Her Best Laid Plans. Cara McKenna

yourself?” she asked.

      They’d been making flirtatious small talk for the past couple hours, but she still felt a ripple of nerves. Thrilling nerves—an endorsement from her intuition, not a warning.

      “I’ll do my best,” Connor said, cracking his knuckles. “Though sadly you’ve already seen my best. I can only pray that whiskey’s left me with a fighting chance.”

      “Sorry. I actually play better after a drink.” She fed the coin tray, setting unseen balls tumbling.

      Connor flipped off all the lights save for the one above the table, seeming to close them in an intimate, dramatic little set.

      He let her arrange the balls, and he broke.

      Feeling cruel, Jamie took to disturbing him just before he could take his next shot, peppering him with inane questions. The fourth time she pulled the stunt, he stayed as he was, leveling her with his eyes. He looked deliciously dangerous in the stark overhead light, still poised to take his thwarted turn—brow furrowed, shoulder blades cocked, gorgeous forearms tensed and his fingers curled around the cue.

      Trounce me.

      He didn’t. He merely smiled some mysterious Connor smile, then finally took his turn. Her ploy worked, though—he didn’t sink a thing.

      He sighed his annoyance, standing aside as Jamie got her own shot strategized. He tapped the table with the tip of his cue. “Aim about here,” he said. Tap tap tap. She eyeballed a different angle and he tapped again, in her line of vision. “Right about here, then.” Tap tap tap tap.

      She flipped her hair over her shoulder and picked a ball, knocking it neatly into a side pocket. She tossed him a snotty look as she circled to find her next move. Connor rested his cue along his shoulders, gripping it with both hands. “If we’d agreed on any prizes this time, I may as well go ahead and forfeit mine.”

      “I thought the stakes were rather obvious,” she said, and potted the blue ball.

      Connor seemed to perk up at this. He was imagining another kiss—she could tell from his eyebrows alone, rising a fraction to betray his intentions.

      “Do you now?” he asked. “And what might those stakes be?”

      “Your dignity.”

      He pouted, posture slumping. “I’m doomed then. Can’t we play for something else?”

      She knocked a red into a pocket. “Such as...?”

      “I rather liked our earlier wager.”

      “At this rate, I’ll be leaving here with an entire bottle.” She eyed the yellow ball.

      “Mine, not yours.”

      She looked up and held his stare. “I liked your wager, too,” she admitted, her smile feeling as shy as her words were bold.

      He stepped closer, skirting the corner of the table. Goodness, those hips. This man could slink.

      “If that’s the case,” he said softly, “then maybe the snooker’s a bit of a formality.”

      “But I already paid for it.”

      A wholly evil grin quirked Connor’s lips, and he dropped to his haunches, crouching to fiddle with something underneath the table. With a smart shove, he popped the coin tray in and out, and Jamie’s investment clattered into the little change well beside it. He came close, closer—very, very close—and pressed the euro to her palm. His mouth was so near she could feel his warm exhalation at her temple.

      She swallowed, pocketing the coin. “Well played.”

      He took her cue stick slowly—slow enough to allow a protest, but Jamie didn’t have one to offer. She watched him set it on the table with his own, upsetting the balls and calling an official end to the match. With that same measured approach, he brought one hand lightly to her side, palming her hip. His hand was hot. So hot. The heat of him seeped inside her, rising to warm her chest, her neck, her face.

      “Flash,” he said, nodding to mean her sparkly silver belt.

      “I’ve got a weakness for glitter.” A weakness for glitter and, it would appear, shameless Irish barmen. Quite without meaning to, she licked her bottom lip. His eyes recorded the signal, fixed like magnets on true north.

      He cleared his throat and spoke softly. “I’ve locked us in a pub together. I think chivalry demands the next move be yours to make.”