“The political science faculty practically lives at that pub,” Rabbit said briskly. “The people who are supposed to be preaching nationalism—”
“What kind of intimidation tactic are you thinking of?” Sean cut in. “IED?”
Cillian nodded. “Car bomb, parked outside the pub.”
“Why Dublin? Why not Belfast?”
“North, south, it doesn’t matter anymore. The results will be the same.”
Sean narrowed his eyes. “With a call ahead?”
Rabbit narrowed his eyes right back. “Do we do it any other way?”
Well, at least there was a bright side. For the most part, the IRA avoided Irish casualties at all costs. Their tactics had always been to phone ahead after a bomb was planted—that way, the target area could be evacuated while the terror was still inflicted, showing that the IRA could get to anyone, anywhere and anytime. Unfortunately, many of the splinter groups had chosen to break that golden rule over the years.
Luckily, it looked like the Dagger wasn’t one of them.
“When?” Sean asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon.” Rabbit pursed his lips. “What are your thoughts about this?”
“Does it matter? It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”
“I’d still like to know your opinion.”
His opinion? This was a bloody
terrible
idea. The last thing he wanted to do was instill fear in his own people. For Christ’s sake, the IRA had been a dead cause for
decades. He had no clue why people like Rabbit continued to cling to it.
But he’d been ordered to back Cillian up, and although the man wasn’t looking at him, Sean could feel the waves of menace rolling off the other man’s body. The implicit reminder that if he didn’t play ball, Flannery would be very, very upset.
“It might help you placate some of the guys,” Sean relented.
Rabbit spoke with a biting edge. “And why would they need placating?”
“I’m not the only one who’s been wondering if you’ve lost sight of the cause. This’ll show everyone you’re still invested.”
Rabbit mulled that over, then gave a decisive nod. “We go ahead, then.” He scraped his chair back, glancing at Kelly. “You and Reilly will head this up. Bring Quinn into the loop.”
“Where are you going?” Sean asked warily.
“I’ve got other engagements to tend to.” Rabbit didn’t elaborate. “I won’t be back tonight. Make your plans, and then take the night to reconnect with the crew.” A slight smirk lifted his lips. “I’m not the only one they’re questioning, Seansy.”
Shit.
He had no interest in spending his evening planning a bomb threat
or
hanging out with the crew, but clearly he didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Once Rabbit left, Cillian turned to him with a broad smile. “Nice work. Getting the men to doubt Rabbit’s loyalties? Very smart.”
Kelly waited as if he was expecting a thank-you, but Sean didn’t offer one. He stood abruptly, taking a step to the door. “I’ll grab Quinn, and then I’m driving my girl home. I’ll join you lads after.”
“Any reason your girl can’t handle a motor vehicle by herself?” Cillian scowled. “I don’t have time to wait for you to play chauffeur. I need you here.” A pause. “Our boss needs you here.”
No mistaking which “boss” he referred to—and it sure as hell wasn’t Rabbit.
“I’ll walk her out to the car, then,” Sean muttered. “I’ll be right back.”
He found Bailey at the table next to Quinn, laughing at something Robbie Doyle had just said. The men seemed thoroughly charmed by her, but Sean wasn’t feeling too merry as he reached for her arm.
“Time for you to go,” he told her.
She wrinkled her forehead. “Is everything okay?”
“I have to take care of business.” He nodded at the redheaded man. “Quinn, Kelly’s waiting for you in the back. We’ve got matters to discuss. I’ll join you after I walk my girl out.”
Quinn nodded back.
Sean tried to keep a casual demeanor as he ushered Bailey out of the pub, but the moment they stepped onto the sidewalk, the tension returned, seizing his muscles and triggering Bailey’s frown.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” Sarcasm dripped from his next words. “I’m about to spend the night talking intimidation tactics and reconnecting with the boys.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. Alone.”
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Anger bubbled in his stomach, hardening his tone. “Go back to the flat, Bailey.”
She studied his face intently. “What kind of intimidation tactics?”
He let out a ragged breath. “Rabbit wants us to plant a car bomb near Trinity College.”
“
What?
And you agreed to it?”
“What fucking choice did I have? Cillian was beside me the whole time and I have to back him up, remember?” He glimpsed the worry in her eyes and sighed. “The explosives won’t go off, luv. The Dagger calls ahead.”
“You mean tips off the Garda about the bomb?”
“It’s the IRA way. The bomb squad shows up and disables the IED before it detonates, and the Dagger proves its point—that nobody is untouchable as long as we’re around.”
“That’s utter bullshit,” she grumbled.
“I’m not saying I support it. Just that you don’t have to worry about innocent people dying, okay?” Impatience rippled through him as he took her arm and guided her to the car. “Go, Bailey. There’s nothing for you to do here.”
