We spend the next couple of days playing games, eating food, drinking Prosecco, eating more food, and dragging sleds up the hill. Typical family Christmas. No one believes Mary when she tells us that she has never been on a sled before.
“Emmett, you’ll have to ride with her,” Mom says. “We don’t want her breaking her neck on her first Christmas with the family.”
Mary climbs onto a sled, sits down tentatively like she just agreed to a skydive, and I climb on behind her, trapping her between my legs. I can feel her body heat through my jeans, and when I lean forward and brush her ear with my lips, a shiver travels down her spine.
“Hold on tight, Mary.”
I grab the rope, adrenaline coursing through my veins. It’s been years since I’ve been sledding, but I’ve watched the twins go down the hill without falling off, and it must be like sex, right? Something you never forget.
I push us off, and we’re flying faster than I remembered, snow spraying out from under us, and Mary is laughing so much that I can feel her breaths juddering through her body. She’s pressed up against me. All I can think about is the feel of her ass between my legs and the citrussy scent of her shampoo from beneath her beanie hat.
We hit a bump right at the bottom of the hill, and we both tumble off the sled. I sprawl face-first in the snow like a starfish, the oxygen leaving my lungs momentarily.
I turn my face sideways to find Mary spreadeagled, face buried in the snow. She raises her head to look at me, and I’m about to ask her if she’s hurt when she hurls a handful of snow my way, catching me right in the mouth.
I splutter, wiping my face with my gloved hands, buying myself some time. I see the way her smile fades, concerned that I’m not laughing, and before she can apologize, I’m on top of her, smooshing snow in her face and pinning her down so that she can’t escape.
“Ugh! Get off me.” She tries pushing me off halfheartedly, laughing too hard to put any force behind it. “Stop, I can’t breathe.”
I pause for a beat, and the little minx twists herself around beneath me, shoves my hat off, and rubs snow in my hair.
“Playing dirty, huh?” I push her backwards like a snow angel and pin her arms above her head easily with one hand. Before I can think about what I’m doing, my tongue fills her mouth, and she closes her eyes, giving into our mingling breaths. I don’t even feel cold. Her body is all I need, and this realization is quite liberating.
She kisses me back, chasing my tongue with hers, and it’s this raw passion that surprised me so much down by the stream. Mary isn’t like other women. She’s like a flower blossoming for the first time and my erection is proof that I want to be the one to open her up. Nothing else exists in the moment.
Until Uncle Ciaran slides past us and catches me on the side of the head with a giant snowball.
I straddle her, the tip of her nose pink, her eyes boring into mine. I want her to say something. I want her to tell me how she feels, but instead, a smile stretches her lips, and she says, “Go, get him.”
The moment passes.
Whatever it was.
I know she felt it too, and I float back up the hill, my heart thumping in time with my footsteps.
That afternoon, we all drive down to Jake’s bar in the village. It’s a small, cozy pub with low ceilings and dark wood beams. The bar counter, I inform Mary, is made from a railway sleeper, and the pub has been in Jake’s family for generations. Jake is a tall, broad-chested guy with a thick mop of salt-and-pepper hair, permanently rosy cheeks, and a wide smile that reveals a gold tooth on top.
Everyone in the pub knows the O’Hara family, and it takes us a while to reach the table with all the back-clapping and handshakes and Merry Christmases being exchanged.
Mary sits next to me on the cushioned bench, her thigh pressed up against mine. Something has changed between us since I gave her the portrait. She is more attentive, more relaxed around me, more natural, as if she has stopped pretending to be my fiancée and this is who she really is.
It’s hard to believe that she works for me, and I’ve never noticed her before.
I like what I see.
My family seems to have noticed the difference too. Mom winks at her conspiratorially whenever Mary catches her eye and she thinks I’m not watching, as if she knew all along that this would happen.
Still buzzing from the sledding, I slide my hand onto her thigh beneath the table, and she sucks her bottom lip to stop herself from smiling. My head fills with an image of me sliding my cock into her mouth, and I shake it away. I won’t be able to sit here all day with an erection, without wanting to drag her outside and fuck her up against the back wall. Next time, we’re going to do it properly.
Next time.
Mary orders Guinness—we insist that it’s good for you because of its iron content—and swallow a mouthful, grimacing at the unusual flavor. Everyone around the table laughs. I cup her face in my hands and, using my thumbs, wipe away the creamy moustache left behind by the drink. She peers at me with those beautiful green eyes, and I see the heat rising in her cheeks.
