“Bloody hell,” I cursed, then sipped again.
Maggie leaned against the bar with a smirk. “I see you came with Boone.”
I glanced over my shoulder. He was standing with a group of men, laughing, his entire face lighting up. I was beginning to suspect he was the epitome of the Irish. Cheeky as hell.
“He followed me,” I said. “I found my own way.”
“I can see why he’s interested in you,” Maggie said. “He was very close with Aileen.”
“So I hear.” I straightened up. “Hey, what’s his story, anyway? I was talking to Mairead at the shop, and she said he just turned up one day.”
“That’s about the gist of it.” Maggie shrugged. “You can usually tell where someone is from due to their accent, and I hear a lot of them workin’ behind this bar. Not just from the tourists who come through, either,” she said. “At first, I thought he was from Galway. Then, the next day, his accent changed, and I thought he might be from Cork instead. Then he took on Sligo with a little bit of Dublin. So, no, I don’t know where he’s from. It seems our Boone is from everywhere.”
Looking back over my shoulder again, I peered at him. The man from everywhere with his thousand and one jobs, his cheeky lit, and his roguish exterior. I hadn’t felt this hot under the collar about a guy since…well, ever. I’d just looked at him and was all like hello sailor.
“Cute, ain’t he?”
Jumping a mile, I grimaced. “I suppose.”
Maggie laughed. “So what about you? What do you do back in Australia?”
My shoulders sank, and I rolled my eyes, but she was the first person to ask me about my life and not gush about Aileen and her impeccable standing in the community. It was just my life was in tatters right now.
“That good, eh?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I was working for a big bank in Melbourne, but a month ago, they handed my entire department redundancies. Then they shipped our jobs to a cheaper workforce overseas. I’m an unemployed drain on society.” I fist pumped the air with as much enthusiasm as I could manage. Which wasn’t much at all. “I’m currently drifting.”
“I’ll never understand big business,” Maggie said, shaking her head. “It’s all cuttin’ costs and budget this, bottom line that. That’s why I like Derrydun so much. We look out for one another. It’s about the folk right here, right now. I’m sorry to hear about your troubles.”
“What about you? You’ve never wanted to go to the city?”
“Nah. I went to study in Dublin when I was nineteen, then to London for a year, but I ended up comin’ home. There’s just somethin’ about this place…” She stared dreamily into the distance before squaring her shoulders. “Ah, that’s another story for another time. I’m meant to be workin’. I’d better get back to it. Enjoy your night, Skye.”
As she moved back down the bar to serve some locals, I swiveled around on the barstool. Nursing my whiskey, I surveyed the pub. People were laughing in groups, clinking glasses, eating hearty meals being ferried out by the kitchen staff, and the low strumming of guitar music could be heard over the din. If this was a wake, then it wasn’t like any I’d seen before. There were no tears in sight.
Everyone knew each other and gravitated around the familiar in their lives, and here I was, the stranger. Taking another sip of my whiskey, I began to struggle with the odd sensation of being alone in a crowd. I couldn’t even see Robert, and I wondered when the lawyer had left. Probably while I was up the hill with Boone.
At the thought of the hot Irishman, my gaze fell on him for the tenth time since I’d walked into the pub. There was something about him I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and it wasn’t to do with his general hotness. Something else radiated around him almost like an aura. I’d always been a good judge of character to the point it had been like a sixth sense, but Boone…I couldn’t figure him out.
Disregarding him, I turned my attention to the people standing around him, attempting to put faces to the names I’d learned that afternoon. Sean McKinnon, Mark Ashlyn, Roy, Mary, and Mairead’s parents, Beth and Gregory. There were a ton more, but I’d already forgotten who they were.
Behind the group by the fireplace, a man was leaning against the wall, watching the room just like I was. Curious, I watched as the villagers milled around him but never once acknowledged his presence. Another loner like me.
Realizing he was being watched, the man raised his head and zeroed in on me. He stared back, his face shimmering as if he were some kind of freaky mirage. I blinked, and his skin darkened to a bluish gray, and his teeth elongated into sharp points before the whole image snapped back. Stiffening, I was frozen to the spot, unable to look away.
Something wasn’t right. Wasn’t this how psychosis started?
Boone appeared next to me, drawing my attention back to reality.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sitting beside me.
“I, uh… I’m just tired. I haven’t had much time to rest.” Looking across the pub, the strange man had disappeared.
Boone frowned. “Would you like me to walk you home?”
Craning my neck, I searched for the stranger but couldn’t see him among the press of people.
“Lost somethin’?”
Shaking my head, I turned my attention back to Boone. “No, I… I’d better go home.”
“Home, eh?” He grinned.
“It’s a figure of speech,” I retorted, springing off the stool.
“Maybe.”
Rolling my eyes, I made a break for the door.
“Goodnight to you, Skye,” he called out after me. “Be seen’ you!”
* * *
It wasn’t a long walk back to the cottage, but I couldn’t shake the image of the weird man at Molly McCreedy’s. If he’d been real at all.
Outside,
