Delaney slapped shut the laptop and pushed herself off the bed. She jabbed an angry finger at my chest.
“You can take your measurements and shove them up your tight, rich ass.”
She gathered up her waitress uniform from last night into her arms, stacked the laptop on top, and snatched up the single remaining full bloody Mary. She shouldered past me and stormed out of the room. I followed, twirling the end of the measuring stick in lazy circles.
“This is what I get for believing a single word out of a rich person’s mouth,” Delaney mumbled as she stomped down the stairs. “You’re all blood suckers.”
“Your posture is absolutely atrocious,” I commented, sliding down the banister behind her. “Do you know how bad it is? You look like a hunchback. Or a manatee.”
“You think the whole world revolves around you,” Delaney continued angrily. “As if gravity itself could be fucking bought!”
I jumped down the last two stairs and then jump roped with the measuring tape at the base of the stairs.
“Other way,” I called after Delaney, who was heading in the wrong direction.
She twisted around and came back toward me.
“A ‘thank you’ is typically considered polite in fine company,” I said as she stalked past me without a glance, making me grin in amusement.
“You haven’t done anything to deserve what you have but does that stop you from acting like you did?” she shouted. “No! Hell no! Fuck no!”
Our footsteps echoed together down the long marble hallway, Delaney’s loud and frustrated, mine light and meandering.
“Do poor people know what a brush is?” I asked behind her as I eyed her messy bed head. “It’s this long-ish tool with bristles and a handle.”
“How fucking far away is the goddamn front door?” Delaney growled, struggling to keep everything in her arms.
“You run it through your hair so it doesn’t look like a horse’s tail.”
Delaney hurried down the grand staircase in the foyer and I remained at the top, leaning against the railing to watch her leave. I wasn’t going to stop her. I didn’t chase her. It just wasn’t who I was.
After I bored of my lady friends and their wandering fingers in the pool, I’d needed something else to amuse me. Delaney just happened to provide amusement in abundance.
I liked her. I really liked her even. I liked her spunk, I liked her fire, I liked her mouth—the shape of it, the sound of it, the bite of it. Her dark eyes performed voodoo magic on the beating of my heart, and the swing of her hips worked better than any hypnotist’s pendant. She intrigued me and aroused me and amused me. But I still wasn’t going to go after her.
I would let her disappear out of my life just like everything else that required work, effort, desire. And I wasn’t just talking about women, though there were certainly plenty of those. I let my role as leader and decision maker for my father’s company slip away, regressing into a PR nightmare figurehead.
I’d only ever known how to play the spoiled, lazy, undeserving asshole and spoiled, lazy, undeserving assholes don’t work for anything; spoiled, lazy, undeserving assholes don’t risk anything.
So I stood motionless, save a bored shrug, and silent, save a bored sigh, as Delaney closed the distance to the front door of the mansion. And I smiled.
Because that was what I did.
That was who I was.
And that was never, ever changing.
Delaney
I expected Ronan to stop me.
I don’t think I was silly for expecting this; he’d stopped me every other time I’d tried to leave, even if the efforts were weak at best. In the alleyway outside of The White Room, I was half a step away from never stopping when his first words to me lashed out in the dark like a bind around my throat: I have a few pointers. When I met him in his bedroom my fingers were wrapped around the door handle, seconds away from turning it, from turning the page, and he lured me back like a rabbit into the fangs of a wolf. Even at the edge of the pool he managed (while getting jacked off, I might add) some bullshit “lesson” to insert just enough doubt into my certainty that this was all a fun little game to him, just enough to make me stay a little bit longer (granted, under the pretence of using his free Wi-Fi and drinking his free booze).
All this to say, I blamed him for giving me the expectation that he was again going to stop me from leaving, again going to say something to make me pause, glance over my shoulder, turn around.
But I made it to the bottom of the marble staircase in the grand foyer of the mansion and his footsteps no longer echoed after mine. I crossed to the wrought-iron double front doors, like the gate to some medieval moat, and his words did not drift down to me past the gold and crystal chandelier. I wrenched open the door and there was nothing, nothing at all except for the blinding white glare of the sudden burst of afternoon sun.
I was mad before, but this sent my vision pulsing bright red. Because I expected him to stop me. Because I wanted him to stop me.
“Oh, pardon me.”
Stepping out the front door, I ran into two men, tall, straight-shouldered, dressed in obviously fine tailored suits. They stepped to either side of me as I blinked against the glaring rays.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I growled. “More goddamn rich people.”
The one with icy blue eyes tilted his head slightly to the side and assessed my silk pyjamas, armful of dirty clothes, laptop, and bloody Mary.
“Good afternoon, miss,” he said, nodding at my things. “Would you like help with that?”
I smiled a wide, fake smile and gave him a quick curtsey.
“Why, yes, of course, sir,” I said in a bad posh accent. “If you wouldn’t mind loading all of this into my Lamborghini? I would ask my butler to do it, but he’s busy getting my leopard’s nails painted with gold.”
The other one with a thick salt-and-pepper beard and tanned skin concealed a snort of laughter behind a big, callused hand. He cleared his throat and mumbled an apology when I sent him a dark glare.
“Miss, it appears that you don’t have any shoes on,” he said.
I jutted my chin up at him.
“Are you going to give me yours, sir?”
The man glanced at his companion, whose stern, straight lips betrayed just the tiniest flicker of a grin.
“I didn’t fucking think so,” I said. “So if you don’t mind.”
I nodded toward the steps below me and the two men stepped farther aside.
“Gentle-fucking-men,” I said with a quick bow of my head before descending the stairs. “Good after-goddamn-noon.”
I slurped my blood Mary as loudly and rudely as possible as I left them behind me, left Ronan behind me. The gravel crunched painfully beneath my bare feet, but I kept my shoulders straight and my chin high. I did have one regret, one single regret.
I regret forgetting the power cord for the laptop I stole.
Ronan
I was turning to leave when Shay and Kane stepped inside, looking aghast and bewildered, glancing each in turn back over their shoulders. I leaned back against the railing and grinned down at them.
“Ah, I see you two had the pleasure of meeting my darling protégé.”
Shay and Kane stared at me as if they’d just witnessed a car crash.