Chapter 4

4

PATRICK

T he day manager at the pub is still new, so I’m trying to be around in case she needs help.

“Any questions, Beth?”

“No.” She gives me a look I can’t read. “Sorry again about forgetting to mark the inventory yesterday. I did it, but I just forgot to make a note. My daughter was up sick all night.”

Beth is a single mom who my sister knows from the kids’ school, and she’s nice enough, but I’m not sure I made the right call hiring her. Honestly, she just looks exhausted, which made sense once I learned she also has an evening part-time job.

“I hope she’s feeling better.” My attempt at sounding sympathetic—which I am—comes out sounding harsh. Honestly, single mothers have all my sympathy. It’s why I try so hard to help Saoirse with my nieces when I can.

Beth furrows her brow and returns behind the bar, while I head to a table and open my laptop back up. I might be micromanaging. But good help is so hard to get. I’ve spent most of the five years since buying the pub hiring and training people, just to have them quit and force me to do it all over again. It’s exhausting.

Back then, I was happy to have a distraction from the end of my relationship with Cara.

After leaving Winchester Football Club in England, I was so bone-deeply happy to be going home to Dingle and Cara. But she was already packing for Dublin, looking for adventure outside of the sleepy Dingle Peninsula.

I should’ve let her go and stayed in Dingle, but that’s not how I was raised. My parents had some marital issues when Saoirse and I were growing up, but they worked through it. And since then, they’ve been the happiest couple you could ever find. So I was sure Cara and I would end up like that, too.

But I didn’t do anything right. I didn’t say the right things, ask the right questions, call her the right amount, text her just enough. None of it. We were finally in the same place, and nothing felt right. Cara said half the time I didn’t say anything at all, and the other half I asked aggressive questions like where do you go all the time? or do you like hanging out with them more than me? or are you seeing someone else?

Turns out I was spot-on with those questions, even though she denied it right up until I walked in on her with him.

I don’t think I’ll ever get that image out of my head.

There’s been plenty to fill my time in the past five years. Saoirse’s girls are now eleven and seven, and I’ve tried to be the best uncle possible. And Saoirse and I help our parents now that they’re older.

But since I took over Slea Head two months ago, it’s been less about staffing issues there and more about coming up with a good plan and convincing Sean—the head brewer who’s been around for thirty years—to embrace change. He and my dad have been good friends for all of that time. I’ve known him since I was a kid. And while he’s great at his job, he’s highly resistant to change and outright hostile to anyone under the age of forty, including me and Cormac, the twenty-five-year-old assistant brewer.

Unfortunately for Sean, change is exactly what I’m going for.

I minimize my email, including a message from Oliver’s fiancée’s sister, and click through to the brewery management software I recently implemented. Sean hates it, but it makes our process so much smoother. I’m trying to ditch the bulletin board and pinned scraps of paper system Dad and Sean had.

A text comes through. I glance down and see the first part of the message pop up in the preview screen.

Noreen

Your new tenant arrived last night! She signed a one-month lease. Her name is?—

And then it cuts off. I don’t tap the text to read more. I’ll deal with that later, as it doesn’t seem like there will be anything for me to do. I note the time on my mobile before flipping it screen-down.

I need to head over to the brewery to do a second check on Cormac’s job cleaning the fermenter yesterday. Monday’s a brew day for our amber ale and there’s a ton of prep work to do. I remind myself to swing by tomorrow and heat the water tank so it’s ready to go Monday morning.

And most importantly, I need to chase the Wellington Pubs people about setting a date for me to pitch Slea Head Brewery for distribution in their network of Irish pubs. It’s a huge victory that they’re even responding to my emails. If I could get our brews in their twenty-five locations in Ireland, then maybe they’d consider carrying us in their five hundred UK pubs.

It would change everything for me.

