“I’m up,” I chuckled, sliding out from under the covers, grabbing a glass of fresh orange juice from the breakfast cart and chugging it down. The shower went on and off, and Daisy came back out, stared down at the silk stockings and suspender belt on the floor, fished around for her bra and clasped it on.
Swiping her dress up she pulled it over her head and fed her arms into it. Pulling the hem into place she stopped and stared at the rest of her underwear lying on the floor.
“I’ll put those in my pocket,” I offered with a chuckle when I saw her mentally wonder how they would fit into the wallet sized purse she had brought with her the day before. “Here, sit,” I ordered, handing her a glass of orange juice. “I’ve ordered a car. You still have ten minutes before it gets here.”
“Are you not showering?” she asked, sniffing my armpit as she sat down.
“Anyone would think you didn’t my scent. It took a lot of work to give off this smell this morning,” I teased.
“Ew, clean yourself up or you can meet me later at the pub. You walk in like that, everyone will know what we’ve been doing.”
“Daisy, they only have to look at that glow on your face and the sparkle in your eyes to know what we’ve been doing, whether I’m with you or not.” Heat crept into her cheeks like it always did when I called her out on something of a sexual nature. I chuckled. “Alright, give me five and I’ll be ready. Meanwhile, make me a bacon sandwich to go from all that food under those platters. I’ve got a feeling Barney’s going to be put to work when we get back to the pub.”
Chapter 12
“Wow, you look like you’ve had a night of it,” Terry remarked to Daisy the minute she walked through the door.
Daisy shot him a glare. “And you don’t,” she shot straight back. “What happened, did all your fuck buddies desert you on Christmas Day?” she retorted.
Terry chuckled at her sassy come back and I felt proud of her that she hadn’t allowed him to undermine our time spent together.
“They did, at first, but by seven last night my cell was vibrating nonstop. I guess there’s only so much family festive fun a girl can take before they need some real excitement.”
“They?” I asked, my eyebrow raised, interest piqued.
“Okay, now we know we’ve all been laid, have the lunchtime tables been laid as well? Remind me how many covers we have for lunch,” Daisy asked, cutting in with a new level of sass and changing the direction of the conversation.
“Yep even the tables got laid last night,” Terry replied with a chuckle. “We have bookings for three tables of four, one of eight and that big one for fourteen,” Terry rhymed off. “Maria and Frances are coming in, right?” he queried, pulling an empty vodka bottle down from the optic stand in front of the mirrored bar wall.
“Yeah they should be here just before noon. They won’t start until the first lunch table sits down though. I’m not paying double time for them to stand around making the bar look pretty.”
“Ah, you’re a hard woman, Daisy O’Donnell,” I joked, “I thought it was the Scots that were tight,” I said.
“That’s a myth. The Scots are canny people, but I’ve never met one that wouldn’t have given you the shirt off his back. And I’m not being tight, I’m being fiscal. This is a business, margins always need to be tightened, and I have to account for every last drop of drink and food we sell.”
“Right, and me working for nothing, how does that fit into your business model?”
“Call it free training. I’m not charging you for letting you roam around my pub picking up glasses. Look what you’ve learned since you’ve been here. You know how to work the ice and glass cleaning machines, the dish washer in the kitchen, how to set a table and where the laundry bags are.”
“Think of how much more I’d have known had I come into that role at eighteen instead of wasting my time on pipedreams of being a musician,” I replied.
“Smart ass,” Daisy chuckled. “Right, Barney, best you get into character. You can start by bringing those crates of soft drinks bottles from the cellar. Then you can replenish that cold bottle cabinet over there.”
For some reason I’d imagined a lull in trade in the days after Christmas, but it had appeared as if everyone and their dogs had deserted their families in favor of a pint in The Lucky Shamrock pub. Every one of us were run off our feet and we never caught a break all day long during the following four days.
As this pattern of events continued on the lead up to New Year’s Eve, with me helping Daisy day to day, I scarcely saw my sister and the boys, but they’d been kept busy with various sight-seeing trips anyway.
The day before New Year’s Eve, Daisy had engaged the same manager she’d used before to claw back another day off with me. By then we were tired and frustrated that time was running out for us again, but at least we had one day together to catch our breath before the New Year’s Eve ceilidh.
“Only three more hours, then we have a whole twenty four off,” I muttered into Daisy’s ear, making her shiver, before I bumped hips with her and headed for another round of glass collecting at the tables.” Daisy smiled and I watched her until it wasn’t safe to not look where I was headed and reluctantly turned away.
“Oh, my, God,” a strong Boston accent ground out, interrupting my thoughts as I rounded the counter to pick up some of the glasses which had built up on the table.
“Excuse me?” I asked, blinking innocently at the red headed girl, but I knew straight away I’d seen her somewhere before, and my gut sank because the moment I saw her face, I realized she knew exactly who I was.
“Jamie Fontaine?” she asked, then squealed. “I can’t believe this,” she stated, as her body shook uncontrollably, and I racked my brain as to how I knew her.
Averting my eyes, I shook my head as I wasn’t confident to talk for fear of being challenged farther. With brows furrowed in my best confused look, I began walking away, but she grabbed me by the crook of my arm and pulled me back.
