Page 126 of Merciless Desires

“Never mind.” I stand up and grip the railing again. “Do you mind if I make myself some tea?”

“Not at all. I have several kinds.” He grabs a towel and wipes the glistening, sexy sweat from the back of his neck. “I’m a tea junkie.”

He approaches the stairs, and I back myself into the wall so he can pass me. My throat goes tight, thinking he’s going to walk around shirtless like that in those skimpy shorts.

I catch a look at myself in the mirror on the far wall. I’m a freaking whale. With an arrest record a mile long. “My case!” I hadn’t even thought about that.

“I’m calling a lawyer I know in L.A. He’ll get both your charges dropped.”

“You can do that?”

Darragh stops climbing the stairs and looks over his shoulder. “Of course, I can do that.”

“How?”

“It’s called money.”

“You’re going to bribe the Las Vegas DA?” I wonder if he’s on the take, considering how much money and power swims in that town.

“Not me. The lawyer. The right lawyer always has backdoor connections.”

I scoff. The four-leaf clover doesn’t grow too far from the meadow. Darragh grew up with the Irish King for a dad. It’s in his blood to skirt around the law. Pay for what he wants. Hurt people to get what money can’t buy.

I glance at Darragh’s hands and the smooth, unscarred, un-tatted, veiny fingers I remember holding his daughter relax me. If he gets my charges dropped, that solves a huge problem of mine.

I have to trust him. I’m having a baby in a few weeks, and I can’t go to jail. I follow him toward the kitchen, where the soft ripple of Puget Sound’s current lapping against the rocks at the shoreline takes my breath away. “God, what a view…”

Darragh crosses in front of the dozen narrow windows that sit in a bowed-out wall and opens a pantry. “It cost over a mil.”

You’re a much better view. Priceless.

He shows me various jars of tea leaves. “I love a good Irish whiskey, but some of these teas also give me a buzz. They’re herbal and safe for you to drink.”

“Should I get buzzed at six-fifteen in the morning?” I slide onto a stool at his kitchen island.

“This lemon ginger will wake you up.” He pinches the leaves with his bare hands and drops them into a round metal ball with a long handle.

At the sink, he fills a kettle. His movements are so sublime, a sheen of sweat still glistening off his skin.

“Oh shoot, did I disturb your workout?” I ask.

He glances over his shoulder. “No. I’ve been up since five. I checked on you, and you were sound asleep.”

My heart jolts. “You came into my room?”

He dips a thick, golden eyebrow at me. “It’s my house. I can go into any room I want.”

I can’t push for privacy less than one day in. Not when he’s doing so much for me. Hell, he bailed me out, and he’s getting my charges dropped.

“Wait, if you’re getting Cormac off the hook too, he’ll be free.” Panic fills me as I grip the edge of the island. “He’ll come after me.”

Darragh’s face turns to stone, and it’s a look that sends ripples of goosebumps across my skin. “He knows I have you here and what’s at stake. Our family’s lives. Cormac won’t ever hurt you again.”

“What will happen to him?”

With the kettle fired up, he places his hands on the counter, inches from mine. “I don’t know yet. I have to call my brother, Eoghan.”

Right, his brother is a Harvard lawyer. “Why not call him to represent us?”

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