Irish Charm; St. Patrick's Day Romance Collection, page 37
Gavin had loaned Sean a suit for the event. He’d only brought the one, and the Ashtons would tear him a new one if they saw him in the same thing twice.
They were just the kind of silver-spoon assholes to think that because they each had closets that stretched for half a city block, everyone else should, too. And they harshly judged those who didn’t.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen Mrs. Ashton smile at all except in the form of a sneer. No wonder their son had grown up to be such an insufferable snob. Not in the Jane Austen way either, where there was a good and romantic heart beating under Mr. Darcy’s exterior. Instead, she was just dead inside.
Hell, I’d even take Bronte’s Rochester over Harry’s self-important ass. At least he had a sense of humor.
It felt funny comparing my own life to those of characters in 19th century novels, but since both my parents and the Ashtons seemed stuck in that era, it seemed appropriate. They already had me set up for a marriage of alliance and were all about going to garden parties.
What was next, white gloves and a corset?
Once Sean and I were all dressed up, I us down to the garden party at my parent’s Palm Springs mansion.
“Ready?” Sean asked, after we arrived and valet was parking my car.
“Does it matter?” I replied.
He squeezed my hand, and we ventured toward the armed guards who were positioned to check invites, and then into the viper den.
It was even worse than I remembered. The smell of bullshit was mixed revoltingly with the reek of overpriced perfumes and cologne that had all been applied a little too liberally.
“Darcy, darling,” my mom said, appearing from the throng of L.A. power elite.
“Hi, mom.”
Mom was my kryptonite. Whatever issues I might have had with my dad, I couldn’t cut all ties with him because it would mean cutting my mom out of my life as well, and she didn’t deserve that.
Yeah, she’d married him, but that was before he’d made his money and made a name for himself. According to her, he changed a lot after that happened.
I couldn’t fault her for not seeing the future or seeing the man he would become. She was intuitive, not clairvoyant. She wanted to honor their marriage vows. In some ways, she was as trapped as I was in this family.
My dad marched toward me, a glass of bourbon clasped in his hand.
“What’s this I hear about you rejecting Harry again?” he thundered.
I steeled my spine.
“When exactly was it that I was consulted about this marriage of convenience? You live in Victorian times, Dad. Time to come into the present.”
Sean squeezed my hand, which helped me simmer down before I said something so mean and nasty that I might regret it for the rest of my life.
“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady,” my dad spat back at me.
“Young woman, actually, not young lady. Young lady is what you say when scolding a child. I’m an adult, albeit a young one, which is more than I can say for some. And before you ask, no, I am not going to quit my job or move back home.” I glanced at my mother. “Sorry, mom.”
My dad rocked back and forth on his heels.
“Have it your way. I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but you’re an adult now, like you said. That still doesn’t explain why you were rude to the Ashtons? I got quite a distressing call saying that there had been a scene at a restaurant.”
It was all I could do not to let my jaw drop open.
“And they said I was rude to them? That’s odd. I remember them being rude to me and Harry very nearly insulting Sean.”
“Sean? Who’s Sean—”
“MacBride, straight from Belfast City. It’s an honor to finally meet you, sir,” Sean said, offering his hand to shake.
Acting on what looked like autopilot, fake civility being part of his stock and trade, my dad shook hands with Sean.
“Have we met before, Mr. MacBride?”
“I don’t think so, sir. I’d remember such an auspicious occasion.”
“Funny, I usually meet the men who take my daughter out.”
“Not for a while now, I’d imagine, what with her being outside your legal control and all,” Sean said, with a flattering wink.
“Quite,” my dad said, doing a poor job of hiding his irritation. “Still, you should be aware that Darcy has a very serious suitor and—”
“We’re hungry,” I said, pulling Sean toward a massive table of food.
I would never say I was perfect, no matter what aspirations my dad might have had for me. I did my best to be as good as possible but still had flaws like any flesh and blood mortal. Among those was my habit of eating when I was stressed.
“Feel better?” Sean asked, after my third plateful.
“Yes,” I said, leaning back and smiling.
“That’s my girl.”
He grinned.
I loved that he accepted me for how I was. Most people I knew would have criticized me for shoving down the food, seeing it as a flaw or something to be fixed. Many of them had in the past.
It was often out of genuine care for me, but it didn’t hurt any less. It was like they thought I needed to be fixed. I was far from a mind reader, even with my inherited intuition, but Sean really seemed to accept it. I didn’t think my feelings for him could get any stronger, but they just had.
I felt gloriously relaxed, despite the surroundings, all the pomp and bullshit seeming to fall away whenever I looked into Sean’s eyes as we ate and drank freely.
“Jesus, Darcy, stop making such a spectacle of yourself,” Harry hissed, appearing next to me, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Bit too close, mate,” Sean said, standing up.
“Get lost, asshole. This doesn’t concern you.”
“It does, actually, yank.”
“Don’t call me yank, you paddy piece of shit.”
“Fair enough. Call me ‘paddy’ again, and I’ll break your nose. That’d be a real spectacle.”
