Chapter 2
Dee
It was bad enough that I had to deal with that useless whiskey supplier earlier.
Now, on top of that, I was saddled with the human equivalent of a golden retriever in a golf cap.
Sunshine charm radiating off him like heat from a fire.
A smile so wide and white it probably blinded small children back in America.
Women probably threw themselves at the Yank.
Oh, I could see that.
He was a charmer. All that gorgeous hair once he removed that PGL cap. Blue-blue-blue eyes and a body that said, “I’m not your pot-bellied Uncle Don who plays golf—I’m sexy-as-sin Jax.”
And what kind of name was that?
A Yankee name, that’s what that was.
I didn’t think he was one of the resort people—oh, but he could be, couldn’t he? They may have sent him over to spy on us.
That thought amused me. The resort people, those Yankees, didn’t think we were enough of a threat to mount such a stratagem.
Jax and I climbed the stairs, and they creaked, just like they’d been for the past hundred years. My mam, God rest her soul, had started to rent out the rooms upstairs when she and my da bought the farm—so we became The Banshee’s Rest Pub & Inn.
The inn had housed drunks, husbands who were kicked out of their homes, lost tourists, and now, apparently, a professional golfer.
Unlike Paddy, I was familiar with golfing being a popular sport, especially with all the golf courses we had in Ireland, but then our Padraig lived in his bubble.
Ask him about a car engine, and he’d talk your ear off.
Ask him about beer, and he’d be able to tell you the hops, the malt, and the exact year the brewery changed their feckin’ formula—but ask him about anything else, and you’d get a grunt and a shrug if you’re lucky.
As we reached the landing, I saw his shoes.
Designer sneakers? Really? The brand was Balenciaga. That pair could probably pay my farm mortgage for a few months.
It wasn’t like I had a problem with wealthy people. I liked money just as much as the next person. I just didn’t understand why a body would need so much of it. I mean, just enough to have a home, eat and drink, and maybe go on a vacation here and there—what else was there?
Apparently, designer shoes, I thought caustically.
And he called me ma’am, like I was somebody’s granny shuffling around in orthopedic shoes…or the feckin’ Queen. But he said it with an American accent, so it sounded extra weird and maybe just a little charming. Only a little!
I glanced over my shoulder as I shoved open the door to one of the four rooms we had.
“Here we are.”
He stepped inside, looking around like he was touring a bloody museum.
The room was small, sure, but it was clean.
A queen-size bed sat against the far wall, its quilt patched with a hundred shades of green and blue.
A small dresser sat under the window, and a framed photo of the Cliffs of Moher hung on the wall, slightly crooked because I hadn’t gotten around to fixing it.
“This is very cozy,” he said, sounding like feckin’ Rhett Butler from Gone With The Wind.
He walked past me to the window and looked out. For a moment, he didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell he was thinking.
“Wow,” he murmured, almost reverently.
I rolled my eyes, though my heart fluttered with pride.
“It’s just a view,” I remarked flippantly.
But I knew that it wasn’t just anything.
The room looked out over the rolling green hills of Ballybeg, dotted with dry-stone walls that zigzagged like old scars across the land. In the distance, you could just make out the edge of the cliffs, rising against the crashing waves of the Atlantic.
The sea shimmered like silver in the late morning light, the kind of wild beauty that made you catch your breath no matter how many times you’d seen it.
Wow, was indeed right.
“It’s stunning.” He glanced back at me.
“It’s raining.”
“And yet, I could sit here and stare out of this window for hours.”
I snorted, though warmed by his compliment. “Some of us have work to do and not just push a ball around on the green.”
I had no idea why I was being such a bitch to him.
No, I know.
I groaned inwardly.
I found him attractive. A Yank? My mam was rolling in her grave.
He smiled, gazing out of the window again. “It’s wild, untamed, and beautiful.”
I softened. “Yes, it is. Our land makes you feel both small and alive at the same time.”
He set his bag down carefully and turned to face me, dimples cutting deep into his cheeks.
Wicked. That was the word for them. Dimples like that should come with a warning label.
“Yes, ma’am.” His lips twitched into a smile.
There it was again. Ma’am. Like he was some Southern gentleman, all manners and money. His voice was smooth, polished, and soaked in allure—the kind you didn’t trust unless you wanted to end up thoroughly disappointed. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
A man like him was off limits.
If my sister Maggie were still around, she’d roll her eyes and say, “Deirdre Gallagher, if a man as handsome as that gives you so much as a look, you’d better hop on him before he changes his mind.”
And let’s face it, why would a man who wore a watch more expensive than my bar—Omega like James Bond’s—be interested in a barkeep like me?
He was well out of my league.
