a quick, achingly gentle kiss. “I’ll be careful. Can you put Catie to bed?”

I nodded, wooden.

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