“That’s rich,” she said with a glare. “Are you really going to pretend we don’t know one another?”
Stealing another quick glance at her before looking over in Daisy’s direction, my heart sank when a vague memory grew in my mind. Reality dawned when an incident came rushing back of a night I’d spent with a freakish redhead, in a plush hotel in Massachusetts, a few short months before I’d met Daisy.
What were the fucking chances? Why does shit like this only happen to me?
“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person,” I replied, laying on my best Canadian accent and mentally quoting the mantra my legal team had once told me.
Deny, deny, deny.
My eyes darted to Daisy and I pleaded with God to make the woman in front of me disappear.
“Something up, Barney?” Terry inquired as he became my perfect wingman and stood shoulder to shoulder beside me.
“Barney?” the redhead asked, her eyes furrowed in confusion.
“Just asking my pot man if we’ve got a problem here? Terry, head bartender,” he added softer, turning on his charm. He held a hand out with an authoritative tone in his voice.
“Pot man? What’s that? I have no idea what you mean?”
“I’m sorry. Let me start again,” Terry said. “I saw you approach my member of staff and from the look on your face it had appeared as if you were having a problem.”
“Staff? This guy’s not staff, he’s Jamie Fontaine,” she stated loudly, drawing attention to me from some of the other customers. Low murmurs temporarily changed the atmosphere in the bar.
“Not that old chestnut again.” Terry chuckled. “Jesus, Barney, if you had a euro for every woman that figured you were that dick from DistRoyed you’d be retired by now, eh?” He slapped my back hard, grinning, like he’d found her suggestion funny.
“Catrina,” she stated, tapping her chest to remind me of her name, like she was in danger of not giving up. “Same name as your sister, remember? Encore Hotel, Boston
Harbor; ring any bells?” she asked, giving me further prompts of the hotel where our tryst had taken place.
For a few beats I could feel my heartrate pulse in my mouth until I heard Daisy’s calm voice when she interjected.
“Can I be of assistance?” My girl asked, looking every part the professional she was in her workplace. “Back to work, Barney, those glasses aren’t going to clean themselves,” she barked in an order toward me. Without looking back at the girl, I took Daisy’s out, but my chest felt so tight I felt dizzy. I could hardly breathe at the thought of leaving Daisy alone with my ‘one and done’. My heart pounded erratically as I walked over to the bar, slid behind the hatch at the side, and placed the glasses down on the counter near the sink.
“Fuck,” I muttered, and began stacking them carefully into the glass washer, my concentration shot to shit at the scene unfolding a few feet away from me. I knew outwardly I appeared calm, but inside my body, chaos reigned.
“I guess that’s what got you into this mess,” Terry advised me when he heard me cuss. Like I hadn’t known his witty comment to be the truth. I glanced back toward Daisy,, still talking to the redhead and I instantly felt ashamed. “Don’t sweat it, you think Daisy hasn’t faced this kind of scenario before. This is a small city,” Terry reminded me. “There’s always someone who has been connected to someone else.”
“I’m not out of the woods by a long shot,” I confessed. “If I remember rightly, I had a lot of issues shaking that one off,” I admitted. “What the fuck, it’s just my luck she’s shown up here of all places.”
“Just keep your head down and do your job, don’t engage and leave the rest to us,” Terry warned.
Leaving the rest to Daisy was dangerous as far as I was concerned, but I had no words for how it had made me feel to know a fast talking guy like Terry had had my back. However, the moment he told me to keep my head down, it had felt like a challenge. It reminded me of those times back in high school when someone had said ‘don’t look now’ and your instincts were automatically programmed to look— so I did.
My girl stood wringing a glass towel in her hand, deep in conversation with my one night stand. In the past, it would have been a situation that would have made me laugh, but not so when it involved the one girl I was desperately trying to convince was my once in a lifetime love. Apart from the towel being worked in her hands, Daisy appeared effortlessly calm.
The program on the glass cleaning machine beeped, signalling the end of the glass cleaning cycle and I jumped, my legs weak, when it startled me. Terry chuckled at my reaction and I smirked before opening the small door. Steam bellowed out affording me another glance in the two women’s direction and my heart squeezed when I saw how they both laughed together like they were old friends. Daisy looked completely at ease with the towel now under her arm as she gestured the redhead toward a table. To my surprise, the girl looked far meeker when she sat down beside it .
“Two elderflower gins,” Daisy said to Terry when she walked over to the bar without looking at me. I willed her to, but had a strong vibe she was deliberately not giving me eye contact.
“Everything okay?” I asked, which had been a stupid question. I was a famous rock star, stood cleaning glasses in a pub in Ireland, pretending to be an anonymous glass collector while the landlady of said bar, my girlfriend no less, saved my ass from a persistent fan I’d screwed in the past. I couldn’t have made that story up had I been forced to.
So, no. Everything wasn’t okay. In fact, everything couldn’t have been more of a slow motion car crash.
After an hour of watching Daisy and the girl intently, the girl got up and left without another glance back toward me. My girl stood up and paused with her back to me for a moment and I wondered what had been said between them. I was about to go over to her when she picked up their two glasses and headed back to the bar.
