Sparrow (23 page)

She twisted out of my touch and spun around, facing me, anger written all over her face. For the first time since I married her, she looked genuinely disgusted by my touch. This wasn’t pretense or shyness. She really didn’t want me anywhere near her. I took a step back.

“That was before,” she spat, every muscle in her face quivering.

Right, that unfortunate Catalina fuck in our house. It seemed like a decent idea at the time, to try and kill the little obsession I’d started nurturing toward my wife. But in retrospect? Worst fuck I’d ever had, and entirely not worth it.

I pivoted back into the room, not wanting to show any kind of emotions. Hell, what was I talking about? I didn’t
have
emotions toward this weird kid. I stopped at the mini bar and grabbed a bottle of hard liquor, not even sure which, twisting the top and taking a sip straight from the bottle. She followed me into the room, pouring angry heat from every pore of her body.

“Don’t pretend to give a damn about who I fuck, Sparrow. Not when you keep on saying everything we do is a fucking mistake. Stop acting like the betrayed wife.”

“You think I care about you screwing around?” She threw her hands in the air, frustrated. “Sorry you didn’t get the memo, Brennan. For all I care, you can dick your way to every STD known to mankind and even create new ones in the process.”

I turned around and got in her face, still holding the bottle by its neck. “Then what the hell are you talking about? What made you so pissed off now?”

“Forget it!” She shoved me back, her eyes glinting with impending tears.

Fuck, she wanted to cry. Red never cried, even when she married me, when I took her in, when crying was the only thing she could do.

I felt my anger faltering. “What happened?” My voice came out so gentle it startled me. “Why are you so upset?”

“Like it matters. You wouldn’t share anything with me, won’t tell me anything.” She wiped the tears from her face, and I hated that a part of me wanted to do it for her. “Just leave me alone.”

“We have reservations for nine.”

“I’m not hungry,” she bit out.

“It’s the best place in Miami. Two Michelin stars. You can hate me tomorrow, the day after and for the rest of your life, but who knows the next time you’ll be able to visit a world-class restaurant other than the one your husband owns.”

Why was I trying to convince her to go out with me? I could have picked a woman better dressed and more agreeable at the hotel bar and actually enjoyed my time tonight. But for some screwed up reason, I wanted her to go ape-shit when she saw the restaurant. Red was food-crazy.

“Still not interested,” she said coldly, yanking the bottle from my hand and taking a long sip, fury in her eyes. I grabbed the bottle back and pointed its neck in her direction.

“Put your fucking shoes on, Sparrow. I won’t ask twice.”

Okay, this was not the best strategy, but damn, she frustrated the living shit out of me.

“Yeah? What are you going to do if I won’t? Will you kill me, like you killed Billy Crupti?” She hit me with her tiny balled fists. She was too small to make an impact, but that didn’t mean Sparrow didn’t try. Shoving me deeper into the room, she continued, “Will you cut me into tiny pieces? Throw me into the ocean? Make sure there’s no trace of me left, but not give a damn that the whole freaking city knows?”

I shook my head, scrubbing my face and raking a hand through my hair, so frustrated I wanted to punch something. If she was bringing the Crupti shit up, she had nothing more to lose. She wasn’t scared anymore. Or at least not as much as she was pissed off.

Sparrow was not going to come to dinner, and for the first time in my life, I knew there was nothing I could do about it.

I had no leverage over her. I couldn’t restrict her, because she refused to use my money. And I couldn’t hurt her, because I didn’t want to.

She didn’t deserve to be ruined. She wasn’t Catalina.

Quietly, I turned around and stalked into the bedroom. I got dressed, put on my Rolex and some cologne, tousled my hair and walked out of the room, leaving her to polish off the alcohol I had left.

When I marched out to the hotel bar, she was still lying on the carpet, drinking herself to oblivion.

I took a seat on one of the stools and ordered a whiskey. A tall blonde of the model variety who was sitting two seats away from me smiled in my direction. I didn’t smile back.

