With a groan, Sarah reached for the knob on the shower, turning the water up hotter than was probably healthy. Steam slowly built up in the room as she got undressed, breathing a sigh of relief as she stepped out of the still uncomfortably damp denim jeans.
Tugging back the curtain, she stepped over the high side of the tub and into the shower, wincing at the sharp needles of the spray. She let it scald her skin for close to a minute before she adjusted the temperature. It was the least she deserved for being all over the man the way she had.
Even if there had been flirtatious vibes between them, that didn’t give her license to jump him. If she screamed desperate any louder, her ex might hear her back in the States.
The thought alone was enough to make her shudder.
Sarah washed away the grime and sweat from her travel, and though she couldn’t scrub away her embarrassment, she stepped from the shower feeling refreshed. She unpacked enough to find jeans and a dry sweater before pulling her blond hair into a knot atop her head. She needed food, but more than that, she needed to talk to Cian.
Sarah couldn’t remember ever acting more appallingly unlike herself in her entire life. If nothing else, she needed to make sure that her landlord hadn’t gotten the wrong impression. She would go to the pub, find him, and try to make amends.
Maybe while she was there, she’d have the chance to taste some of the fare that smelled so amazing when she arrived. Either way, she’d be killing two birds with one stone; and since the rain appeared to have stopped, she could take in her temporary home on her walk down.
Though the storm the previous day had been horrendous, it seemed to leave Ceanmore refreshed and vibrant in its wake. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the hills beyond the town were the greenest she’d ever seen. Moisture from the storm still glinted off quaint window shutters and wooden roofs. The cobblestone streets still retained large puddles here and there, pocking the road. Other than that, all evidence of the torrential downpour had disappeared.
In any event, none of the residents seemed any the worse for wear. They went about their daily duties interrupted, and on her way to the pub, Sarah identified a small grocery store and market. There was also what appeared to be a beauty salon, a newsstand, and an animal shelter. The pub was on the corner where the curving country road turned off onto the town’s main street—easy enough to find.
As she entered Wild Irish, Sarah couldn’t quell the butterflies that immediately rose in her stomach. Cian might not even be here, she reminded herself. After all, she had arrived in the evening, and it was midday now. Maybe his shift didn’t start until the sun began to go down.
Almost immediately, the rich smells of broiling meat and savory broth enveloped her, and Sarah’s stomach growled loudly. How long had it been since she’d had her last meal? Twenty-four hours? Thirty-six? By now, she’d lost count.
“Hello there, stranger. Back again?” She jumped, slightly surprised as a middle-aged woman with kind, blue eyes addressed her from near the door. She sat at a table, along with a child who appeared to be no more than five or six old. For a split second, Sarah wondered about the propriety of bringing a child into the pub, but the boy appeared to be halfway through a glass of milk and a cookie and was completely absorbed in the toy trucks he was playing with. The woman, whom she assumed to be his grandmother, was drinking tea herself, and she laughed softly at Sarah’s inquisitive look. “My name is Marjorie, sweet, and this here is my grandson, Liam. Say hello, Liam.”
“Hi.” The boy addressed her with only the shyest of glances before going back to his play, and Sarah’s heart filled unexpectedly. He was adorable.
“Noticed you in here last night,” Marjorie went on with a charming smile. “You must be the Yank renting out Cian Murphy’s flat. Welcome.”
“Oh…thank you.” Sarah didn’t know quite what to say. She didn’t think she’d ever received so warm a greeting from a stranger.
“You look like a good puff’ll toss you over, love. You should get some tuck in you. I’d recommend the beef stew.”
“I think I will.” Sarah gained a little confidence from Marjorie’s welcome and found her own smile emerging. “Thank you very much.”
“Of course, dear.”
She turned away from the woman, torn between awe and curiosity. What kind of a place was this? When she walked into any bar back home, Sarah was lucky if any of the patrons didn’t simply ignore her. She supposed she’d almost forgotten what it was like to deal with people who weren’t so aloof.
