Page 46 of Her Irish Savage
“They won’t,” I promise.
Still grumbling, she disappears through a door in the back.
“Sorry about that,” the younger woman says. “She’s having a bad morning.”
I spotted the headscarf and the yellow cast to her face the moment I walked in—not to mention wrists as thin as broomsticks. But I say, “Happens to the best of us.” I order a caramel latte for me and two drip coffees, figuring Rónnad can doctor one with cream and sugar, if that’s her preference. When they’re served up, I find a trio of little cherry pastries on the tray as well—Jenn’s Jam Tarts, according to the label inside the bakery case.
“On the house,” the woman says. “Come back in for free refills on the coffees.”
I thank her and carry out the tray. Patrick takes his mug, but he glares at the miniature pies as if they’re poisoned. Tired of old people being pissed off with me, I polish off one in three bites.
Jittery, Patrick is twisting his fidget ring. I think about telling him to take a walk around the block. Or maybe he should stop mainlining coffee.
The skin looks tight around his eyes, but I know he slept well last night. We both did—sliding beneath the duvet and curling against each other, my back to his front. His arm felt like an iron shield clamped around me, banishing even a hint of nightmare.
I know it’s strange that we haven’t talked about it. Neither one of us has mentioned that we’re sleeping in the same bed,touching, closer than close, but apparently we’re never having sex again.
I’m Fiona Fucking Ingram. There is literally nothing I won’t say out loud. Nothing I won’t try in bed. Nothing I won’t tease a man about, if I think it’ll help me get my way.
But every time I start to say something—I haven’t slept this well in eight years—I know exactly what he’ll do. He’ll run stiff fingers through his hair. He’ll look at a point exactly three inches above the bridge of my nose. He’ll let his thumb drift toward the titanium ring on his middle finger, the one that spins.
And I somehow know that if he thinks he’s being soft, that he’s slacking off on what he owes Braiden Kelly or the Fishtown Boys or some perfect version of himself packed deep inside his memory, then he’ll stop. He’ll deny himself a night of sleep, just to prove he can. And I’ll lose out too.
Fuck.
I rub my arms and consider stealing another one of the cherry tarts. Before I can reach for the pastry, though, a bundle of rags rolls around the corner of the building.
Patrick stands. It takes me longer to realize there’s a person inside all that cloth. She’s wearing three different skirts, one hem bunching at her ankles, another at her calves, the last around her knees. Her waist looks like someone cinched a frayed rope around a broken-down mattress. One of her sweaters has horizontal rainbow stripes; the other is covered in filthy white polka dots on black. Both are torn at the elbows, revealing a yellow and black plaid shirt underneath. Her hair is woven into four braids that flop around like snakes.
She looks like a cross between a crazy woman, a witch, and some sort of Roma fortune teller.
She waddles over and sits in the middle seat, the one Patrick was in. Without saying a word, one hand crams a cherry tart into her mouth. The other grabs my latte. Her fingers are gnarled like ancient pine trees, swollen knuckles stretching paper-thin skin.
Her face is as wrinkled as her hands, the skin so shiny she might buff it. Her red-rimmed eyes are the tired brown of sun-baked grass, and that braided hair is the colorless gray of a field mouse. She wheezes, spraying flakes of pastry over the table as she says, “Rónnad.”
“Fiona,” I say, wondering if Q has played an elaborate joke on me.
Patrick doesn’t say anything. He just scowls.
Rónnad downs half my coffee in three noisy swallows. She wipes her mouth with the back of one hand and says, “How much do you need?”
I can’t believe I actually answer her. “Ten million.”
She puffs air out of her mouth, like she can’t be bothered for so small a sum.
“By no later than June 15,” I add.
That’s only six weeks. But Q said she could do it. And no matter how odd this witch-like woman is, no matter how strange our conversation, Q never led my father astray, not once in twenty years. The same instinct that tells me Uncle Aran will destroy me, the one that says Keenan Rivers is looking for a way to tear me apart too, that’s the inner thought that says Q is on my side. So Rónnad must be too.
“Ten million,” she says, finishing off my latte. “Another,” she says, shoving her mug into Patrick’s ribs.
His face darkens, and I imagine all the ways he can put this woman in her place, but I give him a single shake of my head. It’s a risk. I’ve never given him a direct order before.
But he takes the cup and goes inside.
“Ten million dollars,” Rónnad says. “I can do that.”
“How?”
