Page 6 of Deathmarch
Are you kidding me?
“Wait!” She lurched after Harper, lifting a ten-pound arm as the taillights disappeared in the swirling snow at the end of the street.
An icy gust slammed into her, bringing tears into her eyes and, she was pretty sure, freezing the snot in her nostrils into icicles all over again. She looked after the truck she could no longer see, then back at the pub.
An orange poster with wiggly green font covered most of the door, four shamrocks decorating the corners, a smiley face used in lieu of punctuation. WE HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY.
Right.
She had no intention of going inside and running into Harper’s parents or one of his brothers. She was done with anything Finnegan. For life. But as she swiveled on her bootheels to walk to the B and B, a black SUV turned down the end of the street.
The little hairs stood straight up on Allie’s nape.
“No-no-no.”
She squinted against the snow but couldn’t see if the vehicle was the same car that’d been following her on and off for the past two days. It was the closest look she’d managed to steal, but with the windshield wipers going, she still couldn’t make out if the driver behind the wheel was Zane.
The SUV slowly rolled forward.
“Ah, hell, here we go.” Allie reached for the door behind her. “Finnegan’s it is.”
Would Calamity Jane be intimidated?Not hardly, dagnabbit.
Allie pushed the door ajar and wrestled her coat through the opening. A gust of icy air blew in snow behind her, and people turned to look, but she paid them little attention. She glanced over her shoulder instead.
The SUV passed by with a middle-aged guy behind the wheel. He craned his neck as if he was looking for the closest parking spot to the door.Not Zane.
Okay. She could leave.
Except…the heat. And, oh God, the delicious aromas in the air. Her stomach growled, insisting that she’d already made her grand entrance and drawn the attention of every person at the pub, so she might as well get a hot meal.
As Allie stepped farther in, she could almost hear the jokes.So, a grizzly bear walks into a bar…
She didn’t want to make eye contact, so she looked at the updated décor instead. The place had always been a little too quintessentially Irish for an Italian girl, with its green booths andSláintesigns, but it had been Irished up even more for St. Patrick’s Day—leprechauns, and flags, and shamrocks, oh my.
She stepped aside as two women in their early twenties passed by her on their way out, embroiled in an intense conversation. “He says he wants to be friends with benefits. Except, he wants me to be exclusive. But he’s still going to live with his girlfriend.”
“Tell him to wrap his benefits in barbed wire and shove them up his ass,” the girlfriend advised. “You can do better, and—”
The door closed behind them, cutting off the rest. Allie wrestled off her coat and hung it on the polished dark wood coatrack by the door, then her scarf and hat too.
Word to the wise: If you want to keep a low profile, don’t wear spurs that jingle.
She kept her head down as she hurried to the nearest booth, encouraged by the fact that nobody called her name. Maybe she’d changed enough so people wouldn’t recognize her. Maybe Harper’s parents had retired.
Instead of Sean Finnegan, Harper’s father, a hot twenty-something college kid was pouring the green beer and Guinness at the tap. But just as Allie thought luck had finally smiled on her, Rose Finnegan burst forth from the kitchen, still a stunning redhead at what had to be around sixty: slim figure, startling blue eyes, hair pinned up in a regal twist.
“Sliders coming up in a second,” she called to the bartender before turning to the room.
And suddenly, it was too late to run.
A little voice in Allie’s head began to sing “Dead Girl Walking” from the musicalHeathers.
She had one hope left: maybe Rose wouldn’t recognize her either.
Last time Allie had been in Broslin, she’d had dark hair—courtesy of her Italian heritage—in wild-girl spikes. She’d let it grow since to the middle of her back, colored it light brown, an in-between shade that worked for most of the historical characters she portrayed. It spared her from having to wear wigs that were a pain to keep in place and had to be stored carefully, not a possibility for the small trunk of her car.
When she’d last lived in Broslin, she’d been skinny as a microphone stand. She’d filled out since in the chest and hips. Back in the day, she’d been the queen of makeup, had desperately wanted to look older for Harper. Now she went au naturel—for her job’s sake. She couldn’t play Betsy Ross or Martha Washington with cat eyeliner and bright red lipstick.
