High Stakes (22 page)

“No, really. Pat had wild monkey sex with Brie this morning before he came to work. At the pub, Aidan’s falling all over C.J. because she’s pregnant. Something’s going on with Liam and Sophie—they keep looking at each other like long-lost lovers, and even Ma and Pa are dancing in the kitchen, holding hands in the bar. St. Paddy’s Day brings out the romance in all of us, I guess.”

“It sounds lovely.”

“It is.” He kissed her nose. “But I wanted you there with me.”

“Hmm,” she thought as she closed her eyes. “That’s even lovelier.”

Dylan returned to the bar less lonely and nostalgic than when he’d left an hour ago. The pub was hopping and there were lines snaking around the building; the parade had ended minutes ago. Irish music and good-natured joking rumbled through the place.

Pat called out, “Great, you’re back. We got swamped.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Though he would have hated to miss his tryst with Rachel.

“We all need some time off during the day. But Liam didn’t come back at three, like he was supposed to.”

Behind the bar, Dylan tied a towel around his waist. “How come?”

“He called and said his errand was delayed. Whatever the hell that means.” Pat threw Dylan a rag. “Wash some glasses with Sweeney. We keep runnin’ out.”

Dylan settled himself in front of a sink and flicked on the water. As he watched the basin fill, he could still picture Rachel, asleep by the fire, cuddled up in maroon fleece. The covers highlighted the sexual flush on her face. He’d awakened her when he was ready to leave, but she’d snuggled back in and asked him to set her phone alarm for an hour. He hadn’t had the heart to make her leave with him.

Pat glanced at Dylan. “You take a shower?”

He’d had to. He’d been covered with sweat and sex. “Yeah. Needed waking up.”

Nodding, Pat scowled at the crowd of people eating the lunch Bridget and Aidan were serving. “Where
is
our brother?”

“Right here.”

At the sound of Liam’s voice, Dylan glanced up and his jaw dropped. He and Sophie had entered from the back; Liam wore a pristine charcoal-gray suit and pinstriped tie and Sophie had on a lacy beige dress.

She grinned. “Hi, everybody.”

They were holding hands and smiling as if… And suddenly Dylan knew what had happened. But he didn’t steal their thunder.

Aidan and C.J. joined them from where they’d been cleaning tables. And over the cacophony of St. Patrick’s Day revelers, Liam announced, “We got married at the church.”

Dylan slipped under the bar opening and grabbed Liam’s arm. “Congratulations, man.”

Patrick followed Dylan, clapped Liam on the shoulder and kissed Sophie. “So, you did it! On our favorite day.”

“Yep.” Liam looked past his shoulder at Aidan who was glaring at him. “A. You mad?”

“Did you break Ma’s and Pa’s hearts?”

He shook his head. “Nope. We just told them. They understood. They’re coming down for some champagne.”

“What about the boys?” C.J. asked. She still had a soft spot for Mikey.

“They said it was cool, they wanted Sophie to live with us. We took them out of school early so they could come. They’re with Ma and Pa now.”

“That why you did it?” Pat asked.

“Yes.” Sophie finally spoke. “We didn’t want to plan a whole wedding, invite legions of firefighters and all the O’Neil friends and family along with everything else a wedding entails.” She gazed up adoringly at Liam. “We couldn’t wait that long.”

C.J. threw her arms around Sophie. “I’m so happy for you.”

“Thanks. Nothing against weddings. Yours was beautiful.”

Just then the boys raced through the back door and skidded to a halt. They eyed Dylan and his brothers. Mikey asked “You guys mad? ‘Cause we got to see it?”

“Nope.” Dylan lifted Mikey up. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

Cleary, your normal teenage boy, uncharacteristically hugged his dad and murmured something to him. He laughed aloud. “Yep, son, we won’t.”

When Ma and Pa came down, they popped some bubbly and Pat was pouring it into glasses when another person entered the pub through the back.

“Well,” Dylan said with a smile. “All’s right with the world.”

Pat looked up. “You can say that again.” He grinned. “Come give me a proper welcome, wife!”

Still half asleep, Rachel stirred. The hard surface beneath her poked into her flesh. She sniffed. The scent of…fire. And tickling her skin was the softest fleece she’d ever felt. Where
was
she?

