Chapter 13
Lucky Irish approaches the table and I stand up, wondering if my eyes are playing tricks on me.
Am I hallucinating? Have I stepped into some alternate universe where all my wildest dreams are suddenly realized? Because I can only stare with beguiled fascination at the girl walking toward me.
She’s blond, but it’s not a typical blond. It’s not ash or sandy or bleach-blond, but a bright honey gold that’s streaked with platinum. It’s wavy, hanging to barely touch her shoulders, with those same whimsical, jaunty curls as in her photo.
I don’t usually stop to think about how “natural” a woman is.
I don’t care how much she spends at the hairdresser or what she does to enhance herself at whatever kind of spas or salons women go to these days.
But what I notice about Lucky Irish is that she’s very noticeably like this , without even trying to be.
It’s not a manufactured beauty, but one that’s unapologetically real.
Amazingly, she seems completely unaware of how gorgeous she is.
With her clear blue eyes, her flawless skin and a playful sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, she’s young and fresh-looking, like she just walked out of a dewy garden on a sunny spring morning. You half expect bluebirds and butterflies to flutter around her.
She’s slim but also lusciously curvy in all the right places.
Fucking hell.
That blue dress leaves almost nothing to the imagination—and my imagination is on overdrive.
Does she look this way to everyone? Why isn’t every man in New York chasing after her right now? How can anyone be so insanely drop-dead gorgeous?
I can only pray to the Lord Almighty that it’s not obvious I’m already revved into high gear.
My cock has not been happy with my monk-like choices lately and, as much as I’m trying to remain calm, it’s refusing to cooperate.
I’m hard as a fucking rock. Which isn’t the easiest thing to hide when you happen to be…
me. My jacket—thank fuck—hides the worst of it.
She’s close now and I can read that she’s nervous, even as she holds my gaze. So I smile, partly to ease her nerves and partly because I can’t help it. She’s far more beautiful than her photo. This makes me wildly happy.
“You must be Lucky.” And I must be even luckier. I hold out my hand. “I’m Noah. It’s nice to meet you.”
Jesus, how am I supposed to play it cool when she looks like this ?
“You too.” The breathlessness of her softly-spoken reply is almost more than I can handle.
I don’t know why. The light husk of her voice makes me feel like I’ve morphed into a yeti who will protect this feminine softness of her with my life.
It’s intense to suddenl y feel so much, and with so little warning.
A flood of want is pumping through my veins with so much force, I feel a weird kind of vertigo.
Here she is. I finally found her.
I ignore the crazy talk going on in my brain right now and focus instead on Lucky Irish’s face, which is dazzling me like nothing ever has. I offer her a seat. “After you, Lucky Irish.”
Her giggle at the fake name she’s given herself sends more blood south and, with less of it in my brain, my new obsession is making me almost dizzy with it. “Thank you, Noah Steel.”
At this point, the description isn’t wrong. “I hope you like champagne. Or we can order something else if you prefer.”
“I like champagne.” She blinks at me and— holy fuck .
Is it possible to fall in love at first sight?
Because I think it might be happening to me in slow motion.
I think I might already be a hundred percent besotted with this fresh-faced, golden-haired little nymph.
She’s so beautiful . On purely a physical level, she’s so…
what I want . Her perfection is messing with my head.
She sits and I sit next to her but not too close. There’s no telling what I might do.
I pour the champagne, trying not to stare. “So, are you actually Irish?”
“Yes. My mother was an O’Callahan from County Cork.”
There’s a light nostalgia in her voice when she mentions her mother.
I can’t help but notice the was. Not is .
Something we have in common, then. And a topic I’ll save for later.
She bites her lip, like she’s wondering if she’s confessed too much already.
So I give her the same level of honesty.
“My mother’s father was a Sullivan from Dublin. ”
Something about this information digs into Lucky Irish, I can tell. She likes it. Her eyes get even more blue, if that’s possible.