I drank two, three…four drinks before she came over and offered me her hand.

“Kylie.” She pouted her name, but I didn’t reach for a handshake. “And you are…?”

“Not interested. Sorry.”

Two hours after I’d left, I walked back into our suite, drunk as hell and way beyond fed up with the Red situation. Talk about a liability.

I found her laying in the darkness, curled on the sofa, the dim light spilling from the TV, highlighting the curves of her face. She had a pillow under her head and a duvet covering her body, all the way up to the chin. We weren’t going to share a bed tonight.

“I’m only going to ask one last time. Tell me what crawled up your ass, Sparrow.”

“And what good would it do me? You’ll never give me any answers. You never have.”

She was right, and there was no point in denying it. I was keeping her in the dark.

“Pack your stuff. We’re leaving first thing in the morning.” I didn’t even bother to watch her reaction as I strode straight to the bedroom.

The Paddy business was going to be over in a few hours. His lawyer probably had him signing the papers to make the transfer as we spoke. And I had to get back to Boston to take care of the Van Horn issue. Clearly, my wife was in no mood to play, and let’s admit it, Miami was a nightmare to someone like me.

“I never unpacked,” she replied with boredom.

“The fuck not?”

“I knew we’d be back in Boston in twenty-four hours. This isn’t a honeymoon.” I heard the bitterness. “Like everything else in your life, Troy, this was nothing but business.”

SPARROW

WE SLICED THROUGH
the gray Boston streets, the brownstone buildings, jaywalkers and dead-end streets flying by. I pressed my forehead to the glass, trying to ignore my husband as best as I could. His hard eyes were fixated on the road ahead and I knew he wouldn’t talk to me. Knew he’d given up.

I moved my stuff out of the bedroom and into the guest room downstairs, and he let me. A part of me struggled to remember why I didn’t try this approach in the first place, and another part reminded me that for some unexplained reason, I liked sharing a bed with Troy.

Pathetic, I know.

I decided to start at Rouge Bis the next day. No reason to wait until next week. Surprisingly he agreed to let Brock know my first shift would be tomorrow. I tried to fuel my excitement by talking about it with my Lucy and Daisy that night. They still thought I was in danger and demanded I call the police, but both of them knew better than to take matters into their own hands. Rumor was that Troy had a tight relationship with some of the cops around, and besides, they wouldn’t go against my wishes. And my wishes, apparently, was not to do anything about it.

Not because I didn’t want to, but because I wanted to make it to my next birthday.

The next afternoon, Troy double-parked in front of the alley that led to the side door to Rouge Bis, again blocking traffic, this time a delivery truck. I twisted my body, grabbing my backpack from the backseat, when I heard a thump on my side of the window. Brennan rolled it down, and Brock’s face appeared. He shoved his head straight into my side of the car, his lips bare inches from mine. Knocking twice on the car’s roof and the air out of my lungs, he attempted an easy smile.

“I see a tan wasn’t on the menu for the Brennan couple.”

That was an understatement. I was still as pasty as a freshly painted wall.

Troy’s face broke into a devious grin. “We were busy doing things far more interesting.”

Yeah, like getting drunk in separate wings of the hotel and hating on each other. I had no idea why he made it sound like we were a couple in front of Brock, but with all the shit he kept from me, I didn’t even stand a chance to figure out the reason for this behavior.

“Thanks for the ride,” I ground out, pushing my door open and not giving a damn that Brock was still on the other side. He took a step back, but his gaze fell to my thighs when he saw Troy resting a hand over one of them. First time he touched me since I’d refused to have dinner with him.

“Have a good day at work, Red,” he said.

Why was he acting weird all of a sudden? More specifically, like we were civil with one another.

I looked from his hand to his face. “Yeah, whatever.” And before he’d decided to accompany this little gesture with a goodbye kiss, I dashed out.