“Well that was enlightening,” she said, flatly as she placed the glasses on the counter and headed up the stairs to her apartment.
“I think that’s your cue,” Terry said, tipping his chin toward the stairs. Leaning over, he picked up a clean towel and began polishing the glasses I’d let stack up. I’d been too anxious imagining what the two women were saying to do my job.
“Thanks, Terry,” I muttered, throwing the towel I’d been using in the laundry bin and heading up after her.
I noticed the two guys at the bar do a double take as I walked past them and as I climbed the stairs, I heard a guy ask. “Is that the guy from DistTroyed?”
“Oh lord, not that one again?” Maria said, interjecting after an exaggerated sigh. “It’s not him. Think before you speak, you eejit. Why would an American rock star be in a Dublin Bar the day after Christmas cleaning glasses? You both need to get your eyes tested.”
Chapter 13
“Don’t.” Daisy said, holding up her hand as I strode toward her. My intention had been to hug her. In that one word she’d uttered, I’d heard hurt, irritation and anger.
“Fuck, baby, I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice pleading with her to try to understand that girl was before I ever knew her.
“I know. I read that on your face when I walked over to you both… I can see it now in your eyes,” she admitted, wringing her hands as she paced the room, her hands touching her lips, her hair, her hips.
“Can we sit down?” I asked when her constant back and forth had made me feel even more anxious.
“No, moving about helps me think,” she replied, rejecting my request and continued to use this pattern of comfort to calm herself.
“You have no idea how hard that was sitting there,” she offered, and I nodded.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I can’t imagine it from your perspective, but if its any consolation to you, I hated that you chose to sit there with her like that.”
“I bet. Especially when I had to listen to how incredible your body is and how amazing you were in bed… and how she has never been able to get that night out of her mind.”
“Fuck, I’m…” I shrugged; my chest tightened to the point where catching a breath had felt painful. “Sorry isn’t enough… I know it isn’t. But I am. You know how I feel about you, Daisy. That was the old me, not the man standing here before you.”
“I know, but I saw her, heard what she had to say about you… hell, I’ve felt every feeling she explained to me in infinite detail. It makes me wonder how many women there are out there like her.”
“You’re the only woman I care about.”
“Yeah, but the way she spoke about you, seeing that dreamy look in her eyes…” her voice trailed off.
Stepping closer, I took her by her hands, and when she didn’t resist my touch, I gently led her toward the couch.
“Sit. Let me talk,” I said sternly, because I knew what I said then was either going to make us alright or crush what we were. “That girl knew what the deal was when she got with me. Believe me, I’ve never had to go looking for women in my past. I know that sounds arrogant, but I want you to know you are the only girl I’ve ever worked for. With her and others like her, it was always sex for sport, not the genuine chemistry we have, nothing like it.”
Daisy’s hurt eyes searched my face and my heart sank to my stomach seeing how upset she was.
“I knew who you were before, I’d seen the press reports and gossip columns I used to eat up, but when I’m on the other side of that now…” she trailed off
“I hate to say this, but there’s more than one like her out there. But get this, they came on to me. They knew what they were getting into and I gave them what they wanted. If that makes me sound like a pig, then I own that. I was. But that is not who I am now.”
“I know, I knew you weren’t a saint, it’s just…” she shrugged, helpless.
Placing my hand on her head I pulled her toward me and kissed her temple. “It’s hard. I get it, and I’d love to hope what happened won’t ever happen again, but I need to be honest and say I can’t be sure of that, not if you han
g around when I play gigs anyway. She was a pure stroke of bad luck today. What you can be one hundred percent sure of is that there will never be another one of those I take to my bed going forward.”
“I believe you, but it doesn’t mean it still doesn’t hurt.”
“I know. I have no idea how you sat down with that girl knowing I’d been with her.”
“Tsk, it’s not the first time I’ve met an old flame of a boyfriend. I’m not going to pretend that’s easy either, but I’ve never met a girl that wanted to go into intimate detail about what my boyfriend did to her and how special that made her feel.”
My heart sank to my stomach and how devastated she looked, her sad expression and hurt filled eyes almost demolished me.
“Shit.” I blurted, as I sat blinking, unable to find the words to make that go away. Daisy could never unhear that. Sorry didn’t cut it. “Forgive me,” I finally said, when I felt the silence between us had gone on too long.
“What for? You didn’t intentionally set out to hurt me,” she said, quickly.
“No, but I can see my past action has, all the same,” I replied.
“That’s not technically true. She did, unwittingly of course, because we somehow convinced her you were my Canadian boyfriend Barney, thanks to that stupid Canadian accent you throw out there every now and again.”
We both chuckled and I held her head between the palms of my hands and fell serious. “I truly am sorry, Daisy, you know I—”
When she placed her fingertips over my mouth I closed my lips and kissed them.
“Shit happens right? Afterward, we decide whether to clean it up or let it stink the place out. We’re not going to let this ruin what we have,” she stated, and I felt the tight band that had formed around my chest instantly slacken. Daisy was no doormat, but she was pragmatic— another trait I loved about her.
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