have a whiskey, you’ll be skuttered. What might be botherin’ you?”
Conor resented his grandfather stepping in and telling him to slow it down. If he did that to all his customers, Padraig’s Pub would go broke. But he also knew the old man cared about him. Truth was, he had to work tomorrow, and having a hangover wasn’t something he needed. Or wanted. “Brian, make that a glass of water.” He remembered he’d also had a beer with dinner, so he’d already gone over his personal limit.
Why did he have to remind himself about dinner—the best meal he’d ever had—and seeing her?
“Have something on your mind?”
“Nah, Grandda. Just had a surprise earlier, that’s all.” A surprise that nearly knocked him on his ass—seeing the girl he’d known since fourth grade and loved since the tenth.
Padraig Delaney wedged himself between the guy sitting on the stool next to Conor and his grandson. Far too close for Conor’s comfort. “A little birdie told me about the new chef.”
Conor had never told a single person how Shelby had stood him up the night he’d intended to ask her to marry him. The man lived in blissful ignorance where his grandsons were concerned, and seemed to like it that way. Grandda couldn’t possibly be heading in that direction. “What about it?”
“That Mark hired Shelby Brookes to help our restaurant compete in town.”
“Well, from the meal I had tonight, I’d say he made a good choice.” He’d do his best not to give himself away. Even though he intended to personally ring Mark’s neck for hiring the one person he never wanted to see again. If Grandda had a clue how messed up seeing Shelby had made him feel, he’d start spouting Irish jibber-jabber about the fates and fairies and how life always worked itself out, often in mysterious ways. The Irish version of fortune cookie sayings.
“It’s your turn, you know.”
Conor almost spilled the water Brian had just delivered. Grandda wasn’t really going there, was he? Tonight of all nights? He held up his free hand. “Don’t say it. Please.”
“We can’t deny fate.”
There it was. Give me strength. Was it too late to reorder the whiskey? But there was no arguing with the man from Ireland with a head full of fanciful thoughts, as his father called them.
“You boys saved that seal. How much proof do you need that it was a selkie? Both your brothers have found their ladies.”
Last year, worried about Mark moping around for so long after being discharged from the army, Conor and Daniel had rented a boat for some deep-sea fishing in an attempt to cheer him up. They’d wound up coming upon a pod of orca giving a lesson to an orca calf on how to catch a meal.
The pod had singled out a seal and were wearing it down, giving the calf ample opportunity to do the final deed. Nature was cruel, and the sight disturbed the three brothers. They pulled their boat closer and revved the engine, disrupting the pod’s attention. Probably the dumbest thing they could ever do, considering a small fishing boat wouldn’t be able to withstand the wrath of a ten-thousand-pound killer whale. But they’d done it, and amazingly, it had worked. They’d distracted the pod long enough for the seal to make a break. As they’d made a wide circle around the pod in the boat, they’d even cheered on the seal.
The next night, when they’d told the family the story over Sunday night dinner Grandda got weird. He’d sworn they’d saved a selkie and according to Irish folklore she—how his grandfather knew the sex was beyond Conor, but nevertheless—she owed them all a favor. Grandda swore each of the Delaney brothers would find their mate, as though he had a direct line to the little people in magic land.
Because Padraig was old, and they all loved him, the family put up with his occasional fantastical stories, but this one had gone beyond the pale. Until Daniel met a woman and fell in love three months later, a woman who was now pregnant and ready to give birth. Mark had done the same a couple months after that, met someone right across the street, coincidental as it was. Eerily so?
Nothing like flaming a fairy fire!
Speaking of fire, he remembered the reason he was sulking at the bar—seeing Shelby in the hotel kitchen. She’d been as upset at seeing him as he was with her, and her hand had slipped and she’d started the fire.
As she should be, out of guilt for standing him up!
From the corner of his eye, he saw the pub door open and a woman in a chef smock step into the bar. His palms felt on fire and anxious waves licked upward toward his neck. Seeing Shelby once today had been enough. “Well, I’ve got an early day, Grandda. I’ll be going now.” He worked to sound normal, feeling anything but. “Oh, add this to my tab, okay?” He stood and, moving as quickly as possible through a crowded pub without drawing attention to himself, he headed for the back exit.
* * *
Shelby swallowed the anxiety that twisted her stomach and threatened to make her turn and run back to the hotel lobby, but resisted and stood in the pub entrance waiting for her vision to adjust. Her heart battered against her chest. Conor hated her. She’d seen it in his eyes. Could she blame him? She’d given him a damn good reason. But he needed to know the whole story.
Still dressed in her chef smock, but without the hat, she stood for a few seconds, back against the pub doors, fighting for balance. It was loud with conversations and laughter, and over the speaker system, classic Irish music played, but by current, popular US groups.
She scanned the pub, checking out the long bar first. Movement at the far end caught her attention. The tall man stood and headed the other way. It was Conor. Had he seen her? Did he hate her so much he’d skip out of the bar to avoid her?
Too bad; she had to talk to him.
Shelby followed, sidestepping couples and groups of people to navigate the crowd and find that back exit. Spying the door, she rushed through it and after Conor, who, thanks to his long legs, was halfway across the hotel parking lot already. She didn’t stand a chance of catching him, being a full foot shorter, but she wouldn’t give up. “Conor! Conor! Wait up!”
She sidestepped a small group smoking by a car.
Conor stopped, but didn’t turn. If she thought her pulse had gone haywire before, that was nothing as it rattled her rib cage now, threatening to break out. Nearly breathless, her lungs irritated by the cigarette smoke, she bolted closer.
“You need to know something,” she said, fighting back a cough.
Now he stopped and turned, the parking lot light distorting his scowl into something scary. If she hadn’t known him most of her life, she might have run the other way, but she kept closing the gap between them. “I had a damn good reason not to meet you that day.” She prayed her knees wouldn’t give out as she barreled closer.
“And you couldn’t tell me then?”
Closer now, it seemed like a wall of frozen brick separated them.
“Not on the phone. No.”
“It was more important to make me feel like a complete fool?” He leveled his voice, aware of the group of smokers.
Still, his cold blast sent chills across her shoulders
