Chapter 18 #2
Once the waiter left, Ciaran turned back to Jal.
The clouds had cleared in his eyes, leaving behind the usual mischievous twinkle, the whisky-on-ice now had a flicker of something hotter when he looked at her.
“Is that right?” He turned to Elena as the waiter set a double whisky in front of him with a small glass of ice and continued around the table distributing drinks.
“Well, then. What would you like to know?”
Elena considered for a moment. “Well, going by that accent, I’d say you aren’t from Jersey.”
Ciaran chuckled and took a sip of his drink.
He clicked his tongue and added a couple of ice cubes to his glass and swirled it idly.
“You would be correct,” he replied. His accent seemed thicker than Jal had ever heard it.
She would have rolled her eyes if the deep timbre of his voice wasn’t doing wicked things elsewhere. “Parkside, Glasgow, born and raised.”
“And what do you do for work, Ciaran?” Lexi asked.
“I’m an architect,” he replied, “my office is just up the street.” He draped his arm along the low back of Jal’s chair, his fingers sliding under the curtain of her hair to rest along her spine.
Jal forced herself to drink her wine and not show what his touch was doing to her.
Still, there was something in her friends’ expressions that said they knew anyway.
“What types of things do you design?”
He continued to swirl his drink on the table, the glass spreading the ring of condensation around on the wood, while his fingers traced idle circles on her back. “Office buildings mostly, the odd country club. Nothing too exciting.”
Elena considered a moment and then, something glinted in her eyes that Jal didn’t like the looks of at all. “I hear that’s not the only talents you have.”
Ciaran inhaled the sip of whisky he had just taken and started to cough. Jal scrambled to set her wine aside to thump him on the back.
Elena’s hand shot out to keep the glass from toppling.
Her glare softened slightly while she continued to tap between his shoulder blades until Ciaran waved her off and dragged in a deep breath, but still his voice was almost a croak. “What have you been telling them, lass?”
Jal scowled at her friend, who laughed and then turned back to him. “What’s to tell?” she asked. “They know that you’re the guy who broke into my apartment, and—“
“Oh my god, is that Maks Brody?”
The question had come from the table next to them.
It hadn’t been loud, but their ears all perked up at the name.
Everyone but Ciaran looked over the to the table next to them in time for one college aged woman to elbow another and point, not at all subtly, toward the elevator and the small number of restaurant patrons who had surrounded a tall man with dark blond hair and a close-cropped reddish-blond beard who had just exited the elevator.
There was some color in Lexi’s cheeks when she turned back to the table. “Did you know he was coming?” Jal asked.
Lexi waved her off. “He said he might try to come by after practice, but wasn’t sure if he was going to make it or not.
” She turned around just as he arrived at the table, drawing most of the eyes around them as usual.
Lexi slid off the chair and gave him a hug in greeting.
He slid her chair in for her as she sat back down.
To add more chaos to Maks’s arrival, the server chose that moment to arrive with their food. While Elena directed the food deliveries, Maks turned to the table of three women beside them, each at least a half-dozen years younger than him, but each with stars in their eyes.
The server murmured something about her plate as he set an order of paella down in front of her, but the food was the last thing on her mind.
She was too engrossed in the scene, which looked like something out of a reality dating show, as Maks wrapped his hands around the seatback of the empty chair beside a busty brunette.
He flashed one of his million dollar smiles at them. “Good evening, ladies.”
Jal could swear that one of them sighed dramatically, and she suppressed a snort of laughter. They all greeted him with breathless variations of “hello.”
The brunette, already sporting a low-cut neckline, puffed out her chest at him and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Did she just flutter her eyelashes?
“Do you mind if I take this?” he asked.
The brunette deflated a little, as did her friends, though one maintained enough composure to assure him that it was fine.
Maks thanked them and spun the chair around toward their table.
This time Jal couldn’t contain her snigger, neither could Elena.
From the corner of her eye, Jal saw Ciaran conceal an uncertain smile behind his whisky glass.
Before Maks could even sit down, he was intercepted by a passing businessman who shook his hand and clapped him on the shoulder before moving on.
Maks took it in stride. After nearly a decade in the league, it had to be a common occurrence.
He signed an autograph with a brilliant smile, but politely declined the request for a selfie before he was finally allowed to take his seat.
Lexi and Ciaran shifted their chairs to make room. Jal scooted her chair a little to the side and lifted her plate to take it with her. She yelped and dropped it with a clatter.
“What is it, lass?”
“I burned my hand,” she hissed, blowing gently on her fingers, which had already started to turn red.
“The waiter warned you that the plate was hot,” Lexi chided, lifting a piece of shrimp from her own dish to her mouth.
Ciaran gently placed his hand under Jal’s and studied the marks. “That’s none so bad,” he murmured and added his cooling breath, though that only added heat elsewhere. The hair on her forearms rose.
Jal looked over at him and their eyes locked. After a long moment, she blinked and slid her hand from his.
“I’m going to go run my hand under some cold water.
” She informed the table and reluctantly slid off her chair and out of Ciaran’s reach.
She needed to run more than her hand under cold water, but her skin cooled quickly in the absence of his touch and his breath on her skin, so much so that she almost shivered as she made the long trek to the restroom, which was located all the way back by the elevators.
Jal ran her hand under the water until her fingertips stopped pulsing in time with her heartbeat, then wet a towel and wrapped it around her fingers as she emerged into the hallway and stopped.
Leaning against the wall across the hall, his hands in his pockets, one foot propped on the wall like a Scottish James Dean, was Ciaran.