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“We left your bride sighing and sniffling over the shelves we’ve just finished.” Even as she spoke, Brenna had one eye on the kitchen door. “And how are you, Jack?”
“I’m fine and well, Brenna, and you?”
“The same. You’re not falling in love with our Darcy here, now, are you?”
He blushed like a ripe beet. Jack had a face as big as the moon and shoulders wide as County Waterford, and he never failed to color like a schoolboy when teased about women.
“I’ve more sense than that. She’d squash my heart like a bug.”
“Ah, but you’d die a happy man,” Darcy told him.
“Don’t listen to her, Jack.” Aidan worked the taps as he spoke, expertly building the Guinness. “For she’s as fickle and flighty as they come.”
“All true,” Darcy agreed with a careless and beautiful laugh. “I’m holding out for a rich man, one who’ll set me on a pedestal and strew jewels at my feet. But in the meantime . . .” She played her fingertips over Jack’s flushed face. “I enjoy the attention of big and handsome men.”
“Ah, go on and take my father his pint, before our Jack here loses all power of speech.” Brenna cocked her boot on her knee and lifted the glass Aidan passed her. “You’re safe with me, Jack darling.”
“You’re as pretty as she is.”
“Don’t be saying such things loud enough for herself to hear you, or she’ll skin us both.” Touched and amused, she kissed his cheek. And Shawn came through the door.
It would have been comical, she decided, and was a pity that no one noticed but herself the way he stopped dead in his tracks, stared, then jolted when the door swung back and slapped him in the ass.
Secretly delighted, she merely lifted her eyebrows and left her hand cozily on Jack’s broad shoulder. “Good evening to you, Shawn.”
“Brenna.” So much was going on inside him he couldn’t separate one sensation from the other. He knew one was irritation, another was discomfort. And, damn it, another altogether was straight lust that had no business being there. But the rest of it was just a mess.
She sipped her beer, watched him over the foam. “I had some of your soup at lunch today with Jude. It had a fine flavor.”
“We’ve ciste on the menu tonight; Mrs. Laury butchered some pigs this week.”
“Well, that’ll stick to your ribs, won’t it, Jack?”
“That it will. Are you staying to eat, then, Brenna?”
“No, I’m for home after my Guinness.”
“If you change your mind, you can have a meal with me. I’ve a fondness for ciste , and Shawn makes it well.”
“He’s a hand in the kitchen, isn’t he?” She smiled when she said it, but the expression in her eyes was sharp and derisive. “Do you cook at all, Jack?”
“Sausage and eggs I can manage. And I can boil a potato.” Being Jack, he took her question seriously and furrowed his brow as he thought through his culinary repertoire. “I can make a sandwich well enough when I have the fixings about, though that’s not the same as cooking when it comes to it.”
“That’ll get you by.” She gave Jack’s shoulder a friendly pat. “You and me, we’ll leave the cooking for the likes of Shawn here. Aidan, will you be needing me at all this weekend for working the pub?”
“I could use your hands on Saturday night if you can fit it in. The band we’ve booked is a popular one, and your Mary Kate let us know there’s a tour group coming into the cliff hotel for Saturday as well. I’m thinking some of them will wander into Gallagher’s.”
“I’ll come at six, then.” She drained her glass, slid off the stool. “Will you be stopping in the pub here on Saturday, Jack?”
“I will, yes. I like the band.”
“I’ll see you then.” She glanced back, noted her father was deep into talk with his friends. An hour more, she calculated, then called to him, “I’m for home, Dad. I’ll tell Ma you’ll be along by and by. Darcy, you see that the man’s up and out within the hour now, won’t you?”
“I’ll show him the door.” Darcy carted a tray full of empties to the bar. “I’ve a date Tuesday next with a Dubliner who passed through here. He’s taking me into Waterford City for dinner. Why don’t you get yourself a man and come along?”
“I might do that.”
“Better, I’ll ask the Dubliner to bring a friend.”
