The Seduction of Destiny Rhode [The Seduction 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (27 page)

“You and I both know there ain’t nothin’ to talk about, unless it’s how to make Karissa give me another boilermaker!”

She poked her head out from the back room, and he growled at her.

She flipped him off and went to take a drink order on the other side of the bar.

“Gotta respect that girl.” Aiden flashed a cheesy smile.

“I don’t.” Ronan rested his head on the bar. Watching Destiny preen for her ex was too much for him.

“Aren’t you the one who cut her loose, Ronan?”

Was he?

He couldn’t remember.

All he clearly recalled was being scared shitless at how perfect she was for him, and when she seemed the tiniest bit hesitant, he used it against her to torture them both.

“You know I don’t do serious.” Even as he spoke the words, his heart called him a liar.

He’d happily do serious with Destiny in a heartbeat, and maybe that was the problem. Maybe he never wanted to be in the position to have that much control over someone, that much responsibility. Maybe finding the little club whores to play with was enough for him. He had his work, which kept him busy.

“Destiny wouldn’t have approved of my work schedule. You know that was a problem in her marriage.” He surprised himself with how even he sounded.

And that was true. He traveled probably every bit as much as her ex did, and he didn’t like the way that thought always made him think of her in Aiden’s bed.

“And Destiny told you your work was a problem for her?”

“She didn’t have to. She fucked you to show just how much of a problem it was for her the last time. Of course to look at them now you’d never know there’d been any trouble.” He grumbled half under his breath, but he was still pissed about how much time she was spending with that man.

He’d seen them swimming together. He heard they’d gone to the amusement park one day. They closed the bar down more than once, and two nights ago he’d seen them sharing a candlelit late supper in the Italian restaurant that had just opened inside the resort.

“That’s not fair, and do I have to deck you again? I told you this would happen!”

Ronan got up in his face. “No, your prediction was that I’d hurt
her
.”

He looked across the lobby again. They had moved to a more secluded area, and Oscar was holding her hand. The only one hurting seemed to be him.

“She doesn’t seem desperately wounded to me.” Ronan stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“To a real bar that serves its customers!” He stumbled just slightly.

Aiden jumped off the barstool and followed behind him.

“You can’t drive like this. If you’re determined to get shitfaced, come back to my suite. I’ve got the good stuff, and Bella and her nanny are staying with Mrs. Murphy tonight.”

Ronan considered the offer. It’d be a hell of a lot easier.

“And what of your wife?”

“Working, if you can believe it.” Aiden rolled his eyes.

“Fine. Let’s go, but I intend to get really damned drunk, and I don’t want no one around playing mom, got it?” He slapped Aiden’s shoulder.

“Yeah. I got it.”

Together they walked across the lobby and courtyard to the building in the back where most of the employees were housed for the duration of the renovation.

“Did she tell you she wants to turn this building into long-term rentals?” Aiden’s lame attempt at casual conversation was duly noted.

“No, she never mentioned.” But it sounded just like her.

“She wants to provide a place for people in a hard place, or people who are just damn lonely, like Mrs. Murphy.”

They climbed the steps together, with Ronan stumbling only twice.

“She’s got a soft heart. She needs someone to look out for it.” Ronan knew people would always try to take advantage of her goodness, and for some sick reason, he wanted to be her watchdog.

Aiden opened the door, and Ronan half stepped, half fell inside. He found his way around a myriad of baby toys to a white sectional and dropped his ass down onto it.

“Whiskey, or rum?” Aiden held up two bottles.

“Where’s the whiskey from?”

Ronan raised his brows at him, but Aiden only gave him a look in return that told him he needn’t ask.

“Fine, I’ll take the whiskey.”

He looked around the room while Aiden poured. Aiden and Cassidy, of course, were in a suite, but it wasn’t that difference from his own room he found so shocking. What stood out were the wedding pictures, and the baby pictures, and the pictures of Aiden, Cassidy, and Bella with a beautiful older woman with long dark hair, all smiling on a coast somewhere. What stood out were the toys and the books and Aiden’s suit jackets flung over the backs of chairs. What stood out was the fact that the place looked like people actually lived there unlike his room with a bed and a suitcase.

Ronan’s only advanced warning he was about to be attacked was a quick blur of white rushing up on him. He blinked and tried to push the thing away, but it was slobbering all over his face.

“What the fuck!” Ronan stood up, but instantly fell over again.

“Harold! Get down!” Aiden came over, handed Ronan his drink and scooped the white fluff up off the sofa and into his arms.

“Is that a dog?” Ronan squinted, trying to make it out while it wriggled in Aiden’s arm.

“It’s Cass’s dog, and don’t tell her, but I kind of have a soft spot for him.” He walked over to the kitchen and pulled something out of a tin on the counter and fed it to the little mongrel.

Ronan sat on Aiden’s couch, drinking whiskey and watching Aiden play kissy-face with a dog. When had the world as he’d known it ceased to exist?

He remembered a very different Aiden, but then they were never all that close. In fact, he wasn’t close to anyone. Maybe that hadn’t been the best choice he’d ever made. Aiden came and sat beside him, dog placed on his lap. It was the strangest dichotomy.

“So why don’t you tell me what the real problem is, Ronan? You in love with her?”

Aiden’s proclivity for bluntness ordinarily suited Ronan just fine, but not tonight.

“Leave it, Aiden.” He growled and finished the whiskey.

“Mmm…no.” Aiden scowled at him. “I warned you off her. I told you it was a bad idea. Now it seems to have blown up in your face, and I want to know what the fuck is going on.”

“Yeah, well, I’d like to know why the fuck her ex is here, but we don’t all get what we want, do we?”

