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“Saturday night. At eleven-thirty, if you can believe it.”
He laid the dough on the floury countertop, still not meeting my eyes. “I was thinking of taking a few more days off,” he admitted.
“You were?” I said hopefully.
“But I was thinking along the lines of running away with you. Someplace where I won’t have to share you with hundreds of people. I know a guy on the coast who charters sailboats. I thought, four or five days, no worries, no looking over our shoulders. No cell coverage.”
I snorted. “You do like to push your luck, don’t you?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “All the way to the very end.”
I watched his floury fingers patting dough into the loaf shape. “It does sound wonderful,” I said. “But I was hoping—” I stopped, still unsure of myself.
“What were you hoping?” He laid the dough onto a floured baking sheet. He flicked his gaze up, frowning impatiently when I didn’t answer. “Tell me.”
“I want this to be real, Liam,” I said. “Right now it’s just a fairy tale, totally removed from my real life. I have to pinch myself to make sure you exist.”
He slipped his arms around my waist, careful not to touch me with his floury hands. “Let me prove to you that I exist, sweetheart.”
I swatted him. “Stop trying to distract me, damn it. I want my friends to meet you. I want you to hear my artists. I want this to be real.”
He pondered that. “How long is this conference?”
“Four days. Thursday through Sunday.”
He tapped his fingers on the counter. “I propose a compromise.”
“Yeah? Lay it on me.”
“How about I come to the conference Saturday night, see Eoin’s showcase, and experience your life Sunday. Then Monday we go sailing for a few days. Deal?”
My heart soared. “Deal. That sounds amazing.”
“Great,” he said. “I’ll call the guy and make the reservation. Now, let me put this in the oven and wash my hands so I can touch you properly.” He scrubbed and rinsed his hands and pulled me into a tight embrace. I felt the emotional intensity in his hard, urgent grip, and gave it right back to him. Clinging like a vine.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” I said. “It makes me feel like there’s hope for us.”
He was so quiet for so long, apprehension gripped me. “Sorry,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Forget I said that, if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m hoping for that, too.”
Huh. Didn’t seem like he was hoping too hard, judging from his tone, but a girl could try. I buried my face against his sweater and hung on with all my strength.
As if strength had anything to do with hanging on to a man’s love.
Chapter Twenty-Five
John adjusted the angle of the flexible head of the video camera he was threading between the slats of the heating vent, checking the monitor to be sure it would cover the whole miserable little apartment.
He was in a foul mood, and had been ever since that bruising encounter with the asshole carpenter who’d taken it upon himself to be Nancy D’Onofrio’s champion. Knightly had been an unpleasant surprise, causing John to lose even more face with his employer—something he could ill afford to do. For that, Knightly would die screaming. After this shitbag job was behind him, he would take care of that little item. The carpenter’s gruesome death would be a personal side project. There were occasional things he did purely for love of the craft, not for the money.
But first, the money. And the helpless, luscious, fuckable D’Onofrio girls.
He’d taken care of the worthless turd he’d hired for local backup, but that did nothing to satisfy the bloodlust raging inside him, which made it uncomfortably hard to concentrate. That had been just a matter of taking out the garbage before it began to stink. Pure practicality. No element of recreation, so it blew off no steam.
He looked around Nancy D’Onofrio’s wretched apartment and quickly concluded that she hadn’t located the sketches, or she’d be living much better than this. He’d searched her sister Antonella’s apartment in Brooklyn the day before. It was lined with books rather than CDs, but had more or less the same pathetic square footage. He’d searched every nook and cranny, studied every scrap of correspondence, and rigged watching and listening devices.
Vivien, of course, was currently unhoused, crashing with her sister. He’d been through her ramshackle van, but had found nothing of interest.