Paris Is Always a Good Idea - Jenn McKinlay Page 0,46

“Besides, I’ve had too much whiskey to be mad. Brace yourself—I might start singing any minute.”

“Ah, so you’re one of those cheerful drunks,” he said. His eyes were twinkling as he met my gaze.

“True that,” I admitted. Then I frowned. “You’d think I’d drink more often.”

Jason laughed, and I noticed his eyes appeared to be blue tonight. In the silence that followed, I reached for my conversational fallback. Work. “How did your conference call go?”

“Excellent. I had Eleanor eating out of the palm of my hand.”

“Eleanor Curtain?” I asked. “Unibrow Eleanor?” I clapped my hand over my mouth.

“You did not just call her that,” he said. His delighted laughter boomed out of the phone.

“I didn’t mean . . . It’s just . . . she can be rather blunt.”

“Like her Frida Kahlo brow?” he asked.

“Please forget I said that.”

“Oh no, I’m not forgetting,” he said. “Since our call wasn’t video, I didn’t see her or any of the team members, but I consider myself duly warned.”

I sighed, hoping that this conversation did not come back to bite me on the behind. I changed the subject. “Have you finished reading my proposal?”

“You left me a lot of reading material,” he said. “In fact, I’m only halfway through your very extensive plan for the rollout.”

“You’ll note the lack of BattleBots,” I said.

“Clearly an oversight.”

I laughed. He looked at me, and his head tipped to the side as he laughed, too.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh before, Martin,” he said.

“Probably not,” I agreed.

“Which is a shame, because you have a great laugh.”

“Thank you,” I said. He was the second person to say that tonight. My head was muddled, but I felt there was a significant message here. I studied him. His tie was loose. His hair was mussed, as if he’d run his fingers through it. He looked friendlier than usual. I found myself confiding, “It’s one of the reasons I came to Ireland.”

“Okay, I feel like I missed a sentence in there,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the corner of his desk. “Explain.”

I propped the phone up on the coffee table so I didn’t have to hold it. The lighting in the cottage was mercifully dim, and the fire was to my back. It felt weirdly intimate to be talking to Jason in the middle of the night. I wondered if I’d regret it in the morning. Probably. I thought about it for a moment and decided I didn’t care.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am potentially a bit of a workaholic.”

He choked on a surprised laugh, which made me laugh, too. It was definitely the whiskey.

“That’s the understatement of the century, Martin,” he said. “When did you get hit with this sudden epiphany?”

“Someone close to me pointed out that perhaps I’d forgotten how to be happy.” I turned around to gaze at the turf log. It was putting out a delicious heat, and I felt like a cat as I stretched and let it bake into my skin and bones.

“That’s harsh,” he said, bringing my attention back to him. “But I’m still not clear on why that sent you to Ireland.”

“It was also suggested to me that revisiting my past might reconnect me with my laughter.”

“Your past is Ireland?”

“Among other places.”

“And has it worked?”

I could feel the intensity of his gaze coming at me even from the small display window of my phone. I chewed my lower lip, stalling. What could I say?

“I came back, looking for an old friend, and I found him,” I said. “I’m glad that I did, but . . .”

“But he’s married?”

“Yeah, I mean, I knew that was a distinct possibility,” I said. “I figured at the very least he’d have a girlfriend, but I wasn’t prepared.”

“To see him happy with someone else?”

“Not that so much as the discovery that his life has gone on in such a major way since I saw him, and mine hasn’t,” I said. I looked at Jason. “I mean, he’s married and with three of the cutest kids. He’s put deep roots into the community. It made me feel like I’ve just been treading water. You know what I mean?”

Jason picked a pencil up off his desk and tapped the palm of his hand with it. It was a gesture of agitation, and I wondered if I’d struck a nerve.

“It’s not like you’ve spent the past several years eating tacos and streaming Netflix,” he said. “You’ve brought in