by Cara McKenna
“Not really.” Not remotely. “I was in too much of a panic, figuring out how to get myself moved back to Boston and enrolled for classes again, and finding a job to pay for it all.”
His smile was tight, impossible to read. “That’s a shame.”
“It is.”
“Well, I hope you’ll find the young men of Ireland sympathetic to your plight.”
She laughed. “I hope I’ll be able to find any young men on this trip, period.”
Connor looked demonstrably to either side and then down at his own chest, and held his arms out in mock surprise to say, Behold, a young man, at your service!
She smiled, though the sheer openness of his flirtation made her shy. Determined as Jamie was to make the most of her vacation, she was thoroughly out of practice at this stuff. She turned to eye the pool table—still free. The distraction would give her a few minutes to collect herself, with the added benefit of allowing her to play it a touch coy. No need to toss herself gift-wrapped at the very first hot guy she’d come across, her very first night here.
She fished out her wallet. “Could I get change for the...the thing that I want to call a pool table but I know isn’t called that here?”
Connor’s turn to laugh. “Snooker. And sure. What’ve you got to break?”
She traded him a bill for five one-euro coins, then left another bill on the bar for her pint. He slid it back over.
“Damages,” he explained. “On behalf of all men, for whatever injury your ex’s done to my gender’s already suspect reputation.”
She laughed, liking the way he spoke—the effortless way he strung words into lofty declarations. “I see.”
“Cues are on the wall, there,” he said, pointing.
“Thanks.”
She took her glass and change and bag and made herself at home in the corner, with a good view of her bartender. Things went smoothly enough at first—she selected a cue and located the coin tray, but as the balls rattled and rolled and filled the well at the end of the table...
Red, black, red, red, green...pink?
This learning curve clearly went beyond a lack of stripes and numbers. There was always Wikipedia, but why waste a perfectly good excuse to flirt? She marched back to the bar and caught Connor’s eye.
“I don’t suppose you have a rule book for this game?”
Grinning, he stooped to rummage beneath the counter. “If we didn’t, the fights would turn ugly fast.” He brushed the dust from a surprisingly thick paperback and handed it over.
“Thanks.” Her smile faded as she paged through the book, registering precisely how different this was from pool. “‘In the event that a cue ball is touched with the tip while in-hand,’” she read aloud, “‘for example, when breaking off or playing from the D upon being potted...’” She looked up at Connor. “Do you have an English translation of this?”
Another grin. “You need a lesson?”
She glanced down the bar, the dwindling assembly of drinkers seeming content to nurse their current rounds. She set the book on the counter. “If you can spare one, sure.”
“Right you are.” He flipped up the hinged panel of the bar and followed her to the snooker table, bathed in the bright glow of a hanging billiard lamp.
Confirmed—blue eyes. Clear and blue as a Bombay Sapphire bottle. Accordingly, they made Jamie tipsy.
“I’ll walk you through a frame,” he offered. “Just don’t cheat when I run back to pour a pint.”
“Deal. So, is this just like pool, except instead of stripes versus solids it’s red versus...” She trailed off, studying the balls as he set them on the green baize. All those reds, plus a pink, a green, blue, brown...
“I’ve never played pool, so I couldn’t say.” Connor locked the ten reds into a triangle—so far, so similar—then positioned the pink ball at its apex, a black a few inches below its base, a blue one midway along the table, then green, brown and yellow in a short row in front of the blessedly familiar white cue ball.
“Right,” he said, leaning against the table, holding Jamie’s gaze. “Each ball you pot is worth points—different amounts, depending on the color. At the start of a turn you always shoot from the D.” He pointed to the half circle marked on one end of the table, framing the cue ball. The rules he enumerated were dizzying, but the mechanics were basically the same as billiards.
“Got all that?” Connor asked.
“No, but I can fake it.”
Another familiar sight—Connor grabbed a blue cube from the ledge that ran along the wall, chalking his cue. Jamie did the same, and she felt her eyes narrow as an ages-old infusion of competitive adrenaline snaked through her bloodstream.