“He’s here because Destiny’s mother is a damned busybody, and she got Oscar to bring her down here so she could stick her big-ass nose in Destiny’s business.”

Ronan tried to take in all that information, but what he mostly got stuck on was how Aiden had managed to gain the upper hand over him so effortlessly.

“So you got what you wanted, now I get what I want, or I’ll set the white terror loose on you. I’d imagined drunk off your ass as you are, it would be a trip to watch you try and defend yourself. Harold here has the fastest tongue on any coast.”

“Keep your damned dog off me.” Ronan got up and helped himself to more whiskey.

“Ronan, getting drunk isn’t going to help. It’s just gonna make it a bitch at work tomorrow.”

He came back to sit on the sofa, and feeling a small twinge of guilt for his attitude, he pet the little dog on the head as he walked past.

“Sometimes, Aiden, all a man’s got is his whiskey.” He held his glass up in a mock toast before taking a gulp.

“Funny, ’cause I thought you had a beautiful and damned sexy woman not too long ago.”

“Stop. You don’t understand. You don’t know what went on. So just stop.”

“I don’t, you’re right. What I know, though, is that I told you to stay away from her, and I told her to stay away from you, and neither one of you listened to me. I know for most of the summer, neither one of you had ever seemed happier. Oh yeah, you kept the affair quiet, but she was glowing, you were singing. That’s not just sex, Ronan, but what? You convinced yourself it was? When you started to realize it wasn’t, you freaked out? Or you just that much of an asshole that as soon as she took your bait, you pulled away from her?”

Ronan ran his hand through his hair and took another gulp of whiskey. It wasn’t that simple, and he didn’t feel the need to explain it.

“I told you, I came up here to get drunk. There was no invitation for a formal inquest.”

“No, what you said was you didn’t want anyone playing mom. Well, I’m planning to kick your ass in about two seconds, so I think I’m clearly out of mom territory.”

Ronan growled.

Harold yipped in response.

“Who names their dog Harold?”

“My wife.” Aiden’s tone was very clearly a warning.

Ronan chuckled and dropped the subject.

“I don’t want a wife.” At least he’d always said he didn’t.

“Then don’t get one. They aren’t something you happen along accidentally in the grocery aisle, and by the checkout you’re somehow legally bound. Honestly, Ronan, what’s with your fear of commitment anyway, parents have a bad divorce?”

“My mother’s dead. My da, he’s over in Ireland, runs a little pub that’s always in the red because he gives free beer to all his friends, and my da’s got a shitload of friends.” Talking about his family made him feel a little lighter.

“So, what’s the problem then exactly? I used to be the same way you know, surely you remember. I never thought I could do commitment and mundane and day in and day out same old same old, but damn…”

“Cassidy make you change your stripes then?”

“She didn’t
make
me change so much as inspired me to. She’s an amazing woman, and now she’s given me this precious daughter, I work my ass off to be worthy of them.”

Aiden didn’t say anymore, but he didn’t have to. Ronan understood that feeling. That night at the club he felt that need to be worthy unlike he ever had before.

“Destiny definitely deserves better.” He placed his glass on the coffee table in front of him. The liquor suddenly grew tasteless.

“Shouldn’t she be the one that decides that?”

“Stop using my own words against me.” He dropped his head back on the sofa and examined the ceiling. “Doesn’t really matter much if she’s getting back with the asshole, now does it?”

“I can’t see her getting back with him. She’s not stupid! I’ve overheard some of their conversations. I’ll be straight up with you. He’s doing some
major
brownnosing. He’s probably wakened up to what he’s lost. At least that’s what I’m hoping.”

Ronan felt a chill go down his spine and he sat straight up.

“Why? What else would it be?”

Aiden shrugged and calmly pet the little dog in his lap.

“I don’t know him, but when a man all of a sudden shows up acting like Don Juan when his ex has suddenly become successful…”

He left it there, but that was enough. Ronan picked up the implication.

“You think he’s after her hotel?”

“I don’t know, but I do know when they were married he was very controlling, and she told me that he
hated
that she’d done this, so why is he here acting like it’s the best thing since Walt came down here in the sixties to scope out land?”

Ronan’s head was beyond murky at this point, but his blood was beginning to boil.

“That bastard!” He stood up, thinking maybe he’d go introduce his fist to the ass’s teeth, but his head immediately spun, and he fell back down onto the sofa with a thud.

“You’re in no shape to do anything about it tonight, Ronan. Besides, I’ve been keeping my eye on it. I respect Destiny’s free will and all that, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let that asshat take away her dream.”

“I’m too drunk to do anything about it.” He groaned.

“Yeah. You are.” Aiden let the dog go and he instantly rushed into Ronan’s lap.

“I’m not too drunk to drop-kick this cotton ball.”

Aiden laughed and took the dog back. “You wouldn’t dare. You don’t know my wife well enough, but if you did, you wouldn’t even joke. She’d have your balls in a vice faster than you could figure out what the fuck she was doing.”

Ronan smiled. “Sounds like a woman after my own heart.”

“Back the fuck off, Ronan.” Aiden’s tone threatened.

“Oh shut up. I’m in no shape to put the moves on your wife, not physically or emotionally.” Truth was, he hadn’t even looked at another woman since that first night with Destiny.

“Then what are you going to do? She’s not gonna take to your caveman crap now. You may have had her heart fluttering for a while, but you shut that off the day you ended it.”

“She was ending it.” Ronan’s heart still ached when he thought of that afternoon.

“And what, you just beat her to it? Some dumb-ass idea about salvaging your pride?”

Yeah, that was pretty much it, but he wasn’t going to admit to it now.

“I’m a fuckup.” He closed his eyes as just how badly he’d fucked up started to come to him.