Chapter 1
Bridget O’Malley loved Ruairí O’Connor. She had since the day they’d accidentally met by the garden gate dividing their properties. At the time, she was four years old and didn’t understand she wasn’t supposed to love him. She was supposed to hate him with every fiber of her being as every O’Malley had hated every O’Connor since the family feud started two-hundred and fifty years before.
Despite his betrayal when they were only twenty—the one she still couldn’t bear to think about some seventeen years later—she found it difficult to call up the hate. Oh, for sure, she wasn’t happy with him, and she’d spend every hour of every day making him aware of the fact if she could, but she didn’t hate him. Not even a little.
“Good morning, mo ghrá.” Ruairí had a deep, raspy tone that never failed to reach in and tickle her girly parts. Bridget cast an irritated glance toward the stone fence where that good-for-nothing O’Connor stood sipping his morning coffee. Her standard sneering response was done more out of habit these days. “I’m not your love, Ruairí. I’m not your anything.”
“Oh, but you are. Have been since the day I first set my eyes on you thirty-three years ago.”
They were of an age. Both bonded as children and spent their youth sneaking out to meet at the same time they were being taught to despise one another. They’d continually laughed at their parents’ attempts to poison their hearts and minds.
Until the day Ruairí had poisoned hers against him.
He’d done what her parents and grandparents hadn’t been able to.
Snorting her derision, she turned her attention back to the rosebush she was pruning.
“We aren’t getting any younger, Bridg. When are you going to forgive me?”
Her heart flipped in her chest, and her mouth went dry. If she faced him, she knew what she’d see. Six feet of contrite male with shaggy blond hair and a knicker-melting smile. She didn’t turn around because she couldn’t afford to lose her only clean set of drawers. Which reminded her, she needed to get the laundry on before heading to work at the pub today.
Goddess, she needed a clone.
“Yer not plannin’ on answering, mo ghrá? Can you not see your way past a wee mistake?”
That asinine comment brought her head around. “Wee mistake? Are you mad, Ruairí?” She chucked her pruning shears at his head, and lucky enough for him, he had rabbit-fast reflexes. Oh, if only she had the magic of a normal witch, she’d blast him to hell and back. And wasn’t that another blame she could lay at his door? If it hadn’t been for his bloody family, they would all be enjoying a taste of the Goddess’s gift right now, instead of just her brothers.
Sometimes she dreamed about having abilities. What wouldn’t she do with a spot of magic? Where wouldn’t she go if she could teleport from one place to another in the blink of an eye like her brothers were beginning to do?
Fecking prophecy.
And fecking O’Connors for causing all their woes!
“You got a temper on you, ya do!” Ruairí shouted as he tried to mop up the coffee he’d spilled down his shirt when he dodged the shears.
Bridget experienced a pang for the discomfort he must’ve felt from the hot liquid, but she couldn’t stop herself from running an appreciative eye over the sculpted chest displayed so nicely by the wet material clinging to each and every muscle. The blimey bastard even had beautiful nipples, small, hard, and perfectly pebbled at the moment.
With a heartfelt sigh, she turned her back, but not before calling over her shoulder, “Then feck off and don’t come back, why don’t you? It’s not like I’ve asked you to hang about like a damned wraith.”
“One day I won’t come back. What’ll ya do then, you bloody shrew? You’ll be sorry for the way you treated me. You won’t have old Ruairí O’Connor to abuse.”
“Promise?” She gave him a hope-filled look. The flash of his wicked grin nearly did her in, and she knelt at the base of the bush on the pretense of fluffing the dirt.
Damned weak knees! Nothing was finer than Ruairí’s face when he was amused by her. His blue eyes twinkled. Paired with that dimpled smile and the mussed white-blond hair that always seemed to need a barber, those peepers of his had the ability to melt even the steeliest of hearts. Cold, hard determination was no match for his roguish charm. And didn’t that beat all?
“What are you doing here, Ruairí? Don’t you have a job to see to?”
“It’s Saturday.”
She frowned and ripped out a weed. Her days all ran together now that her family had opened O’Malley’s Black Cat Inn. Between the pub and their bed and breakfast, Bridget was run ragged. Soon enough, her brother Cian and his new bride, Piper, would return from their honeymoon and relieve her of the burden of running two places.
“What time do you want me at the pub tonight, mo ghrá?” Ruairí had stepped in a few months back—despite Bridget’s objections—and taken over bartending while she prepared the occasional meal and bused tables. He’d initially done it as a favor to Cian, but he’d never left.
She couldn’t say Ruairí was a terrible worker; hell, he’d turned out to be a godsend. But she didn’t have to like it, and she sure as hell wouldn’t praise or thank him for his timely help.
“Four-thirty should do.” If she could stand to have him around, she’d have told him an hour earlier to help prep for the evening ahead. However, it was essential to her mental wellbeing that she avoid spending as much time with him as possible. “Now go away. I’ve things to do.”
Ruairí stared at the rigid back Bridget presented to him. The woman was as stubborn as the day was long. She refused to listen to any apologies or explanations of the past, convinced he was in the wrong.
And maybe he had been, once. But now? Now, he deserved to be heard. Having dealt with her frigid stares and scathing remarks for the better part of seventeen years, he was working up to a fine temper.
Her brothers, Cian and Carrick, were convinced she’d mellow if Ruairí remained in close proximity. Sure, and they were wrong. If anything, Bridget had reinforced the walls of her heart and effectively barricaded it against him. Convincing her that he sincerely regretted his fool mistake was getting harder by the day.
She tossed back her shiny red hair with a simple flick of her wrist and cast him a withering glare. “Still here?”
For some odd reason, he found the gesture humorous, but he dare not laugh where she could see, or she’d skin him alive. He couldn’t resist saying the one thing he knew would irk her. “Aye, mo ghrá. It’s difficult to part ways with one so lovely.”
“Sure, and you didn’t have a problem movin’ on when you decided to stick your lying tongue down Molly Mae’s scrawny throat.”
Ah, finally. Bridget was ready to address the ever-present issue.
“Molly Mae kissed me, Bridg. Not the other way ‘round.” She snorted. “From my vantage point, the kiss went on for a good day, and you weren’t shoving her away, now were you?”
“She used a spell on me.”
Her severe frown rivaled the dark clouds of the fiercest winter storm. “Spell? What kind of spell?”
“One designed to freeze me in place,” he improvised. “I’m telling you now, Bridg, I never knew she had magic powerful enough to control me that way.”
Bridget squinted as she weighed his words.
Ruairí did his best to look innocent.
Yes, he’d kissed Molly Mae down by the stream under the large oak where he and Bridget used to meet in secret. He’d employed a whole lot of stupid with a huge heaping of arrogance when he’d come up with the idea to make Bridget jealous and force her hand. The decidedly dumb plan to convince her she couldn’t live without him had backfired on an epic level. Seventeen torturous years later, he was still dealing with the fallout.
“Do you know your left eyebrow twitches and you grimace slightly before you lie, Ruairí?”
His hand flew to his brow, but he dropped it just as quickly when he saw the smug satisfaction on her face. Goddess, he was still three steps behind Bridget on a good day. ...
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