“Who breaks?” she asked.
He waved to say, Ladies first. Jamie hadn’t played in months, but she nailed the cue ball and broke the pyramid of reds apart with a smart crack, sinking one into a side pocket. It earned her a raised eyebrow from her coach.
As Jamie got the green ball in her sights, Connor asked, “Would you fancy making this a bit more interesting?”
“How so?”
“Friendly wager?” Flirtatious wager, to judge by his tone.
“How much?”
“Name your prize.”
She thought a moment. “If I win, a glass of your finest whiskey. On the rocks.”
“Fair play.”
“And if you win?” She leaned in, cocking the cue along her thumb and knuckle.
“If I win...if I win...”
His fingers drummed the table’s ledge until Jamie raised her eyes.
“Your finest kiss,” he said with a devil’s smile. “On the mouth.”
She lowered her elbow and stood up straight, countering his smug smirk with a skeptical show of blinking.
“Don’t look too scandalized,” he said. “A kiss is free, whereas your whiskey comes out of my wages.”
From another man, one she didn’t feel any chemistry for, this would’ve been pushy. But she did feel something for Connor, and she wouldn’t mind kissing him at all. Though she’d prefer to do it on her own terms—giving her the perfect motivation to win.
“You’re on.”
They shook, and he held her small hand in his strong one for a good beat longer than was innocent. She took a deep breath to clear her head enough to line up her next shot. When she sank the green, she beamed him a triumphant smile. “Four points now, right? I can taste my winnings already.”
“Wish I could say the same,” he sighed, and ticked her score on a chalkboard mounted by the cues.
She potted another red but scratched—or whatever scratching was called in snooker—and Connor enjoyed a brief run. He wasn’t bad, but once Jamie found her rhythm, there was no stopping her. She trounced him inside ten minutes.
They shook on her victory.
“I hope you didn’t let me win.”
He held her hand. “If you knew how much I wanted my prize, you wouldn’t believe that for a second.”
Pleasure flushed from her hair down to her feet. Connor let her hand go and she set her cue on the table.
“I’ll claim my winnings here,” she said haughtily, hoping to cover how giddy and warm she suddenly felt. Earlier she’d thought herself doomed to a pathetic consolation of a first evening at the local pub, but this was just perfect. Guinness, whiskey, snooker and a flirtation with a hot local. What could be more Irish?
She fed the table another coin, and Connor delivered her glass after tending to a couple customers. From the first stinging taste, the whiskey lit a glow in her chest—like a hearth, warm and comforting.
“Good?” he asked.
“Perfect, thank you. Another game?”
He eyed the bar. “I better not. I’ve been rather neglectful already.”
“Thank goodness you don’t work for tips.”
“Indeed.”
He lingered for a bit, attention divided between the patrons and Jamie’s one-woman snooker match.
“You really are
quite good. You sure you’re not a shark?”
She sank the blue ball. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She caught him smiling again, his eyes squinched in the most adorably sinister way. “I wouldn’t mind knowing rather a lot of things about you,” he said casually.
“Like what?”
“Oh, nosy things.”
She liked how he said that—tings.
“Like what exactly your ex did to get himself dumped...?”
She bit her lip. “He dumped me, actually.”
His eyes widened, the drama overdone but not unwelcome. “No.”
“Oh, yes. I was as surprised as you are.”
He cocked his head. “He must’ve been a right spanner, then.”
“Does that mean idiot?”
“It does.”
Jamie grinned. “Cheers to that.” A right spanner. She could hug him. In fact...
“You deserve a taste of this yourself, for saying so.”
He eyed the bar, finding his customers placated. “You’re a bad influence.”
She shrugged and took another sip. The whiskey was making her feel bold in the most natural, essential way.
Connor nodded his surrender. “Fine. That’s top-shelf—I won’t say no.”
