The Problem with Paddy (Shrew & Company) (2 page)

In spike heels.

Her fingers danced over the spidery scrawl on one particular receipt where someone, ostensibly Mr. O’Dwyer, had printed
Arriving for set-up at eleven a.m., 3/17.
There were similar notations on all the statements—tidbits that probably could have been better served by being plugged into his phone reminders or written on a pub calendar. But, she suspected this wasn’t his usual means of time management.

Maybe it was because she was a business owner herself, but what she saw was enough information there that a person—even an outsider who knew nothing about the pub’s operations—could coordinate the flow of bodies. She could do it, and she wasn’t even on staff.

“What else do we have here?” She returned the folder to its tray after sifting through the papers beneath it.

Mr. O’Dwyer had doubled his usual food and alcohol orders for stock through March 17. The notes on the memo lines of the receipts read
Deliver in care of S. Drake per Patrick O’Dwyer. Resume usual order on 3/18.

“Ah, Mr. O’Dwyer. Do you want to be found?”

On a whim, she picked up the desk phone and dialed the cell phone number listed at the bottom of one of the invoices. Sometimes she got lucky and they answered.

It wasn’t her lucky day.

“
This is Patrick O’Dwyer. I’m not available to talk right now, but your message is important to me. I’ll return your call as soon as I can. If this is regarding Paddy’s or the 5K run, please call the pub during normal business hours.
”

She disconnected before the beep and fanned herself with a nearby folder. “With a voice like that, he’d better be ugly as shit, because otherwise that’s just cruel, Lord.”

She’d always had a thing for accents, and she hadn’t considered that perhaps the owner of an Irish pub would be…well,
Irish
. Suddenly, Mr. Drake’s accent seemed less mysterious.

“Are you talking to me?” As if drawn in by a psychic lasso, Mr. Drake stuck his head inside the office.

She dropped the folder and stood without addressing his concern. “Get the house keys. I’ve seen all I need here.”

And heard all I needed, too.

It was difficult for Patrick to shove aside thoughts of his pub and the race, but what more could he do? If he’d been better organized, he would have had someone in place as a back-up should a situation necessitate his absence, but this had been a last-minute thing. He did what he could to leave his affairs in order and hoped at the end, it wouldn’t bite him in the ass.

He put his feet on the cabin porch’s railing and took a long sip of his whiskey, welcoming the burn as it coated his throat and warmed his belly.

Maybe just one call to let ’em know not to expect me.

He shook his head. No, they’d ask too many questions and he wasn’t prepared to give them the answers they sought. He’d have to make up some kind of lie before he returned to work…whenever that would be.

Family emergency? No, everyone knows I don’t have any other family. Scheduled surgery? No, they’d ask why I didn’t tell them beforehand.

He shrugged and finished what was left of his drink. He hoped the crew could hold it together until his return, because the last thing he needed was for his faithful staff to stage an uprising in his absence. Old Simon did fine when Patrick was around. He tended the bar and kept the kitchen staff on their toes, but when it came to making executive decisions, he froze up. He could hardly sign for UPS packages without breaking into a cold sweat.

Patrick set his bare feet on the ground and pushed himself to standing position. He took one last, long look at the fir-covered mountains in the distance before pulling open the screen door. He cursed those mountains.

Last year, he’d regretted buying the little cabin in the Smoky Mountains because he never really had a chance to avail himself of it. The pub was open six days out of seven every week, and after five years, he still hadn’t been able to tear himself away from the place. Maybe that was a problem of his own making. Maybe Simon was a crutch he used to give himself a
reason
not to stray too far. He didn’t want to see his business fail, because really—that pub was all he had left in the world. If it went down, he didn’t want it to be because he didn’t try hard enough. He couldn’t prevent the occasional disaster, but he did his damnedest to run a respectable establishment.

Still, his doctor had said he was too stressed and that his blood pressure was too damned high for a thirty-two-year-old man, so he’d spent a long weekend at the cabin the month before, engaging in prescribed R&R.

Big mistake.

He set his glass on the counter and reached for the bag of bread on top the microwave. Mentally, he debated whether the night’s sandwich would be turkey—again—or roast beef.
Maybe I’ll nuke something. Hot sounds good.

The bread bag was halfway back to its nook when the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside gave him pause. He froze there, not moving a muscle, and turning his hearing outward to isolate the sound.

Was it a guest? Perhaps a neighbor from down the mountain who saw his SUV parked beside the house and traveled up to see who he was?

No. The hairs prickling on his neck said it wasn’t that. The person, whoever it was, walked with too tentative a step for someone making a social visit.

He stood very still, waiting for the knock.

None came, only a creak of the old boards on the porch as the person shifted in front of the door.

A woman’s voice—accented with the slight Southern drawl he’d become so familiar with in the past five years—called through the screen. “Mr. O’Dwyer, could you come to your door, please?”

He didn’t recognize the voice. Sultry with a bit of an edge. Definitely wasn’t an employee, and none of the neighbors would have known his name. He wasn’t there enough to even put it on his mailbox.

He put the down the bread and walked to the doorway between the kitchen and front room, pausing at what he saw through the screen. A petite, shapely woman stood in a no-nonsense stance with hands on hips and lovely face a blank mask. He whistled low.

Nice
.

She may have tried to be tough with that voice and that posture, but with those curves and all that black hair hanging over her shoulders, she was
soft
, even if she didn’t want to be. He let his gaze trail down from her neck to the
café au lait
mounds of her breasts barely visible at her maroon sweater’s V-neck, and imagined nuzzling his face between them, memorizing her scent. Marking her.