Having this effect on her just by touching her face makes my cock twitch. I need to fuck Mary Chrysler again. I need to fuck her every way I can think of, and then some.
“Patrick would’ve let me wander about with froth on my face for the rest of the day.” Mom laughs, dragging me away from thoughts of Mary naked, her ass in the air while I fuck her from behind. “I always knew my Emmett was a keeper.”
“Just a shame it took him so long, eh, Sinead?” Auntie Erin joins in.
“You can’t hurry perfection.” I don’t even know where it comes from, but Mary almost chokes on her Guiness, and I hide my smile behind my drink.
A hush settles over the table though when the Blackthorns enter the pub and make a beeline for us. My spine immediately tenses. I remove my hand from her thigh, and ball it into a fist. I don’t know what game Fianna is playing with him, but nothing will ever persuade me to like the guy.
“What’s he doing here?”
“Emmett.” Fianna flashes a warning look my way before turning around and smiling up at him.
The guy bends down and kisses Fianna’s cheek, and I can’t prevent the growl rumbling deep inside me like a dog sensing danger.
“Merry Christmas, all.” Ronan’s gaze drifts around the table and settles on Mary. The bastard does it deliberately. “How are you enjoying your first Irish Christmas?”
“It’s been the best.” Mary smiles with genuine affection at my parents. “I’m still waiting for someone to pinch me.”
Unprompted, Ronan leans across the table and pinches the flesh on the back of her hand, and I want to punch him right here, right now. “Aye. You’re still here.”
Erin and Sean exchange glances, and I get the feeling that they don’t like the thought of this guy with their daughter either. Who can blame them after what he did to Oisin? What does she even see in him? All I see is a bully with pumped-up biceps and an ego to match, but I understand my dad’s need to keep the peace.
He asks if anyone wants a drink, goes to the bar, and comes back carrying a tray of glasses, which he sets down on the table before squeezing next to Fianna on the end of the bench opposite Mary and me. It’s as if a rain cloud is hovering above our heads. The easy banter between family members has been replaced by stilted conversation and periods of silence, something that hasn’t occurred since we arrived.
But what unsettles me the most is that whenever I look at Ronan, I catch him staring at Mary.
Later, Mary goes to the restroom, and I watch her pass the group of men standing at the bar drinking stout with whiskey chasers. They’re loud, their voices booming around the pub and drowning out the music playing from the jukebox and the growing hum of conversation.
Keep on walking, Mary, I think to myself.
But she must catch a glimpse of a thick neck in a black turtleneck sweater and hear a voice that sounds familiar because she freezes.
Declan.
Then, right on cue, he turns his head, raising a glass to his lips, and I see it in her face that she knows where she has seen him before. She watched him throw a man over the edge of the roof during the office party. She witnessed a murder and then got dragged into a situation that was entirely out of her control, it’s unlikely she will ever forget his face.
Fortunately for Mary, she doesn’t know the guys he’s drinking with. The other dons.
They’re the reason I brought her here. No one would’ve believed the fake proposal if I spent my first Christmas as an engaged man without my fiancée. But I never thought we’d come face-to-face with them.
But the question is: what will Mary do about Declan?
Perhaps I should’ve warned her. I’ve had ample opportunities to tell her that he would be nearby while we’re out and about, and that it would work in our favor if the families saw us together. But the situation is precarious enough without lighting a flame beneath her anxiety with a flippant comment like, “Hey, you know the thug on the roof? Yeah, we’ll probably see him down at the local pub.”
After what feels like hours, she keeps walking, and I release a breath I didn’t realize that I was holding.
Declan’s gaze roams the seating area. His eyes settle on me, and he raises his pint in a toast. All good. He settled my business on the roof. Which means that we have the green light to fake an argument and go our separate ways once we’re back in New York.
Only, I’m not entirely certain that’s what I want.
Mary might not know it, but I’ve spent every waking moment since I came home with her face center stage in my mind. Capturing her on canvas was nowhere near as difficult as I’d expected it to be because I was able to study her while she slept on the flight here. She’d probably freak out if she knew that, but man she’s easy on the eye.
Ronan’s cell phone rings and he stands, murmuring at the table in general that he’ll take the call outside. I watch him leave, Fianna’s eyes on me.
Something is making me feel uneasy. I can’t even follow the conversation at the table while Mary is out of sight.
Fianna nudges my knee with hers. “I never thought I’d see you so lost without a woman by your side.” She gives me a sly smile and sips her wine.
A comeback is on the tip of my tongue, but Ronan comes back into the pub with a whoosh of cold air from outside. Instead of coming back to the table, he heads towards the restrooms.
