Billy's Baby - Annie J. Rose Page 0,38

could’ve had a traumatic brain injury and had to relearn how to tie my damn shoes. All because I wasn’t paying attention. Because of a woman. Now, I knew that Morgan and Kelly had nothing in common except for a couple of X chromosomes in the big picture. Still, there were parallels in the situation. Distracted by thinking about a woman, letting emotions interfere with work, I had been lucky. He had lost his life. Even though his circumstances were far more extreme than mine, I couldn’t help making the connection. I was mad at myself for being careless and off my game so badly.

I had a lot of fun with Morgan, but I wasn’t sure it was worth the cost. Worth the risk of a profound and ongoing distraction. I was too used to covert missions, to life and death. After playing with those stakes for two decades, I had a healthy respect for the way danger could come out of nowhere. The smallest misstep was all it would take.

Chapter 13

Morgan

The dark wooden walls of the pub were already like an old friend. The soft whiff of lemon polish from the scarred but gleaming bar greeted me as I entered after my time in line. I declined VIP treatment to spend some time in line with the other patrons, many of them locals. We all know a beloved local watering hole is a hidden gem, but in the case of O’Shea’s Pub, it’s an open secret. It’s worth standing in line for an hour, while bartender extraordinaire Tommy O’Shea sends out samples of his latest Caribbean firecracker concoction and small bites as complimentary placeholders to make the queue more enjoyable. It has a party atmosphere all its own, with music piped from inside the pub that sets repeat customers trying their hand—or their flip flops—at a version of the Irish step dance taught nightly under the O’Shea roof. We’re all in on the trick—that when we’re lined up outside O’Shea’s, they’re waiting for us inside, welcoming us back home. Because once you’ve visited, you’ll keep coming back like family.

I paused in my typing to take a drink of my lemon water. After a lot of time in the sun and a few adult beverages every day, I needed to hydrate and stay inside for part of the day. I drafted part of my article and stopped to listen to my recorded notes from the hike. I buried my face in my hands at one point, smiling and blushing, slightly embarrassed by how smitten I sounded. Billy had to have heard me mumbling about his strong shoulders, his assured movements and soldier’s lethal grace. I might as well have announced that I wanted to sleep with him.

“My tour guide smoothly points out the tracks of rare native animals, supplies the names of bird and insects when I ask, but never forces information on me like a museum recording. He doesn’t have to announce his expertise—his deep understanding of the forest itself, his sense of its rhythms is as obvious as it is awe-inspiring,” was another comment I’d recorded. I kind of wished I’d kept that thought to myself. Yeah, he’s an expert and also incredibly sexy, but did I have to be so blatant about it? I cringed through some more of my notes and jotted down only what I’d use, leaving out the musings of an overgrown teenager with a crush on her tour guide.

Downing the rest of my water, I made myself wipe the silly grin off my face and make a list of the places I’d visited and add the observations from my voice notes under each heading. My bullet point list would serve as an outline, and I’d be sure not to forget anything noteworthy. Like that frozen lemonade. Damn. Maybe I could convince Billy to make a stop there tonight and I’d offer to buy him a drink at the lemonade stand. I smiled at the thought. I was really looking forward to seeing him in the fizzy, foolish way that I hadn’t felt about anyone in a long time. Truth was, not even my ex, who I’d almost married, had made me feel like this.

My ex had been a series of mistakes. Breakups and reconciliations and all the dramatic ups and downs of an early-twenties serious relationship between an ambitious woman and an immature boy-man. If Scott wasn’t reason enough on his own to make a woman switch teams and date girls, then I