The second time, I told him to go to hell.
But now, standing at the bar in The Banshee’s Rest before opening time with his blue eyes locked on mine, I realized that for the first time, I reallydidtrust him. They weren’t mere words that I spouted out of guilt for hurting him—Ididtrust him.
“It’s my knee-jerk,” I muttered defensively.
“Jerkbeing the operative word,” Jax shot back in a low voice.
“Alright then, tell me about your plan.”
He sat on a barstool and pulled me to stand between his legs. He nuzzled the opening of my shirt and placed a kiss right above my cleavage.
“Plan, Jax?”
“It’s easier for me to talk about my plan when I have your tits close to me,” he replied with aggravating calm.
He cupped my breast. I slapped his hand away.
“Go on then, unveil your super plan to save Ballybeg and my eternal soul.”
“Your soul I already saved by making you fall in love with me.”
I pressed my lips into a line because I was about to burst out laughing.
No one made me laugh as Jax did.
With his easy way, his sense of humor, and his honesty (how on earth did I even think he’d lie to me about something as big as wanting to hurt my village and me)—he just made everything better.
Aye, I was starting to sound like one of those lasses from romance novels that Saoirse loved to read.
“Before I tell you, I want you to know that it’s going to take some work, and you’re not going to like it.”
I let out a soft chuckle, shaking my head. “What a way to keep my expectations low!”
“I believe in under-promising and over-delivering.”
I arched an eyebrow as I put my hands on his shoulders. “Is that right?”
He maneuvered me to sit on his lap.
I was sitting on a man’s lap in broad daylight in my pub. Aye, the world had turned upside down.
He let out a soft laugh and kissed my hair. “Dee, I’m serious. I can save Ballybeg. I can save your land, the pub, all of it. But you’ve got to trust me.”
Trust didn’t come easily to me—it never had. But this wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about Ballybeg, the village that had shaped me, the pub that had been in my family for generations, and the land that held my memories of Maggie and my parents.
It was about all of us.
“I do trust you,” I said without an iota of hesitation.
His eyes softened. “Good girl.”
“Who are you calling a girl?”
“Y’all call yourselves lass all the time,” he protested.
I tilted my head. “Tell me your grand plan, Jax, before I murder you.”
He turned us around so we could both look at the monitor on his shiny Apple laptop. “The first thing we need to do is make the resort project too messy for the developers to push through.”