I wait. Maybe I’m being paranoid because I don’t trust the guy, but Mary isn’t back yet, and he has gone out of his way to antagonize me since the party.
Thirty seconds pass by, and I can’t believe Mary has turned me into the kind of guy who hangs on every moment that his woman is away from him, but I know that my gut’s right when I see Declan, the guy from the roof, set his pint down and head towards the restrooms. They’re not throwing a private party out there, so it can only mean one thing: he senses trouble brewing too.
I stand abruptly, knocking the table with my thighs and spilling drinks over the sides of glasses.
“Emmett?” Fianna’s eyes are wide. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back in a moment.”
“You won’t do anything silly?”
I don’t respond. My pulse is racing because Mary still hasn’t come back from the restroom, and I don’t like this churning feeling in my stomach. If anyone touches her…
When I reach the corridor leading from the bar to the restrooms, Declan is standing back, hands balled into fists, elbows out and muscles pumped, which is his go-to stance. “Everything alright here?” I hear him say.
I follow his gaze and find Mary with her back to the wall, Ronan’s arms either side of her head, his body too close, preventing her from moving.
“All good here,” Ronan shoots back over his shoulder without glancing round. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“I was speaking to the lady,” Declan says.
“Let me pass,” Mary says loudly enough for us to hear.
I’ve seen enough. I push past Declan, who doesn’t try to stop me. Grabbing the back of Ronan’s sweater, I yank him away from Mary, his beady eyes widening with surprise. I shove him across the hallway, and he crashes against the opposite wall.
Mary gasps when she realizes what’s happened.
My eyes roam her up and down, making sure that she’s not hurt. I swear if I’d found a hair out of place, I’d kill the bastard, but she gives a barely perceptible shake of her head, as if she knows what’s going on inside my head.
But Ronan recovers quickly. Without wasting a beat, he swings a punch at my face, pure hatred in his twisted expression. I dodge it easily, catching him in the gut with a swift blow. The guy doubles over, clutching his abdomen. But I’m not letting him go that easily. He made a play for my fiancée, and no one gets to do that and walk away unscathed.
I grab his shoulders and shove him back against the wall, pinning him down with my lower arm against his throat. “Go near her again, and you won’t see next Christmas.”
Ronan’s lips twist into a sinister smile. “Who rattled your cage? It was just a friendly chat.”
“You rattled my fucking cage when you got too close to my fiancée.” I can’t even stand the sight of him, and it scares me how much I want to hurt him in the moment.
“Emmett, it’s okay.” I hear Mary’s voice from somewhere outside my subconscious. It registers, barely, that she wants me to back down, to walk away and let it go.
But the guy is obviously not prepared to go down without a fight. Maybe a fight was what he wanted all along. His body seems to go limp, and then in one fluid movement, he raises his knee and rams it straight into my groin.
“Emmett!” Mary cries out.
As I double over to contain the pain, Ronan catches my jaw with his fist, and I sprawl backwards. Mary tries to reach me, but Declan grabs her arm and holds her back.
I don’t want her to see me fighting. I don’t want this to be one of the memories she holds on to when we’re back in New York, but no one gets to touch Mary while I’m around. No one. Especially not this arrogant fucking bully who tried to destroy my cousin Oisin.
I drag myself back onto my feet, testing my jaw with my hand while Ronan watches with that smug smile on his face. Without warning, I lunge at him, my head colliding with his diaphragm. Ronan lands on his back, his skull connecting with the floor, and I drag him upright by his sweater., shoving him against the wall
Winded, he doesn’t move apart from the rise and fall of his labored breathing. Then the smile sneaks back across his face. “You should learn to control that temper. It’ll get you into trouble one day.”
The strange thing is that my temper is no longer red-hot now that he has opened his mouth. A calm has settled over me because I can see him for the slimy cowardly snake that he is. “Apologize to Mary.”
“What for?” He shoots a look Mary’s way as if searching for validation. “We were just chatting. No law against that.”
“She asked you to let her go, and you ignored her.”
“Banter.” He shrugs. “We’ve all had a drink. She didn’t mean it—”
I aim a punch at his gut, but my arm is grabbed mid-swing by an iron fist. My dad. “Let it go, son. He isn’t worth it.”
Fianna is with him. Her gaze hops between me and Ronan, and I pray that she doesn’t go to him. Instead, she places an arm around Mary’s shoulders and we all make our way back to the table, leaving Ronan alone in the corridor.
