intentions. Instead, I’d been relatively open and honest.
The only thing I hadn’t declared outright?
How long she’d be in my bed.
I couldn’t put a time frame on something I didn’t have an answer to.
If she was crap in bed, then I’d let her go after one screw. But if, as I suspected, things were awesome between us, no way was I doing away with my leverage. Not if these sparks between us could morph into an out-an-out inferno.
See, ironically enough, I liked Senator Alan Davidson. Or I had until I’d learned the bastard was schtupping my woman.
He was good for my business with his policies, and as such, the news of just how I was using Aoife for my own gain would never come to light.
Having a politician in my pocket would make me look like the golden boy in Aidan Sr.’s eyes, but I wasn’t tempted.
I made the man enough money to have his respect—more than that, I laundered nearly sixty percent of his capital with Conor’s help. We were both the financial brains behind Acuig, but we were a team. We bounced off each other, always had.
Aidan would love to have a Senator, one who wanted to rise to the White House, in his back pocket, but I didn’t want that.
It wasn’t that I had a conscience.
I didn’t.
Leverage was leverage, and business was business.
But I knew, in my gut—and I trusted my gut. It had saved my life too many times to ignore—that blackmailing a man like Davidson would go nowhere.
There was a reason I’d liked the dick before today. That reason? He was a career Army man, who’d served during Desert Storm and had served his dues to this country. Any man deserved respect for that alone. More than that, as a politician, he’d seemed inviolate.
Sure, every man had some secrets, especially after getting into the down and dirty game of politics, and I didn’t even begrudge the man for having a little something-something on the side. I only begrudged the fact it was this woman.
Possessive and stupid?
Sure.
Was I thinking with my cock?
Definitely.
Still, there was a reason Davidson was where he was. Until now, his reputation had been lily white. I was under no illusion that Aidan would want to get his claws into the Senator, but a guy like Davidson? He’d bite back.
There was not a single doubt in my mind, no matter what Aoife thought, the politician would never allow himself to be manipulated into doing anything he didn’t want. So, no, I wasn’t about to use the Senator’s sticky side boo as a means of getting an in with the future President of the USA. I was too fucking smart to do that. Aidan, not so much, and the last thing I needed was Aidan and Aoife in the same fucking place.
Aidan resented the fact that none of his boys were married. It was a point of contention, one that we all narrowly avoided by never bringing the subject to his attention. But taking home a woman? Yeah, that would have him leaping down my throat, and no way in fuck did I want that conversation.
I was stressed as we walked down the darkened parking garage toward the elevator. In the background, the exhaust on Samuel’s beat-up car made a racket as he set off and headed home for the night—on the proviso that if I needed him, he’d be back here within thirty minutes. I always made that stipulation, but I rarely asked him to come back unless business with Aidan made it imperative.
Tonight, unfortunately, Aidan had brought business to me.
He said we had a problem, and Aidan’s problems were rarely things like a leaky roof or a bathroom faucet that was dripping and driving Magdalena, his wife, nuts.
I was hoping that whatever his issue was today, it would be dealt with after a half-hour’s conversation, one that was liberally lubricated with half a bottle of good Irish whiskey, then he’d fuck off home and I could, well, fuck.
The elevator whirred as we silently climbed the floors to the penthouse. I had private access to it, and that came as one of the perks of being the developer behind the building. I’d had the penthouse designed with my personal tastes in mind.
I said it was a perk, but it was one Aidan gave us.
This was my ‘bonus’ for hitting an all-time high almost five years ago—thirty million dollars in profit, and five laundered through the system Conor and I had drafted that year.
Conor had