When she opened her eyes, she smiled. Dylan’s house. They’d grabbed a quickie, the colloquial term for meeting on the fly and making love. Tumultuous love. She could still hear his desperate pleas of need. Feel the scratchiness of his beard on her breast. She shivered just thinking about their time together. Afterward, she’d been exhausted. He’d had to leave, though, and had kissed her and set the alarm so she could get an hour more shut-eye.

It took her fuzzy brain a minute to realize the alarm had not gone off. Searching for her phone, she found it and saw that the battery had drained and the device was out of power.

Wrapping the heavy fleece around her, she sat up, then stood to check the clock on his television cable box. Green numbers blinked five-thirty. Uh-oh. It would take her thirty minutes to get back to the studio. Maybe she’d just shower here, then dress and get her makeup done at the studio. But she was going to be much later than usual and needed to call in.

She glanced around. Dylan didn’t have a landline. She caught sight of his laptop on the dining room table. She needed to email her staff. One of them could call her a cab. She’d go for Jeannie, who, though she wasn’t crazy about Dylan, was the most circumspect and wouldn’t ask questions.

Still wrapped up in the fleecy blanket, which smelled like Dylan’s after shave, she crossed in bare feet to the dining room, sat down and booted up the computer. Moving the cursor to the browser, she stopped short. The icon was next to the trash; parallel to that was a folder titled
Rachel.

Don’t look at it. It’s private. He’ll have a fit.

She sat back, remembering how a lock of hair fell across his eyes as he braced himself above her.

How he said he cared as he kissed his way down her body.

He’d touched her like she was a precious gem.

But then, she remembered other comments.

It hit me in the diner that nothing had been decided about the column, that there’s still a whole host of things against this. I got confused and scared, I guess.

The woman inside Rachel warred with the reporter. Unfortunately, the reporter won.

She clicked on the icon with her name and read,

“Notes for
CitySights
article on Rachel Scott

“Note to self:
Be tough, Dylan. Make this cutting edge like your other stories.

“These are the facts:

“Rachel Scott works 24/7.

“She is acutely ambitious. No personal life. (Absence of friends and time spent with family. No one to take care of her when ill?)”

Rachel closed her eyes to take in breath. She read two more indictments.

Tears prickled against her eyelids, but she finished the list.

“She’s devious and underhanded. Doesn’t abide by promises. (Sneaking into Aidan’s wedding—no cameras, I promise.)

“And why: need to succeed, parental disapproval, family of stars.

“Note to self: Check with paper’s lawyers: can I include things about her family, even though I signed a piece of paper not to? No witnesses? Legally binding?”

Suddenly, Rachel was cold. The blanket, previously warming her, wasn’t enough to fight the chill starting deep within her. Her hands shook as she stared at the incriminating words. A kernel of hope surfaced, and she scrolled down the page to see if there was more or if he’d written something after this, something different.

She encountered only a white space.

And for the first time since…she didn’t know when…Rachel put her head in her hands and cried.

Dylan had been wrong about his family getting together after they closed the bar. By midnight, Ma and Pa had gone to bed. They’d let the newlyweds head home early, as well as Aidan and C.J.. Left in the pub were Dylan, Pat and Brie and Sweeney.

Singing an Irish tune, Dylan picked up the last of the glasses on the tables. “You’re in my heart, lass, and you’ll always be…” Damned if he didn’t feel that way. He knew as he watched Rachel asleep on the floor earlier today that she’d burrowed into his heart and found a place there. He also knew there would be no book deal. Why had he ever entertained the notion? He could never, ever hurt her by convincing the public she was a cruel bitch who cared only about ambition. And he could never reveal her insecurities about her family and herself.

He sang a little louder, “My love will be as vast as the ocean sea,” and repeated the refrain.

Did he love her? Today he was overflowing with feelings for her. But was it the real thing—like his brothers had with their wives? He thought so. At least, he was halfway there. And the emotion stirring inside him felt so good.

Sweeney interrupted his song and his thoughts as he headed out the front door. “Thanks guys, I enjoyed today.”

“Anytime,” Pat called out to him.

They’d locked the front door, and after Sweeney opened it, he stopped. Someone had come up to the entrance from the outside. Dylan couldn’t hear what the other person said, but Sweeney turned to him. “Dylan, a messenger has something for you.”

