would’ve learned how to love him deeper. He would’ve learned how to love me. And I would have given him my heart. He was my turtle, winning the race of life at a reasonable pace with me. Not a quick-witted and cunning cat that came in, tried to steal my heart, and then set us on a miserable pace until we both burned out. All because of vengeance.
Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have mentally complained about Scott when we were together. I had jinxed myself beyond belief.
I stared down at my messenger bag, stuffing a few things in.
Okay, so maybe Scott wouldn’t have been the guy I would’ve ended up with, but he had potential, didn’t he? If not Scott, someone like him.
Stop making excuses, Keely. Listen to your heart.
I refused to. It had betrayed me by already feeling something for the marauder. Especially after that kiss.
“Okay, Kee, we need a plan. Like yesterday. You’re not going to get out of this, or get even, if you don’t start setting some ground rules now. Even if you do it without him realizing it.” My Mam always said the trick with my Da was making him think he was the head of the house. “Minds are nothing without thoughts,” she’d always say. “I’m the thoughts.”
“Thoughts that lead to clever ideas are so important,” I said to myself, stuffing some papers in my bag.
“No doubt.”
“Ooh!” I twirled around, flinging four or five papers at the man who’d entered my dressing room.
Raff deflected and started laughing. Then he bent over and picked them up, handing them back to me.
“Tell me now if this is a family trait that I should get used to.” I stuck the papers inside. “You scare me. Your cousin constantly scares me. I mean, you’re both big men, why do you both walk like ghosts?”
“I wasn’t aware ghosts walked,” he said, going to take a seat on the small couch. He grinned at me, resting his foot on his knee.
I waved a hand. “You know what I mean.”
“Mean what you say and say what you mean.” His grin turned even wider.
“What are you doing here so early?” Cash had appointed Raff my shadow after the party at Harrison’s house. But he usually came later to pick me up. I knocked off earlier than usual because of my shitty day.
“Cash sent me to bring you home.”
He was keeping tabs on me, but that didn’t make a lump form in my throat, blocking airflow to my lungs. It was one word. Home. The marauder’s house.
Raff had overseen the move from my old apartment to Kelly’s warehouse-turned-palatial-palace in Hell’s Kitchen. After Kelly orchestrated that dramatic scene in front of Harrison’s house, he told me I had three days to get my shit ready to be moved into his place. He actually used the word “our”—as in, his and mine.
If that kiss wasn’t enough to knock me on my ass, moving in with him swept the barstool right out from underneath me.
I stared at Raff for second, maybe longer, because he raised his eyebrows at me. I’d been lost in thought.
In the time it took me to walk to my dressing room and pack up some of my stuff, I had come up with plan that might rattle Cash Kelly a little. It was going to take courage to see it through, though. I took a deep breath and said, “Cash’s family church, the one he was telling me about?”
Cash said we were going to get married there, since the priest had been a family friend for years—no date had been set, but he’d mentioned it to my Mam and Da after the scene with Scott. My parents were familiar with the church, so my Mam approved. Not that Kelly seemed to care one way or the other, but it was a point for him.
“What about it?” Raff said.
“I’d like to stop there before going home.”
Raff nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’d be all right.”
I nodded, more for myself, swooping up my bag from the table in front of the mirror. The reflection lit up by megawatt bulbs showed a woman at war with herself, but I’d already made up my mind. “I have one other stop before going to church. It won’t take long.”
Raff narrowed his eyes at me but came along without protest.
The small office inside of the massive church was dim, since the sun was starting to set. Raff had gone to find Father Flanagan and had left me alone with