I glare at her and she bites her lip. “I’m sorry, it’s Thanksgiving.”
I reluctantly nod, then fix her skirt and back away from her, because being that close and not being able to touch her is absolute torture, and the lord knows Mr. Rodriguez would not appreciate me doing rude things to his daughter while they’re on the phone. My mind focuses on all the most horrific things, like being stuck in Dublin, to get my erection down.
“Papá, hi! Happy Thanksgiving,” she says and then gets down off the desk. I can’t make out how he responds, but it doesn’t sound quite as pleasant as I would expect it to. She’s never talked to her parents in front of me, and I haven’t ever considered that weird until this exact moment. I’ve heard her speak to Cara and work colleagues, but never anyone from her family. Alarm bells go off in my head.
“What?” she says into the phone and her face falls, like she’s received the worst news.
I take a step toward her and she holds her hand out to stop me. “What’s wrong?” I quietly ask.
She doesn’t answer me. “You saw the photo on Facebook?” She braces her head with her hand and stands up straighter. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“Are you all right?” I whisper more insistently.
She turns slightly away from me and says into the phone, “We’re just friends.”
Am I the other half of the “we” in that sentence? We’re just friends. What the actual fuck?
“No. That’s not Javier. That’s Eoghan,” she tells her dad, flabbergasted. “No, you cannot talk to him.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I say and hold my hand out. This is ridiculous. I am a man and we are in a serious relationship. I would be more than happy to talk to her dad about it. “Let me talk to him.”
“No!” she says to what I suspect is both of us. “Papá, I can’t talk about this now. Cara is here, along with my other friends. I need to get back to them, please.”
She pauses and wipes away a few tears.
“Yeah, I’ll call you this weekend. Okay. Bye.” She shuts off her phone and covers her face with her hands.
My usual instinct is to comfort her, but not this time. I’m right angry at her. “You didn’t tell your parents about us?”
She shakes her head.
“Why not?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Let me see your face,” I demand.
She pulls her hands down. Her face is tear-soaked and blotchy.
“Why didn’t you tell them?” I ask and bite on the inside of my cheek.
“Don’t read too deep into it, please, Eoghan. My dad is overly protective. I’ve told you that. He hated that I moved here and he was obsessed with my living arrangements. Trust me when I tell you that there was no way he was going to be okay with me dating some guy I met at the airport.”
Her words are like a punch to the gut.
“Just some guy you met at the airport, eh?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” she says.
“Do they even know that we live together?”
She shakes her head again.
“Where do they think you live?”
“With a roommate, in the city. I didn’t tell them about the pub. They still don’t know.”
I take a step back. “So, they didn’t even know I existed? Not until that photo?”
“No,” she says in a whisper and won’t meet my eyes.
Fuck, that hurts. Deep. “So…what exactly do I mean to you, Juliana?”
She looks up at me finally and says, “You know you mean everything to me.”
I want to hear that. I want to believe it. “Do I?”
“Of course, you do,” she spits out, and now I’ve made her angry.
“Because you just told your dad that we’re just friends, Juliana. So either you’re lying to him or you’re lying to me. Which is it?” I rattle off quickly.
She gives me a confused look. “I’m sorry, what did you say? Your accent—”
“Christ!” I bellow and then much slower and even more seriously, I ask, “Are you lying to your dad or are you lying to me?”
“Him! I’m lying to him, you know that.”
“I’m not sure what I know.”
She scoffs. “How could you not know?”
“Well—”
“Stop, okay, just stop,” she says and closes the distance between us. She cups my face with her hands and makes me look her in the eyes. “It’s us, Eoghan. You know what we are, what we mean to each other.”
I turn my face, refusing to look at her.
“What can I do to convince you?”
“Will you tell your parents?”
“Why does it matter if they know?”
I pull out of her grasp completely and start to pace around the office. “The fact that you don’t even understand why that matters destroys me, Juliana.”
“Eoghan—”
“Don’t you get it?”
“Get what?”
“I want to marry you.”
And then she takes a step back. “Marry me?”
“Not today, not tomorrow, but someday, yes.” And now I’m full on confessing it all. “My heart has been bound to you since the moment I saw you standing there at the airport. You showed up one day out of the blue and changed my life forever, lass. Don’t you get it? You’re the one for me.”
She lets out a big breath and then wraps her arms around her stomach, like she’s going to be sick. I’ve just poured my feckin’ heart out to her and she looks like she’s going to vomit.
“Say something,” I demand.
“I…I don’t even know how much longer I’ll be living here.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I roar.
“It means that I could get shipped back to San Diego.”
My heart drops into my stomach. “Is that a possibility?”
“It always has been, I guess.”
And now I’m mad at her for a whole new reason. I assumed she was here for the long haul, that this wasn’t temporary. She never made it seem temporary, not even once since she first moved here, so it feels off. Something’s wrong. “Is this why you’ve been working so hard, so you can stay?”
“Yes.”
“Did your boss do this to you?”
