Wild Chance (Wilder Irish #13) - Mari Carr Page 0,39

if you won’t let me cook you dinner, I’ll make you breakfast in the morning then. I make a killer spinach and mushroom omelet.”

“You like to cook?”

“I love it, but I don’t do it much. Always seems like too much trouble, trying to cook for one.”

“Yeah. I get that—eating alone sucks.”

“It really does.”

“Doesn’t help that I’m not much in the kitchen. If I’m not eating at the pub, my dinners are usually cereal, soup, frozen pizza, or the yellow meal.”

She gave him a curious look. “Do I want to know what the yellow meal is?”

Padraig laughed. “Mia dubbed it that. As she got sicker, I took over more of the meal prep. Like I said, I’m not a great cook. One of our weekly standards was the yellow meal. I threw a couple prepackaged chicken cordon bleu and some tater tots on a cookie sheet in the oven and then opened a can of corn so we could say we’d eaten a vegetable. Of course, I always added a dollop of ketchup for color because I’m a professional that way.”

She laughed. “Do you promise not to judge me if I say that actually sounds pretty good?”

“I’ll make it for you one night.”

They both laughed when they heard a scratching at the door. “My cats sleep with me,” she admitted.

“That might be a problem.” She frowned briefly before he explained, “Because Seamus sleeps with me. You think Luna and Neville would be okay sharing a bed with my mutt?”

“Might make for some interesting nights,” she said, before the weight of his words sank in. “You’re planning for us to share a bed?”

“Every single night.”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah.”

He laughed at her surprised but obviously pleased response—the same one she gave earlier when he’d said he was going to make love to her. She stood up to cross the room and the second she opened the door, both cats streaked inside, jumping onto the bed. Neville—a huge Maine Coon—settled down at his feet almost instantly. Luna—the tiny Calico—prowled around him a couple of times before flopping down near his head.

Emmy returned to the bed, but she didn’t get in. “You know,” she said. “I’ve never showered with anyone before.”

All traces of tiredness he’d felt vanished in an instant as Padraig rose from the bed. “I’ll scrub your back if you scrub mine.”

She giggled. “Deal.”

8

Padraig pulled out Emmy’s chair for her, and she smiled. “Thanks.”

Her gaze traveled around the restaurant, taking in the white tablecloths, the candlelight, the soft piano music, the dim lighting.

Padraig ordered a bottle of Chardonnay from the waiter, who came to greet them as soon as they were seated.

The restaurant wasn’t overly crowded, the tables spaced out enough that she could almost believe they were the only people in the place.

“How did you find this place? It’s very romantic.”

Padraig grinned. “Ryder told me about it. No shock there, right?”

They shared a laugh. Ryder was now married to Padraig’s cousin, Darcy, but the couple had had a rocky start to their relationship due to Ryder’s assertion that he didn’t possess the love/romance gene. He’d been in an unhappy marriage prior to dating Darcy, and it had convinced him he wasn’t “good husband material.”

Darcy had taught him how wrong he was, and now he was the king of romance, always wooing his wife with flowers and candy and impromptu weekend escapes. Lately, most of the Collins males had begun complaining to Ryder about how he was making them look bad with their own wives.

“Of course he did,” Emmy joked. “Well, be sure to thank him for the recommendation. This place is lovely.” She looked around again, cataloging what she was seeing, certain this would be the perfect setting for a chapter in the book she was currently writing.

“You’re mapping the place out, aren’t you?”

She looked back at Padraig and giggled. “Guilty.”

Padraig had been around her long enough that he understood her writer eccentricities, the way she would snap random pictures of places with her phone so that it would help her word her descriptions.

“So you’re putting this place in a future book?”

“Actually, it will work great in my current story.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the book you’re writing about?”

Emmy flushed. “Um…you know, the usual.”

“You’ve never let me read one, so you’ll have to spell out the usual part for me.”

Emmy blew out a long breath. It was time to just rip off the Band-Aid and tell Padraig her pen name. The silly game had gone on long enough. The problem was…the more time she’d spent