Page 4 of Gorilla in the Groove (Shamrock Safari Shifters #3)

"That's gas." In fact, Mick was on time, even a minute or two early.

He'd found out the hard way that other countries were less casual about time than Ireland was, and had generally learned to show up at least half an hour before he was supposed to go on.

But this was Ireland, and his gig was meant to start at ten.

The fact that he was there a couple of minutes before, instead of at twenty after, meant he was purely in the right.

He swung up onto the stage and offered his hand to Adrian.

The manager sighed, shook it, and said, "I need you here earlier, lad."

"I'm guessing Ronnie there didn't start until half eight and has at least fifteen minutes left in his set," Mick said with a shrug. "I've loads of time to set up. And I had something important to do."

He doesn't need the details, his gorilla said. Humans are so nosy.

Mick didn't think he'd been going to offer details, but the gorilla had a point.

And Adrian sighed again, suggesting Mick was pure right about Ronnie's set, too.

He fistbumped the other DJ as he went to grab his headphones and check the playlist he'd pre-arranged.

There were whole other lists to blend into, depending on how the vibe went tonight, but from what Ronnie had going, he thought he had a good set prepped.

Good, his gorilla said. That means we can watch our mate.

Mick chuckled under his breath. "I'm not sure that's how it works.

" But it did sound good. He glanced toward the dance floor as if he'd be able to pick Irina out of a crowd of hundreds, and to his amazement, he did catch a glimpse of her.

She was on the edge of the floor, a bottle of water in hand as she watched the dancers.

Mick thought she looked lonely again, or sad, though her gaze found him on the stage and she smiled brilliantly.

She can't be lonely with us around, his gorilla proclaimed. Play something she'll like.

I don't know what she'll like! I can't play trad at a club! Mick assumed Irina didn't listen to Irish dance music all the time, anyway, but that wasn't the point. Hopefully she'll just like whatever I play.

A minute or two later he took Ronnie's place at the control booth, the transition practiced even though he didn't often work with the other DJ.

Still, to do this job well, you had to be able to move in and out of a space efficiently, especially on nights that featured more than one DJ.

Ronnie offered a fistbump that Mick accepted, and then the soundboard was his.

Even before he called out his introduction, a load of dancers realized their local lad had stepped up and shouted a greeting.

Mick grinned at everybody, announced himself, and spent the next ninety minutes altering tracks, watching what people responded to, and generally losing himself in the music.

His gorilla, never a fan of loud things, tucked itself up in his mind and went to sleep as Mick worked.

It didn't even wake up when he saw that Irina had worked her way across the floor to dance near the DJ stage, but Mick waved at her and got a brilliant smile in return.

A minute later he turned the music down a little, calling, "Here now lads, would yis know there's an Irish dance competition in town? "

Half the dancers yelled, "No!" back at him, and he saw a few people here and there do a bit of fancy footwork, pretending to be trad dancers themselves.

Mick laughed into his microphone and raised his eyebrows at Irina.

Her eyes were wide and she shook her head, but when he lifted his eyebrows higher, she gave a little shrug that he was pretty sure meant 'well, okay, maybe. '

"C'mon now," he called to the people who were pretending to be trad dancers. "Would yis like to see how it's really done?"

"Are ye gonna dance for us, Mick?" somebody bellowed.

"God, no, I'd scare the horses like! But we've American dancer Irina Zarabaka here with us tonight and if you mad feckers will give her a bit of room to breathe she'll show you what it's all about! C'mon, Irina!"

Inevitably, a bunch of lads started singing C'mon Eileen, but Mick drowned them out with a new piece of music, then turned it down as Irina, visibly blushing, stepped into a square of space the other dancers made for her.

She took a moment to count the music, then went from standing still to the dance so fast it took Mick's breath away.

A startled cheer went up around her, and people backed off farther, giving her more space and making room for other people to see.

Phones went up in the air, recording her, and she finished her dance with a breathless laugh to great applause.

Irina sent Mick a grateful, happy smile as the crowd closed in again, dancing, still applauding, getting her to show them some of her footwork.

On and off through the evening they cleared a space for her to dance.

A few times other proper Irish dancers joined her, their feet clattering against the concrete floor at great speed.

More often, regular dancers tried to keep up and fell away again, laughing, until it was abruptly time to wind the evening down.

Irina looked up at Mick, asking with a gesture whether she should hang around. He nodded, and her smile lit up again.

It took a while to clear the floor, even with the music done.

Mick tidied up his space, readying it for the next gig in a few nights, then grabbed the coat he'd left there a few nights ago and came down off the stage to find Irina the centerpiece of gathered admirers.

"My wee little sister is mad for the Irish dancing," one of them was saying to Irina.

"She'll go spare, learning I met one of the competitors.

If there's tickets to spare I'll bring her to the competition. "

Irina blushed happily again. "If you give me your name I can add you to my comps list. I only have five seats, but I'd love to have someone in the crowd who was there for me. My mom and dad couldn't make it. Too far, too expensive, you know?"

"Sure and Ireland's not a cheap place to visit," someone else agreed solemnly. "But look here, you're only brilliant and we can't have you there without any support. No, never mind giving me a ticket, I'll buy one my own self and you can let Karina and her sister take the free ones."

"Thank you," Irina said, and after names, numbers, and promises of tickets had been exchanged, she turned to smile up at Mick, repeating, "Thank you," in heartfelt tones.

"Not at all. You're fantastic, and you deserve to have more support."

"Maybe, but I'm really saying thank you because you took my kind of lousy evening and made it amazing.

