Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 97724 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97724 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
“Did he hurt you, malishka?” Mik asks.
“No,” Skyla says, shaking her head. “No, I was creeped out, but I’m okay. And I need to tell my parents before my da has a stroke.”
Maeve wrings her hands as she sits on the edge of the chair next to Skyla’s.
“You’re scaring me, a stór.”
Skyla’s eyes find mine, and I see the distress in them, so I cross back to her and sit next to her on the sofa. She leans into me and begins telling them the same story she told me when we started this relationship.
I keep my eyes on Patrick and Maeve, who go from scowling, to horror, to fear, and back to anger again. Maeve begins to cry, but Patrick looks like he wants to murder someone. His face is red, and his hands are fisted.
And I know how he feels.
“Tell me your men found him,” I say to Connor, who’s stood back with his hands in his pockets, grinding his teeth this whole time.
“No,” he says quietly, and Skyla’s hand tightens around mine. “Not yet, anyway.”
“He was here,” Maeve says, shaking her head. “Tonight? But we have the best security money can buy. No one not on the guest list could have gotten in.”
“We’re running an internal investigation,” Connor says, pulling his hand down his face as his phone rings, and he answers it.
“I want to know why I’m just now hearing this tale,” Patrick says. A vein protrudes from his temple, and his face is hard with anger. “If my fecking daughter has been dealing with a bloody stalker all this time, why in the name of all the saints wasn’t I apprised?”
“Because I asked that you not be,” Skyla says. “Because there was nothing you could do.”
“Nothing I could do?” he roars. “You listen to me. I’m Patrick fucking Gallagher, and I have contacts that you’ve never even dreamed of, mo mhuirnin. I’m worth more than fifty billion euros, and I can make that piece of shite disappear from the face of this earth, and no one would ever question it.”
Good. His rage matches my own.
“I can’t prove that he’s done anything illegal,” Skyla continues. “The police told me that he’s a nuisance at worst, and I should ignore him. He used to go away for months at a time. This is the first time that anything has happened since I moved to Montana. I’m not lying about that, Da. I’d hoped that he’d finally lost interest.”
“But he’s why you’re not in New York,” Maeve says. “And he’s why you can’t dance.”
“I’m happy where I am,” Skyla insists as she reaches for her mom’s hand. “No, it’s not how I would have chosen to leave, but I have a full life, and I’m happy. I just need him to stop.”
“You don’t have to say that for my sake,” I tell her, but she turns to me and shakes her head.
“It’s the truth of it, Beckett Blackwell. Bitterroot Valley is my home. I have friends and a home, and a business. And best of all, I have you. I don’t want New York City. I just want him to stop. I don’t want his fecking hands on me.”
“He touched you?” Patrick asks, his voice eerily quiet now, and I can see that that is what had to have terrified his competitors early in his career. Patrick Gallagher isn’t a man you want to cross. “Tonight. He laid hands on you?”
“He touched my back,” Skyla whispers, and I release her hand to wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her against me. “And he whispered in my ear, which gave me the creeps, and I had to wash him off me.”
“He’s a dead man,” Patrick says as he paces.
Mik also paces the room, looking like a pissed-off brother.
Connor’s taking calls across the room and scowling, and then he hangs up and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“I’m putting a team of four men, twenty-four hours a day, at your house,” Connor announces, still looking down at his phone. “We’ll add more cameras to the exterior as well.”
“No.”
All eyes turn to this fiery Irish girl at my side.
“What?” Connor asks, scowling.
“No, I’ve told you before, I don’t want strange men wandering around my property. It’s my home, and I won’t have it. I won’t feel like a prisoner.”
“It’s not to keep you bloody in,” Connor says with more emotion than I’ve seen from him before. “It’s to keep that psychopath out. It’s not up for debate, Skyla Maeve.”
“Don’t think you can use my whole given name and have me folding as if I were a wee girl,” she replies, getting hot now as she sits forward on the sofa, pulling out of my arms.
God, she’s fucking gorgeous when she’s pissed.
“You’ll do what you’re bloody told,” Conner retorts, and I think I just saw steam come out of my girl’s ears.