Chapter 23

23

MADDIE

Monday, March 17

I wake up in Patrick’s bed, in his cottage. Is this a dream? I stretch out my arms and wince at the sting on my right arm. Nope, that soreness is definitely real. And the pounding in my head reminds me how my skull met a giant boulder yesterday. I have a vision of a flock of sheep and moan into the pillow.

Sheep caused my bike accident.

Patrick stayed with me until the doctors said we could go, only ducking out of the room to make a few phone calls on brewery business. He wouldn’t give me details, but it seemed urgent.

Then he took me to his cottage. His home .

We walked to the front door, his arm wrapped firmly around my waist, as if I might fall over at any moment. It was dark and I didn’t even get a tour of the cottage before I collapsed on the couch, where we ate takeout and turned on a movie. I didn’t watch it at all, as my head was so sore. Instead, I fell asleep wedged in the crook of his shoulder. He put me to bed in his room and woke me every three hours to ask questions like what’s your name and where are you from and what’s the best amber ale you’ve ever tasted and why is it Slea Head Golden Amber . Doctor’s orders, he said.

We’d slept in the same bed together many times in my flat. But this was different. He’d never brought up bringing me here. It didn’t seem to be something he would do. That was fine with me—it was his sacred space, his real home, where his nieces would come sleep, where he has pet sheep in the backyard.

His side of the bed is cold, but his voice carries from the other room as he talks to someone on the phone. I sit up slowly and wait for the pulsing in my head to subside, and when it does, I pull on my hoodie and shuffle out of the room.

“I’ll call you later,” he says as soon as I appear at the end of the hallway. He quickly pockets his phone.

I lean against the wall.

“Brewery stuff?”

He nods and presses his palms on the granite counter, his eyes locked on me, scanning for weaknesses.

“How are you feeling?” he finally says.

“Wonderful.” I wince as my head pounds in response. “Mostly wonderful. But you can go to work, you know? I can go back to the flat. I hate to mess up your week. I know things are stressful right now.”

Me making bad decisions—biking in the rain—is going to interfere with his life even more. But deep inside, I hope he says no. I hope he wants me to stay.

Patrick shakes his head and strides over to me, reaching for my hands. Warm and sweet, his thumbs slide over the back of my palms. Then he drops my hands and cups my face. My body heats at his touch.

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

“It’s a minor concussion and some scrapes.” My heart squeezes.

He shakes his head. “You were in hospital.”

“But it’s St Patrick’s Day. The pub is going to be so busy tonight.”

“It’s covered.”

“Seriously? By who?”

Patrick ignores the question and drags his thumb along my jawline, swiping at my bottom lip.

“Did I say I’m so sorry about last week?”

I nod. “You did. I’m sorry, too.”

He leans in to kiss my lips softly. “Hungry? How about leftover cinnamon rolls?”

“Sounds delicious.”

“Let me show you around first.”

Patrick takes my hand and leads me down the hallway, pausing at the room I just emerged from.

“My bedroom, obviously.”

“Your bed is beautiful.” It’s wooden with a majestic headboard. Looks like the same type of wood as the coffee table at my flat.

He gives me a funny look and leads me further down the hallway, hand still clasped around mine.

Past his bedroom, there are two closed doors. He opens one and gestures for me to step inside, letting go of my hand as I take in the pink-and-blue masterpiece.

“Niamh loves pink.” There are a trio of canvas prints above her bed on one side of the room: a unicorn, a sheep, and a puppy. “But Erin will only put up with blue.” Above Erin’s bed on the other side there are stickers of soccer balls, a goal, and also sheep.

“It’s so sweet that they have their own room at your house.”

“I bought the cottage a year ago. I knew I wanted this to be a safe, fun second home for the girls. My sister needs a break once in a while, and her ex is an arse and hardly ever around.” He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, muscles bulging out of his t-shirt, while I spin slowly in a circle.

A soft throw rug tickles my toes. There’s a sturdy wooden nightstand for each girl that matches the beds, with a pile of age-appropriate books. Skinny chapter books for Niamh, fatter novels for Erin.

I swallow and turn to Patrick. I’m seeing another layer of this man, one he seems to protect fiercely.

“What about the rest?” I nod my head toward the hallway.

“There’s another bedroom down here. It’s, uh, a bit of a workroom.” He makes no move to budge from his spot.

“Do you have some dark secret hidden in there?” I close the distance between us and press myself against him, turning him toward me with my back against the doorframe. I’m deliciously trapped.

“Not quite.”

“Show me.” I tilt my head up and he makes a low sound as he leans down to kiss me. Too gently. I sigh. I’m not going to break, concussion or not.

Patrick leads me down the hallway and pushes the third bedroom’s door open, stepping aside to let me in. It’s a bright room with pieces of furniture in that same color of light wood organized randomly. A coffee table against one wall, several small bookshelves—including one set up in the middle of the room and appearing half-finished—and a worktable of carpentry supplies.

“What’s this?”

He runs his hand up his neck and blushes. It’s freaking adorable.

“I make furniture.”

“You... make it? With your own two hands?” I blink a hundred times. Could this man get any hotter?