“All right.” Brenna didn’t have any interest in having dinner in Waterford with strangers, but it was so satisfying to plan it with Shawn listening. “I’ll just stay with you after, as I expect we’ll get in late.”
“He’s picking me up at six, prompt,” Darcy called out as Brenna started to the door. “So be here on time and looking like a female.”
Jack sighed into his beer when Brenna strode out. “She smells of sawdust,” he said more to himself than otherwise. “It’s very pleasant.”
“What are you doing sniffing at her?” Shawn demanded. Jack just blinked at him.
“What?”
“I’ll be back in a minute.” He shoved up the passthrough on the bar, let it fall with a bang that had Aidan cursing him, then rushed through the door after Brenna.
“Wait a minute. Mary Brenna? Just a damn minute.”
She paused by the door of her truck, and for one of the first times in her life felt the warm glow of pure female satisfaction stream through her. A fine feeling, she decided. A fine feeling altogether.
Schooling her face to show mild interest, she turned. “Is there a problem, then?”
“Yes, there’s a problem. What are you doing flirting with Jack Brennan that way?”
She let her eyebrows rise up under the bill of her cap. “And what business might that be of yours, I’d like to know?”
“A matter of days ago you’re asking me to make love with you, and I turn around and you’re cozying up to Jack and making plans to have dinner with some Dubliner.”
She waited one beat, then two. “And?”
“And?” Flustered and furious, he glared at her. “And it’s not right.”
She only lifted a shoulder in dismissal, then turned to open the truck door.
“It’s not right,” he repeated, grabbing her again and turning her to face him. “I’m not having it.”
“So you said, in clear terms.”
“I don’t mean that.”
“Oh, well, if you’ve decided you’d like to have sex with me after all, I’ve changed my mind.”
“I haven’t decided—” He broke off, staggered. “Changed your mind?”
“I have. Kissing you wasn’t altogether what I thought it would be. So you were right and I was wrong.” She gave him a deliberately insulting pat on the cheek. “And that’s the end of it.”
“The hell it is.” He trapped her against the truck, quickly and firmly enough to have both excitement and annoyance rising inside her. “If I want you, I’ll have you, and that’s the end of it. Meanwhile, I want you to behave yourself.”
She couldn’t speak. She was certain that if she tried she would strangle on the words. So she did the only thing she could think of. She plowed her bunched fist into his gut.
It cost him some breath, and the color that temper had brought to his face drained completely. But he held his ground. The fact that he did, that he could, when she knew she had a solid punch, sent another trickle of excitement sliding through her.
“We’ll talk about this, Brenna, in private.”
“That’s fine. I’ve plenty to say.”
Satisfied that he’d made his point, he stepped back. “You can come by the cottage in the morning.”
Seething, she climbed into the truck, slammed the door. “I could,” she told him as she started the engine, “but I won’t. I came to you once, and you spurned me. I won’t be back.”
He stepped back again, to save his toes from being run over. If she wouldn’t come to him, he thought as she drove away, he’d find another way to get her alone so they could . . . come to terms, he supposed it
was.
In private.
SEVEN
A BODY WOULD think the woman had never jumped into his arms and kissed him senseless. A man could start believing himself delusional and that she’d never sat across from him at his own kitchen table and suggested they have a romp in bed. But she had done both of those things. He knew it because every time he came within a foot of her the muscles in his belly knotted.
Shawn didn’t care for it, not a bit. No more than he cared for how easy and bloody normal she was acting as they fell into the Saturday night routine at the pub. Every time he came out of the kitchen for one reason or another, she’d shoot him that look of hers that was caught somewhere between a sneer and a smile.
It made him wonder why he’d ever enjoyed seeing that selfsame expression on her face in the past.
Brenna worked the set of taps at one end of the long chestnut bar while Aidan manned those at the other end. She talked with the customers, laughed with old Mr. Riley, who was in the habit of asking every pretty young thing to be his bride. If the musicians played a tune she was fond of, she joined in the chorus.
