The Wedding Pact (The O'Malleys #2) (2 page)

“No, you just threw me in a trunk, and then tied me to a bed and—” She shook her head, drawing his attention to her mass of dark hair. “I don’t know why I’m still standing here. Stay the hell away from me.”

This was it. She would walk away, and it was entirely likely that he’d never see her again. He’d never see his album again. The last link he had to his mother. It was a stupid sentiment, but he’d never been able to fully pack away the old photo album. To know it had been in her possession for the last four months…It left him feeling edgy and strangely vulnerable. He couldn’t tell anyone that she’d taken it without admitting what it meant to him, and that was handing a loaded gun to the O’Malleys. No fucking way was he going there.

That’s the reason you’re here, dipshit. You’re not fawning over some woman, no matter how hot she is. She took something from you and you want it back
. “Where is it?”

She stopped, but she didn’t turn back. “Where is what?”

“Don’t play dumb, lovely. It doesn’t suit you.” He took a step closer, close enough to see the way her shoulders tightened, as if she could sense his proximity. “That album wasn’t yours to take.”

She gave him an icy look over her shoulder. “Even if I did take something—which I didn’t—I wouldn’t have kept it.”

She was bluffing. She had to be. He made himself hold perfectly still, all too aware that one wrong move would send her fleeing into the night. “Liar.”

“Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.”

It struck him that maybe she
had
gotten rid of the album. She had no reason to keep it. It was nothing to her—less than nothing. He strove to keep his thoughts off his face, but from the curiosity flaring in her green eyes, he did a piss-poor job of it. “I’ll make you a deal.”

“That’s rich. You have nothing I want.”

Maybe not, but he wasn’t above playing dirty. Not in this. Not in anything anymore. James closed the distance between them in a single step and grasped her chin tightly enough that she couldn’t pull away. “Give back what you stole, and you’ll never have to see me again.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Well, lovely, then I’m going to have to take that as a sign that you still want me as much as you did four months ago. Which means you want to see me again—and again, and again.”

Her eyes went wide. “Are you seriously offering
not
to stalk me if I give back this thing I supposedly stole? What kind of deal is that? It’s bullshit.”

She wasn’t afraid anymore, which was a goddamn relief. Instead there was a spark of anger vibrating through her body, and she was eyeing him like she wouldn’t mind taking a chunk out of his hide. He preferred this Carrigan to the frightened one. As long as she was focusing on where she wanted to hurt him, she wasn’t thinking about the threat he potentially posed. “I said you and I have unfinished business, and I damn well meant it.”

“Wrong.” She snorted. “Finished business is the only kind we have—ancient history. For the last time, get your big paws off me.”

He released her for the second time. “I’m not bluffing.”

“Neither am I.” She turned around and walked away.

This time he let her go. He had no goddamn right to threaten her, but the thought of never seeing the album again—it sure as fuck wasn’t the thought of never seeing
her
again—made him twitchy. It wasn’t a threat he’d have made six months ago, but he wasn’t the same man he’d been then. He’d given up trying to be better than the rest of the Hallorans. That same violence and aggression that ran through their blood ran through his, too.

No matter how much he hated it.

Things had gotten out of control after his older brother’s death four months ago. Even now, knowing what he did about the monster Brendan was, his absence was still a weight in James’s stomach. He didn’t choose his family, and half the time he didn’t like them, but they were all he had. The Halloran empire in Southie. All the death and unforgivable shit, and for what? A few square miles of land in the part of Boston no one else wanted?

He waited until he saw Carrigan climb into the back of a cab before he turned and headed for his car. He wasn’t quite thirty yet, and he was so goddamn
tired
. It never ended. The power games, and the unforgivable acts, and the compromises on what he used to think of as his honor. There was nothing left of it anymore, and hell if that didn’t send a pang of loss through him.

Not for the first time, he wondered what his mother would think of the men her beloved sons had turned into. He couldn’t shake the belief that he was failing her. But she was dead and gone some fifteen years, and his old man was very much among the living. The only link James had to her was the album Carrigan had taken—a shrine to the man he might have been in different circumstances.

That man was dead and gone as surely as his mother was. In reality, he’d never stood a chance. His course in life was set the second he came into this world as a Halloran, and any chance he had to choose a different path had gone up in smoke with Brendan’s death.

Now it all fell to James. The responsibility of keeping the Halloran name from disappearing the same way other enemies of the Sheridans had. People still talked about what Colm Sheridan did to the MacNamaras, though the details were sketchy now, thirty years later. All anyone knew was that it was horrific enough that no one had challenged him since.

James couldn’t let that happen to his people. And they were his, whether he wanted the responsibility or not. The only other option was walking away and letting his idiot of a younger brother take over, which was as good as signing the death warrant of everyone who depended on the Hallorans to keep shit in check in their territory.

Besides, where would he go? This was his life.

His options were sink or swim—and if he sunk, he’d take a hell of a lot of people with him. So he got up every day, and he swam, even though some of the shit he was required to do turned his stomach and made him lose sleep. He did it because there was no other option.

He slid into the driver’s seat of his cherry red ’70 Chevelle and sighed. His life would be a whole lot less complicated if he could let the specter of his night with Carrigan O’Malley go. She hated his ass, and for good reason. Spending more time chasing her was courting more problems than he had resources to deal with. Life was too tenuous right now to throw something like this into the middle of it—the whole thing could erupt like a bonfire at the first spark of trouble.

