his armoire and shuffling through a row of dress shirts. He tosses me a black, long-sleeve one made out of the softest silk I’ve ever felt.
“Wow,” I remark, looking at the label. Tom Ford. Padraig has taste, and it’s expensive. “I didn’t think you were a designer kind of guy.”
“There’s a lot ye don’t know about me, darlin’,” he says before walking out of the room, presumably to give me privacy to change.
I stare at the shirt in my hands and my shoulders slump forward. Am I doing the right thing? Why am I heading back to the hotel already? Why don’t I get in that shower and spend the day with him? Why don’t I at least give a little more consideration to what he asked? Yes, it’s crazy and it’s scary, but wasn’t that what my resolution was all about? How come I stopped saying yes already? I should have said yes to the shower, yes to the fake fiancé. Yes to more of him.
Maybe saying yes led you only to last night, I tell myself. Maybe that’s enough.
But I know in the depths of me that it’s not. There should be more to this.
And yet, I slip on the shirt, button it up, and try to tie it in the most flattering way possible. I don’t have a bra so it’s kind of a lose-lose situation here, but I still feel more comfortable in it than that dress. I then find my underwear and leggings and put them on, then my boots. I grab my phone, make a pit stop in his washroom, then head downstairs.
“I hate to say it,” Padraig says as I step off the last step. He’s leaning against the kitchen island with my coat in his hands. “But that might be sexier than the dress.”
“It’s because I’m not wearing a bra,” I tell him with a smile.
“You won’t hear me complaining.” He slips the coat on me like a gentleman and leads me outside. The air is crisp and cold, but there’s a purity to it, as if the weather knew it was the first day of the year and needed to be a clean slate. All of yesterday and yesteryear is hidden by a few inches of snow.
I take a quick look around, marveling at the row of neat brick houses, all attached. While Padraig’s door is black, his neighbors are yellow and red with a black iron fence lining them. I can hear the hoots and hollers of a nearby snowball fight, and further down the street, a father is pulling his bundled-up kids along in a sleigh.
“It’s a nice neighborhood,” I say to Padraig as he pushes the button on his key fob and the lights of a metallic grey Porsche Cayenne with a dusting of snow on the hood come on.
“Yea,” he says, opening the passenger door for me. “Lots of families.” He nods at the father and children as they pass. “Lots of my teammates, too. It’s close to the stadium.”
“Do a lot of your teammates have families?” I ask him.
“Most do,” he says. “I guess I’m the odd one out. Even my father used to play professionally when I was young.”
“He did?” I ask as I step inside the car. It looks and smells brand new, all leather and totally luxurious.
He shuts the door and comes around on the passenger side and gets in. “Not for Leinster, he stayed local and played for Munster. Our biggest competition.”
“Was he as famous as you?” I ask.
“No,” he says, and the muscles in his jaw seem to tense. “He wanted to be. He tried. Maybe he could have been but he got injured, tore a ligament, couldn’t play again after that.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
“Yea, it does,” he says. “But that’s life. After that I saw more of him. That was a downfall of him playing so far away. He was gone a lot of the time. Just my mam and me.”
“It wasn’t nice to have him back home?” I ask carefully.
“Nah,” he says with a sad smile. “He hated it. Hated being stuck in Shambles, hated that he had to stay home and couldn’t play. Like he didn’t know who he was anymore.” He seems to think that last part over and then starts the car.
The rest of the ride to the hotel is mostly silent. It’s not uncomfortable at all, it’s just a little sad. It doesn’t seem fair that I finally meet a man that I feel most at