Page 41 of Connor's Claim
Riordan gripped my arm. “You’re fucking insane.”
“Cry to the pathologist who stitches up your dead body.”
He wrenched me off him so he could stand upright, his mouth a slash of anger and his eyes dangerously dark. “I needed to come to check she was all right. With a man like you around?—”
“You’re the one who broke into her house yet ye think I’d hurt her?” An incredulous laugh left me. I clenched my fists, ready to lay into him like he deserved.
Then a hand landed on my chest. At the touch, my energy left me, and Everly pushed between Riordan and me.
“Stop.” She linked her gaze to mine. “You don’t need to fight. He only wanted to make sure I was okay.”
“Why?” I tore my gaze back to his. “Why are ye so interested in Everly? Why follow her around like some kind of stalker?”
“I’m not stalking her.” He swore. Scrubbed his hands into his brown hair. “There’s a reason why I care.”
“Give it to us, then,” I said, deadly low but audible over the music that made the backdrop of our standoff. “What possiblereason could ye have if it isn’t wanting to fuck her or being paid to make a second attempt at delivering her to your boss?”
“It’s neither of those things.”
“Then what?”
Riordan worked his jaw but remained silent.
“Then what?” I repeated, louder.
“We’re related,” he finally released.
Related? I knew all her family, the aunt, her father’s sister who sent cards twice a year for birthdays and Christmas but never visited and had no kids, and her mother’s father, Everly’s grandfather, who was in a care home in the Midlands, so affected by dementia he barely remembered he’d once had a daughter, let alone the fact the woman had died.
“Liar,” I snarled.
Shifting to stand alongside him, and with Arran bracketing her, Genevieve stared at the man I was still facing off with. “Not that I doubt you, but how is Everly part of our family?”
Riordan sucked in a breath and eyed Genevieve. “She isn’t. I’m related to her, not you.”
For a messed-up, heart-wrenching moment, I braced myself against a confession of them being somehow married. It made no sense, but what other explanation was there?
A secret wedding, a love affair that had come after me. A tiny green shoot in my heart withered and died.
“I don’t understand,” Genevieve said.
“Because he’s full of it,” I added.
“Because, asshole, she’s my sister,” he finally spat out.
At my side, Everly froze.
I replayed the word, stunned and unable to accept it.Sister. Not a bride. Not his.
Riordan passed his hand over his face. “Fuck. This isn’t how I meant to do any of this. Everly, I’m sorry you had to hear it likethat. Gen, can the three of us talk somewhere we don’t have an audience?”
He sent a pointed look my way.
Arran curled an arm around Genevieve’s shoulders. He’d followed me inside but stood back to let me handle the scene. “My office.”
She nodded, her gaze flicking from her brother to Everly and back, then made for the stairs. Riordan followed. Everly paused, took a breath, and trotted after them.
Like a whipped pup, I trailed her, guarded her, even though inside, I was still dying over her. I had been for years. Somehow, I hadn’t been able to make it stop, and a few days in her company had me fucking caring about her.