Page 1 of Beer & Broomsticks
CHAPTER1
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 wassupposedto 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.
“You’re not plannin’ on answering,mo ghrá? Can you not see your way past a wee mistake?”
Thatasinine 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 wouldallbe 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?”