With a smile, she took one more generous taste, then rose on her tiptoes. He caught on just in time, leaning in to bridge the gap. Their noses brushed first, then their lips. She held the glass between them, one of his shirt buttons teasing her knuckles—a strange and perfect little intimacy. A different sort of buzz arrived as their lips met, the contact rocking through her with a sharp, hot bolt.
All at once woozy, she kept it brief—just enough of a kiss to let him taste her winnings, then she dropped back on her heels. Her cheeks were flushed, lips tingling. From the whiskey, or from Connor? Both. And from her own desire, a well that had gone untapped for far too long.
His blue eyes were half-closed, lids looking heavy. Languid. Lips parted. If sex were a season, it had settled over him in full bloom.
He smiled. “It would seem perhaps we’ve both won.”
Chapter Two
As Jamie and Connor returned to their respective sides of the bar, something joined them—chemistry. Tangible as a heat wave. She’d crossed a line, initiating that kiss, and he seemed only too happy to explore what might lie beyond.
She was reeling. From the surprise of having stolen the reins, and from the realization that chased it—that the last time she’d shared a first kiss with a man, it’d been Noel. At the time he’d been, what? Twenty-two? Still thoroughly a dude. Could she even say for sure she’d ever kissed an actual man before Connor?
She’d set her pint and rocks glasses on the shiny wood, and Connor mirrored them with his elbows, leaning in to smile at her.
“Yes?”
“You’re a fine thing,” he said with a breath’s bold scan of her. She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but she suspected it might translate to hot. Yes, please.
“And I like your eyes,” he added, narrowing his own. “They look like they’re full of secrets.”
“That’s an awfully long-winded way to say brown.”
“No, it’s not the color. It’s something else.”
She bit her lip. “You think you’re awfully charming, don’t you?”
“And you’re awfully worried I’ve charmed you.” A cocky pronouncement, but the way he said it, so quietly, so pointedly... Charming indeed.
She met those pale eyes. “Maybe. A little.”
He stood up straight, hooking his thumbs in his pockets. “I’m feeling rather charmed, myself.”
“It doesn’t hurt that we’re the only two people for miles who’re under thirty. Or I assume we are—how old are you?”
“Twenty-eight. You?”
“Twenty-three.”
Huh. She’d never been with a guy five years her senior. Noel was two years older, but the difference between a twenty-five-year-old American student and an Irish bartender with a misspent youth loomed chasm-like. Among her friends, Jamie felt like one of the experienced ones. She’d been with Noel, of course, plus an earlier college boyfriend, a couple summer flings of differing regrettability and her high school sweetheart. But standing here, so close to this tall, self-assured man with his dirty-sweet accent... She felt fifteen again. As though she’d never been kissed. Though she most certainly had been, barely five minutes ago—a technically chaste kiss, but one that had burned in a way she hadn’t realized possible. Scorching as the dirtiest sex she’d ever had.
All that from a kiss... What on earth might a night with this man feel like?
“What d’you do, back home?” Connor asked, drawing her from the far baser question. “You said you put your education on hold.”
“I did, to work full-time and support my ex. Waitressing and bartending, mostly.”
“Bartending?” His expression brightened. “Perhaps you’d care to teach me a thing or two.”
“I doubt I’d have any tricks you don’t already know.”
He laughed. “In the ten years I’ve been helping my dad out in this place, I’ve had to fill exactly four orders. Lager, stout, cider and spirits—neat or on the rocks. You ask me for a martini and all I can tell you is that it’s clear and we haven’t got any olives.”
“Oh. I guess maybe I do have you beat, then.” She liked that. He oozed sexual experience and misadventure, but perhaps she had him trumped in cocktail mixing. Oh, and snooker, of course.
He smiled again, this one so clearly naughty Jamie felt her middle flutter—misgiving or excitement? Didn’t matter. Felt good, whichever it was.
“What?” she prompted.
“Care to mix me something? Something impressive?”