What I don’t have time for is Oliver’s fiancée’s little sister to show up in Dingle. To plan his stag do road trip? There are countless websites and travel agencies and random people on the street who could easily give her a list: Dublin, Belfast, Giant’s Causeway, Donegal, Galway, Dingle (obviously), and a few other stops between here and there. This is not rocket science. I cannot believe she flew all the way to Ireland and came here, of all places, to do what could have been done in front of a laptop or a mobile phone. I don’t have time to babysit. I’ll have to think of some way to satisfy her with minimal effort.

She’ll probably show up any second. I roll my shoulders back. I have to be nice to her. Cordial. I can’t swing friendly on a good day, and definitely can’t match the vibes of that annoying-as-shite sunshine-y email she’d sent.

The door to the pub swings open and I glance up, expecting the sister to walk in, or maybe one of our regulars.

But it’s not. Certainly not.

It’s the hot American tourist from last night, and my face heats at the memory of her pulling me in by my waist, tilting her head up to mine, asking me to make her forget her ex. Those pink, plump lips and the way they felt against mine. The top of her arse under my fingers, the line of her underwear begging me to slide lower.

I swallow hard. Those dark hallways are made for making out. I’d never realized it before.

She’s wearing another dress today, long and covering up those sexy boots I fantasized about last night. She stops in the doorway and wiggles out of her puffy jacket, not yet looking at me, and the front neckline of her dress dips down to show a hint of the swell of her breasts.

Maybe this is a second chance. I can book a room at the hotel Saoirse works at down the road and see what this woman looks like without that dress.

I groan softly. I’m an eejit. And I’m committed to being single. I’ve got everything I need in life. I’m not looking to start anything with a woman, even and especially one who is just passing through Dingle, probably looking for a bit of adventure.

That word—adventure—makes my skin crawl. All because of Cara.

The American tourist finally looks up and meets my gaze, and I raise my eyebrows and lean back in the wooden chair, crossing my arms and cocking my head. Instead of heading to the bar and Beth, who looks confused counting the taps ( the feck, Beth? ), the woman walks slowly toward me, her long dress moving with each step. She’s got a strained smile on her face. Her shoulders are raised and she’s gnawing on her bottom lip. I pull the screen of my laptop halfway down.

“Patrick?” she says and stops a meter from me.

“Yes.” But a beat later, I narrow my eyes. How does she know my name?

“Hey. Nice to, uh, meet you. Again. Sort of meet you.” She breathes out loudly. “I guess we didn’t actually meet, not officially. I was tired and probably not making the best life decisions, and you were working, so there wasn’t much time for formal introductions...”

My eyes widen as she speaks, twisting her hands together. Nothing like the flirt she was last night. She’s nervous? To be around me? I guess it might make sense after what we did in the hallway.

“I don’t think I caught your name last night,” I say. Did we introduce ourselves and I completely forgot?

But she had been the one drinking, not me, and I only remember some brief banter before we kissed.

“We didn’t exchange names.” She sighs and stands there, a tentative smile on her face.

I blink at her.

“How do you know my name?” Did she ask around about me? That’d be weird, but who am I to judge someone for being weird.

“You responded to my email this morning,” she says slowly. “So technically, you should know my name as well.”

“Email?” There’s a low buzzing sound in my ears. Time seems to slow as realization dawns.

“Yup.”

Ohhhhh. Oh no.

No fecking way.

“Oh, feck.”

This woman—the hot American tourist from last night—is not a random woman passing through Dingle.

No. She wasn’t. She isn’t.

She’s Oliver’s fiancée’s little sister, the one who arrived in Dingle to plan the simplest road trip ever.

“I’m Maddie Hart.”

“Fuck.”

“You said that already.” Maddie lets out a huff of laughter and her face relaxes.

“I said feck before, not fuck.” My face, on the other hand, is definitely not relaxed.

“Whatever. Either way, it’s kinda how I felt when I figured it out.”

I’m not sure what to even say. Oliver is going to kill me. No, forget that, I’m never going to tell him. Then I remember Maddie’s email, where she asked me to keep it a secret from Oliver that she’s here. Done. Jaysus, so done.

“You can, you know, pick your jaw off the table now.” She makes an upward motion with her pointer finger.