I’d made that mistake once when I got involved with Cillian O’Farrell and his posh accent and tailored suits, always telling me he loved me but looking embarrassed when I opened my mouth in front of his family.
He’d betrayed me when he went ahead and fucked whatshername he worked with, and now he was working on betraying Ballybeg and what our village stood for by joining hands with those Yankee resort types.
He and Jax would probably be good friends, grinning like the world was their playground.
“All right.” I stepped back into the hallway. “Bathroom is attached. Towels are in the cupboard, and the walls are thin, so try not to snore like a chainsaw.”
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “I have it on good authority that I don’t snore. How about you?”
Oh, this man was going to be the death of me. Everything he said was suggestive.
I glared at him. “I don’t snore either.”
“And…what about turn-down service, breakfast in bed, you offer that?” He was teasing me, and despite myself, I smiled.
I gave it right back to him, hand on my hip. “Oh, aye, we’ll do that for you—and leave a wee chocolate on your pillow too, like it’s the feckin’ Ritz.”
His grin widened. “That’s what I thought.”
I shook my head in amusement. “We serve food from eleven to eleven. So, come on down after you’re settled in, and you can eat something.
For breakfast, if you want a full Irish, Ronan—that’s our cook—makes the best in the county.
There’s Cadhla’s Bakery right around the corner.
She makes a mean batch of soda bread, scones, and the best apple tarts you’ve ever eaten. ”
“Thank you, Dee. Does Dee stand for….”
“Deirdre,” I confirmed, walking out of the room. “But everyone calls me Dee.”
He leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed, not in defense but in casual laziness. He had that way about him, like we were in one of those plantation houses in Georgia, and he was sipping mint juleps on a blue sunshine day.
“Paddy said you were fierce.”
“Did he now?”
“Yes, ma’am, he certainly did.”
For a second—a stupid, fleeting second—I felt something stir in my chest. Like a flicker of heat, there and gone before I could make sense of it. But I shoved it down, locked it away.
“I think fierce is just his way of saying that I’m impossible to deal with,” I chimed airily. “I am, too, you know, impossible to deal with.”
He grinned, and feckin’ hell, but the man was potent.
Warn a lass, will ya?
“I don’t think so.”
His eyes looked bluer, and I had to look away and act busy.
Ronan and Saoirse, my server, had probably already opened the doors while I was here chatting away with Mr. Professional Golfer, so there was work to be done.
I shrugged. I didn’t care what Jax thought of me. He wasn’t staying long enough for it to matter.
I headed back to the bar, trying to shake him from my head, but the truth was, I couldn’t. His voice lingered. His face lingered. His bloody dimples lingered.
It’s just that I’d had some dry days… months… fine. It had been two years.
Two years since Maggie got sick. Two years since I became her nurse instead of her sister. A year and a half since I held her hand in the bedroom we grew up in and felt it go slack in mine.
After she was gone, I couldn’t stay on the farm. Not in that house. Not in the room where the air still felt like it remembered her last breath.
So I moved above the pub, where the walls weren’t steeped in ghosts, and let Ronan take the farm when his girlfriend kicked him out, and he needed somewhere to land.
But distance didn’t fix a thing.
Grief followed me.
Maggie’s laugh still found me when the nights were too quiet.
Her smile lived in the back of my mind, a constant reminder of what I’d lost.
Now I was afraid of losing more.
Keeping the pub afloat was hard enough—arguing with whiskey suppliers who sent rubbish stock and fighting off greedy developers who saw Ballybeg as a blank slate for their overpriced golf resort.
“I hear you’ve got a boarder.” Saoirse pulled beer for Angus, who’d come as he always did with his dog, Finn, as soon as we opened.
They were old and, as Angus liked to joke, circling the drain. He didn’t like being home, not since his wife passed, and now both man and dog came to The Banshee’s Rest and stayed all day until it was time for bed. He read and played cards with some others who also came as he did.
What would happen to all of these people if the pub were gone? They couldn’t afford some fancy resort, and honestly, they wouldn’t go. Ballybeg would become something else, not what it was today.
“Aye.”
“Heard he’s a Yank,” Angus commented.
“Aye.”
“Drives a Porsche.” Saoirse wiggled her eyebrows. “It’s sitting pretty in Paddy’s garage. Heard he’s a professional golfer.” She stressed the word pro.
“Down, lass, he’s too old for ya.”
The girl was only eighteen. I shook my head and went behind the bar.
“He’s rich enough to be as old as he likes,” she quipped airily, waving the dishrag she carried like a kerchief as if she were royalty.
Angus looked up from his pint. “How rich would I need to be?”
Saoirse laughed. “Ah, Angus, love, there isn’t enough money in the world for that.”