“So, did you come up with the name Lucky Irish yourself?”
She laughs. “No. That was my best friend Grace’s idea. She created my profile on that dating app. I haven’t been on a date in…a while. She thought I needed to get out more.” Her eyes are still on mine. Like mine are on hers. “How about you, Noah Steel?”
I laugh, running my hand across my jaw. “That name was my brother’s idea. So was the dating app. He thinks I work too much. He thinks I need to loosen up and socialize more. He’d heard of the app and signed me up.”
“So we’re both here against our will.”
I clink my glass against hers. “To being here against our will.” I can’t help myself. “And to our Irish luck. And the most beautiful blind date I could have imagined.” It sounds cheesy but I don’t fucking care. She deserves all the praise I can give her.
Lucky smiles and it’s so cute-hot, my chest feels tight with longing. For what, I’m not sure. Okay, I’m sure. For her. To kiss those lush lips and get my first taste. “Where are you from?”
“Born and bred right here in the Big Apple.”
“How about that.” Her smile lingers. “So am I.”
“So now we know two things about each other. And they both match.”
“I guess at ninety-eight point two percent, we’re bound to have a few things in common.” She takes a sip of her champagne as she continues to watch me.
“I guess we are.” Wow, she’s gorgeous . “Tell me more. What does Lucky Irish do when she’s not being set up on blind dates with random strangers? The app mentioned you work in finance.”
As if she weren’t perfect enough, little dimples tweak playfully. “Yes.”
“So do I.”
“How about that.” She touches her tongue to her plump bottom lip, causing my hard-on to crank up at least one more notch. “Another thing we have in common.”
My voice sounds low and husky as I dig deeper.
I know it might strike a nerve as I ask it, but I want to know more about her.
I want to know if she’s okay. If she’s safe.
My curiosity is almost manic. I need to calm the fuck down.
“Is your family still in New York?” If I didn’t know better, she could be in her late teens, she looks that young.
The playfulness fades out. “No. Both my parents died. I’m an only child. I live with the same best friend who set me up on this date.”
“Grace.”
“Yes. Grace.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your parents. I lost mine too.”
“You did? When?”
“My mother died when I was seven. My dad had a heart attack around four years ago.”
She watches me for a few seconds. “I was four when my mother died. My dad died only recently.”
“I’m sorry.” She’s alone and this feels strangely unbearable. Some new protective instinct flares and I have to fight the urge to reach out and weave my fingers through hers.
“So, I guess we’re both orphans,” she says.
“I never really thought of it that way but, yeah, I guess we are.”
She exhales a light laugh at her own choice of words. “It sounds very Oliver Twist, but the whole concept has kind of knocked me around recently.”
“It’s a hard thing to adjust to,” I agree.
“You said you have a brother.”
“Three, actually.”
“Wow. Well, there’s our one point eight percent point of difference.” She’s got a quirky little sense of humor that practically has me on my knees. “Are you close with them?”
“You could say that. They drive me crazy, but they’re also my best friends. We lean on each other more than we’d like to admit.”
“You’re lucky to have them.”
“I am. Even if they annoy me on practically an hourly basis.”
She smiles quietly. There are big holes in her life I understand only too well. I am lucky that my brothers insist on filling the holes in my life whether I want them to or not.
“I’m sorry you’ve lost so much.”
She shrugs a little. “I have Grace. She’s like a sister. She lives with me. She met her new boyfriend through this same dating app, so she insisted I try it.”
“Grace is quickly becoming one of my favorite people.”
Lucky twirls a strand of her flaxen hair absent-mindedly around her finger. “Is your name actually Noah?”
“Yes. What about yours? Give me your first name, at least.”
“Lucky is my real name.”
My eyes narrow. “Yeah?”
“It even says so on my birth certificate.”
This charms me even more. “You look like a Lucky.”
“And you look like a Noah.”
I can’t tell if she’s teasing me. “Is that a good thing?”
