Ramsay(8)

"No, Lydia. You're not going there."

I licked my lips. "We were friends . . . of a sort, once upon a time.  Maybe he'd listen to me, Stuart. I have to try." Plus, I owed him an  apology. It had been a long time coming. I'd wanted to apologize to him  for so many years. I still carried it like a sliver deeply embedded in  my skin. Stuart owed him an apology, too, but I couldn't be responsible  for Stuart. Clearly. "Give me the address. I don't have the energy to  argue with you." I felt drained, zapped completely of the hopefulness  from this morning.

"I'll go with you then."

"No, I think you've done enough damage. I'll go alone."

"He's not the same as you might remember him. He's . . . different . . .  dangerous. He tricked me." The last part came out sounding like a whine  and a wave of disgust washed through me.

I rubbed at my eye. Dangerous? Brogan? I remembered him as sensitive and  intense. "I'm just going to talk to him, Stuart. Do you have a better  idea? Another solution that you haven't put on the table?" I asked  angrily.

"No," he said, his shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry, Lydia. I'm so sorry." He put his head in his hands again.

I couldn't muster any compassion for him, not in that moment. "Then give me the address."

"It's a business address."

"That's fine-even better. There'll be plenty of people around."

"I don't think it's that kind of business." He raised his head, his  expression a mixture of fear and dejection. But he reached into his  jacket pocket and brought out a business card and pushed it across the  table. I reached out and grabbed it.



**********



I followed the instructions from my GPS to the address on the business  card, pulling up in front of a nondescript red-brick home in Woodlawn, a  neighborhood in the Bronx known as Little Ireland. All this time he was  so close? After he'd left-don't sugarcoat it, Lydia, after he'd been  kicked off-our property, we'd looked for him and hadn't had any luck. It  was as if his family had simply disappeared. I'd even wondered several  times if his father took Brogan and his sister back to Ireland after  that day. That day. I cringed, as I always did when I thought about it. I  sat in my car for a few minutes, staring at the building, working up my  nerve to go inside. Stuart had said it was a business address, but it  looked like someone's home. Taking a deep breath, I stepped out of my  car into the muggy air, straightening my dress as I crossed the street.  One glance at the clouds above told me we were about to experience a  summer shower.

The brass knocker had the head of a ram on it. My heart rate had sped  up, and I worked to calm my breathing as I lifted the knocker and used  it to rap twice.

I was about to come face to face with Brogan, after all this time, all these years.

After a minute, I heard footsteps coming toward the door and stood  completely still as it was pulled open. My breath came out in a whoosh  when I saw a boy, no more than fourteen standing in front of me. "H-Hi,"  I stuttered, clearing my throat and pulling my spine straight. "My name  is Lydia De Havilland. I'm here to see Brogan, that is, Mr. Ramsay."                       
       
           



       

The boy raised one brow, letting his gaze roam down my body in a  suggestive way. I stiffened and gritted my teeth. Insolent little brat.  "Is he in?" I demanded.

"Aye," he stood back and waved his arm, indicating I should come inside.  I hesitated only briefly before stepping over the threshold. The foyer  was nondescript, lots of dark wood and a faded oriental carpet on the  floor. It was devoid of furniture or wall hangings.

I jolted slightly when the door slammed behind me, fidgeting with my  purse strap and waiting for instructions from the boy. He appeared to  text something on his phone, then put it in his pocket, and gave me  another gesture to follow him. I did, walking down a hallway and turning  into what appeared to be a waiting room. There was a large leather  couch, several bookshelves lining the wall, and a coffee table with a  few financial magazines on it.

I sat down on the leather couch and the boy sat down next to me. I  scooted over slightly and smiled at him politely. His eyes swept my body  again, a cocky smirk on his face. My God, the boy didn't even have  facial hair yet. "How's the form?"

"Excuse me?"

"What's the craic?"

"I'm sorry, I don't-"

A door on the other side of the room suddenly opened and a tall, dark outline stood in the doorway. "Rory."

