Page 197 of Carnal Wagers

“Unless you’re planning to move to Lyon.” I felt his wince in the tightening of his shoulders more than I heard it, and I tittered midway through a yawn. “I didn’t think so. That’s fine. I can manage my businesses anywhere. But…and this better be very clear, mari chéri.” Head heavy with a need for sleep, I shoved a finger against his chest. “No more micromanaging what I do and where I go. I’ll take guards without protest, but sometimes I need my own space.”

His arms tightened around me, and he huffed forcefully. “Trying to get away from me, wife?”

“Never.” I snuggled further into him as my eyelids drooped. “But I am curious what you can come up with for us to do together now that we’ve almost crossed everything off my list.”

“How about we write a new one together?”

I nodded slowly. “As long as you’re not in as much of a hurry to complete this one too.”

With the tight press of him surrounding me, combined with his scent, his warmth, and the even rise and fall of his chest, I yawned again and let the fatigue slowly carry me off.

“We have all the time in the world now,” he said.

Then the light press of his lips against mine sent me under to the promise of forever.

Epilogue

Over the next few days, the FBI interrogated Cillian and me. As we agreed, we withheld the details of Maeve’s confession that the Love Knot Killer was actually a duo and of her involvement. However, I divulged that she blamed Cillian for the death of her mother. That, compiled with the hatred she had accumulated on my behalf as his scorned wife, had sent her into a psychotic episode when I announced my change of feelings for him. Based on the FBI’s profile of the killer, the sudden change in LK’s MO, and their dead-end lead on Laoise Healy, aka Morrigan Hackett, considering her death seven and a half years ago, the FBI provisionally accepted our version of events.

It took four days for Cillian’s FBI contact to grant us access to visit Maeve in the hospital under guard. By then, I was hobbling up and down the hospital corridors but opted for a wheelchair just in case. Cillian rolled me up to her door, guarded by two agents, with Special Agent Joey Cranwell taking up the rear.

He had yet to obtain a confession from Maeve, and with the O’Learys cryptically concealing information, he hoped my relationship with her might help loosen her tongue as to how and why she imitated the Love Knot Killer. As if. For Cillian and me, this was as much about seeing how she fared as it was about building on the groundwork established the day of the attack toward her insanity plea.

Maeve sat stoically on her bed, her gaze lost to space and her face twisted into one of absolute boredom. One of her wrists was cuffed to the bed while the other hand tapped along as she hummed “Back to Black” by Amy Winehouse. Her hair was tangled in morbid, greasy strands over her shoulders, void of its usual exuberance, looking like it hadn’t been washed since the day we arrived.

“Maeve?”

Her head slowly turned my way as I left Cillian behind the curtain at the door and wheeled to her shackled bedside. A peaceful smile snuck up her cheeks, little by little exposing her teeth. For a long minute, we stared at each other, unblinking. The silence wasn’t tense or foreboding. Instead, it felt like a simple lull in a conversation.

“You shot me,” she finally said.

“You stabbed me.” And tried to kill my husband, but that was beside the point.

Her mouth curled up.

“Touché.” She tapped the bed. “Come on. I’ve been dying for company. Tell me everything, you beautiful sight for sore eyes.”

It chilled me to see her so calm after what happened, as if either she’d already put it behind her or it meant so little to begin with. I forced a smile.

For a while, it was like nothing had happened. We spoke of Erel’s departure, and she waved it off, the cuff clanking against the bedside, unbothered and delivering a simple “I assumed.” It was so different from the happy couple image she’d convinced me of for the last two years, almost as if she’d never felt anything for him at all. Yet when we talked about my surgery and my recovery over the last few days, genuine concern wrinkled her brow, and she bit her nails. She asked after my health—no one else’s—and teared up when she learned I’d make a full recovery with a little physical therapy.

I snicked my thumbnail along the rubber of the wheelchair’s wheels. “Do you worry about all your friends like you do about me?”

This was something that had been bothering me. I couldn’t recall her ever mentioning another confidant over the years.

“What do you mean? You know you’re my only person.”

“You must have some other friends.”

She shook her head. “Why would I? I had you.”

I bit my inner lip. “Work friends?”

“I’m the boss. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“There’s always business contacts or suppliers. Those make decent friends.”

“Yes, which is why you had so many of them.” Her sarcastic glare had me scratching my neck, mouth puckered in unease.