mirror, especially one as conniving and dastardly as Aedan McCabe, would do me no favours. If I wanted to cease the comparison between the two of us, I had to act differently myself.
The irony—I supposed it was irony—was that I knew I would hate to see Delaney with a man like Aedan. I would say that he didn’t deserve her, that he couldn’t possibly treat her the way she deserved to be treated. I would pray that she woke up and found someone, anyone else…
And yet he was I and I, him.
Aedan and Kane disappeared into a crowded corner café and as Shay and I followed inside, he asked, “How’s it going with Delaney?”
My head snapped up. “What’s she got to do with any of this?” I demanded.
“Got to do with what?” Shay asked, frowning.
“What?”
“What?”
Shay looked at me with growing curiosity and I realised I’d given myself away, idiot that I am. I brushed him off with a wave.
“Nothing, nothing,” I said, nodding toward where Aedan and Kane had already grabbed a table. “I need a drink.”
Shay grinned as he followed me. “Because of Delaney?”
I bit my tongue as I stared up at the ceiling. Goddamn Kane and his cursed brother…
Ronan
“You’ve been quiet.”
I dragged my eyes from the flickering streetlamps passing by the tinted window like ships through the night and blinked dumbly at Delaney seated next to me in the back of the town car. We were being driven through the narrow cobblestone streets of Paris, though I could hardly recollect where we were, not even after glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, a golden spectacle in the hot, perfumed night. Delaney was watching me steadily through long dark lashes, the red marquee of a Parisian café casting a ruby glow over her soft curls.
“Huh?” I mumbled rather stupidly.
Delaney’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, but nevertheless I perceived it. I saw it and I knew I deserved it; I wasn’t acting like myself. To my credit, it was a lot of hard work, this strange, foreign thing called, I do believe, “caring”.
“You’ve hardly said a word since I came down the stairs at the hotel,” she said, subtlety searching my face.
Delaney on the stairs… she said it so casually, so simply, a person, a place, commonplace. But it was nothing like that, nothing like that at all. She descended the rose-carpeted stairs of the intimate five-star boutique hotel as silently as a mist over the emerald hills of Kerry. Her eyes were downturned, fixed on her tanned fingers that brushed the well-worn, dark wooden railing like a whisper. Her simple black heels emerged from the full black velvet skirt, embossed with a garden of flowers that rivalled le Jardin du Luxembourg, and descended to the next step sweetly, as if testing the waters of Glendalough Lake. I could see the way her chest quivered with each breath, even behind the delicate panels of lace that swept up to her narrow shoulders like vines twisting to the sun. Her hesitant gaze rose to mine halfway down the elegant, sconce-lined stairway and the stunning beauty of her gown was suddenly forgotten, because her eyes enchanted me like an ancient fire.
She stopped in front of me like a fawn before the lion, bold and beautiful and stupid. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I knew what I would have done before: I would have torn that dress in two, not even bothering to keep her clothed till we were sequestered in our suite on the top floor of the hotel. I would have emailed, or rather had Benson email, a half-hearted apology for not showing up to the organisers of the Le Ball later the next day. I would have left a couple hundreds piled haphazardly atop my cold pillow beside a still snoozing Delaney as I left to go find a new little French thing to sit atop my lap and leave red lipstick on my neck that I would easily wash off before going home.
I knew how to do things like that. That performance was easy, familiar. But caring, loving, risking, how the hell did one do that?
“I did say you looked beautiful,” I said in the back seat of the car as we glided closer to the Palais de Chaillot.
I said this in bad faith, because while I did say that, I said it in an embarrassed mumble while turning for the door and hiding my heated cheeks.
Delaney nodded, went to bite her lip uncertainly before seeming to