“Yes. Noah’s the kind of guy who will talk you off a ledge or save the day when things go wrong. Always dependable. Trustworthy. Almost always honorable. A borderline control freak.”
I laugh. “You nailed it.”
“What, then, are Noah Steel’s wildest dreams?”
I’m not expecting the question and something about it spears me right in the chest. I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that, point blank with blue, blue eyes. Coming from someone as knock-out stunning as Lucky Irish, it hits me where I live. “You want the honest answer?”
“Of course I do.”
She wants honesty. I only hope it doesn’t scare her away. But to hell with that. I’d already run after her. “To fall in love.”
Her smile is beguiled, like I’ve caught her off guard. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not. It’s true. You can ask my brothers.”
“That’s very… romantic of you, Mr. Steel.”
“Guilty as charged. I’m always getting accused of being a romantic. I’m not sure why though. Out of all four of us, I’m the only one who’s still unattached.”
“Maybe you were just waiting for the right person.”
“Maybe I was.” And I’ve got the craziest feeling I’ve just found her. “What are Lucky Irish’s wildest dreams?”
She pauses, like she’s not sure she wants to tell me. But then she says, “You know, it’s funny, I’ve never really thought about it much because I’ve been busy with school or work, but I was actually thinking about that exact question on my way over here.”
“And what did you decide?”
The light pinkness of her cheeks as she smiles is driving me slightly insane at this point. She’s mind-numbingly lovely. “I can’t tell you that.”
“That’s not fair. I told you mine.”
“You’d laugh. It sounds weird, even to me.”
I top up her champagne. “I promise I won’t laugh.”
She gives me a lightly sassy look and— fucking hell —my obsession digs deeper. I love her face. I love the way her hair curls like it’s got a mind of its own. I love those little dimples like I’ve morphed into an obsessed madman. I love her lush mouth . “You promise?”
I set the bottle back into the ice bucket and place my hand over my heart. “I’m not going to laugh.”
She still won’t tell me.
“I can wait. Another thing about Noahs is that we’re patient,” I tell her. “And very persistent. We’ve got all night, Irish.”
There’s the smile. She relents a little. “Well…the thing is, I’ve got kind of a high-powered job. Which I’m grateful for. But to be honest, it isn’t really me at all.”
“It isn’t?”
“No.”
“What is you, Lucky Irish?”
“All I really want to do is…” Eyeing me. “No. I can’t.”
“You said it yourself. Noahs are trustworthy, remember? Tell me. You have to now.”
Her blue eyes rove over my face, lightly spellbound. I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone with this kind of voracious need before in my life. I can’t help it. Slowly, I reach for her hand. Willing myself to take it as carefully as I’m capable of, I rub my thumb across her smooth palm.
Holy fuck. I’m touching her. She exists and she’s perfect.
Lucky watches my hand, now wrapped around hers, but she doesn’t pull away.
“In a perfect world I’ll fall madly in love.
I’ll become…enlightened about all the things that go along with falling in love.
Things I haven’t experienced yet. And then one day—not today, obviously—but one day, what I really want is to have a family.
I know it might sound old-fashioned, but I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with my own mother and I feel like I really missed out on that.
I’ve missed her every single day. I still miss her every single day.
I want to be able to spend all my time with my own babies.
I want to have lots of them and just… be there for them.
Cook for them. Decorate a beautiful home for us.
And dedicate my time to my family. I would love to do that.
” She stops and a light blush warms her cheeks.
“Crazy, right? Not exactly trendy in New York City.”
It’s a visceral reaction on a very deep, primal level.
When she says the word family , my heart sort of breaks and beats more heavily, more purposefully.
At the mention of the word babies , my cock thickens hotly, almost painfully.
I can’t explain any of it, but her reply slays me.
It’s ridiculously fast but all I can think about is that I want it to be me .
“That’s the best goddamn dream I’ve ever heard. ”