“Yes. There’s a workroom attached to the shed out back where I do most of the work, but I bring some of the finished pieces in here. Plus that one bookcase that isn’t quite done. I need to get a heater set up out there.”

“Your bed?”

He nods.

“The girls’ room?”

“I had more time before taking over Slea Head. I did a ton when I first bought the cottage. But this stuff’s kind of sat here for the last three months.” Patrick runs a hand through his hair.

“Understandable.” I walk over to one of the bookshelves and run my hand along a smooth, thick shelf.

“One of the bookcases is for my parents and the other is for Saoirse. They’re almost done. After that, I will focus on smaller pieces so I can actually complete something in a reasonable timeframe.”

“These are beautiful. So sturdy. Strong. Unbreakable.” Not cheaply made. Real wood, dependable, long-lasting.

That’s what I want from a man. All of those things.

My gaze lands on the coffee table.

“Oh! The coffee table in my flat?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” I steal a look at him. “Wait, what about that wooden wall hanging in the flat? In the shape of Ireland? Is that yours, too?”

“Yes.”

“You’re talented.” I hug my arms across my chest, trying to douse the sweet warmth sparking inside.

He shrugs and backs up out of the room. “Want to meet the sheep?”

“As long as they’re not the ones that took me down yesterday.”

“Christ.” His eyes widen. “Would this be triggering?”

“I’d prefer baby goats, like your neighbor has, to sheep.” I step closer to him. “But it’s okay. I don’t blame the sheep.”

“Come on, then.” He half-chuckles, half-sighs, and holds out his hand. I step forward to take it.

“Wait a minute.” I pull back on his hand until he turns to me.

“Hmm?”

“When you say smaller pieces, do you mean things like wooden figurines?”

“Aye. Figurines and bowls and wall decor. Just not giant pieces like the bed or bookshelves.”

“The ones your nieces painted over the weekend?”

“Yes.”

“Sweet. And did you happen to make a terrifying wooden sheep and leave it on the dresser in the flat?” A vision of the menacing shadow of the sheep on that first morning I woke up in Dingle flashes in my head.

“I wasn’t going for terrifying.” Patrick squeezes my hand.

I crack up.

“Come on. Kitty’s the friendly one. Turtle hides. He’s super standoffish.”

I let Patrick lead me to the backyard.

“I’m gonna take a wild guess that you let your nieces name your sheep.”

“Aye. I wanted to call them Brains and Holy.”

“That’s weird.” I cock my head as we get to the sliding doors in his family room.

“You know, short for Sheep for Brains and Holy Sheep.”

I cackle and follow him out the door, where Kitty stands about ten feet away. Patrick looks over his shoulder and winks at me.

My heart twitters. I’m in so much trouble with this man.

On Tuesday afternoon, I shove Patrick out the door to go to the brewery.

“I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

This morning, he filled me in on the full-blown crisis at Slea Head with Sean quitting.

And he canceled the damn Wellington Pubs meeting and didn’t tell me about it until it was too late.

“You need to be at work. Go taste the IPA. Talk to your dad. Convince him to help out. And call the Wellington people!”

“I hinted at asking him to help me when I called. I’m sure he’ll say yes.” Patrick invited his father to join him and Cormac for the IPA tasting.

“Thank god.”

“And I already emailed the Wellington people on Sunday night. They acknowledged it with we’ll get back to you with the next available date , so I need to wait it out.”

I groan. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“You’re the most important thing right now,” Patrick says, and my heart squeezes. “Not work. Are you sure you’re okay with me leaving?”

I growl as he slides his phone in his pocket.

“Yeah, and if I weren’t trapped here, I might head to the pub to work. Maybe I’ll walk to town.”

“Don’t you dare.” He picks up my hand and examines the healing scrapes, then touches the road rash on my forearm, which is looking so much better. “How’s your head?”

“Fine. I don’t have a headache today.”

“Good.” He moves his hand from my arm to my cheek, gently swiping a finger along my jaw.

“Think about it. You need the help, and I’m just fine. The doctor didn’t say I need to sit on my ass for a week.”

“You do have a very nice arse.”

“Patrick.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Who is covering my shifts? We were already short-staffed.”

“Saoirse is stepping in.”

“Huh? What about her job?”

“She’s cutting back on her hotel hours. I’m slowly convincing her to come work for me.”

“That’s great. It’d be fun to work with her.” But my stomach flips, because I won’t be here long enough to appreciate it.

“The girls might come over tomorrow night for a few hours, if that’s okay.”

“Of course, I can’t wait to spend time with them.”

“For now, just rest, Madison.” He runs his finger under my chin. A delightful shiver shoots up my spine.

“Can I make dinner tonight?”

“You up for that?” He leans back and examines my face. “I can pick up take-away on the way home.”

“Yes, I’m up for boiling water for pasta.”

He laughs and hands me his credit card, telling me to order groceries online for delivery.

I accept the card and step forward, throwing my arms around his neck. I tried my best to seduce him last night, but he insisted I needed to rest.

“I’ll be back soon.” He peels my arms off his neck and takes a step back. “But I am very seriously reconsidering leaving you.”

