Bawling was more like it. Gasping for air worked too. My tears were bitter and hot, full of self-pity and fresh anger. The unfairness of my situation made my breath catch. Why was this happening? Why me? I wasn’t a bad person.
Actually, I was a pretty kick-ass one.
I donated to charities and babysat my friends’ kids and always bought Girl Scout cookies. Even the lemon-ups—which, let’s admit it—were so bad they should have been illegal in all fifty states.
Why was having a child going to be more difficult for me—if it was even possible—when everyone around me fell pregnant whenever their husbands so much as asked them to pass the salt?
Dejected, anxious, and confused, I stumbled straight into the temple.
No, not the place where you pray. A place called Temple Bar.
Getting drunk in broad daylight might not be the smart thing to do, but it sure was comforting. Plus, I needed to pregame before going to a party tonight. And I was definitely partying tonight.
I pushed the door open, stomped to the bar, and ordered a tall glass of whatever the hell would get me drunk in record time.
“An After Shock and a glass of wine coming right up.” The bartender saluted, slapping a polishing cloth over his shoulder and pulling a steam-filled glass from the dishwasher.
I slumped on a barstool, massaging my temples as I tried to process my new reality. It was either have a baby now or pretty much never.
Tourists and professionals lounged in green wooden booths, enjoying pints of Guinness, coddles, and Irish stews.
Irish folk songs belted from the speakers, jolly and full of mirth. Didn’t the world know I was hurting?
The place looked like an authentic Irish pub, with ornate high ceilings and liquor-soaked walls.
The bartender came back with my drinks before I could burst into spontaneous tears. I hadn’t cried since I was five, maybe six, and I wasn’t going to start turning on the waterworks regularly now that I found out I had to get pregnant at thirty while financially insecure.
I downed the After Shock in one go, slamming the glass on the counter and moving straight to the wine.
A tall, dark, and handsome type appeared in my periphery. He propped an elbow against the bar, his body tilted in my direction.
“Aren’t you Emmabelle Penrose?”
“Aren’t you a middle-aged man with enough life experience to know better than interrupt people when they’re trying to get drunk?” I snapped, ready for another round.
He chuckled. “Feisty, just like I thought you’d be. I wanted to say I appreciate your business model. And your ass. Both look great hanging from a billboard in front of my building.” He leaned forward, about to whisper in my ear.
I swiveled on my stool, grabbing his wrist in a death grip and twisting it down, rotating his entire arm in the process, on the verge of breaking it. He let out a moan, squeezing his eyes shut.
“What the f—”
It was my turn to lean toward him. “The fuck is I’m trying to enjoy my drink here without getting sexually harassed. Think it’d be too much to ask? My being an owner of a burlesque club doesn’t give you permission to try and feel me up. Just like if you were a dentist, it wouldn’t give me the authority to lie on your dinner table at a restaurant and ask you to fill my cavity. Now beat it.”
I pushed the guy, sending him careening across the bar, back to his stool, spitting out profanity in his wake. He grabbed his coat and stormed out of the bar.
“Whoa. Is your day as bad as the hangover you’re going to have tomorrow morning?” The bartender grinned at me impishly. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with ginger hair and a shamrock tattoo on his forearm.
“My day’s worse than any alcohol poisoning recorded on planet Earth.” I smacked my wine glass on the bar. “Trust me.”
“Do not trust her. She’s a flighty one.” A posh English accent chuckled three stools down. The person it belonged to was shadowed in the depth of the bar, a stain of darkness concealing his elegant silhouette. I didn’t have to squint to know who it was.
Only one man in Boston sounded like power, smoke, and an impending orgasm.
Say hello to Devon Whitehall.
Also known as The Bastard Who Broke My Strict One Night Only Rule.
He’d made it to a third hookup before I came to my senses and cut him loose. From the moment we jumped each other’s bones about three years ago at my brother-in-law Cillian’s cottage in the woods, I knew Devon Whitehall was different.
He was a dangerously mild creature, the scholar out of his group of friends. Manipulative, arrogant, and in a league of his own.
Other men around him had glaring shortcomings—Cillian, my brother-in-law, was a cold fish in a suit; Hunter, my best friend’s husband, was loose-tongued and goofy; and Sam, my friend Aisling’s husband, was … well, a mass murderer. But Devon had no giant neon sign warning you to stay away. He wasn’t damaged, or broken, or angry. At least not outwardly. Still, he had that same untouchable quality that made you want to burn like a meteor, which would inevitably, reduce you to nothing but cinders.