“Right. Because you’ve got everything covered, apparently.”
“What the hell do you want from me? I can’t bring my girlfriend to a fucking strategy meeting. That’s not how the Dagger operates.”
Her gray eyes blazed. “Out of curiosity, do you consider all women less than your equal, or is it just me?”
He felt a headache coming on. “This has nothing to do with bloody gender equality. You think I don’t recognize that you’d be an asset in the planning of something like this? I
know
you would be. But it’s not my call. If they wanted you to stay, I’d let you stay.”
She hit him with a dose of sarcasm. “Oh, you’d
let
me? How nice. And I call bullshit on that, by the way. You’ve been trying to force me out of town since I got here.”
“Because I wanted to keep you safe!” he shot back. “I wanted to keep you safe for
Ollie
, damn it. He already
lost you once because of me, or at least that’s what I thought—” He stopped abruptly, his temples throbbing even harder.
They couldn’t have this damn argument right now. Someone in the pub might be watching them from the window. Hell, it was bad enough that Macgregor was lurking somewhere nearby, witnessing every second of this.
“Look, I don’t have time to argue with you,” he snapped. “Get the hell out of here, Bailey.”
“Fine, you want me gone? I’m gone.” She flung open the driver’s door, angrier than he’d ever seen her. “I’ll see you later at the flat. Or maybe I won’t. I’m sure you’ll do whatever suits your fancy with no regard for your
girlfriend
, right, Sean?”
He gritted his teeth. “I’ll be back later tonight.”
Then he turned on his heel and walked back into the pub.
“I absolutely hate him.” Bailey irritably slid into the booth and snatched the drink menu. She needed a stiff drink, pronto. Otherwise she would lose her temper again, and she couldn’t afford to do that in the middle of a crowded pub.
In the seat across from her, Isabel looked like she was fighting a smile. “No, you don’t. You don’t hate people, remember? You get along with everyone.”
“Sean’s the exception to the rule,” she muttered. “He’s a damn Neanderthal, Iz.”
“Ha! And my husband isn’t?” Isabel’s bright green eyes sparkled as she ran a hand through her red hair, and if Bailey hadn’t known the woman for years, she might actually believe she was having afternoon drinks with her new Irish gal pal, “Izzy O’Malley.”
The waiter came by, raising a bushy eyebrow when both women ordered bourbon, as if he’d expected to scribble down
daiquiri
or
appletini
on his little notepad. Well, screw that. Bailey had never ordered a sissy drink in her life.
“Trust me,” Isabel added after the waiter left. “Trevor gets crazy overprotective when I’m on a job.”
“But you’re married to him. He’s allowed to be overprotective. Sean and I aren’t even together.”
“Uh-huh. So then you
haven’t
slept with him again?”
“Nope.”
“You used to be an accomplished liar. What happened to that?”
Bailey felt herself blushing. “Fine, I slept with him again. But that doesn’t mean we’re together, and it doesn’t give him the right to control me.”
Was
he trying to control her, though? She didn’t even know anymore. Didn’t know if Sean was truly on some kind of power trip, or if she was simply scrambling to find excuses to keep him at arm’s length.
I wanted to keep you safe for Ollie, damn it. He already lost you once because of me
.
His aggravated words buzzed in her mind, but she had no idea what to make of them. Did he honestly expect her to believe that his overprotective bullshit stemmed from his desire to protect his
brother
? She knew the twins were close, but that sounded like an excuse to her. Sean’s way of justifying his alpha assholeness.
“He does get a little . . .
intense
when you’re around.” Isabel sounded perplexed. “I mean, I’ve known Sean for years. He’s a raging flirt. Total ladies’ man, and that killer smile of his? Watch out. But he’s different with you. He’s . . .”
“A barbarian,” she said darkly.
Isabel laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s a good way to describe it—you
do
bring out his savage side.”
“Lucky me.”
“But that just tells me he’s fallen hard.”
Bailey smothered her alarm. “He hasn’t fallen for me. I’m just a conquest for him, and five years of rejection has made him determined to break me.”
A groove dug into Isabel’s forehead. “Sean doesn’t break people.”
“Yes, he does. You think you know him, Iz, but I know him better.” The confession slipped out before she could stop it. “I tailed him for two months earlier this year.”
Isabel’s jaw dropped. “You did?
Why?
”
“I wanted to find out what he was up to,” she said defensively. “He pretended to be Oliver to get me into bed, Iz, and then he started calling and texting all the time, asking me to meet up so we could ‘talk.’ I didn’t trust him.”
“Fair enough.” Isabel looked amused now. “So what’d you find on your fact-finding mission?”