She nods and starts to cry. Her tears pull at me, but I’m still so angry and shaken up that I’m stuck in place. “Because of us?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Probably. He’s a fucking slime bag.”
I’m fuming. I’m raging. I say out loud the thought that consumes me. “I’m going to kill him.”
With renewed urgency, she comes to me and grips my shirt. “He’s not worth it, Eoghan. Please don’t say that.”
“He can’t get away with this,” I spit out.
“Nothing has happened yet. I’m sorry I even told you.”
“Yet?”
“It’s fine,” she says desperately. “I’ve got it under control. Please…” she says, her eyes pleading with me.
“Lass—”
But I’m cut off by a knock on the door.
“Go away,” I yell harshly, and notice that the band has stopped playing.
“It’s Brigid,” Dylan says from the other side of the door. “Her water broke.”
Juliana doesn’t wait another second before she darts out of the room and leaves me in shambles.
Julie
Brigid has just gotten off the phone with her husband, Niall, and we’re waiting for Javier to pull the car around. In typical Brigid fashion, she’s acting as if this isn’t a big deal at all.
Meanwhile, I’m freaking the fuck out. “What if Javier can’t get his car up to the pub? It’s a Thursday, and the streets are crowded.”
Brigid shrugs. “Then I’ll walk to the car. I’ll be fine.”
“Where did he park?”
“On the other side of the River Lee.”
“All the way over there?” I shout, and point in some random direction.
She sh
rugs again, but then is suddenly hit with her first contraction. Her scream echoes throughout the pub.
I turn to Eoghan and he reads me loud and clear. He grabs his jacket from behind the bar and pulls his keys out of his pocket and takes off to get his car, which isn’t far. Dylan and I help Brigid stand up and start to walk her to the door.
“My husband is so mad at me for coming out tonight,” she says to me. “But it was so worth it, to see the look on your face.”
“Brigid, you are crazy and I love you,” I tell her. “I’m sure he won’t be mad for long.”
“I’m the one that’s about to get real mad as I birth his giant baby through my wee fhaighin.”
“Oh my God, I don’t even want to know what that means.”
She laughs a little. “But you can guess,” she says, and then screams out again at another contraction.
“They’re coming fast,” Cara says. “What was that, three minutes?”
“Maybe four,” I say, and now I’m really freaking out.
Just in time, Eoghan pulls up and we put Brigid into the backseat of the car so she can stretch out.
Once she’s in, he gives us a simple nod and takes off.
“I should have gone with him,” I tell Cara and shake my head.
“Is everything okay with you two? We heard yelling.”
“We got in a fight,” I tell her honestly.
Cara looks up at Reid, and he reads her perfectly. “I’ll let you two talk,” he says and follows the others back into the pub.
I place the sandwich board sign that says we’re closed back in front of the door, and then we take a seat at one of the outdoor tables, popular with customers who smoke cigarettes. It’s chilly, but at least it’s not raining.
“What did you fight about?”
“Well, my dad called.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah, get this,” I say and shake my head. “Brigid tagged me in a Facebook photo. Eoghan is all over me in that photo…and my family saw it. My dad is totally pissed.”
“You haven’t told your parents about you two?”
“Nope, not even a little. I never even told them that I was living with him.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. They still don’t know that part. So, I tried to appease my dad and told him that Eoghan and I aren’t that serious.”
“Oh…” she responds, knowing exactly where this is going.
“Yeah, Eoghan got pretty upset about that.”
“He really loves you, Julie. It’s so obvious.”
“I know he does, but now I’ve hurt him and I feel like absolute shit.”
“Did you explain?”
“I tried, but I’m not sure it made a difference. He was really angry. Christ, I could just use a single day where shit isn’t hitting the fan somehow.”
“Yeah, it’s been a rough few weeks for you.”
I’ve been keeping Cara in the loop with all my job drama, much more so than Eoghan, and that suddenly feels so wrong. I’ll never forget the way he looked at me when I told him about my job situation. He looked terrified and broken. “God, I’m horrible.”
“Julie, stop,” Cara says and squeezes my forearm.
“I told him about Aiden.”
She cringes. “How did that go?”
“Well, what would Reid say?”
“He’d want to beat his ass.”
I point at her and wink.
“Do you think he’ll do it?”
“God, I hope not. He’s such a fixer and so protective, I’m really worried that he’ll march right into CloudSoft and punch that fucker in the face.”
“Oh my god, that would be amazing. I would so pay to see that,” Cara says and we both laugh a little.
“Didn’t Reid get in a fight with some asshole?”
“Yes, and it was actually really horrible. Like, you think you want your man to defend your honor and all that, but it was completely terrifying. The jerk punched Reid in the skirmish and I died a thousand deaths in that moment.”
“I’d be the same way.”
Two headlights shine on us, and it takes a minute to figure out what’s going on. Javier pops out of the car.
“Oh shit,” I tell Cara.
“Where is she?” Javier asks.
“Man, she left already. Eoghan took her,” Cara tells him.
His whole body sags and I feel a little sad that Javier couldn’t have his big moment, being Brigid’s hero.