“Hello, darling, how’re you today?” This time, Sarah had no problem smiling back at the greeting. A pretty young woman with twinkling eyes and a jet-black braid snaking down her back reached out to shake her hand. “I’m Ainsley. Ainsley Murphy. Do you have any idea what you’d like for lunch?”
The lilting, engaging accent of the people here only made them seem friendlier.
“I…um…I suppose I’ll have the stew.”
“A fine choice.” Ainsley beamed, wrapping an arm companionably around her shoulders to lead her to an empty booth by the already roaring fire. Despite the fact that it was midday, Sarah found the blaze both cozy and comforting.
“I’m Sarah, by the way. Sarah Mercer.” She held out her hand to shake, and Ainsley’s face immediately lit up when she took it.
“Sarah, is it? You must be the Yank with the nice bum my brother was going on about!”
The Yank with the nice bum?
Sarah’s face immediately flamed as Ainsley released her. “I…” She tried, completely flummoxed. “That—”
But Ainsley only laughed at her reaction, waving a hand playfully. “Don’t you worry, sweet. I won’t tell a soul. I’ll have your stew right out for you.” And with that, she flounced away, leaving a very confused Sarah in her wake.
The Yank with the nice bum? Was that how Cian had described her?
Lowering herself into the booth Ainsley had shown her to, Sarah wondered how she was going to talk to the other woman now without retreating out of embarrassment.
But if Cian had mentioned her to his sister, then maybe his sister would speak to her about Cian.
Before she had time to consider it much, however, Ainsley returned, bearing good cheer and a tray laden with amazing-looking food. “Here we are.” With loving care, she set a gigantic bowl of steaming beef stew studded with chunks of decadent meat and stewed veggies. But that wasn’t all. In addition to the stew, there was also a grilled cheese sandwich, oozing its glorious fare onto the plate, and a few crumbly, fresh-baked cookies that smelled delightfully of chocolate and cinnamon.
Sarah’s eyes widened even as her stomach did a jig of excitement. “I…I don’t know if I can finish all this.” At home, she had always prided herself on eating sensibly. With the body she’d been given, she didn’t really have a choice—all she had to do was look at a regular soda and she gained five pounds. Ross had once seen her eating a piece of cheesecake and had teased her so mercilessly that ever since she’d done her best not to indulge at all—and if she slipped, to hide it from him.
“Nonsense. You’re skin and bones, darling. Eat up!” Her grin still firmly in place, Ainsley departed with a winning wink.
Exhaling a long breath, Sarah turned her attention back to the enormous portion of food before her. After about a minute of contemplation, her stomach overrode her common sense, and she reached for her spoon.
Well, she’d missed almost an entire day of meals. Surely she could count some of these calories toward that?
When she took her first bite of stew, Sarah almost moaned—after years of diet crackers and sparkling water, the flavor was a full-body punch to the senses. It was sheer nirvana—savory and meaty with just the right amount of garlic and basil. She told herself she would exercise self-control, but before she knew it, she was all but wolfing down her meal.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten without worrying she was being watched—by Ross, by her critical parents, or by any numbe
r of her overbearing coworkers. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, she allowed herself to simply enjoy a fantastic meal—and fantastic it certainly was. Sarah finished her entire bowl of stew so quickly she was surprised she’d even tasted it.
Without her belly railing at her to fill it before she dropped dead on the spot, she was able to move on to the sandwich with a little more leisure. As Sarah savored the sweet brie on sourdough, she gazed around the pub, taking it in with a more assessing eye than she had the previous night.
Sarah had always imagined European pubs as places where men gathered to drink themselves silly and cheat on their wives. The places didn’t have a particularly positive connotation in the pop culture references she’d seen. Just went to show you how wrong mainstream media was. There weren’t just men in the cozy, mismatched interior of Wild Irish. Marjorie and her grandson were in attendance. There were teenagers sharing pictures and videos on their cell phones over plates of French fries, and men who looked old enough to be her grandfather speaking a language both strange and beautifully lilting. To her, it seemed as if this particular pub was for everyone in town and not only a masculine stomping ground.