Harry took a small step back, his eyes going wide, despite the fact that he was also trying to glare, the result looking pretty funny.
“Mind your own business, Harry,” I said, stepping between them before things could get ugly. I turned to Sean. “Ready to go?”
“Aye.”
We were heading out when the familiar and annoying sound of a fork striking a wine glass filled the garden. I froze, my heart sinking as I had a pretty good idea about what would be coming next.
“Hello everyone,” my dad started, turning on the fake friendliness, “and thank you for coming. As you’ve probably heard through the grapevine, I have a bit of an announcement to make. A big one, actually.”
“Fuck, he’s doing it,” I whispered. “I can’t believe it. I thought after our little talk earlier, he’d let it go. What a fool I was.”
“I’ve got this, love.”
Giving my hand a squeeze, Sean made for the head table, grabbing a champagne glass from a passing waiter on the way.
My dad continued.
“This is an announcement I’ve wanted to make for a long time.”
I could see Harry from the corner of my eye. He was sitting back and smirking in a way that made me want to slug him. I looked at Nicole, hoping it might be a joke, but she looked as surprised as everyone else.
My dad couldn’t stoop any lower. Trying to pressure me into a loveless marriage with a public announcement was a shitty move, even for him.
He was certain that I’d been raised well enough not to make a scene or call him out as a psychopath who thought he could barter his daughter to secure a business arrangement. He was right, of course, which made me even angrier. I wanted to leave before I really did make such a big scene that there would be no way to come back from it.
He turned in my direction.
“Darcy, I can’t express how happy and proud I am of you.”
I almost felt sorry for him. Not really, but almost. The poor guy always had to live his life according to how other people saw him, whereas I was trying to free myself from that trap.
Sean cleared his throat and then spoke up, completely out of turn, of course.
“Thanks, Garrison. I’d just like to say I’m thrilled to be marrying Darcy.”
Murmurs spread around those gathered. Dad looked like he was going to choke, and mom, who clearly had no idea what was going on, stared daggers at him.
“Congratulations,” she said, clearly trying to help Sean out. “But my only regret is not getting to meet you soon.”
“Please, don’t be cross with your daughter,” Sean said. “It was something of a whirlwind courtship, not something that was kept from you, Mrs. Matthews. Despite the swiftness of everything, I know in my heart that Darcy is my soulmate.”
He said the last part while looking right at me. He was speaking with so much honesty and intensity that his eyes felt like they could look into my soul. For a second, I almost believed they could.
He hadn’t exactly been lying. The engagement was a fabrication, but what about the rest of it? From Maggie’s wedding to the garden party, everything that had happened could be defined as a whirlwind romance.
We also hadn’t had time to tell our families, at least not formally. Maggie and Gavin knew, but it seemed like they had mostly guessed. Nicole looked as shocked as anyone at Sean’s pronouncement.
In a way, I was glad it wasn’t Maggie who was looking so shocked, because I really wouldn’t know how I would explain not telling her. Nicole was my boss, or at least above me on the ladder, as well as my friend, but she was perhaps not the first person I would tell. Particularly if I hadn’t actually told my parents.
Like an award-winning salesman, Sean had convinced everyone gathered that we were really engaged. Perhaps he was so convincing because he had the advantage of slight truth behind him. I would much rather choose to be engaged to him than to Harry!
It was amazing that he would go to this extent for me. Maybe he would, in fact, like to actually be engaged to me one day. I wanted so much to believe he did, but it was the context of his declaration that made me start to wonder and to let my insecurities get the best of me.
Did Sean really mean it, or had he said what he’d said to throw my dad off?
There was really no way to know. I still trusted him on an intuitive level but I needed to be careful.
“That was quite the speech,” I said when we got a moment alone.
“Really had them going, didn’t I? It was a gamble, but at least you shouldn’t have to worry about your dad for a while, or the Ashtons. As far as anyone knows, it’s us that are engaged.”
“Yeah, what a show you just put on,” I told him. “It seems Gavin isn’t the only MacBride with a talent for acting.”
We both laughed, and I wasn’t sure what to make of any of it.
Was it all just a big façade or did it really mean something?
“Yeah, I can put on a show when I need to,” he said.
Did that confirm that it was all just an act, or was he interested in me but obviously not to that level yet?
I started to want to kick myself for letting my feelings for him grow to this extent. I may have been dumb for thinking that our relationship could continue once he went back to Ireland.
It was very likely that he just thought I was a fun vacation fling and that this was all temporary. And now we’d spun ourselves this elaborate lie that would have some permanent consequences.
All I could think was that at least I didn’t have to pretend to marry Harry!
I’d rather have Sean as a fake fiancé, although, I wished I didn’t want him to be my real fiancé because that was just complicating things so much.
Before we could talk any more about it, we were swamped. Friends, family, and bystanders were all coming up to us to congratulate us on our happy news. Even if it had come as something of a surprise.
“I can’t believe you went and did this. And yet I don’t blame you,” Nicole said candidly. “I’m a bit shocked but, more than that, I’m really happy for you. I really do need to get myself an Irishman.”