He growled and pulled his head back into the kitchen.

Get a hold of yourself.

He didn’t ogle women. In his profession, gorgeous women were par for the course. They were in his pub day in and day out. He’d even paid attention to a few, but mostly he’d trained himself not to become involved. The women always got jealous. Were suspicious when he came home late and when they saw him chatting up girls at the bar. That was his
job
, and he knew how to keep his hands to himself. Now he didn’t bother because it never panned out and wasn’t worth all the grief. They were so damned needy. He didn’t want needy. He already had Simon for that.

“Mr. O’Dwyer?” she repeated, annoyance tingeing her alto voice.

He loved the way she said his name.
Oh-Dwy-uh.
Maybe if they had the chance, he’d teach her to say it in two syllables like his disreputable family had.

“One moment, please.”

He nudged the tap and put his mouth beneath the flowing water in a lame attempt to rinse the whiskey taint from his breath. Before passing into the front room, he grabbed a dishtowel from the hook and wiped his mouth. Best he could do.

As he approached the door, the woman’s eyes widened. Whatever she saw that caused her surprise, however, seemed to become a non-issue, because she smoothed her expression to its former blank. The flicker put his curiosity into overdrive.

“Yes, can I help you?” he asked from his side of the door.

“Patrick O’Dwyer?”

“Yes.”

He waited for her to hand him some paperwork and tell him he’d been served or
worse
, but no.

She nodded and pulled a cell phone out of her coat pocket. Without acknowledging him further, she dialed in some numbers.

Suddenly, his sense of self-preservation kicked in. He pulled open the door and rested a hand on her arm. “Wait, who are you and who are you calling?”

She looked first at his hand on her forearm then up to his eyes and pressed her glossed lips into a tight line.

He dropped the hand. “It’s just that…no one knows I’m here.”

She worked her jaw left then right, studied his face, and punched the end button on her phone. “Mr. O’Dwyer, I was hired by a member of your staff to find you and ensure you were safe.”

“I am.”

“So…” She held her phone up to his face and wriggled it at him. “I’m checking in and informing my client of such. I cancelled a hair appointment for this.” She drew the phone in close and poised her finger to dial.

He grabbed her arm again. “Please, don’t. They’ll ask questions.”

This time, she didn’t bother looking down at his hand. She just wrapped her free one around his wrist, picked it up, and dropped it. “Please don’t touch me.”

He cringed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

She stared at him. Assessing him. Then, the tension she held in her jaw eased somewhat and she took a step backward.

He hoped she was enjoying the show, though he doubted it. He hadn’t shaved in two days and his hair was any which way but combed. Meanwhile, whether she’d missed a hair appointment or not, she was looking like she’d just walked off a magazine page advertising the new trend of ball-buster chic. She was stylishly hardcore from her tweed blazer down to her knife-pleated slacks and especially her spike-heeled boots. He suspected that if pressed, she’d actually be quite proficient at running in them. Probably even had gel inserts—she looked like the type to be prepared for every contingency.

“You’ve got to throw me a bone, Mr. O’Dwyer,” she said, and it looked like her pupils shrank suddenly.

He’d thought her eyes were nearly black upon first impression, but now, they were definitely brown and her pupils were getting smaller and smaller. He stared at them, entranced.

The fuck?

She snapped her fingers at him.

He straightened up.

“I can’t tell them you’re fine and not give them any proof. That’s shitty work, and I have a reputation for thoroughness.”

“Reputation? What, exactly, is your gig?”

She ignored the question. “How do you want me to disseminate this information? Would you prefer to call Mr. Drake from your own phone and I’ll close out my bill from there, or—”

He scoffed. “Mr. Drake, huh?”
Should have known he’d crumble under the threat of responsibility. So much for giving him a kick in the pants.
“I’ll make it worth your while for coming all the way out here, but please—this is important. Just tell them you couldn’t find me.”

She seemed to consider it for a moment, cocking her head to the side and narrowing her eyes again, but finally shook her head. “No. I’ve got a reputation for what I do. I always find my man, and I’m not a liar. Come up with something else, and I’ll let you know if it’s an improvement.”

Ball-buster.

In spite of her brusque dismissal, a grin quirked his lips up at the corners. He kinda liked the attitude. It was almost refreshing compared to his usual fare. This woman wasn’t going to take any shit from him, or anyone
else
, probably. She’d probably tell him what he could do with himself and
where
the moment she thought he was patronizing her. He wasn’t dumb enough to try that. Still, it was his secret to keep, no matter how thorough she was at her job.

“How about you say
nothing
? That way it wouldn’t be a lie.”

The hinges of her jaw twitched and her gaze darted around the room behind him. She was thinking about it, otherwise she would have probably given him a flat-out no.

“Oh. Where are my manners?” He stood a bit to the side and held open the door. “Would you like to come in?”

She shifted her weight and crossed her arms over her breasts.

Her arms pressed them, coaxing her cleavage up to her sweater’s V-neck. It pulled at his gaze like a magnet. He imagined his hands pushing those pert mounds together, his thumbs flicking over her nipples and teasing her until she was ready to play nice.

He must have zoned out, staring at her sweater where her nipples should have been, because she sniped, “This isn’t a social visit, Mr. O’Dwyer.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face, forcing him to look up.

“Yes, uh…”

She raised one of those perfectly-groomed eyebrows, daring him.

Damn, she’s pretty. Too pretty to have an attitude like that…or perhaps that’s why she has the attitude.