same scared teenage girl she was back then, Gage,” he said. “Give her more credit than that.” He huffed. “After all, this is the same woman who challenged her new boss in front of her superiors. I’d say she’s tougher than you think.”
I didn’t comment and we both sat in silence, nursing our drinks, before I asked, “What would you do?”
Lorcan snorted. “What would I do?”
“Yeah.” I looked over at him. “What would you do in this situation?”
He looked over at me, lifting one black brow. “I wouldn’t be in this situation,” he replied. “Not judging, Gage, but had it been me, and I found someone who drove me to the brink of madness just by looking at her, nothing, and I do mean nothing, would have stopped me from hunting her the fuck down. I would have gone to the ends of the Earth in search of her.”
My male pride was taking a beating, but I couldn’t do much about it. He wasn’t calling me out, but he wasn’t lying either. “Even if you believed she had left you?”
Lorcan let out a dark laugh. “Especially, if I thought she left me,” he said. “I don’t connect with many people, Gage. I’m not built like that. So, if there was a woman who inspired that kind of insanity from me, there’s no way she’d have a choice in the matter.”
“She doesn’t anymore,” I stated.
Lorcan gave me a sharp nod and returned to his drink. “As it should be,” he agreed. “Don’t let that girl go again, Gage.”
“I’m not.”
After a few moments of silence, we got to talking about work again. “I’ll assign another-”
“Don’t,” I said, stopping him before he agreed to my ridiculous demand. “I’ll figure something out.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t need you storming into CI like a lunatic because you don’t have your shit together.”
“Nah,” I reassured him, even though I couldn’t give him total certainty. “I’ll just get the marriage license this week and force her hand next week, if not this Friday.”
Lorcan chuckled. “You really are out of your mind.”
I side-eyed him. “This from the guy who just admitted to hunting some poor girl down to the ends of the Earth and forcing her to be with him. Yeah, okay, Lor.”
“I didn’t say your actions weren’t valid. I just said you were out of your mind.”
“Okay. Quite sure I’m done here for the evening,” I announced. “But I need you here tomorrow, same time, so I don’t do something stupid like show up at Mystic’s house while her brother’s still there.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “We can drink as I tell you all about Molly’s party last weekend.”
I winced at the tone of Lorcan’s voice. “That good, huh?”
“Even better,” he deadpanned. “So much so, that I took two of her stupid friends to The Sphynx.” The Sphynx was one of the many hotels CI owned. “The dumb bitches thought I was too drunk to overhear their scheme of an unplanned pregnancy.”
My eyes widened. “What the fuck?”
He looked over at me. “Yeah,” he scoffed. “They had gone into the bathroom to pretty themselves up and forgot to shut the door all the way. I had walked over to ask them what was taking so long when I overheard them whispering.”
Instead of leaving, I signaled the bartender for another round and got comfortable. “Jesus,” I breathed.
“Yeah. I guess the plan was whoever got pregnant would get the monthly check while the other look for another sucker to trap,” he replied.
“What did you do?”
“Got sober, lost my hard-on, and kicked them the fuck out,” he said as the bartender set down a fresh glass in front of each of us. “Then I called Molly and told her to never invite me to one of her parties ever again.”
Ouch.
“And?”
Lorcan laughed. “Now those two are on Molly’s shit list, and it’s not looking pretty.”
I took a drink of my whiskey and felt a pang of unease for those two women. Molly’s shit list is not where anyone wanted to be.
She was worse than Lorcan.
Chapter 33
Mystic~
David Booker was turning out to be as sharp as a tack. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised, considering that Gage hadn’t become wealthy by hiring idiots, but the guy was definitely turning out to be a godsend for this project. I had planned on working around the clock on this project, but with David’s knowledge and experience, it looked as if the hours weren’t going to be too painful.
I had just finished emailing him