“And when...” I gulp. “When did you figure this out?”

Maddie takes a few steps forward until she’s only an arm’s length away from the table. I wish she’d back away, instead of coming closer.

“This morning, when I walked through town and saw you playing soccer.”

I cock a single eyebrow. “You watched the game?”

“Not intentionally.” She glances at the empty chair across from me. “May I?”

“I’m very busy?—”

“I feel so much better getting this all off my chest.” She pulls out the chair and sinks down, facing me, using two hands to pull the thick, long chunks of her dark hair over her shoulders until the tips gather on the table.

“I can’t say I agree.” As a matter of fact, I feel a billion times worse than when she first walked in, when I was fantasizing about what the afternoon could bring with the woman I’d kissed.

Maddie presses her lips together, barely suppressing a smile. It’s true, she looks far less tense now. What the hell is she thinking? I know what I’m trying not to think about, and it’s the feel of her hips as I pressed her against the wall last night, the way her lips parted as we kissed, the way the entire pub fell away.

This is not good. I need to get rid of this woman.

“So, Madison Elizabeth Hart,” I say, awkwardly stumbling over the sender name from her email. “What can I do to help you?” The unspoken second part of that sentence is what can I do to get you out of my pub and out of my town?

“Madison Elizabeth? What are you, my mother?”

“It was in your email.”

“Hmm. I guess so.” She bites her bottom lip and leans back in her chair, hair shifting in waves over the front of her dress, cascading around the curve of her breasts.

Her gorgeous fucking breasts.

No. Nope. Off-limits. No matter how cute she is, this woman is definitely off-limits now. Besides the fact that she’s Oliver’s fiancée’s little sister, she’s not just passing through, and that’s way too complicated. I need her out of here.

I give her my best morning-after-get-out-of-my-flat glare. Which isn’t hard, because that’s generally my default expression. It scares off most women in the light of day. Actually, it scares off most people, especially the ones who don’t know me well.

I’m good at scaring women away. After Cara, I tried to date a local woman in Dingle. But that experience only reinforced what Cara told me when we broke up: it’s impossible to be in a relationship with me. Cara was right. I was trying so hard not to ruin that new relationship, but I broke it anyway. It’s hopeless for me to try, so I stopped.

“First of all, call me Maddie, not Madison.”

But I don’t scare this person, apparently. She seems to settle in more with each second.

“I prefer Madison.”

“Ohhh-kay.” She tilts her head at me.

“What’s second of all?”

“Huh?”

“You said first of all.”

“Oh, right. Second of all, I need help planning the road trip.”

“Jaysus. You mean to tell me you really flew across the Atlantic Ocean to do something that can easily be accomplished with a simple Google search?”

She blinks at me.

“You did, didn’t you?”

Maddie nods. “I don’t want it to be a normal Irish road trip. It has to be special. For example... what’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done in Ireland?”

“What?” I chuckle, and she waits for me to answer. “Kiss the Blarney Stone.”

“See, there we go!”

“I was being sarcastic. That’s a disgusting tourist trap.”

“Still, I’m adding it to the list.”

I groan. “Please don’t.”

“Even though there might be other reasons I’m here, planning the trip is definitely in the top, like, five.”

“You have five reasons to be here?” What other possible reasons can this woman have to be in Dingle?

“Dingle’s one of the top tourist spots in Ireland, don’t you know that?”

“Yes, which is a great reason why it should be a stop on the road trip. Just like all the websites recommend.”

“Are you always this grumpy?” Maddie stretches her arms over her head and yawns.

“Yes.”

“Well, you weren’t last night.” She rolls her shoulders back and grins at me.

“My god, woman, that never happened, okay? If I’d known you were Reese’s sister, I wouldn’t have touched you, whether you asked me to or not.” I stumble over the last words. The lady balls on her. Christ.

“I did ask you to, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Who does that?”

A crooked grin comes across her mouth. “I’m really not that forward normally. I’m just in this awkward spot in my life.”

I refuse to ask her to elaborate, even though I’m kind of dying to know more.