“Next time, yeah?” I tell him, because if Brigid keeps her word, she’s going to be doing this about five more times.
He smiles and then waves at us. “Buenas noches, Julie.”
“Buenas noches,” I reply and wave goodbye.
My phone starts to ring and I pull it out of my pocket, figuring it’s Eoghan or Brigid. I’m reminded of just how wrong I can be when I realize it’s Deidre. “Crap, I forgot I have this conference call tonight. It shouldn’t take too long.”
Cara nods and heads back into the pub. I’m freezing and I wish so badly I was in Eoghan’s office or even upstairs at this point, but I figure it’s best to just get this over with.
“This is Julie,” I answer.
“Julie, hi, it’s Deidre.”
“Yes, hello. Are you ready to go over those implementation plans?”
“Not exactly. I also have Aiden on the line.”
“Aiden?”
“Miss Rodriguez,” he replies. “I’ll keep it brief. We’ve called you tonight to talk through a strategic shift we’re making in the team.”
“Okay,” I say, and my heartbeat triples in time.
“Deidre is going to be taking on a broader role, and in this role, she will assume management of your support staff.”
“What?” I say and stand up. “Why?”
“As you know, the merger has created some redundancies here. As a result, your assignment in the Cork office has come to an end. They need you back in San Diego in three days’ time for the final implementation.”
I knew it, deep down. I really knew this was coming for me. He was never going to let me be happy here.
I feel like I’m going to throw up. “Three days?”
“That should be sufficient. The company will pay off your lease, and of course pay for your travel expenses. You’ll report to Leighanne Jenkins, Director of Customer Success, in San Diego.”
“What about transitioning my staff to Deidre?”
“I’ve…em…I’ve got that handled,” she says softly and I detect some regret, maybe some guilt.
“And my belongings?” I choke out.
“You can clear out your desk tomorrow,” Aiden says, so stern and so cold.
Everything about this is terrible and I am fucking pissed. Of course, he has a witness for this phone call so I can’t freak out on him. If it were just the two of us, I’d tell him that he’s a low-life douchebag that deserves to be miserable for the rest of his days. And I don’t think I could go without mentioning that I really hope his dick falls off from disease.
“Anything else?” I bite out.
“That’s all.”
And just like that, the call with Aiden ends and so does my life in Ireland.
When I go back into the pub, I’m ready to completely lose it, but I stop and take in the sight. Music is playing over the speakers, while my friends are all standing around drinking and watching Ruth dance on top of the bar. I’m surprised Dylan is letting her do it, but he totally is, and he’s enjoying every second of it. Their joy is infectious and I decide that I’m not going to say a word or wallow in my misery. Instead, I’m going to enjoy every moment I can until I have to go.
Eoghan
It’s been a long feckin’ day. The longest, really. When I finally get home, the pub is still a total mess, but all the lights are out. It’s a little unusual for Dylan to leave it that way, but he’s been known to do it when he has too much to drink. After two seconds of consideration, I decide to leave it as is and climb up the tw
o flights of stairs, totally knackered and ready to crash. I’m not sure what I expect when I get to the top floor, but it’s definitely not Dylan and Ruth, tangled up together on the couch, in the dark, asleep and barely clothed.
“What on earth?” I mumble under my breath. Could this day get any weirder? The door to Juliana’s room is shut. So that’s how it’s going to be? I consider my options and decide it’s probably best if I leave her alone for the night.
My bedroom is dark and quiet. All I want is my bed, so I go into my room, shut the door, and take off all my clothes. I get the fright of life when I pull back the covers and find Juliana sleeping in my bed, wearing one of my t-shirts. She stirs and turns over to look at me.
“Eoghan?” she asks, a little confused.
“It’s me,” I reply and slip into bed beside her.
“I missed you,” she whispers, and wraps herself around me.
I’ve missed her, too. Of course I have, because any time spent away from her is a little like torture. Even when we’re fighting.
“Forgive me,” she says against my ear and then starts to kiss my neck. My eyes shut at her touch and I try to let go of my anger. It’s not as easy as I want it to be. She really hurt me by not being forthcoming with her parents about us.
“Please,” she pleads and crawls on top of my body. She crosses her arms and grabs the hem of my Keep Calm, It’ll Be Grand t-shirt and pulls it off of her body. She is completely naked and straddling me. My eyes adjust to the dark and I can see the outline of her full breasts and the stiffness of her nipples.
“Please, Eoghan. Forgive me,” she murmurs, and bends down to my chest and rests her head against my heart.
I thread my fingers through her long dark hair, from root to tip, and then down to her bare bottom. How can I stay angry? I can’t, no matter what she does, no matter where she goes. She’s always forgiven, because she’s it for me.
“It’s okay,” I whisper and wrap my arms around her, holding her tight against me.
She gazes up at me and smiles, but her eyes are sad.
“Let me finish what I started today? Please,” she requests, and starts kissing me from my sternum up to my neck. The pressure builds between my hips. She sits up and starts to rub her wet sex back and forth along my erection. “Please.”
Pull At My Heart Page 29