Thinking of the KPRAY pickets that morning, he asked, “Is it ticking?”

“Nah, it’s too small.”

Crossing to the front, Dylan took the envelope and fished into his pocket for a tip. The messenger held up his hand. “No, Ms. Scott already did that.”

Sweeney left and Dylan grinned down at the envelope. There hadn’t been a minute to call her all day, and he’d even missed her show, though he always taped it. Now she’d sent him something by private messenger. A love note saying she adored being with him today, adored
him?
His heart swelled as his brain filled with more images of her.

Not wanting to open the delivery in front of Pat, he shot a quick glance to see his brother and Brie sharing an Irish coffee at the bar and talking intimately. Walking back to the side of the room, he dropped down onto a chair at the same table where Rachel had thrown her whiskey at him. They’d come so far. Like a little kid, he ripped open the flap.

What the hell? Inside was a copy of one of his columns. He scanned it. No, this was the draft for a
possible
column, which he’d written when he came home from meeting her on location, when he was torn between his feelings for her and the need to still write objectively about her. After he’d typed the words onto a page, he’d trashed the document. He reread it.

At the end was a handwritten note. In Rachel’s pretty script. “So, you seduced me to get information for your column? You lied about everything. What a fool I was! If the agreement was all a sham to you, then vice versa. All bets are off.” It was signed, “Miss America.”

Rachel watched the tape of her show at home. She’d escaped the studio without their usual debriefing, pleading a headache, ignoring her staff’s questions about the surprise ending, which she’d ad-libbed. Now she watched herself come on-screen. She looked self-contained and calm, when in truth, she was devastated by Dylan’s betrayal. She saw herself beat the pain, lift her chin and smile at the camera. Rachel knew how to handle negative feelings: work hard and forget them.

She faltered a few times, as if she’d lost her train of thought, but no one else would notice, she guessed. She seemed happy to talk to a governor of another state, someone from PFLAG, an LGBT organization, a woman who’d saved a baby’s life on the highway. Ah, here was the last little piece of news. She’d faced the audience and smiled. “So, it’s been a long time since this show aired anything about its favorite son and his wife and her family. But I’ve got a scoop for you. What
are
the O’Neils really like personally? Stay tuned beginning next Monday, for a week of exclusives that will give insights into this famous New York family.”

There, she’d done it. Learning what Dylan thought of her, what he planned to do with the private things she’d told him, had cut her to the core. But fuck him. Fuck Dylan O’Neil.

Though it was late, she went to her computer and called up the notes she’d taken on what he’d told her. She hadn’t included any personal revelations because they were supposed to be off-limits. But if he was going to use her background, she was damn well going to use his. She began to type.

“—The elder Paddy O’Neil (get pics)left his family and had an affair. Scarred everyone, especially Dylan.

“—Child out of wedlock. (Research girl gangs, esp. the GGs.) Moria (last name?) taken in by sainted Mary Kate O’Neil. Sister to Second Lady—born the same year. Gang involvement. Ms. O’Neil starts ESCAPE later. As tribute to her sister?

“—Oldest O’Neil. Patrick; hardheaded, he’s the most ornery, troubled marriage (check wife’s and his background for skeletons.)”

The pièce de résistance—she’d be most cutting here: “Dylan O’Neil: overly protective of family because of Paddy’s actions; cause of his column’s content—protect people. Everybody’s Favorite Lady’s Man (find pics of girls on arm.) Bad, bad marriage. (Stephanie and boutique.)Son caught in middle.”

That halted her.

Dear God, could she do that to an innocent kid? Yes, she’d do what she had to. She’d spent her professional life making hard decisions and choices. This was just another one.

After making espresso, she searched the internet on the family and wrote all night, not wanting to sleep or dream. At seven a.m., she had to get ready for her dance class. As she headed to the shower, she felt better, knowing she wouldn’t be played by Dylan O’Neil—ever again.

Strung so tight it hurt to move and not trusting himself to drive, Dylan pulled up to DanceWorks in a cab. Her class ended at nine and he’d timed his arrival so he could catch her before she left but when she’d be alone. Rachel said the owner of the dance studio started at ten on Saturdays.