Page 11

CHAPTER 11

Jax

I was in week four of my impromptu stay at Ballybeg. The Porsche was still at Paddy’s garage, though it worked fine, which surprised me. I had to confess that I’d thought he’d definitely feck it up. I didn’t tell Nikolai about his car since he was in qualifiers for the European Championship. Last I heard, Denmark had beaten Finland in Copenhagen, and the team was getting ready to face Kazakhstan next. He had more to worry about than his custom Porsche.

Everyone in Ballybeg had decided that Dee and I were an item, except for Dee. She scoffed at the idea but let me sneak in kisses. This was the slowest relationship I’d ever been in, and yeah, it was a relationship. We spent time together. We went on walks. We kissed. I jerked off, thinking about how it would be to have sex with her.

I knew she’d bought a vibrator because I’d seen the package and read the label, which wasn’t discreet at all as it came from Ann Summers in Cork, and when I investigated, I found that it was a lingerie and sex toy store.

Maybe I had then sneaked into Dee’s room and shamelessly invaded her privacy and found the pink rabbit charging on her bedside table. That had been a bad idea because now I had visions of sexy Dee using the vibrator as I watched.

Blue balls were a real thing, and I was experiencing it for the first time. Usually, I wasn’t attracted enough to a woman to care whether I had sex with her or not—and if I did want to, usually , I just did. This was a new situation for me. Not an undesirable one but a challenging one. I liked Dee. I liked her a lot. I didn’t want to just fuck n’ forget as I was known to do, I wanted to…fuckin’ hell, I wanted to get to know her and see if we could sustain something between us. It was a pipe dream. We were different people living in different parts of the world. Whatever this was would end, and I hoped to hell I wouldn’t end up getting hurt or, worse, hurting Dee, which I didn’t want to do.

“Wait, wait, wait—let me get this straight,” my friend and confidante, Amara, exclaimed, her voice crackling faintly through the spotty reception from Charleston to Ballybeg. “You’re in Ireland, living above a pub, flirting with a fiery Irish woman who yells at you more than she smiles, and you’re enjoying yourself?”

“Yep.” I leaned back against the headboard of my bed in my room at The Banshee’s Rest. I had my earbuds on and my feet propped up as I talked to Amara, watching the gorgeous view in front of my window. Today, the sky was blue, and the sun was shining. After days of rain, everything was lush and neon green. I couldn’t wait to go for a long walk with Dee and find a tree or two to push her against so I could feel her up.

I hadn’t made out like this since I was a teenager, and it was exhilarating.

“And it’s cold there?”

“Fuck, yeah. It’s March, and even when the sun is shining, there’s a bite in the air.” I loved the South, I loved Charleston, but when it got cold, I got the hell out of there and went to some place in Hawaii where I could golf without wearing a freaking jacket, hat, and scarf.

“Okay, who are you, and what have you done with Jax Caldwell?” she teased.

“Very funny.”

“No, seriously.” She laughed. “You’ve gone full rom-com hero. Next thing you know, you’ll be buying sheep and wearing tweed.”

Why the hell not? I could buy a farm and….

“My stay here is temporary, Amara.”

“Uh-huh.” I could hear the smirk in her voice. “You keep telling yourself that. But I’ve known you long enough to know when a woman’s gotten under your skin. This red-headed pub owner—she’s something else, isn’t she?”

Amara had been a close friend for over two years now. I knew her husband, Lucas, well enough—we got along fine—but it was Amara and I who had clicked instantly. It just went to show that friendship wasn’t about how long you’d known someone but who they were. I told her the truth—at least when I knew it myself—and sometimes, she was the one who helped me find it.

“She’s absolutely beautiful. Stunning.”

“Go on,” she urged.

“She’s smart and tough as hell. And she’s got this way of looking at you that makes you feel like she’s seeing every damn thing you’re trying to hide.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She’s fuckin’ sexy without even tryin’. All luscious body and big heart. Those curls in her hair…the whole package is just… wow !”

“Jax Caldwell is speechless! I never thought I’d see the day,” she said. “It’s not a bad thing, you know, Jax, to fall for someone.”

“We’re very different people, coming from very different worlds,” I warned.

“You and Dani came from the same world, and how did that work out?” she challenged.

“You’re right.” I shifted to get comfortable on the bed. “We haven’t even, you know?—”

“Don’t you use the F word,” she admonished. “How come?”

“She’s not ready,” I told her about her sister, Cillian O’Farrell, and the resort development project.

“She’s carrying a lot on her shoulders,” Amara remarked. “You should help however you can.”

“She’s prickly as hell.”

“So? Lucas says that begging for forgiveness later is better than asking for permission.”

“And how does that work out for Lucas?”