“Well, I saw how he gathers his intel, for one. He definitely uses that killer smile you mentioned and charms information out of his sources. But he also roughed a lot of them up.” She frowned. “Ollie told me once that Reillys solve problems with their fists. I don’t condone that.”
Her colleague hooted. “Says the contract killer.”
“Hey,” she protested, “the people I take out are scum.”
“And the people Sean hits up for intel are also scum. We live in a scummy world, Bailey.”
Their drinks arrived at the same time Liam’s voice filled Bailey’s ear.
“You ladies have an admirer,” he said softly.
At first she thought he was referring to their waiter, but the young man had already darted off. Bailey’s hand moved to activate her earpiece, but Isabel beat her to the punch. She’d forgotten that her colleague could hear Liam too.
“Does he have any friends?” Isabel kept her gaze on Bailey as she addressed Liam.
“Flying solo,” he reported. “But he’s armed, judging by the very obvious bulge under his shirt.”
Bailey was troubled by the update. She always sensed when someone was tailing her, which told her that the man on their tail had taken up his post only today. Made sense, though. This was the first time she and Sean had separated—Cillian must have told Flannery to put a guard on her.
“Recognize him?” she murmured to Liam.
“Nope, but I snapped a pic and e-mailed it to Paige. She’ll find out who he is and get back to us.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how bored are you right now?” Isabel teased him. “You must have drawn the short straw to get stuck with chick surveillance today.”
“Yeah, I’m
stuck
watching two beautiful women, darling. God, the torture.” His deep voice rippled with sensuality.
Bailey grinned at Isabel. “He’s loving every second of it.”
“Sully’s the one who has to stare at Reilly’s ugly mug all day,” Liam drawled. “So I definitely got the better gig. Show me some skin, ladies.”
Bailey didn’t know where he was positioned, but it must have been close enough for him to see them through the plate-glass window. She was tempted to give him a little wave, but she resisted the urge.
“Keep us posted about our friend,” Isabel said. “We’re cutting off the feed so we can resume our girl talk.”
“No, keep it on,” he begged. “I
love
sexy girl talk.”
“Nobody said it was sexy, you pervert.” Isabel touched her ear, then flashed Bailey a grin. “So, how was the sex?”
She instantly donned a casual look. “It was okay.”
“Just okay?”
One arch of Isabel’s brow, and Bailey caved like a broken roof. “Fine, it was good.”
Ha. More like incredible. Phenomenal. Mind-blowing.
But she refused to give Sean the satisfaction of voicing any of those annoyingly accurate adjectives.
“Why are you fighting him so hard?” Isabel asked gently.
Bailey gulped some bourbon.
“Seriously, hon—why?”
The alcohol loosened not only the knot in her insides, but her tongue as well. “Because he’s everything that scares me in a man.”
That got her a sad smile from Isabel, who knew enough details about Bailey’s childhood to understand the meaning behind the confession. “We’ve all been hurt by our pasts, hon. It’s hard to put old traumas behind you.”
Hurt? The word didn’t come close to describing what she’d gone through. But Isabel was wrong—Bailey
had
put the past behind her. She didn’t wallow about it, or cry herself to sleep every night. Every grisly thing she’d experienced had shaped her into the person she was now. She’d
learned
from her past. It had showed her what she wanted out of life, who she wanted to be . . . and whom she didn’t want to be with.
God, she wished she could make sense of her feelings for Sean. She couldn’t deny that she was wildly attracted to him, but was it just a case of lust? Or was it something more?
No, it couldn’t be anything more than that. He was bossy and annoying and too damn cocky for his own good. She couldn’t possibly have actual feelings for the man.
So why did you come all the way to Dublin to help him?
Bailey swallowed another gulp of bourbon, unable to defend herself against the internal taunt. She couldn’t even use Oliver as an excuse for racing to Dublin,
because she hadn’t learned he was in trouble until
after
she’d snuck into the bank.
Did a woman really go to this much trouble for a man she didn’t care about?
Damn it. She was so fucking confused.
“He’s too unpredictable, Iz,” she said. “I can’t open that door, okay? I just can’t.”
“I get it.” Isabel hesitated. “But you’re wrong about what you said before—he
does
love you.”
Ignoring the tight clench of her heart, Bailey picked up her glass and downed the rest of her bourbon. “I don’t care.”
* * *
There was nothing more uncomfortable than watching another man ejaculate. Well, unless you were into blokes. Then you’d love it. But Sean couldn’t say he was entirely comfortable seeing Patrick O’Neill orgasm ten feet from his face.
O’Neill groaned in ecstasy as the prostitute in his lap rode him like a bitch in heat. The bastard even had the nerve to wink when he caught Sean’s eye.