Impressive. Em-pray-suv. She loved how that sounded, the way he said it. Certain words tumbled from his lips with a special breathy lilt, swaddled in that accent as though they’d been lolling away a wicked weekend morning in his rumpled covers.
“You’re on the clock,” she reminded him.
Another laugh, rich and rousing as a gulp of whiskey. “And you’re not in Kansas anymore, proper girl.”
She felt herself blushing again. Proper. Impulsive kiss or not, she probably did seem like a good girl, to him. She suddenly wanted very much to make the acquaintance of whatever skills he’d picked up during his enviably reckless younger days. Souvenirs to take back to Boston, to turn over in her memory when her soon-to-be-reprised plans had her feeling restless, locked into a routine.
Connor drummed the bar with his fingertips. “I promise you I’ve given my father plenty of reasons to sack me in the last decade. One cocktail’s not going to tip the cart.” He flipped up the hinged bit of the bar and invited her inside. “I’ve taught you to play snooker—and bloody well, I might add. Your turn to teach me how to mix a drink like an American.”
“When you put it like that, I guess it’s my patriotic duty.” Jamie slipped behind the bar and inventoried what she had to work with. A decent selection of liquor bottles mounted upside down along the back wall, though hardly any mixers aside from a few bottles of juice in a glass-fronted minifridge.
“Sweet or sour?”
“Sour. I’m sweet enough already,” Connor added, his tone far too saccharine to be trusted.
“I’ll make you a sea breeze.” She grabbed the grapefruit and cranberry juice cartons and found a highball. Connor watched as she filled the glass with ice and eyeballed a healthy shot of vodka, added twice as much cranberry then floated the grapefruit so it kept that nice bloody-looking layer at the bottom. She notched a lime wedge onto the lip, jabbed in a straw and handed it over.
“Cheers.” He took a sip, a belated wince screwing up his face.
Jamie laughed. “You can stir it—that’ll take the edge off.”
He swirled the straw and his second taste looked better received. When he set it aside to pour someone’s pint, Jamie ducked under the bar and took her seat.
Du
ties tackled, Connor hazarded another taste. “Are these popular in Boston?”
“I did most of my bartending in California, but in either case, no, not really. I actually learned to make those when I was...jeez. Maybe fourteen?”
He blinked at her. “And I thought we started young.”
She leaned on the wood, hugging her arms. All at once, she felt comfortable. Comfortable in this place, and in this stranger’s easy orbit. Alcohol, or pure attraction?
“I used to spend summers on the Jersey Shore, with my dad,” she told him. “He was always busy, and the waitresses who worked in the local bar and grill sort of adopted me. Sea breezes were very popular with that crowd. They used to make me virgin ones, with Sprite instead of vodka.”
“Ah.”
“I felt very sophisticated. They also let me borrow the key that unlocked the pool table, so I could play with the same quarters, over and over. That’s why I’m a half-decent pool player. I’m deathly afraid of the ocean, so it’s pretty much all I did, two months a year for five years.”
“Half-decent?” he teased. “You sell yourself short.” He filled an order for a cider then came back to Jamie, leaning on the other side of bar, grinning.
“Yes?”
“I’d like a rematch.”
“Would you?”
“After I kick all the respectable patrons out. What d’you say?”
“Maybe.” Sounded bit reckless—a two-person lock-in with a rather forward man, and no one to come rescue her if she got spooked. That was how it sounded. But her gut disagreed—it felt perfectly right. She could bluff, texting Kate but letting Connor think she was telling Donna what time to expect her. She hadn’t come all the way to Ireland to play everything perfectly safe. She was on the rebound, and she’d been hoping to meet exactly this man—handsome, easy, no strings. Thinking too hard about it all would be just another stupid plan, and that ran counter to the spirit of this entire trip.
She shouldn’t be worried about his intentions being too wicked. She ought to be making sure her own intentions were wicked enough. Jamie had done enough regretting these past few months. She wouldn’t finish this adventure lamenting a wasted chance with Connor...Connor...