Which led to another question—in his messages, Cian had simply mentioned the pub without stating his connection to it. Was he a bartender here? Was he a manager? Did he own the place? Sarah couldn’t deny she would color herself impressed it the latter turned out to be true.
His Facebook profile hadn’t given his birthday, but she put his age somewhere around thirty. Though Sarah had never considered herself a slacker, owning an apartment block and a pub at his age was no small feat, not when so many twenty-somethings preferred to live check to check, too young to think about starting a retirement fund.
His occupation hadn’t really featured in the dirty little fantasy she’d built around him in her head, but it made her like him—the flesh and blood him rather than the online one—even more.
As she finished her sandwich, she looked over the various occupants of the pub, wondering where on earth Cian could be. His sister had spoken of him as if he’d already arrived. Or had she?
More, Sarah didn’t know why she cared. She shouldn’t—she wasn’t in Ireland to flirt. She was here to focus on the master’s degree she wanted. Yes. She was really excited about that.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t look, did it?
She needed a distraction. She took a long swallow of the orange juice Ainsley had given her with her meal, then pulling out her phone. She’d had the textbooks for the courses she wanted to take while here loaded into her online cart for days, and as she tapped the last few buttons to complete her purchase, she started in on her cookies. At her first bite, a low moan of pleasure escaped her, knocking thoughts of the textbooks from her head. She’d never had cookies like these—crispy on the outside, dense and gooey on the inside—tasting heavily of chocolate with just the tiniest hint of cinnamon. They were absolutely sinful. She was full when she finished her sandwich, but to leave these cookies untouched would be a crime of irreparable proportions.
“Enjoying the food, are we?”
Cian slipped into the seat across from her just as Sarah took a gigantic bite of her cookie, and she immediately flushed at the sight of him.
Was it possible for the man to look even more attractive than he had the first time she’d seen him? Today he wore a dark sweater with the sleeves pushed up beyond his tattooed forearms and a pair of jeans that clung to his long, muscular legs. As she stared at him, embarrassed by her full mouth, the corners of his lips quirked upward in amusement. “Brought this for you.” He set a tall glass of milk on the table in front of him, and Sarah immediately grabbed for it, taking a swallow.
When she could speak, she tried her best to be polite. “Thank you. It’s delicious.”
She could have sworn she’d looked over every inch of the pub without finding him, but all at once, here he was. As if he’d been waiting to surprise her.
“Did you sleep well?” His question made Sarah recall that the man must have taken her sweater off to put her to bed, and her face flushed even darker. She barely knew him, and he’d already seen her all but topless—just because she couldn’t keep her jet-lagged self together.
“Um, look, Mr. Murphy—”
“Cian.” Sarah was ready to let her apology fall artlessly and be done with it, but when he smiled at her, her heart skipped several life-giving beats. “Let’s dispense with the formalities, shall we?”
“Cian, then.” She took a deep breath, steeling herself for the berating she knew was to come. No matter how charming this man was, there was no way he approved of a stranger molesting him on his own property. “I just wanted to apologize for yesterday. I was super tired and disoriented, and I didn’t mean it. I just—”
“Didn’t mean what?”
Sarah gaped at him. He couldn’t be serious. But Cian’s expression was so pleasantly intrigued as he gazed across the table at her, it led her to believe… He couldn’t have forgotten, could he?
“I kissed you…when I was jet-lagged.” The words streamed from her lips unfettered. “Didn’t I?”
Had she just dreamed all of that, too? She couldn’t have been so lucky.
At her question, Cian’s smile merely widened. He leaned across the table, raising one hand to cover hers where it lay between them. “Darlin’ the day I’m upset by a gorgeous girl taking advantage of me is the day I drop dead where I stand.”
