LITMIR.BIZ

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      The stranger’s dark gaze had been making a leisurely appraisal of the bar and suddenly caught mine. Wham. It was the most bizarre thing. Almost as if an explosion had just happened, turning everything mute and muffled, like the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

      I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot by the darkest blue eyes I’d ever seen in my life. Navy. Long lashes that should have looked feminine, but didn’t.

      “Yo! Earth to Ashling Sullivan. How about a bit of service?”

      More than a little humiliated and annoyed to have been caught mesmerized like every other female within a mile radius, I broke the connection and went over to take some orders.

      Not cool, Ash, not cool at all to notice someone so...noticeable. Thanks to my job as a film makeup artist, I’d worked with some of the hottest men in the world, so it wasn’t as if I’d never seen a gorgeous guy before.

      I sucked in a deep breath. Kings of Leon were still playing—Sex on Fire —mockingly enough. Everyone was chattering again. Maybe it had been some kind of mad hallucination? But then I felt a prickle of awareness. I looked to my left along the bar and my skin sizzled.

      Nope. He was real and he was still here. And looking at me. Even if it was just to get a drink. After all, I was on my own in the bar tonight and for the foreseeable future, thanks to a litany of minor disasters with the other staff.

      I told myself he was probably gay, even though every feminine instinct I had screamed in protest at this. But the laws of dynamics in New York said that any half-decent guy was gay, or an asshole, or taken.

      I couldn’t keep ignoring him. But as I went over to take the stranger’s order, I hated that I was so aware of him. Dammit, I wasn’t a fifteen-year-old virgin anymore! I was an independent twenty-six-year-old woman who’d had her fair share of sweaty, earth-pounding sex, so why was this pretty boy making my palms damp?

      Because when I stood in front of him I realized that he wasn’t pretty at all. He was devastating. And unsmiling. Tense, almost wary.

      I forced down my libido, which was jumping up and down like an overexcited dog dry-humping my leg. “Hey, what can I get you?”

      “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll have a beer. Please.” His voice was deep, his tone dry.

      Whenever you’re ready. And please almost as an afterthought. I only dimly registered that his accent wasn’t American because hackles were rising. I smiled sweetly and cocked my head. “Any beer in particular, sir?”

      He glanced behind me and back. Slightly distracted. “Local is grand.”

      My insides twisted. He was Irish. And there was something about an Irish accent that made me melt. This was getting ridiculous. Gorgeous and Irish. Who cared if he wasn’t a smiler?

      I got a bottle and felt as self-conscious as I had when I was a teenager. All awkward limbs and burgeoning boobs and clumsy with everything.

      When I put it in front of him, I said casually as I wiped the bar, “If you like Guinness, we have it on draft here.”

      He arched a dark brow as he took a gulp of his beer, his Adam’s apple moving. Even that was sexy. He put the bottle down, and after another enigmatic glance somewhere behind me, he said coolly, “I’ll stick with the local brew.”

      He managed to make it sound almost like an insult. As if any proper Irishman would even consider drinking the national drink outside Ireland.

      Someone called me then, and I used the opportunity to escape, not liking how disappointed I was that he was living up to his brooding intensity, and borderline rude to boot.

      One look at him and any resolutions to swear off men had been slinking away like weak traitors given the slightest chance to escape. But not anymore. He had danger written all over him. Just what I didn’t need.

      He was welcome to the veritable quivering queue of pretty women lining up to give him some company. And sure enough, when I looked again some girl had perched on the empty stool beside him and was all but pushing her chest into his face. Not that he looked remotely impressed. The fact that that mollified me somewhat was not appreciated.

      * * *

      Johnny Ryan curbed the urge to snarl at the girl who seemed intent on thrusting her oversize breasts into his mouth. It wasn’t her fault he was edgy as fuck tonight. How was she supposed to know he was sweating at the thought that any moment now he might see his baby sister for the first time in years?

      Pneumatic breasts brushed his arm boldly again and he gritted his jaw. He’d tried ignoring her, but he was well used to the tenacious zeal of the single New Yorker woman by now, so he sighed and turned to her, saying, “Look, I just came in for a quiet drink, okay?”

      For a second her heavily made-up eyes took on the glint of a challenge, but then she must have seen something on his face, because she finally admitted defeat and said, “Aw crap. Fine.” And then she swung off the stool to go back to her friends.

      Johnny could have sworn he heard her say something like, “He’s gay,” and he gave a little smirk. At least that would dissuade the others from coming over. He was under no illusions about his appeal to the opposite sex. He’d been aware of it since he was fifteen, when an eighteen-year-old Sinéad Morissey—the best looking girl in school—had pulled up her skirt, dropped her knickers and instructed him in the fine art of cunnilingus, before instructing him on a whole lot more.

      A shadow covered the memory. Fifteen had been before his world had been ripped apart for good. When he’d still had some sense that life was a pretty benign place and that nothing too bad would ever happen.

      But it had. And he’d only just started coming out the other side again, nearly a decade later.

      The cute bartender came into his line of vision and his conscience smarted because he’d been rude to her. Coming into this bar was loaded for him, and he was raw, but it wasn’t her fault.

      What was it someone had called her? Ashling...Sullivan. So she had to be related to Liam Sullivan, the owner of the bar and his little sister’s boyfriend, according to the PI who had tracked Johnny down. The PI had been sent to look for him by Liam on Johnny’s sister’s behalf.

      Luckily he’d been able to persuade the man to give him a chance to come and see Caitlin himself, before the PI gave Liam and Caitlin his whereabouts. Except neither Liam or Caitlin appeared to be here this evening. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not, but something in him eased out of a tight grip. He was ill enough prepared to see his baby sister, never mind deal with the fact that she had a boyfriend.

      He scowled at himself; as if he even had a right now to act like the possessive big brother. He’d given up that right when he’d left Dublin three years ago. Familiar guilt made Johnny’s hand clench around his beer. Guilt on top of guilt. Heaped in so many layers now, he’d never find his way out.

      After his world had imploded with the death of his parents at the age of seventeen, he’d been plunged into the depths of grief and had created not a little havoc.

      New York had become his hiding place for the past three years. A space for him to lick a lot of wounds and explore what he really wanted to do. And now with his baby sister on his doorstep, it was time to come out of hiding. But perhaps not today.

      Now that he felt fairly certain he wouldn’t see Caitlin, he watched Ashling Sullivan work. It was no hardship; she was exquisitely pretty. Big blue eyes, slightly almond shaped. High cheekbones, a straight nose and a wide mouth with full, very kissable lips.

      Desire pulsed through his blood, heating it up. When he’d caught her gaze earlier, it had been so blue it almost hurt. She lifted her hands now to tuck some stray dark blond hair into the messy bun on top of her head. The movement lifted smallish but firm-looking breasts, and a jolt of electricity and heat went straight to Johnny’s groin, surprising him with its force.

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