“I’m not getting into a moving vehicle with you.”

He finds something about that extremely funny. “I assure you I can handle an automobile with better proficiency than most.”

“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about me tossing you out while it’s still moving.”

“I’d like to see you try. This suitcase is bigger than you.”

“It’s a good thing, too. I’ll need somewhere to hide the body.”

Someone passing behind us overhears my comment and laughs. His eyes narrow on me, obscuring some of their electric, snapping blue color. “I’ll carry you if I have to, but you’re getting in the car one way or another.”

I’ve been avoiding making embarrassing scenes and pissing people off for two years. I’ve been swallowing my pride and acting like a reasonable adult because I felt that was the kind of girlfriend Evan deserved. I wanted him to be proud of me and not sorry he’d taken a risk on my scrawny, emotionally stunted ass. I could be the bigger person and go with this asshat to the car. Ignore him long enough to reach the inn.

I could. But I won’t. Because, well, fuck that.

Willa’s pale body twitches to life on the banks of the Chicago River.

I smile, but keep it tight as if I’m forcing it. “What’s your name?”

He’s suspicious. The smile doesn’t fool him. “Shane Claymore.”

“Shane.” It fits him perfectly, and his last name tells me he’s not just an employee. His family owns the place I’ll be staying in for an entire month. Damn. I won’t be able to avoid him completely. “I need to use the restroom. It’s urgent. And I need a certain feminine product in my suitcase. Do I need to explain further?”

Surprisingly, he doesn’t shrink into himself at the mention of the Scourge of Womankind. He crosses his arms and starts to protest, but his phone rings again in his pocket. With a muffled curse, he answers. “What is it, Orla? Have you set the place on fire now?”

I raise an eyebrow at him, and he waves me off with a flick of his hand, already beginning to pace. I’d been planning on sneaking out a different entrance, but he’s just made it even easier. I owe you one, Orla. As soon as his back is turned, I wheel my suitcase out the front entrance and slip effortlessly into a cab.

Chapter Two

While I’m in the cab it begins to pour rain, then stops…and begins again in a matter of thirty minutes. I thought the weather in Chicago was volatile, but volatile doesn’t begin to describe the Irish weather. One minute I’m squinting through the sunshine, the next clouds are darkening the sky, turning it to nighttime in the middle of the day.

We wind down narrow cobblestone streets, slick from the intermittent downpours and pull to a stop outside the Claymore Inn, located on Baggot Street. Slightly off the beaten path, away from the touristy end of town. The inn is a gray, stone building, four stories high. Windows are painted a crisp white, flower boxes containing cheerful pink flowers attached at their base. A trio of Irish flags, white, orange, and green wave from the roof. The bottom floor has a dark wooden facade, a dramatic break from the floors above. A green awning with gold lettering extends from the entrance to the curb where my cab sits idling, the driver waiting for me to pay.

But the wallet is frozen in my hand.

Underneath the awning, leaning against the outside of the pub, is Shane. Somehow he’s beat the cab, and I have no idea how. We managed to avoid all traffic on the way. He’s watching me with an expression I can’t decipher. It’s a mixture of relief and pure, undiluted pissed-off-ness. I want to study that expression later. So I do what comes naturally. I yank my camera out of my messenger bag and snap a quick picture. And I was wrong. He hadn’t been pissed off before.

Now? Now, he’s good and pissed.

I step out of the cab and thank the driver, who has lifted my suitcase from the trunk for me. Making sure to school my features carefully, I swagger toward Shane. A truly dope swagger is a little trick I picked up from Ginger over the years, although she probably wasn’t even aware she’d passed it on. Your walk can mean everything. It lets whoever you’re walking toward know just what the hell they’re in for. Although my little vamoose at the airport has probably already tipped him off.

I suspect he’s waiting for me to ask how he made it back so quickly. So I don’t. “The weather in this country sucks ass,” I remark instead on my way into the pub.

He catches the door and follows me inside. “That stubborn pride is going to get you into trouble, tough girl,” he whispers gruffly in my ear.

Ignoring the shiver his voice sends down my spine, I wink at him. “Bring it on.”

With a snort, he leaves me standing in the entrance and ducks beneath a hatch leading behind the bar, joining a redheaded girl who looks flat-out panicked at the amount of customers staring at her expectantly from the other side the bar. I can’t hear her over the music and conversations crowding the room, but she appears to be rambling some sort of explanation to Shane. Clearly ignoring her, he takes a drink order and begins to pull pints of beer from a white handle.

Determinedly, I push Shane Claymore and his Hulk-sized attitude to the back of my mind and take in my surroundings. Claymore’s is small, clearly ancient, but immaculate. And popular. Every polished, wooden table is full with customers digging into their food between sips from pint glasses.

I know what a tourist looks like. In Chicago, they’re everywhere, slowing you down by crowding the sidewalks as they try to decipher oversize maps. I’m trying my best not to look like a tourist even though my suitcase might as well be a flashing neon sign that says outsider. Unlike the Temple Bar section of Dublin I read about on the flight, this is definitely where the locals come to eat lunch. Men dressed smartly in suits, female coworkers gossiping over their salads. At the bar, older gentlemen keep themselves company, watching horse races on overhead televisions. Regulars, Ginger would call them. A few of them send me curious glances that I return steadily.

Laughter, clinking silverware, chairs scraping, the bell dinging in the kitchen…all are unfamiliar sounds to me, but when combined, they are immediately welcoming. Instinctively, I know this isn’t the type of establishment my sister worked in to support us from age sixteen. The ones that sent her home to our crumbing two-bedroom house on the wrong side of Nashville smelling like cigarette smoke and despair. There is an air of acceptance here, as if anyone walking through the door could seamlessly mesh right into the tapestry of color and sound.