Before I dug in, I gave him a dark look, and he groaned.
“Okay, so we’re frigging rude barbarians here in Mac Tire. From now on I’ll make sure to give you everyone’s family ties before I even tell you their names when I’m introducing you. I will never understand women. Particularly American women. I don’t even know why the hell I try to reason with any of them. Ever.” He muttered the last bit to himself and abruptly grabbed a fistful of chips from the plate and stuffed them in his mouth.
“All right then,” I allowed after I savored a forkful of the delicious shepherd’s pie. It was spicy and warm, and hit my empty stomach like a welcome friend.
“Glad to have the royal pardon, your Majesty,” he mocked, and I flipped him off because my mouth was too full to yell at him.
I decided to concentrate on my food and not Paddy because he’d just ruin my appetite, the sonofabitch, and I was starving. I applied myself to my plate, and by the sounds he made, he practically made love to his fish and chips.
Replete, I leaned back in the armchair. My plate was incredibly empty, and so was my glass. Paddy remedied the latter by refilling it from the pitcher on his desk.
He studied me for a moment as he stood before me. “You’ve got some color back in your face. Non-choleric-rage-related color, that is.” He reached down to brush some hair from my face, and I flinched. His mouth tightened.
“I know you think I’m some sort of complete, unfeeling bastard, Stanzie, but—”
“I don’t think—I know,” I interrupted.
He sighed and stomped back behind his desk. Faith’s dream had to be bullshit. There was no way I would forgive this man for abandoning me after he told me I was family.
“So where is he?” At my question Paddy nearly dropped the pitcher of Guinness and set it down carefully. “Paddy?”
“Belfast,” Paddy told me, although by the look on his face he’d rather have eaten glass than answer me. “He got an offer for his cottage, and he went to the closing. He’ll be back soon. I think.” His tone was doubtful.
I thought about the cottage in Belfast. I’d never seen it, but Murphy and I had had plans to go there together for weekend getaways after we made our home here in Dublin. We were going to keep my condo in Boston and his cottage in Belfast, and now he’d sold the cottage. It shouldn’t have hurt because the man walked out on me four months ago, but it still did. Now I’d never see it. Of course, it could be cover for his investigation into the whereabouts of Mick Shaughnessy, but I could not blurt that question in case Paddy didn’t know about the conspiracy.
Besides, Murphy wouldn’t have to put the cottage up for sale to support his investigation of Grandfather Mick. If anything, he’d want to keep it as a base away from home as he traveled around the UK. My stomach soured, and I wished I hadn’t wolfed my food so fast.
“Well, I guess he’s not planning to leave the pack and grow vegetables this time around,” I remarked, chin jutted.
After Sorcha died he’d left Mac Tire, bought the cottage, and escaped. After he left me, he’d sold the cottage and apparently planned to say in the pack. Which meant…
“Who is she? He’s got someone new, hasn’t he?” My heart beat painfully in my chest, and I wanted to rip it out and stomp on it to make it stop.
“Don’t be daft,” Paddy advised. “Sure and he’ll have to bond with somebody if you don’t figure out a way to get back with him, but you heard Alannah, didn’t you? He’s been scowling and moody the whole bloody time he’s been here. Snapping at people or more likely ignoring the crap out of them. If he’s got somebody new, she’s a masochist for sure.” Then a grin spread across his attractive face. “You’re jealous.”
“You’re fucked in the head,” I snapped, and he laughed, the bastard.
“You do want him back,” he crowed.
I scowled at him. “Well, duh, that’s why I’m here. But you don’t have to get all smirky about it. So I admit it. I want him back. But since I wasn’t the one who walked out, I don’t see how what I want means shit.”
“Then why are you here?”
Because of you, mostly, I thought to myself but didn’t say since Paddy didn’t know that part. Ask him, Stanzie. Ask him if Murphy’s in bad trouble. But I wasn’t sure it was the right time. I wasn’t even sure that’s what the dream meant. I wasn’t sure of any goddamn thing.
“I’m tired. Do you know any good hotels? Since Murphy’s not here, there’s no sense in me sticking around here tonight.” I yawned and stretched my arms over my head.
An affronted expression made Paddy look like a mule.
“A hotel now? You’ll be traveling all this way, and you being Mac Tire and asking me if I know any good hotels? You rude little bitch.”
“What?” I glared. “What did I do now?”
“Mac Tire don’t stay in hotels in Dublin, woman,” Paddy roared, and if they didn’t hear him downstairs in the pub, it was only because everyone had gone deaf.
“Where would you suggest I stay?” I made my voice as sweet as I could, but he still grimaced as if I sounded like nails down a chalkboard.
“Not a hotel,” he barked. He fished in his pocket and came up with a set of keys. He extracted one from the main keychain. It had its own keychain, one with a small Eiffel Tower dangling from it. My heart gave a lurch in my chest.
“Here,” he tossed it to me, and I caught it automatically. My mind flashed back to a windy afternoon in Paris when Murphy and I had sat together on a bench on the first level of the Eiffel Tower and drank coffee while we read case files Jason had given us.
I’d bought the keychain in the gift shop, and somehow he’d ended up with it. I’d forgotten all about it until I saw it in Paddy’s hand.
“I’ll give you a lift to Liam’s place. You’ll stay there.”
“What if he comes home?” I said, panicked.
“Oh, the horror,” Paddy screamed in a girlish voice. “The man you want to get back with comes home and finds you sleeping in his bed. Whatever would you do?”
“Shut up,” I snapped. “You’re such a bastard, Paddy.”
“If you continue to hurt my feelings, I’ll make Alannah give you that lift,” he threatened, and I gritted my teeth.
Paddy watched me drink my Guinness. His eyes fascinated me. I’d never seen anyone with different-colored eyes before him. I wondered if his wolf’s eyes were two different colors and tried to remember if I’d noticed the afternoon I’d had to shift for the tribunal. My mind had been focused on other things—like how my wolf had refused at first to come out, so it was no wonder I didn’t have a clue.
“I meant what I said, you know.” He had that wistful, remorseful look on his face again—the one I didn’t trust because he was a lying, manipulative bastard. “About you being family. About how you belong to me.” The possessiveness in his voice was not overtly sexual, although there were undertones since he was an Alpha male and I was a fertile female. Instead he evoked feelings of protectiveness—feelings I fought because they weren’t true.
Was this the prelude to the scene from Faith’s dream? Would he open his mouth and say, Now do you believe in me again?
I hoped not because I sure as hell didn’t feel like saying I belonged to him. Maybe I ought to put the dream aside and concentrate on dialog that actually took place versus the stuff of Faith’s unconscious imagination.
But if Murphy was in trouble, Paddy would know it. And he’d tell me, I hoped.