So…thank you. And you're really good!" Irina pointed her chin at the DJ booth.

"I have absolutely no idea how you do all that, but I loved hearing how you blended the music and I kept thinking, 'I never would have imagined those two songs would work together that way, but they do!

' I could listen to that forever. How did you get into it? "

"C'mon now, they're going to throw us out." Mick tilted his head toward the doors, and Irina fell into step beside him. "I can't sing, is how."

Irina laughed. "I thought all Irish people could sing."

"I know. I'm a shame to me family and me country," Mick said dolefully.

"And I've these big ham fists that are fair dreadful for playing an instrument, so I found something I could play and nobody minded if I couldn't sing.

That's not far off what happened, even if I'm taking the piss about it," he admitted.

"I've no voice at all so I found myself listening to what the music was doing, and after a while I started noticing things I thought would go well together, and next thing I know… "

"You're Mick the Mouse, playing the club…house." Irina fair sparkled saying it, and Mick groaned.

"Would you believe that's a new one on me? Oh, the wind's come up," he added as they walked outside. "You'll freeze in that little bit of nothing. Will I lend you my coat?"

"I don't know," Irina said blankly. "Will you?"

Mick's brain ground to a momentary halt. The expected answer to will I lend you my coat would be a yes or no. After a moment he thought he figured out the problem, and said, cautiously, "I meant, would you like to borrow it?"

"Then why did you say 'will I lend it to you?' I don't know if you will or not!"

This was not an issue Mick had ever encountered before. It took him another few seconds to say, "It's the Irish way of saying, would you like me to do something, I suppose. I never thought it was…"

"Weird?" Irina supplied. "It's weird. How am I supposed to know what you will or won't do?"

"When you put it like that, I don't know!"

"See?" Irina sounded indignant, but she was smiling up at him.

"I would love to borrow your coat, yes, please.

Although I'll swim in it." A moment later, swathed in brown leather, she said, "Yep.

Swimming. This thing could fit three of me with room to spare.

I'm three Americans in a trenchcoat, pretending to be an Irish dancer! "

"It's a bomber jacket."

"You know what I mean." Irina rolled her eyes from the depths of his coat, which really was big enough for at least three of her.

It went most of the way to her knees, and she hadn't even tried to get her hands all the way down the sleeves.

She'd just wrapped herself up in it, and now looked completely adorable.

"Thank you," she added from somewhere in there. "It's nice and warm."

"Can I walk you home? Or call a taxi," Mick said with a glance at her feet. The shoes she wore were pretty sensible for heels, but they were still heels. "Or I could call a taxi and take you out on the town before bringing you home."

"A taxi sounds good," Irina said, muffled by the coat. "Going out also sounds fun, but I don't drink."

"Jaysus, you'll never make it in Ireland, then," Mick said, only half kidding. "It's the national pastime, like. Though half of us are teetotalers."

"I'm not a teetotaler, I just don't drink." Irina emerged from the coat enough to make it clear she was laughing at herself. "What I mean is, I'm in the middle of a competition and already doing badly. Dancing with a hangover isn't going to help. Those shoes are loud."

"You don't need to explain it," Mick promised. "But there's not much nightlife here that isn't at a club or a pub. Not that we have to partake if we go out to one."

"Okay, as long as you don't expect me to get sloshed."

"Grand so." Mick ordered a taxi on the app, showed her the expected pickup time, and put his phone in his hip pocket. "Are you just here for the competition, or do you have some holiday time?" He hoped the answer was the second one, and felt a wave of real relief when she smiled.

"I've got a week after the competition. It's not enough, but it's all I can afford, and probably it'll be the only time I ever get to come here, so I've got to make the most of it. What do you recommend?"

"Aaah, jeez, in a week? Even Cork alone would keep you busy for that long. There's Cobh, which was the last stop for the Titanic, and the Safari wildlife park?—"

"I've been there!" Irina said brightly, which was good, because Mick had been about to say, 'but you've been there,' which would have been hard to explain.

"It was great," she said. "I met a nice gorilla.

" Then she laughed. "I can just imagine saying that to my mom.

She's hoping I'll meet a nice Irish boy, and if I called her up and said I'd met a nice gorilla… " She laughed again.

If they were not in a still-busy public space in the middle of a city, Mick thought he would shift right then and there, to show her she'd met both a nice gorilla and a nice Irish boy.

That was really not an option, though, so he just smiled at her.

"Porque no los dos? And that's all the Spanish I know," he warned.

"Meme-based language learner, that's me. "

"I'll totally take it if I can meet a nice gorilla man," Irina said. "Anyway, the wildlife park was really neat. Where else?"

"Oh." Mick drew a blank for a moment. "Oh, Kinsale, the sailing's good there, and out to Bantry, which is lovely, and there's Blarney for proper touristy stuff."

"We're going to Kinsale tomorrow! The whole group of us. There's some kind of old fort there? And we're doing some kind of photo shoot."

"Oh, brilliant. I'll take you out to dinner after." Mick almost clapped a hand over his own mouth, and hastily added, "If you'd like, I mean."

"I'd love that. Oh, all right, I know. If we're going out in Cork tonight, is there somewhere we can hear trad music? I'm sure it's not your thing, but it's not like I'm going to have lots of chances to go to a real Irish pub and hear people play trad music, so if you wouldn't mind?"

"Macushla, there's nothing I'd mind as long as it's with you." That was probably a little too honest, but from the way Irina gazed up at him, Mick decided he didn't care.