“Sit down. Don’t blow this. You’re off to a good start. What’s your name?”
Strange to say, I sort of meant it. Certainly, I meant it as much as I could considering that Davies was one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and much drunker than he was showing. Growing up in Glasgow and west Ireland, and having gone to Uni and grad school I had plenty of experience with people able to walk about despite being legless with drink, so I was impressed.
No slurring, capable of a bit of poetic flirtation, looming gracefully over the table without looking like he was going to fall on me. Impressive. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d seen him put down most of a bottle of cheap whiskey, knowing that he’d been to a few other crap establishments before washing up at the current pub, I might not know he was hammered.
Other than the smell of his breath. And the color of his eyes. The deep, lovely, poisonous green of them was so surrounded by red it looked like he had decorated his face for Christmas.
Yes, his eyes were lovely, hell he was lovely. I admit that, while normally Englishmen - even tall, shockingly handsome and fit ones - were not my type, he had something about him that might make me forget my morals and standards for a night or two. Except he had humiliated my well-meaning naifs and was about to destroy a good chunk of irreplaceable wetlands and thatmeant…
Something. I still hadn’t quite figured out what I was going to do with him after roofying him and getting him on the boat that was waiting in Heysham port to get us to Ireland.Because the trip over was far from legal, I needed to get Davies out of the pub fairly quickly.If I didn’t I’d lose the window of time I had been given by the smuggler I was paying to get out onto the water.
I picked up my mostly tonic gin and tonic and zoned back into Davies’ chat.There was always the potential for a boring old ransom, even if that came with a great deal of personal risk. I could spread a lot of money to causes that needed it before getting arrested myself.
He was looking at me expectantly, and I realized he had asked what I was doing at the protest.
“You don’t strike me as an onlooker, or a reporter. And your hair is too good for local politics.”
Taking a drink, I smiled and met his eyes, waiting until he had lifted his own glass before saying, “What can I say? I justreallylike tits,” with a little growl on the ‘really.’
His pupils dilated to where only the finest thread of green was visible, and he aspirated a bit of Kentucky’s worst. Still, credit to him, despite whatever porno was playing in his head, he finished his drink and put it down without spilling a drop. “Who doesn’t?”
“I think the guy who asked if the bartender could put Chappell Roan radio on the Spotify, and the cute fella he’s been canoodling with all night, could take or leave them, but otherwise, yeah. Who doesn’t like a good pair of wet ones.”
Davies put his head back and laughed and kept laughing.Not like he had at the protest. That had been mean-spirited, laughing down. This was a long laugh, a cleansing laugh, that he had a hard time stopping. More than the joke deserved. Like it had letsomething loose in him and he was enjoying letting it out.
And his long neck and perfect jawline showing themselves off like that, didn’t bother me a bit. For a minute I wondered what they would taste like. I could all but feel the bit of end-of-the-day stubble he had there rough on my tongue.
Shit. None of that now, Fee, I told myself. Sleeping with the enemy is a bad idea, even if it can be fun.
Wiping his eyes with a cocktail napkin, “Thanks, I needed that.”
“Now come on, I know you’re trying to pull, but it wasn’t that funny.”
Which set him off again, though that time he got himself back under control more quickly. Davies smiled at me, a full, open smile, “I haven’t laughed like that in… never mind… What were you doing there? Fondness for the Willow Tit aside.”
I liked that smile, and that he had swung the conversation over to actual birds. I didn’t like that I liked it. “Truthfully,” I said, “I was curious what all of the fuss was about. I’ve only been in Lancashire for a few months and I was surprised that there was such scandal around pulling down old housing. It's like every day is a slow news day. And it ended up being good craic, with the hippies and your performance, as well. I need to get one of those t-shirts.”
I did actually want one. It would be a hell of a distraction for when I didn’t want someone to remember my face.
“I’ll get you one. ‘Good craic,’ you don’t hear that a lot from people outside of Ireland.”
Shit, again. I was too relaxed talking to him and for a minute I forgot I was supposed to be English. The accent I picked up when at school in Birmingham was a useful code switch for when I used my Margaret Baird cover. I was so so with languages but I picked up accents like wool trousers pick up lint.
“I used to work in a restaurant where thechef was from Cork. Everyone in the kitchen ended up sounding like him, cursing like him for sure.”
“You don’t look like a cook,” he said, taking another drink, realizing he was down to melted ice. “Your hands aren’t scarred enough, and your tattoos are barely visible.” He took my hand and turned my arm gently over so a bit of the ink on the inside of my forearm could be seen peeking out from my blouse cuff.With the veriest tip of his finger, he traced the loop of the ‘e.’“What does it say?”
That put me back. He was quick. Noticed things, the kind of things I wouldn’t expect a cosseted billionaire to notice, let alone a drunk one. And that little touch, just a bare brushing of skin, and the warmth of his lightly calloused palm on the back of my hand woke up my skin, my blood. He kept his head bent over but looked up at me, his eyes hot and starting to be more focused, as if the act of seduction was sobering him up. Why would a Godking sort have calluses?
I wanted to feel them rasping over me, and I needed to break that gaze or I might be letting that happen.Should he sober up enough for it.
Picking up my glass, I drained it down. “It says I was a bartender for a while, and that we both could use another drink.” Under the table, I moved the tiny bottle of powdered Flunitrazepam from my tote into my suit jacket pocket.
“Ah, well then-” he let go of my hand with a slow slide and started to stand up.
“Wait a minute there,” I picked up both of our glasses with one hand, and put my other on his surprisingly muscled shoulder. He let me push him back down, “No woman survives long if she lets strangers get her drinks.”
“True. Besides which, the first time I buy you a drink I’d rather it was an establishment that doesn’t have plastic wood paneling and doesn’t pride itself on their variety of test tube shots.”