Sean lowered his gaze to his pint glass, wishing like hell he could get out of there. O’Hare’s was closed to the public for the private party. Or
morale booster
, as Cillian had referred to it. Only the younger men filled up the main room, though Quinn had apparently been in the mood for some fun, because he’d stuck around too and was in the process of getting blown in one of the back booths, fortunately hidden from view.
Sean was used to these kinds of raunchy scenes. The men on Rabbit’s crew had simple tastes—they liked to fight and drink and fuck.
Especially
the latter. When Sean was a teenager, he’d been more than happy to join in on the fun. Ollie, too, though they’d drawn the line at tag teaming women, no matter how many times a pretty
girl tried to lure them into it. Apparently boning twins was a fantasy for a lot of chicks. For him and Ollie . . . not so much.
“You know, you’d do a better job of convincing the men if you dipped your wick in a pussy or two.”
Cillian’s low voice made him tense. The man stood next to Sean’s barstool, watching the sexual festivities in boredom.
“I have a girlfriend,” he mumbled.
“I’m sure she won’t mind.”
Sean glanced at the naked women littering the room, picturing the look on Bailey’s face if he admitted to “dipping his wick” in a prostie. “She’d rip my balls off,” he said dryly.
Cillian chuckled. “I envy you. There’s nothing hotter than a high-strung filly. Makes it all the more rewarding when you break her. When you show her who’s boss.”
Sean bristled. He had no desire to “break” Bailey. He
liked
her fire. He liked the way she challenged him, argued with him. Though sometimes he wished she didn’t argue
so
much. He wished she would . . . Fuck, he didn’t even know what he wanted anymore.
No, that wasn’t true. He wanted
her
. Just her.
But she refused to give that to him.
“I’ve actually got a filly waiting for me in the back,” Cillian told him. A dark eyebrow propped up. “If you want to join me.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself.”
As Cillian wandered off, Sean slid off his stool. Definitely his cue to leave. There was no reason to stick around now that Flannery’s trusted observer wasn’t watching his ass like a federal prosecutor.
He made his way to the door, only to get intercepted by two crew members he didn’t know well. They forced
him into a conversation about football. The irony didn’t escape him—here they were chatting about the Red Devils while everyone else was screwing their brains out. But these boys were in their late teens, and clearly overwhelmed by the hedonistic activities happening around them.
They also knew exactly who Sean was, and he was uncomfortable with the way they looked at him. Like he was their idol or some shit. He knew his reputation, both as a lethal fighter and as a ladies’ man, was legendary around these parts, but he hated that these lads viewed him as some kind of superhero.
Still, he used the Manchester United discussion to sneak in a few barbed comments about Rabbit, which caused both lads to fidget awkwardly, as if they didn’t know how to respond. Hell, they were so damn young. They had no idea what they were even fighting for.
“Sorry, lads,” he said a short while later. “I have to go. My girl’s waiting for me at home.”
They grinned knowingly and drifted off, and Sean was two feet from the door when he realized he’d left his coat in the back when he’d been strategizing with the men earlier. Normally he’d say fuck it, but it was pouring buckets outside, and his already shitty mood would only get shittier if he went out there without a coat and got soaked to the bone.
Loud slapping noises met his ears when he approached the closed door at the end of the rear hallway. Lovely. Cillian and his
filly
had gotten started.
It took a second to register that he wasn’t hearing sex. The sharp slaps were not the sounds of flesh meeting flesh, of bodies coming together in a frantic fuck. Cillian was spanking the hell out of that woman.
Sean rapped his knuckles on the door, then strode through it without waiting for a response. He walked in
just in time to see the hard strike of Cillian’s palm against a round backside.
Jesus. The woman’s ass was a shocking red contrast to her lily-white skin. Sean could even see the imprint of Cillian’s hand.
She was bent over the arm of the couch, but she whirled around in startled surprise at Sean’s entrance, and he didn’t miss the red marks on her breasts, as if Cillian had squeezed the hell out of them. He also didn’t miss the tears streaking down her pale cheeks.
“Everything all right in here?” he said roughly.
Cillian smirked. He was fully clothed, but a visible erection strained against his fly. “Ah, you decided to join us after all?”
“I forgot something.” Sean headed for the table with stiff strides and grabbed his jacket, then spared another glance at the prostitute, who’d draped herself over the couch again. “You all right, darling?” he repeated.
She nodded, a little too fervently.
“Amelia is just fine,” Cillian answered for her. “Isn’t that right, sweetness?”
Her head bobbed up and down again, but tears continued to slide down her face.
Sean hesitated before leaving. He supposed he could interfere, but the woman was a professional. Her specialty was probably catering to sick fucks like Cillian, who liked a side order of violence with their sex.