*  *  *

Carrigan huddled in the back of the cab, trying not to shake. James motherfucking Halloran. She should have known better than to risk going back to the same club he’d taken her from, but it had been a test. Avoiding that location meant she was afraid. Carrigan had learned a long time ago that every time she refused to face her fear, it got more powerful. A fear left unchecked took away her control.

And control was one thing she didn’t have nearly enough of as it was.

Why the hell was he there?
In the months and months of her frequenting that club, she’d never once seen him there. And she
would
have seen him there. James was the kind of man who stood out, even in a crowd. He exuded danger that even the most oblivious idiot could pick up on—every time she’d seen him, even in the most crowded room, he had a good six inches of empty space around him. People might not realize why they gave him wide berth, but
she
did. Because he was the kind of man who did very bad things without hesitation. A predator.

The fact that he was big and blond and gorgeous in a rough kind of way was only the icing on the cake if a woman was into that kind of thing. She’d been exactly that kind of woman the last time they’d met, and she’d like to say she’d learned from her past mistakes. James Halloran was a man she needed to avoid like the goddamn plague.

She’d bet what little freedom she had left that he’d never been there at the same time she was. As tempting as it was to chalk it up to a coincidence, it was too damn much to believe he’d been there tonight by chance. Which meant he’d been there looking for
her
.

She shivered. Taking the album was a mistake. She’d known the second she opened it and saw its contents that he wouldn’t rest until he had it back in his possession.

If she had half a brain in her head, she’d send the thing back to him and good riddance. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she shook her head. As questionable as it was, she wasn’t ready to give up that pawn—especially since it was important enough for him to seek her out.

He said he’d been thinking about that night
.

He lied.

He
had
to have lied. The sex obviously didn’t mean shit to him since he’d thrown her in a trunk less than ten minutes afterward. Not to mention that every remaining member of his shrinking family had been all too happy to threaten to kill her—and worse. They would have done it. She wasn’t naive enough to think they wouldn’t have.

Hell, her own father did worse than that to people who crossed him. There was no reason to believe James would have suddenly developed a conscience and played white knight to her damsel in distress. Yes, he’d stepped aside and let her and Callie go when they were sneaking out. He might have let them escape, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have stood by and watched her tortured and killed if his father commanded it. Her body burned at the memory of how he’d kissed her, of the look in his eyes when he’d growled that they had unfinished business.

Stop it
.

Which was why it was so incredibly unforgivable that her brain kept circling back to him in the intervening months. She could claim Stockholm syndrome until she was blue in the face, but it wasn’t the truth.

The cab pulled up in front of her family’s home, saving her from following that train of thought any further down the rabbit hole. James Halloran was the enemy, and she’d be every bit the stupid bimbo her father thought she was if she forgot that.

Carrigan paid the driver and climbed out of the cab. She made it all of three steps when she realized what she’d done—she’d come home wearing her clubbing clothes when she was supposed to have been at church, praying for her father’s immortal soul.
Goddamn it
.

“Rough night?”

She startled, nearly tipping over her heels, and spun to face the male voice. It took all of a second to recognize who it belonged to. “Cillian? What the hell are you doing lurking out here?” The middle child of seven—and third boy—Cillian had lived as much a charmed life as possible under their circumstances. He’d always been kind of an idiot, but he’d never had to face the same things she and her sisters had. Or even that Teague and Aiden had. There had been no one requiring him to grow up, and so he’d happily played at being a Lost Boy.

Until Devlin died.

It seemed like so much of their lives centered on that one tragedy. Things had been a certain way. Before Victor Halloran lost his mind and declared war. Before things escalated to the point of no return. Before a bullet from a Halloran man snuffed out the life of the best and brightest of their family. Now life was divided into Before Devlin and After Devlin. She rubbed a hand over her chest, wondering how much time it would take to dull the edge of pain that thinking about him brought.

As Cillian moved closer, the toll the last few months had taken on him was written all over his face. Even in the shadows, his eyes were haunted. He glanced at the intimidating front door to the town house, the trees lining the street making the darkness feel more absolute despite the lights peppered between them. “I wasn’t ready to go in.”

To face their reality.

Was there anyone in their family who didn’t want to run as far and fast as they could to get away from the hell they lived in? Carrigan didn’t think so. Six months ago, she would have put Cillian on that short list. Maybe even Devlin, too. Now? Now Devlin was gone and everything was different.

Devlin was the one who had still maintained an aura of innocence despite everything. The one who might have escaped the net their father was so intent on tangling them in. The net called
family
. She almost laughed. Who was she kidding? No one escaped. Not Devlin. Not Cillian. Sure as hell not her.

And what would you do if you
did
escape?

There was no point in thinking about it. This was her reality, and she had to make the best of it that she could. Carrigan looped her arm through his. “I’m not ready, either. Want to go for a walk?”

He glanced down the street. The same direction he’d been coming from—the direction of the pub where her brothers had all been walking back from the night everything went to hell. “It’s not safe.”

She could argue that it was as safe as it ever was, that they were supposed to be back to peacetime relations with the Hallorans, and that Teague marrying the heir to the Sheridans had made sure that they’d be fine on that end as well. But the memory of James waiting for her in that club was still too fresh. It wasn’t safe. It might never be safe again. “The Commons?” It was cold enough that she was already starting to shiver, the faint wind cutting through the thin fabric of her dress.