PROLOGUE
AMELIA
New York City
“Brandy, double.”
The guy scans the nightclub as if he’s searching for someone, then finally remembers that he sat down at the bar to order a drink. I haven’t moved. Where I come from, manners are generally considered the norm.
He stares at me and then down at the empty space between his hands before repeating his order. “Brandy, double. With ice.”
There are plenty of us working tonight, and it isn’t so busy that a line of irate thirsty customers is forming behind him. I can stand here all night if that’s what it takes. Carol, my supervisor, and best friend, will back me up all the way.
And besides, this guy is hot.
I mean, he isn’t my usual type. He’s pale, with red hair that has glints of gold in it when he moves, freckles across his nose, and blue eyes that… Okay, so maybe I’m paying a little too much attention when I should be working. But goddammit he’s cute.
“Everything okay here?” Carol comes up behind me and squares her shoulders the way she does when she thinks she needs to come across all intimidating.
“Just trying to order a drink.” The guy looks at her as if she might rescue him from the dumb bartender who clearly doesn’t understand his accent.
His accent!
“Are you Irish?” I lean closer.
I hear Carol’s snort as she moves on to serve someone else.
“Are you serving?” he counters, an eyebrow quirking upward.
Cute but arrogant. A definite no-no.
“Most customers say please.”
He blinks at me like I’m speaking a different language, and I curse my luck that the hottest Irishman in history walked into the nightclub where I work and turned out to be an asshole. I could’ve spent the rest of the evening plying him with extra-large shots and finding out everything there is to know about his home country before I fly to Dublin in three days.
But no. I’ve seen his type before. They’re regulars here. The personal trainers, the wannabe movie stars, the realtors, and the billionaire players. He’s probably going to take his drink when, orif, I finally serve him and chat up a model with long pale hair and breasts that disappear when she turns sideways.
I stopped letting the disappointment get to me a long while ago.
Then he smiles, and I find my lips reciprocating the gesture without my permission. Boy, does he know what he’s doing. He probably practicedthe smileon every girl in Ireland beforestarting on New York. Perfect white teeth. Ever so slightly lopsided, attractive without a hint of sleaze. And my body forgets every lesson it ever learned in high school from the jocks who practiced their future player-status on the popular girls.
“Please,” he adds.
“With ice?”
The smile becomes a mischievous glint in his cool-blue eyes like he already knows that he won the first round. “Always.”
I toss ice cubes into a brandy glass without noticing the satisfying chink or the familiar crack when I add the liquor. I’m trapped in limbo with a disarming smile and the soft lyricalplease. I’ve heard Irish accents before, it isn’t an alien concept to me, but when it rolls off this guy’s tongue, it does something to my insides that I generally associate with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s Half-Baked ice cream and Gary Oldman asDraculaon the TV screen.
I place the drink in front of him on a paper coaster and walk away.
“Do I get a running tab?”
Jeez, how does he make it sound like,Do I get inside your panties later?
“Sure.” Because, you know, I don’t make a habit of serving free drinks, but my pussy already made an exception for this guy. And doesn’t he know it.
I need to get a grip.
