was met with laughter and jests. Several men rearranged their chairs or scooted deeper along the lone bench to make room for Gareth. Instead of slipping in among the men, though, he tossed his jacket down before retrieving a vacant chair from a neighboring table. Flipping the battered and aged oak seat around, he straddled it loosely, rested his forearms along the square back and leaned forward. “Who’s buying the first round?”
“Age before beauty,” Jacob announced.
Gareth grinned. “Like that is it? Need I remind you to respect your elders lest you find yourself on indefinite kitchen duty?”
“You’ve resorted to pulling rank. That means I managed to back you into a corner in moments,” Jacob said, grinning. “That’s worth peeling potatoes for a week...hell, a month, and without a word of complaint—mostly because I’d no idea it would be so easy.”
The men laughed, Gareth included, though he was obliged to reach over and cuff the young man on the back of the head. “Mind your manners. I’m older than you, but I’m far from old. I’ll kick yer arse to the Aran Islands and see you come summertime when it’s warm enough for you to swim home.” A flash of color and the tinny sound of a cheering crowd drew Gareth’s attention to the wall-mounted television where Ireland’s national soccer team played Scotland. “So, what’s the score?”
“Two minutes into the second half. Ireland’s up by one.”
The woman’s voice was as smoky as a two-finger shot of single barrel whiskey and as smooth as the waters of Loch Mor.
A jolt of pure, sensual pleasure arrowed through Gareth and settled a solid eight inches below his navel. He closed his eyes and took a bracing breath. “Care to repeat that?” Please.
Instead of answering, she chuckled. “Sure and if anything changes, I’ll gladly shout it out for you. In the meantime, what may I get you from the bar? Guinness? Whiskey? Murphy’s?” She must have shifted because the air moved and carried with it her scent—campfire smoke, warm flannel and the faintest hint of something spicy, like cloves. “The kitchen’s only open for another half hour, so you’d best get your order in if you’re hungry.”
Gareth fought the compulsion to look at her, the pull that urged him to face her where she stood and pair the voice with the rest of her, head to toe. “Order of chips and an Irish coffee. Be generous with the Irish.”
“I’ll see that you’re not cheated a drop,” she replied, the smile in her voice an audible caress.
Again, air moved, but this time with her departure.
Gareth spun in his seat, his narrowed eyes homing in on the seductive sway of the tall woman’s hips. Narrow waist. Long, long legs clad in skintight denim and knee-high boots. A simple white T-shirt. Skin on her arms bordering on pale. And her hair... It was a red so brilliant, so vibrant, that every strand seemed to come alive as the mass tumbled to her waist. Large, soft curls swayed back and forth as she walked, and the dense mass crackled with static.
He swiveled in his seat to face the men he’d come out to celebrate with. “She’s a new face.”
Jacob snorted. “And I told ye so earlier. ‘She’ is the new bartender as of several months ago.”
Gareth leaned his heavy forearms on the worn tabletop. Once, he’d have been the man to pursue her, the man to charm her right out of her tight jeans and onto a smooth-sheeted bed for a night of unparalleled pleasure. Now?
He shivered, his near hand drifting to the persistent ache at his side.
Now, not so much. If at all.
So much for finding a means to forget.
The men bantered back and forth, the sound mixing into the mishmash of noise in the crowded pub until all Gareth heard were random words, shouts of encouragement at the telly and, below it all, the faint vibrations of both fiddle and bodhran from the corner where the musicians had begun to prepare for the show.
A fiver slid into his view, followed by Jared’s voice. “So what of it, Gareth? You in?”
Slipping the euro back into the middle of the table, he looked up and forced an approximation of a smile. “My mind’s been wandering about. I’d be a poor Regent and even poorer assassin to take a blind wager, don’t you think?”
Jacob’s smile fell a bit, and the other men went still.
Gareth wanted to yank at his hair, wanted to shout at them to just behave normally, but he knew it had taken months of his withdrawing from them to get the men to this place where he was now unfamiliar. He didn’t want them to remember him this way after he was gone, but rather they should remember him as he had been. Might as well attempt to set things to rights.
With an air of feigned casualness, he retrieved his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a hundred note, sliding it across the table with the general irreverence he’d been known for over his lifetime. “But it’s not to say I can’t sweeten the pot for the man about to dive into the seedy Shadow Realm of bloody taunts and bodily wagers.”
The men leaned in as if he was their puppeteer, the money their master.
“Go on, then,” Jacob said, eyes bright.
“I’ve a hundred that says not a one of you can get the redhead to take you home tonight.”
“That was the wager—that you could talk her out of the bar and back to her place,” Jacob said, smirking.
“I’m not favored in this one, gents. It’s not fair for me to use my gods-given charms—plural—against the lot of you.” He leaned back, hands gripping the chair back, and kicked his feet out in front of him. “Too much like taking candy from babes. So, you care to play or is it all talk with the lot of ye?”
There was a great deal of shifting in seats and casual glances left and then right to see who would be the first to man up or bow out. Finally, a lad named Alex, slapped a ten-euro note on the scarred table and grinned. “I’ll take that wager.”
Gareth chuckled. “You’re barely out of short pants, Alex. What could you possibly know about seducing a woman?”
“Far more than you think, you gobshite,” he responded, his broad shoulders squaring. “I’ll have the lass eating out of me palm before sunrise.”
Gareth grinned. “And that, right there, is why you’ll lose.”
Alex’s brow furrowed.
Leaning forward with an air of absolute seriousness, Gareth clasped the younger man’s shoulder. “The goal in spending the night with a woman has nothing to do with feeding them like a wee bird.”
The men all laughed. Several more bills were added to the pile as their group grew more boisterous.
Gareth chanced a quick glance over his shoulder at the woman in question. If he was honest, what he really wanted was another look.
She’d nearly reached the bar. From somewhere deep in the group of men she passed through, a brawny hand snaked out and grabbed her backside hard enough he imagined she’d bruise.
He was out of his chair before his mind registered that he’d responded. It turned
