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Like I wasprecious to him.
Like I mattered to him.
It put me right back to that night in the cozy little cabin near the sea. When we were pretending to be a couple. When we spent every day living as though our real selves didn’t exist.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it?
Our real selves do exist. I’m Roisin MacAntyre. He’s Marco DeLuca.
The little bubble of happiness that we had out there? It wasn’t real. It wasn’t even close to real.
And when it became real, everything between us broke wide open.
Marco, unfortunately, is nowhere to be found.
Instead, I find Liam and Stassi, sitting together in the kitchen. Stassi looks furious, and Liam looks…
Well, also furious, but in an entirely different way.
I plop down into one of the dining room chairs. “Hi,” I mutter.
Stassi sucks in a huge breath, like she’s trying as hard as she can to move the conversation out of the mud they’ve stuck it in. “Feeling better?”
“A little,” I say.
I’m not feeling any better. Especially because, by my estimation, things went from bad to worse when Marco and I kissed.
Even if it was the most delicious kiss you’ve ever experienced…
I give myself a little shake. “Where’s Marco?”
“Taking a call in the garden,” Liam says. His eyes turn to me, looking a little too bright. “Thought he told you that?”
Oops.
Yes, someone’s romantic partner would, potentially, know when they were taking a call.
Instead of letting Liam dig further into my slip-up, I throw my shoulders back and give him a look. “And you’re just going to let him do that without spying on him?”
“Do I need to spy on your boyfriend, little sister?,” Liam retorts.
Damn.
“The garden’s bugged anyway,” Stassi waves a hand. “And I’m sure Marco knows that.”
He probably does.
I sigh. This type of constant cat-and-mouse is exhausting. Just one of a million reasons that I don’t like being around men like the men in my family.
Like Marco.
You can never really relax. You have to constantly stay vigilant.
And no one is ever,ever,safe.
“So. Are we going to talk about why Andrei Moretti is after one of the two of you, then?” Liam’s eyebrows raise.
I open my mouth, some kind of lie brewing on my tongue, but Stassi beats me to it. “It’s probably me,” she says with a little bit of a laugh.