“Go. The brewery needs you.” I gently push him out the door.

I’ll make grilled chicken with rotini on the side and a homemade sauce. He has several packages of mushrooms in his fridge, so even though I’m not the biggest fan, he must love them.

After the groceries show up later that afternoon and I start dinner, I shower and put on a short blue dress, one of the things we picked up at my flat yesterday. Just because I now own more appropriate clothing for Ireland doesn’t mean I can’t dress up sometimes.

He gets home as delicious scents of garlic chicken and simmering sauce fill the house. Patrick drops his bag on the kitchen floor and turns to me, seeming almost surprised to find a woman in his kitchen cooking dinner.

“I missed you.” I slide my hands around his waist, pulling him toward me, then run them up his chest. He smiles and encircles my waist with his hands, connecting them at the small of my back.

“I feel good.” I remove one hand from his neck for a brief moment and push his hands onto my ass. “That’s better.”

“You look good.” He presses me against him.

“Dinner’s in ten, okay? Let’s continue this later.”

“Feck.” He groans.

“This is really good, Maddie, thank you for cooking.”

I smile at him and bite into the chicken. I learned a few tricks working at restaurants for so long, and one of them is how to make perfectly tender and flavorful chicken.

“No problem.”

“Why aren’t you eating the pasta? The sauce is delicious.”

“Oh, I don’t like mushrooms and I’m too lazy to pick them out.”

“Then why’d you put them in?” He gives me a confused look.

“Because you like them, I guessed.”

Patrick blinks, then reaches over and carefully removes the mushrooms from my plate one by one. “You don’t have to always do things to please other people, you know. You hate mushrooms, so don’t put them in your sauce.”

I freeze with my fork of mushroom-free pasta halfway to my mouth. “Hmm. This sauce might be a metaphor for my life.”

“Maybe.” One side of his mouth twitches up.

“So your dad approved of the IPA?”

“Yeah. He called it perfect, which is a huge compliment from him.”

“Congrats.”

“He actually seemed impressed with everything. He’s not been to the brewery since he handed everything over to me. I think he misses it.”

“Think he’d come back to work?”

“I don’t think so. But he agreed to help while I’m down a head brewer. I asked him if he could give me any advice on the Sean situation, and all he said was to give him time.”

“Not super helpful.”

“Nope. Oh, I have two more quirky stops for you.”

“Yeah? What are they?”

“Mam suggested this creepy Viking cave in Kilkenny where a thousand people died. It’s haunted, or something.”

“Nice, that’ll go well with the gateway to hell in Donegal that your sister suggested.”

He snorts. “Why is my family like this? Anyway, I found another one online.”

“What is it?” He’s finally embraced road trip planning and I couldn’t love it more.

“In Galway, we can play footgolf.”

“Footgolf?”

“Yeah, it’s golf with soccer balls.”

“No way. That’s perfect. Now I’m at nine. Just need one more.”

We clean up side by side, and the second the kitchen is done, I pull his hips against mine, my ass against the counter.

“Are you sure you feel good?” Patrick murmurs, his eyes sliding to the swell of my breasts above the scoop neck of the dress.

I move my hands from his neck down his chest and under his t-shirt, sliding my thumb along the hem of his jeans.

“Yes.”

“I’ll be gentle with you, Maddie.” His eyes darken and he tugs up my dress, moving his hands until they’re tucked in my underwear. I breathe out at the pressure already building.

“When do I ever want gentle?” I whisper.

He tugs down my underwear and I step free. I fumble with his jeans and breathe out when I take him in my hand, savoring his hardness.

“Feck, Maddie.” He moans into my mouth and buries his fingers between my legs, sliding on the slick center of me before pulling one leg up around his waist, rubbing himself against me.

“Patrick...” I lean back against the counter with one hand for stability as he pulls a condom out of his back pocket and slides it on.

“You’re so ready for me already, Maddie,” he says with his lips against my neck.

“I might have been thinking about this all day.”

He pushes himself in with a thrust that wasn’t as gentle as he’d promised, then pauses.

I wiggle, trying to get him to move, to ease the ache.

He smiles against my neck and moves me so my back is against a cabinet instead of the counter and I can wrap both legs around his waist, allowing him to take me against the wall, finally moving his length in and out of me. My eyelids flutter as he hits a spot I didn’t even know was there.

Reality distorts as the pressure grows, my orgasm building, pulsing, and when it hits, right before he comes himself, Patrick whispers, “What are you doing to me?”

I can’t respond. Even if I could, I wouldn’t know what to say. I don’t think he meant to say it out loud. Maybe he doesn’t realize he did. Because the thing is, he’s letting me in more each day, and I don’t know what to do with that.

I’m terrified of how it will end.

Maybe I should be the one who ends it first. To get it over with.

But I can’t. I won’t. I could never.

The whole deal here was that I was going to let myself have a fling with Patrick, with whom a future is not possible. So it wasn’t going to hurt when it ended, because I wasn’t going to let myself fall, because I knew what it was all along.

I’m messing it all up.

I’m falling for him.