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Dammit. This is the opposite of getting over him.
I smile at Fiona. “That sounds fun. I’ve heard of your animal park. Of course.”
“Oh, love that,” she tells me. “Tell the kid at the ticket booth “alpaca spit”.”
I laugh. “What’s that?”
“Code for a free admission. I’ll see you over there.” Then she turns and heads for the back table.
As if on cue, everyone sitting there starts getting up, talking, grabbing bags, and kids. They start filing out of the building, some through the front door, some through the back.
“You really want to go over to the park?” Henry asks.
“Well, yeah. They have giraffes and penguins.”
He grins. “They certainly do.”
“Is that okay?” I ask, suddenly not sure. “I mean, it’s full of visitors, right? I can just blend in.”
Cian ambles by and pauses for a second. “If you touch her, I’ll put cayenne in your tea bags.”
Then he keeps walking, following Saoirse out the door.
Henry chuckles and finishes off his drink. “Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to just blend in.”
I look at him with wide eyes. “You’re going to touch me?”
Henry shakes his head and stretches to his feet, tossing a twenty on the bar. “No. But he’s still not going to be able to stay away.”
“You don’t think so?” I slide off my stool too, trying to pretend like there aren’t butterflies flitting about in my stomach.
“You, here? In one of his favorite places on earth? With his people? There is no way he’s going to be able to pretend he barely knows you, not to mention being able to keep his hands to himself.”
“Oh.” I chew on the inside of my cheek. “Should I just leave?”
He laughs. “Hell no. This is going to be more fun than I’ve had in a week.”
I start toward the door with Henry right behind me. “Oh, this is all about entertainingyou?” I ask.
“Damn right.” He pushes the door open for me, and I step out into the bright, hot Louisiana sun. “It’s you and Cian’s fault I’ve been stuck close to Ruby, seeing her, hearing her, smelling her, but not being able to have her. I deserve to see the two of you stammering and fumbling around for an hour or two.”
“You know, if you hadn’t spilled the news about finding me living in Ohio, you wouldn’t have had to bring Cian to Emerald and you and Ruby could have just gotten over each other,” I remind him.
Henry simply grunts at that.
I start across the parking lot. The road in front of the bar leads down to the Boys of the Bayou swamp boat tour company’sdocks and beyond that is the entrance to the Boys of the Bayou Gone Wild animal park.
I look up and notice Cian standing under a tree at the edge of the parking lot, clearly hanging back from the rest of the group that’s walking down the road. He’s got a baseball cap on now—a look I haven’t seen on him before—and he looks like a regular guy. A very hot, regular guy. But my heart trips a little as I get close enough to see the way he’s watching me. And the way his mouth tips up as I approach.
“Yeah, tell me again how upset you are that I brought him to you in Emerald,” Henry says dryly.
Well, upset is probably an exaggeration.
“I’m really fucking glad you’re here,” Cian says when I stop in front of him. Henry continues on past us.
“Yeah?”
“And you gave my sister and Ellie your real name.”