The boy-Rory-stood abruptly and moved around the table. I stood, too.  "Sorry, Mr. Ramsay. This fine thing is here to see ya." I did understand  that. I pulled myself straighter. My heart was now a frantic drumbeat  in my chest as I stared at the man I'd only known as a boy so many years  ago. My nerves stretched tight, tension coiling in my stomach. I was  suddenly having difficulty pulling air into my lungs. He took a step  closer, into the light, and it felt as if time stood still. Brogan  Ramsay stood in front of me. He was all man now, tall and broad, his  black hair cut shorter than it'd been the last time I'd seen him. He  removed a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and I stared at his face. It was  the same and yet different. I recognized the ice-blue beauty of his  eyes, framed by thick, inky lashes and black, slashing brows, and the  sensual shape of his mouth. But the difference showed in his strong jaw  and sculpted cheekbones-the bone structure of a full-grown man. He was  even more beautiful than I remembered. The girl in me swooned and melted  just a little. But I wasn't a girl, I was a woman, and I stiffened my  spine. I wasn't here to swoon.

His gaze finally moved from Rory to me and lingered on my face for one  startling moment as my breath caught, his eyes hard chips of blue ice. I  froze under his cool assessment. He looked away as if in disinterest,  and I released a breath.

"I told you I require a visitor's name, Rory."

"I sent it, sir."

"You didn't."

Rory swallowed. "Phone's acting the maggot, sir. Strangest thing. Lydia  De Havilland." He swept his hand toward me as if I were royalty, but  Brogan's eyes didn't follow it. A small muscle twitched in his cheek.

"Get it fixed. Go now."

"Shur look it. I'm gona head on." Rory rushed from the room, not looking  back. My gaze returned to Brogan, taking him in. He wore black suit  pants and a gray shirt, open at the collar and the sleeves rolled up to  show strong, tanned forearms, those same forearms I used to stare at as  he worked in my yard.

"Hi, Brogan," I said softly, unmoving. Emotions were assaulting me, so  fast and furious I hardly had time to analyze them. They overlapped,  swirling together to form a ball of nerves in my stomach, a tightening  in my chest. Something seemed to flutter through my veins.

"Lydia, it's been a long time. How can I help you?" His voice was deep, smooth, completely unaffected. Bored even.

I stiffened. "You don't know why I'm here?"

He paused and then turned, heading back into the room from which he'd emerged. "Would you care to sit down?"

I followed him into what I saw was his office. He tossed his glasses  onto the top of a large, black desk in the center of the room and sat  down in the chair behind it. I hesitated momentarily before taking a  seat in the chair across from him.

"It has been a long time," I said, replying to the comment he'd made a  few moments before. "I'm glad to see you're well, Brogan." I cleared my  throat. "What exactly is this business?" I asked, sweeping my hand  around, indicating the building as a whole.

"I'm in life insurance." There was some kind of amused gleam in his eye I  had no idea how to interpret. I noted he no longer had any trace of an  accent. I wondered if that had come naturally, or if he'd worked to rid  himself of it. Either way, it seemed a shame. I'd always loved the  lilting sound of his speech, the way he sometimes threw in Irish slang  that I had no idea how to interpret. The way the boy, Rory, had just  done. I remembered laughing and asking him what certain sayings meant.  I'd known a few . . . long ago. Sometimes they still came back to me,  unexpectedly. He'd called dandelions piss-in-the-bed. What are you doing  down there? I'm clearing out the piss-in-the-bed.                       
       
           



       

I cleared my throat again. "Insurance. Oh. Okay. Well, good. Obviously you're very successful."

Brogan tapped his fingers on his desk as if impatient. "As to your  previous question," he went on, apparently ignoring what I'd just said,  "yes, I do know why you're here. I imagine it's because your brother is  still a coward and a moron. Sending his sister to do his bidding? To  clean up his mess?"