“Anyway, you didn’t fight me on it.”

I make a rumbling noise in the back of my throat.

“Easy, Patrick, no need to growl at me.” She leans back and crosses her legs to the side of the table, within my line of sight. I find myself wishing she’d worn a short dress where I could get a peek at her thighs. “Hello?”

“Sorry.” Feck. I was staring at her covered legs. The side of her mouth twitches.

“Okay, well, we have time to figure this all out because I’m in town for a month.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say? Surely it’s not that you’re in Dingle for a whole month?”

“Yes. That’s what I said.”

I can’t help but laugh, and it attracts Beth’s attention from behind the bar.

“Why? Where are you staying?”

“Above the pub, actually. There’s a flat right there.” She points at the ceiling.

Oh, feck.

“You’re not serious.”

She nods and crinkles her forehead. “The owner is absolutely obsessed with sheep. It’s kinda weird.”

I grab my mobile and click through to read Noreen’s full text.

Noreen

Your new tenant arrived last night! She signed a one-month lease. Her name is Maddie Hart and she’s a delight. She was at the pub last night, actually, but I didn’t get a chance to introduce you two. Be nice if you see her around town!

“I counted at least half a dozen framed pictures and paintings of sheep. And when I woke up this morning, there was a sheep figurine glaring menacingly at me. I swear it wasn’t there last night.”

Bollocks. I’m absolutely not telling her that I carved that sheep figurine, and I also made the coffee table in the living room.

“Oh my god,” I whisper.

“What? You look... disturbed.” She reaches out and touches my hand, an exaggerated look of concern on her face.

I almost yank it away at the jolt her touch gives me. Sure, we touched last night, but this is different. We’re sober. I resist the urge to turn my hand over and press our palms together.

Should I tell her that she’s sleeping in my old bed, since I left it there when I built myself a bigger one for the cottage?

“Seriously, are you okay? It’s not like you have to hang out with me every day. Or at all.” The smile falls off her face, and she pulls her hand away slowly. It’s like a live wire being dragged away from the back of my hand, leaving a trail of crackling electricity. Then she leans back and licks her lips, this time more as an anxious movement. I can’t watch her do things like that for a whole freaking month.

I also hate that her mood seems to have shifted back to the anxious one she had when she walked in.

“That’s my flat.”

“Huh?”

“The one you rented. Look.” I flash her my mobile screen. “Noreen texted me this morning that I have a new renter—although she said you were a delight and I’m not yet convinced on that part.”

“No way.” She laughs so loudly that I let myself crack a smile.

No. No smiling at the tourist. No. I wipe the pleasant look off my face and let my resting arsehole face take back over.

“Well, Patrick McNulty, we are meant to be, I think.”

“Meant to be?” My eyes widen.

“Friends, obviously. Jesus, don’t freak out.”

“I wasn’t freaking out.”

“You were.” She presses an elbow onto the table and leans her head in her hand. “I’ll mostly stay out of your way, I promise. And we can, like, pretend last night never happened.” She rakes her eyes down my face and stares at my lips, eyes heating.

“Stop that,” I snap. “Please don’t talk about it ever again.”

She grins. “But I won’t stay out of this pub, because it’s delightful, just like Noreen said I am. The music was amazing, and I enjoyed that pint you poured me.”

I warm slightly to her. “The Slea Head Golden Amber? That’s my family’s brewery.”

“You didn’t say that last night!” She lifts her head from her palm.

“I know.” I shrug.

Maddie pauses for a beat. “Since I’m here—since we’re here—do you want to get one together sometime? A Golden Amber? I could use a friend in this town.”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Just a friend.”

“I don’t have time for friends.”

“We don’t have to make out.”

“God, no.” If I was a nice, normal human being, I’d offer to take her around town. As a friend.

She sighs deeply. “Don’t hide your real feelings on my account.”

“I’m very busy. I don’t have time for fun.”

At least not with this hot ball of energy across the table from me. This off-limits woman.

Something tells me spending time with her would be the worst idea ever.