“Brock,” Troy barked, making him stick his head back into the car. A traffic jam formed behind Troy’s Maserati, and embarrassment heated my neck again. “You’re needed at the cabin.”

Brock groaned. “I have work here. I’ll be there in the evening.”

Troy glanced at me as he clutched the steering wheel angrily, and then he seemed to relax. “One hour and you’re on your way. I need you. Bring the kit.”

With that, Brock straightened and walked over to join me. Troy still didn’t budge.

Brock opened the side door for me and I entered Rouge Bis. I still had paperwork to sign before I started, and he led me down a back hallway, past the kitchen.

“Aren’t you going to ask where the cabin is? What’s that kit Troy was talking about?” he asked

“How do you know I don’t already know?”

A small smile tugged at his flawless face. “Because I know your husband, and he is very good at keeping secrets. Especially from you.”

True, Troy hid stuff from me. Mainly, he hid the reason why we got married in the first place. I knew that. And then there was Rowan…the thought of him made my spine stiffen.

I rolled my eyes, feigning boredom. “No thanks. I’m perfectly fine staying in the dark with this one. You guys can break the law as much as you like. No need to keep me in the loop.”

“That’s not what I do.” He stopped in front of a glass door. Behind it, I noticed a gray brick wall, trendy office desk, several paintings and leather chairs. “I never break the law.”

“But you break your promises,” I challenged, not sure where all this strength came from. Maybe I was sick of being pushed around by his boss. “You said it’d be worth my while to go to Miami. It sucked.”

“What I meant is I’d cheer you up when you got back. Sorry it didn’t work out for you, sweetheart.”

“Don’t sweetheart me.” I spun, marching into his office. I took a seat on the chair opposite from where he was supposed to sit. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Since I arrived a trillion years earlier than I should have for the dinner service, I was also the first to greet Pierre in the kitchen. The short, fat man walked in with a sneer on his face, smoothing his thick, black moustache with his finger. I jumped up on my feet from a milk crate I was sitting on and flashed him an enthusiastic smile.

“Hi!” I chirped.

“Well, if it isn’t Miss Nepotism. I thought you weren’t supposed to start until next week.” He made his way to the large stove, leaning against it and folding his arms as he somehow defied physics and, despite being even shorter than my humble 5'3", still looked down at me.

Cringing inwardly, I wiped off my smile. “I’m ready to work hard and to prove I’m not only here because of my husband.”

“No,” he agreed, pushing off from the stove and walking over to me. “You’re also here because of Greystone. He instructed me to let you pick a station. So you think you can rule my kitchen, do you?”

I wrinkled my forehead and took a step back. If Brock told him to give me my pick, it was all on him. I knew Troy would never offer me the easy way out. It was not his style. He was more the let-her-work-for-it type of guy. Brock, however, was the sweet let-me-help-you-out gentleman. The perfect man to bring home to mom. If I had one, that is.

“Station me wherever you want.” I raised my chin. “I’m not scared of hard work, chef.”

Pierre took a step toward me and smiled into my face, his breath reeking of cigarettes. “We’ll see about that.”

I gutted, scaled and cleaned dozens of fish, cutting myself several time with the thin-bladed boning knife just to keep up with all the work Pierre gave me. By the time my shift was done, I looked like I had just played rock-paper-scissors with Edward Scissorhands. Thoroughly bruised and cut, I helped cleaning up the kitchen, even scrubbed up the stove.

I got out of the place at eleven, and started walking the distance from Rouge Bis back to the penthouse. It wasn’t close, but the trip back home was on crowded, main streets and I needed the time to think. I wrapped myself into my navy fleece hoodie—this was the coldest June to be recorded in Boston for the last fifty years, perfectly orchestrated with the breakdown of my personal life—swung my backpack over my shoulder and started for Brennan’s building. My legs shook from exhaustion as I passed by the expensive stores and galleries, and I dug my hands into my pockets to brave the weird summer chill. Picking up the pace, I rounded the corner and immediately halted when I saw him.