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“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.
Duties 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...
“What’s your last name?”
“Kelleher. What’s yours?”
“Webb.”
“Right. Jamie Webb,” he said softly, as though he didn’t wish to share the knowledge of her name with any eavesdroppers. Another of those delightfully untrustworthy grins, and he clacked her pint glass with his highball. “I’m Connor Kelleher. So very fine to make your acquaintance.”
* * *
Jamie wasn’t sure when bars officially closed for the night in Ireland, but Connor locked the door to the Crossroads just after ten, when the final regular bade him a good evening and shuffled out into the night. He flipped the dead bolt and the sign in the window, then turned expectantly to Jamie.
“Ready to redeem yourself?” she asked.
They’d been making flirtatious small talk for the past couple hours, but she still felt a ripple of nerves. Thrilling nerves—an endorsement from her intuition, not a warning.
“I’ll do my best,” Connor said, cracking his knuckles. “Though sadly you’ve already seen my best. I can only pray that whiskey’s left me with a fighting chance.”
“Sorry. I actually play better after a drink.” She fed the coin tray, setting unseen balls tumbling.
Connor flipped off all the lights save for the one above the table, seeming to close them in an intimate, dramatic little set.
He let her arrange the balls, and he broke.
Feeling cruel, Jamie took to disturbing him just before he could take his next shot, peppering him with inane questions. The fourth time she pulled the stunt, he stayed as he was, leveling her with his eyes. He looked deliciously dangerous in the stark overhead light, still poised to take his thwarted turn—brow furrowed, shoulder blades cocked, gorgeous forearms tensed and his fingers curled around the cue.
Trounce me.
He didn’t. He merely smiled some mysterious Connor smile, then finally took his turn. Her ploy worked, though—he didn’t sink a thing.
He sighed his annoyance, standing aside as Jamie got her own shot strategized. He tapped the table with the tip of his cue. “Aim about here,” he said. Tap tap tap. She eyeballed a different angle and he tapped again, in her line of vision. “Right about here, then.” Tap tap tap tap.
She flipped her hair over her shoulder and picked a ball, knocking it neatly into a side pocket. She tossed him a snotty look as she circled to find her next move. Connor rested his cue along his shoulders, gripping it with both hands. “If we’d agreed on any prizes this time, I may as well go ahead and forfeit mine.”
“I thought the stakes were rather obvious,” she said, and potted the blue ball.
Connor seemed to perk up at this. He was imagining another kiss—she could tell from his eyebrows alone, rising a fraction to betray his intentions.