Amara laughed softly. “I’m married to him and six months pregnant. How do you think it’s worked out for him?’

The road to true love never did run smooth, and it didn’t with Lucas and Amara, but they’d gotten there—and there was a lesson in that: easy didn’t mean a successful relationship.

“I’ve fallen for her,” I admitted. “She’s been through so much, and she’s still standing. Still fighting for her family, for her village, for everything she believes in.”

“That sounds like admiration. And maybe a little bit of something else?”

I knew what she was saying without saying it. She wondered if I’d fallen in love. I didn’t know. Could you fall in love in four weeks? Was that enough time to act on your feelings? Or was this just infatuation, and once we fu…made love, it would fade?

“Maybe.” I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. “She’s lost almost everyone she’s ever cared about. I just…I don’t know if she’ll let anyone in. If she’ll let me in. I don’t know if we have a chance to even find out what that something else I feel for her is.”

Amara was quiet for a moment, her tone softer when she spoke again. “She sounds like someone worth fighting for. And if anyone can break through those walls of hers, it’s you. You’ve got that Southern charm thing in spades, remember?”

“You think?”

“I absolutely do,” Amara replied with confidence.

Before ending the call, we talked about friends we had in common and her pregnancy. Looking at the time, I knew I still had another fifteen minutes before Dee was ready for our regular Monday morning walks.

I called Brad, who I knew would pick up no matter where he was and what time it was.

“Yo,” he greeted. “You finally called your agent? You know how many texts I’ve sent you?”

“I don’t get them all,” I reminded him. “Some disappear into the ether.”

“How are things? You still enjoying your holiday? Ready for it to be over?”

“Good. Yes. No.”

“Right,” Brad said. “You have a meeting in two weeks in London, and then one in Dublin. There’s some party thing there, too.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You want me to see if we can do it remotely?”

What I loved about Brad was that he never pushed me to do more than he knew I wanted to when it came to activities other than golf. He tried, but he always knew when to back off so as not to completely piss me off.

“Nah. I need to meet with them. Their CEO is coming and all that.”

“Okay.” Brad was quiet for a long moment. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“I like it here.”

“You like a cold Irish village?”

“Yeah.”

“You working out? You need?—”

“I found a gym and am doing cardio. I do need to find a golf course.”

I heard sounds on Brad’s side of the line, and then a door slammed shut. “You want me to set you up? I think there are a few in Ireland.”

“Private ones where I won’t become fodder for fuckin’ Instagrammers?”

“Let me look.”

“Brad? You looked into that development thing they got going in Ballybeg?”

“I did.” He was quiet again.

“Brad?”

“It’s almost a done deal.”

“What?” I sat up.

“Yeah,” he said apologetically. I’d told him how I thought a project like that would ruin what made Ballybeg, well, Ballybeg. “Who’s running the show?”

“In Cork, there is a development company called Irish Dreams. CEO is an Eoghan O’Farrell, and the guy who’s running this particular project is his nephew, Cillian.” I heard his keyboard then. “The hotel development company, though, is owned by fellow Charleston citizen Gilbert Hampton.”

“Big Gil?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuckin’ hell.”

“Yeah,” Brad agreed.

“So, it’s a done deal.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” I repeated.

“Yeah,” Brad repeated.

Gilbert “Big Gil” Hampton was precisely what his nickname suggested—a larger-than-life personality with a wallet to match. He owned three private jets, two ranches, and a yacht he once named The Second Wife , where he took all his four wives for their honeymoon. Subtle as a chainsaw, the man was.

I knew Big Gil well, as he was an old friend of the Caldwell family. Although he was from Charleston, he spent plenty of time in Texas. He dabbled in oil, ranching, and hotel development, focusing on golf resorts.

Not only that, he and my Daddy had been playing golf since before I was born. When I’d won the PGA, he’d been one of the first people to shake my hand at the afterparty. He was the kind of guy who never let you forget he was in the room, and as far as I could tell, he loved three things more than anything else: money, golf, and the sound of his voice, and in that order.

If Big Gil found out that I was in Ballybeg and wanted him off this project, that would make him dig in further, and my father would insist that I was thinking with my heart and not my head, which I’d often been accused of doing.

I knew Dee was hoping the County Clare council would reject the development project, but if Big Gil was involved, I knew he’d already bought those votes even before he’d filed a single piece of paperwork. That was how he operated, and that was how he ensured he never lost a single deal.

I tossed my phone onto the bed and stared out the window for a long time, feeling frustrated and helpless.

How would I tell this to Dee? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but I knew she’d have to find out sooner than later. I decided that, for now, I wouldn’t tell her anything. I’d reach out to Big Gil and see if I could maneuver his attention away from Ballybeg somehow.