hell. As a prize, she would steal the color of my eyes and use them as feathers on her arrows.
6
Keely
On the ride home from the fair, I wondered if there was a way to purge my brain. Do one of those detoxes everyone raved about, but instead of doing it for my body, do it for the wellness of my mind.
Because when one infuriating, probably fucking crazy Irish marauder got into my brain, it was almost impossible to get him out. He kept pillaging around, taking what he wanted—my time and attention.
I refused to give them up.
Yet.
There they went. Straight to him.
Even in that moment, I was still thinking about him and what had happened at the fair. My reaction to him took me by surprise. As soon as I laid eyes on him, it felt like my breath had been knocked from my lungs. The man looked fucking amazing in a t-shirt and jeans, as fine as he’d looked in a suit.
For someone who was probably put together in hell, he was heaven to look at.
His eyes were green; his limbal ring thick and black. It made him look wicked. And for the first time, I noticed a tattoo on his neck: a tiger with the same color eyes. The collar of his coat had hidden it when we’d met at the cemetery. It spanned from underneath his ear to the end of his neck, ending right above his collarbone. It looked like it was going to climb out of his skin and devour me.
Heat crept up my neck at the thought of it. Think about something else. Anything else.
Happenstance. That was the word he’d used to describe our meeting at the cemetery, and he’d said it with that soft and lyrical Irish lilt.
Happenstance my ass. Even in such a dead place, he was such a life force. His moves were calculated and done with purpose.
Yeah, that wasn’t technically thinking about something else, but I couldn’t seem to stop.
I’d always go back to our meeting at the cemetery. Something had been nagging me about it, and I couldn’t figure out what. Not until it hit me at the fair: this was New York. If you met someone twice, there was probably more to it. Then when Cash turned up as my brother’s new boss? The one who gave him a fully restored vintage car as a bonus? My bullshit meter exploded.
The cemetery. Bam.
Harrison’s new boss. Bam.
Showing up at the fair to “meet” me. Bam.
I was waiting for the BOOM.
What the fuck did he want with me?
What was even more puzzling—the thought of him made me uneasy and excited.
Being close to him? Excited me more than anything. It was also what pissed me off the most. My feelings around him screwed with my mind. There was something about him that immediately made me want to take a step back and then a step forward. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I felt like the family in Beetlejuice when they all started dancing because the husband and wife ghosts controlled their functions.
Giving myself some credit, though, I felt like I handled him pretty well at the fair.
On the other hand.
I wished I could extend a fist through time and punch myself for giving him the satisfaction of knowing he had rattled me.
Darlin’. The way he’d said the word, with that sexy voice of his, made me shiver.
I was not an experienced woman when it came to men like him, but I did have a heightened sense when it came to the world in general, and something told me that he was the kind of man who easily read the signs from a woman. And he used them for his nefarious schemes. In his case, he had the perfect weapons: face, voice, body. His fucking charm locked it in tight.
Charm—such a pretty word for something that could turn life ugly if used as a weapon. Especially when he used it to get whatever he wanted. And when charm didn’t work? There was no doubt he’d get it another way.
I hoped after I showed those men at the fair how good I was at hitting each target set out for me, Cash Kelly would realize that I wasn’t to be fucked with. I’d shoot an arrow in his ass so fast that he’d think an invisible foot had kicked him in it.
I grinned to myself, imagining it.
There was one truth that I couldn’t ignore, though, no matter how hard I tried. It always led me back