She seemed so happy for me that I wasn’t about to dispel her notions, though I didn’t like having to go along with what was, at most, a half-truth.
“Congrats, I guess. We thought you were lying,” Mr. Ashton said, speaking for the whole family for once. “Sorry.”
I never thought I could feel sorry for the Ashtons, but just a bit of sympathy crawled its way into my emotions. Sure, they could be awful sometimes, expecting the world to be handed to them on a platter, but that didn’t mean I took any joy in seeing them miserable.
“Honey!” a very familiar voice called out.
Damn. The last thing I needed was to face my mom. I couldn’t lie to her, never could. Technically, Sean had lied for me. But I wasn’t sure I could keep up the façade. The whole thing could come down with the wrong line of questioning.
“I’m so happy for you,” she exclaimed. “Like I said, I wish I’d met him or at least heard about this sooner, but I’m so glad you’ve found someone who makes you happy.”
She reached over and smacked my dad, who looked to be almost catatonic. All his plans were falling apart before his eyes.
“Right, Harry?” she asked him.
“Um, yes, er, well done.”
He didn’t really mean a word of it. I knew him well enough to know that much. He was just too shocked and sad to argue. That and he didn’t want to cause a scene. I didn’t like it when he argued, but his behavior now was even worse.
I’d gotten out of marrying Harry, but I wasn’t sure the cost of having to hold up a beautiful lie was much better than an awful truth. But I was still impressed at what Sean had done, even though I was confused as to what it could mean.
He was trying to save me and was acting fast to avoid disaster. We were just going to have to deal with any fallout.
Chapter Seventeen - Sean
The truth could be flexible. That was a lesson I’d learned early on from my father, who I would never call a liar, but who seemed to have a very loose grasp on reality, including and especially in terms of his own actions.
Every pronouncement of getting clean was absolutely truthful at the time of its utterance. A year and five months clean was his standing record. Then something would happen, a switch would flip, and he would tumble off the wagon.
Gavin certainly seemed to have picked up this talent for momentary sincerity and channeled it to his acting career. I’d never really thought I had, right up until I walked towards Darcy’s dad with a glass in my hand but with no idea in my mind of what I was going to say, just knowing that I had to say something.
I wasn’t sure from where my speech had sprung. The words had just flown out of my mouth nearly as fast as I could think, as if they were so natural and sincere. And they were.
I wanted to be with Darcy. I wanted us to be engaged— eventually. There was no doubt in my mind she was the one for me.
Everything I said was true, the only real inaccuracy being that we were currently engaged. That was a fib. Though what I’d told her mother wasn’t. It had been a whirlwind romance, and we hadn’t told anyone about it.
Darcy didn’t seem completely happy, though. Despite my best efforts to do what was best, I could understand how she felt that we now had to live a lie. And I wasn’t sure how much of a lie or how much of the truth she wanted it to be.
I was pretty sure she was as into me as I was into her, but her comment about me putting on a show made me start to think otherwise.
Did she think this was just a fling?
Or that it was that crazy I could have developed real feelings for her?
It was pretty clear that we were both confused.
Silence reigned as we left the garden party, with nightfall still a few hours away. Since she had had a few drinks, we called a cab, and luckily it wasn’t too long until it pulled up.
I got into the back seat with her and she took my hand.
“Want to come up?” she asked as we stopped outside her apartment building. “We should probably talk.”
“Yes,” I said immediately, although I wasn’t sure of her intentions.
Options ran riot through my head on the elevator ride. She might have wanted to have a drink, talk, and nothing more, or she might want to have more hot sex.
No sooner were we through the door to her apartment than I had an answer to my question. Darcy was on her way to the bed, stripping off her clothes as she went. I followed suit, completely naked by the time I reached her. She took me in her warm embrace, and we kissed as if we were both starved.
Darcy took the lead, and I started to think that maybe confused sex was the best sex. Reaching down between us, she took a firm hold of my rock-hard cock, her hand moving fluidly along the shaft as she slipped her tongue into my mouth. Slow and soft, our spirits started to feel as entwined as our bodies.
Pushing me onto my back, Darcy kissed her way down my body from my lips to my cock, planting a trail of soft, wet kisses along my neck, chest, and belly. She didn’t start sucking right away. Instead, she ran her tongue up the front of my shaft, over the head and then back down the other side before retracing the steps back down to my balls, giving each a brief session of sucking before repeating the process.
It seemed to go on for hours, though it could have only been one. Every second felt amazing.
“I can’t believe what you’re doing to me,” I told her. “It feels so good.”
Eventually, on one of the trips back down to my balls, Darcy dropped her entire mouth over the head of my aching cock and sucked for all she was worth, dragging me to the tipping edge of a fantastic orgasm before abruptly stopping.
She did this a few more times, licking from my balls to my pelvis and then back again before bringing me to the edge. Just when I thought I might go mad with frustration, she settled her lips about halfway down my full length and gave me a slow, sensual blowjob, taking my cum into her mouth.
I’d never been so exhausted after a blowjob, which I’d always considered to be a passive experience. Not the way Darcy did it, though.
