Page 2 of Fighting for Irish
Feigning his own disinterest, he turned his attention back to his water, but he continued to study her from the corner of his eye. She turned and reached over the bar counter for the open beer Johnny must have set there in anticipation of her arrival. Lifting the neck of the bottle to her lips, she took several long pulls. Lucky fucking bottle.
Her body willowy and defined, she couldn’t have been taller than five-seven at most. She wore a logoed shirt just like Johnny, but hers had a plunging neckline that revealed the inner swells of her breasts. A stiff black skirt didn’t just hug her ass, it promoted it. The uniform was tight and meant to draw attention.
The wrong kind.
Images of drunken assholes pawing at her as she served them drinks flooded the space behind his eyes. Something he’d thought dead for years stirred in Aiden’s gut. His misguided sense to protect and defend where he had no right. Where this woman worked and the attention she attracted was no concern of his.
Actually, that’sexactly what she might be, dumbass. Your concern.
He recalled the description his friend had given him. Red hair, small, and covered in freckles. Looks like he might not need to make conversation with Johnny after all. She wasn’t close enough for him to see any freckles, but red hair stuck out like a domestic beer in an Irish pub.
“Hey, Johnny,” she said, “think we can claim a measles outbreak or something and shut down for the night?”
The man snorted. “Are you kidding? Lou would probably tell us to wear gloves and paper masks and keep on serving.”
Tying a small black serving apron with pockets around her waist, she sighed and said, “Then I guess we’ll just have to hope time goes fast and nothing gets broken tonight.”
“Your constant optimism is what I love best about you, Sydney,” Johnny said.
Damn. Wrong name.
She gave Johnny a wry grin while sticking an order pad and pen in her apron. “Bite me, Anders.”
As the old guys stopped playing to shout their hellos to the waitress, she made her way around the front of the bar and offered her own greetings in the way of smartass comments. Aiden started to ask Johnny if he could see a bar menu when he heard a squeal next to him.
Her foot had slipped on the spilled beer and sent her on a one-way trip to the floor. Reflexes took over. He took one large step to the left and snaked an arm around her waist, bringing her up short before she hit the ground. Instinctively, her arms had latched onto his neck for dear life, bringing her body flush with his.
Somewhere in the background, whistles and catcalls filled the bar for saving the woman, but he didn’t acknowledge them. Or anything else for that matter. His chest felt branded where her breasts pressed against the steel bars in his nipples and sent shockwaves of pleasure to his balls. Desperate to derail his train of thought, he focused on her face, now only inches from his.
Natural beauty.That’s what popped into his head. Everything about her looked like it had been pulled from one of the four elements. He’d been wrong to think of her hair as merely “red.” Now that he saw it up close, it reminded him of the orange and gold streaks of a sunrise.
Blue eyes with a hue of green, like the water in a brochure for the perfect island vacation, gazed up at him with an innocent uncertainty.
The rest of her face was variant shades of peach: the lightest being her flawless skin, the darkest being her plump lips, and the feature that used every shade in between…
Freckles.
Looked like he’d been wrong after all. Because despite the wrong name, the reason Aiden left Boston for this Podunk town in the middle of nowhere just literally fell into his arms.
