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For a long moment he held her eyes, one corner of his lips curled with unmistakable mischief. She expected some offhand remark, but when he spoke, all that came was, “What’s your name?” Three simple words, but loaded somehow in his hushed, conspiring tone, warmed by that melodic accent.
She swallowed. “Jamie. What’s yours?”
“Connor.” He offered the silliest of gestures, miming a curtsy with an invisible skirt. She laughed.
“And what brings you to the dullest pub in all of Country Cork, Jamie?” Connor asked, organizing lemon wedges in their bin, forearms flexing. Down, girl.
“I’m staying at my mom’s best friend’s house for a week and a half.” Best to not say she was house-sitting, solo. Gorgeous or not, this guy was a complete stranger.
Connor bopped his fist against his palm, squinting in concentration. “Donna,” he declared, snapping his fingers. “Donna Jameson. She’s your ma’s mate?”
Jamie laughed. “Yes. How did you know that?”
“Only American I know of who lives round here.”
“Oh, of course. Yeah, she and my mom grew up together.” Jeez. A realization struck. Jamie had packed up and moved cross-country for a man, but Donna had moved across an entire ocean for her husband. Not me, no, thank you. No more following anybody’s map but my own. Then again, an Irish accent did mess with a woman’s good sense...
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you from around here?”
“Grew up here, but I live in the city now.”
A city! Swoon. Take me there. She needed it like a grounded fish needed water.
“When did you land?” he asked.
Jamie pretended to check an invisible watch. “Five hours ago?”
“Ah, very fresh then.”
She eyed him. “So you live in Cork?”
“I do.”
“That must be quite a commute, just to come bartend.”
He shrugged. “Only a half hour’s drive, plus it’s the family business.”
“Was that your dad who served me my first round?”
Connor nodded.
“I could tell. You have the same eyes.” Blue, she guessed, though it was hard to confirm in this lighting. Pale, at any rate, and bright as a river sparkling under the summer sun. Fucking dreamy.
“I tend a bit of bar in Cork, too. And I fix up cars and motorbikes on the side.”
“Busy boy.”
“Saving up,” he said, lifting her glass to run a bar towel across the wood.
“What for?”
“College. Engineering.” He strung the towel through his belt loop.
“I thought college was free here. For citizens.”
“Tuition is, but registration fees and rent and petrol add up.” He pursed his lips, something guilty in the gesture, then told her, “I had a bit of a squandered youth. I’m playing catch-up these days.”
Aha. A formerly delinquent hot Irish bartender looking to make good. He probably picked up some tricks in his so-called squandered youth. Sex tricks. Jamie wouldn’t mind making those tricks’ acquaintance.
“Squandered how?” she asked, and sipped her stout.
“The usual rubbish. Drinking, trouble, spending too much time underneath fast cars...and trying to get underneath fast girls.”
She laughed.
Connor smiled, reflecting that funny mix of humble and shameless she’d expected of Irish guys. “Can’t say I was always so successful with the latter, but no one could fault my efforts.”
“Sounds like a youth well squandered to me,” Jamie said. “I just wasted over two years of mine playing house with a guy who didn’t pan out, so irresponsibility sounds pretty attractive.”
“If you’re going to make mistakes, I suppose you may as well make fun ones,” Connor offered.
She lifted her drink in a toast to this wisdom. After a pause, she found the balls to say, “So you’re trying to make good now—does that mean you traded in all the fast girls for one nice, slow one?”
“Nah, not yet. I may be through chasing women, but I’m not ready to stand still with one either. I’d be quite happy to find the right lass to just walk alongside for a while.”
“Good plan,” Jamie said, liking that image—the natural, easy pace of it. “I pretty much signed up to play housewife for my ex way too young. Put everything I had in mind for myself on hold. I probably need to find some momentum while you’re busy cooling your jets.”
Any reply Connor might’ve volleyed was cut off by a patron’s request for a refill. After delivering it, he busied himself running the glass washer and organizing the bar and register. Jamie watched him with stolen glances, and twice their eyes met. Even wordless, the flirtation buzzed—excitement mixed up with nerves and shyness, shaken until it fizzed.
When his tidying brought him back into Jamie’s orbit, Connor asked, far too innocently, “So, how long since you and this bastard ex of yours split up, then?”
“Three months or so.”
“I, em, I hope you at least made up for lost time.”
“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.