Sarah’s eyes widened as warmth emanated from where his skin lay against hers. His icy-pale eyes, though amused, didn’t seem to hold any mockery.
Which meant that the man was flirting with her.
If that was the case, then she had absolutely no idea how to react. The events of the previous evening came back to her in a rush—when she had all but stumbled up the stairs to her second floor flat and nearly fallen asleep on the floor. The way Cian had humored her with his help—up to and including when she yanked him down atop her to see how he would taste.
Christ, she’d been so unbelievably brazen! But their online flirtation had paved the way for her to act in way she never had before, and well, here they were.
But Sarah didn’t even have to try to remember the way his mouth felt against hers. How he’d been surprised a split-second before the gesture turned demanding, his tongue sliding past her lips. Just thinking about it was enough to make her warm between the legs—in a place she hadn’t thought would get any stimulation, seeing as how she was supposed to be on a trip to find herself. Yay, girl power, or something like that.
“I have to go.” Sarah stuffed the last half of her cookie into her mouth unbecomingly as she leaped to her feet, reclaiming her hand quickly. She began digging vainly through her purse for money, even though she had no idea how much she owed. “Thank you for lunch.”
Instead of handing her the bill, however, Cian merely arched a brow, looking injured. “Where on earth do you have to be at this hour on your vacation?”
Damn. She scrabbled to come up with an excuse.
“It’s not really a vacation,” she stammered, trying and failing not to stare at his wicked mouth. Damn it. If she was going to have one wild Irish kiss, why couldn’t she have been fully awake to appreciate it? “I’m planning to take some correspondence courses from a university back home.”
And to recover my pride. Which wouldn’t happen if she let herself fall for a sexy Irishman who would probably come to think of her the way that Ross had—not interesting enough, not sexy enough…just not enough at all.
“Are you? Well, that sounds a bit dull, if I do say so.” Her spine stiffened at Cian’s rather candid assessment of her plans. “Might I propose an alternative?”
She stared at him, torn somewhere between affront and fascination. He seemed to have no filter at all—and Sarah wasn’t sure that she disliked him for it. “What’s that?”
In answer, Cian lounged back against the weathered leather seat of the booth, his gaze suddenly g
leaming with an allure that had Sarah pressing her thighs against one another to assuage the ache between them. “How about you stay here and play with me?”
If Sarah had been uncomfortably hot before, now she was all but aflame with a need she’d never experienced before. Even with Ross, sex had been more mechanical than enjoyable. He always had some bit of constructive criticism that had taken pleasure out of everything and left her feeling more used than sated. “Play with you?”
Sarah had never had someone come on to her so blatantly before, and she was torn between fleeing and hopping into Cian’s very welcoming, muscular arms.
No. Bad Sarah. This wasn’t what she was here for.
Yet how could she possibly resist?
Play with him… Her imagination whirled with delicious thoughts, but then, to her surprise, the man pulled a deck of cards from the front pocket of his shirt, and Sarah swallowed the reply she was considering. “All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl,” he said. “How about a little round of poker?”
A card game. He meant a card game. Cool relief and crashing disappointment were tightly twined as she stared at the well-worn deck and scrambled to shut off the part of her brain that had started to fantasize the moment the word “play” left his lips.
“Poker?” She didn’t think she had anything with which to gamble. “I’m not very good at poker,” she replied, finally digging a twenty-pound note from her purse to extend to him in a peace offering. “Will this be enough to cover everything?”
Cian eyed the bill a moment before taking it from her. A soft yelp escaped her as he hooked two fingers into one of her belt loops and tugged her over to his side of the table—until they were less than a foot apart.
Her pulse, always steady and dependable, stuttered before resuming its beating, double-time.
“How about this?” Tucking the bill into her front pocket swiftly, Cian continued as if she hadn’t even offered it to him. Her skin heated where his fingers had lingered, though the thick denim of her jeans separated their bodies. “We have a friendly game.”
Kiss of the Irish (Foreign Fling) Page 4