AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“They don’t play games like this in Provence, do they, Sophie?” Taylor called with a little snark. “Go on. Someone give that girl a beer. On me.”
Her friend’s cheeks went pink before she looked over her shoulder. Taylor followed her gaze. Jamie nodded to her friend with the most mysterious smile on his face. She narrowed her eyes at the subtext.
“I’m just drinking water tonight, folks,” Sophie declared with a grin before coughing loudly.
She was pregnant!
Liam reached for Taylor’s hand and squeezed it, and she knew his Spidey sense was onto them too.
Sophie must have seen the looks on their faces because she shot them a pleading glance. “I’m heading off the Irish flu,” she added with another fake cough.
“There’s a flu going around?” Ellie gasped.
“That’s Irish for hangover,” Declan told her, fighting laughter.
“Water?!” Eoghan wiped the silver wisps of his hair off his forehead. “You’re in Ireland, girl. The water of life is whiskey.”
“Eoghan…” Sophie gave him a stern but kind smile. “I’m drinking water. Now, let’s play.”
Bets was grinning as she yelled, “Brady, turn on the music.”
The game resumed. Taylor managed to dump the potato off on Bets right before the music died. They shared a conspiratorial grin. Thank God Bets wasn’t being all weird with her like she’d feared. So far, she’d mostly been cool.
Then Bets rose and declared it was time for the Lucky Charms to do theirthang, and suddenly Taylor wanted to run and hide in the bathroom stall. Bets had gathered her older friends around her and was starting to hand out feather boas, but surely she’d ask Taylor to join them, and then—
“Feeling the need to flee?” Liam asked, putting his arm around her.
She made a face as her internal temperature spiked from his touch. “I still have nightmares of stumbling over my feet and falling on my butt at prom when I attempted the Macarena.”
He chortled, his gorgeous green eyes dancing. “This story crushes me. I adore the Macarena.”
“You do?”
His kiss on her cheek was quick and delightful. “I was kidding,a stór. Come on. I’ll make up your excuse.”
She made a raspberry sound. “I can face Malcolm, but I’m having trouble with saying no to your mother. What does that make me?”
“Human,” he replied with a devilish grin.
That she was. She was kissing him back on the cheek when she heard someone calling her name. Bets!
She went rigid instantly.
What was she going to say? That she had a muscle spasm from all the potato throwing? Jet lag?
She was turning when she heard Linc shout, “Stop everything!”
The pub went instantly silent as he rose, his face a wild mixture of shock and joy.
“Wilt Mather just called the Garda,” he announced in his booming voice. “He caught Mary Kincaid trespassing on the arts center property attempting to paint over the mural. We’ve got her!”
A cheer erupted in the pub.
“Bon Jovi can wait!” Bets yelled after giving a wild jump of joy in the air. “Let’s go, everybody. We’ve been waiting for Mary to get her just deserts and that dish is about to be served.”
Taylor’s heart rate tripled at the thought of someone trying to paint over her mural. Of course it had happened in the past, and sometimes she’d been plagued with sadness for days afterward. She knew her artwork wouldn’t be permanent, of course. Street art was the antithesis of the grand masters and the formality of wooden frames and high-tech lighting. Still, when her art disappeared, it was gone for good. No photo or print could quite capture the original.
“You okay?” Liam rubbed her arms briskly, his soft gaze searching her face.
