Page 28 of Surrender
But if he looked at her like that again? She didn’t know if she could keep it up.
Not when her whole body was already whispering yes. Not when his name was still a burn on her lips.
Not when she’d never wanted to tell the truth so badly in her life.
Keefe slammed the oven door with more force than necessary. The clang echoed through the kitchen, but he didn’t care. He needed the noise. Needed the distraction.
It wasn’t working.
He grabbed a fresh loaf of brown bread from the rack and started slicing—too fast, too hard. The knife slipped, nearly catching his thumb. He swore under his breath and tossed the blade into the sink.
“Jesus,” he muttered, pressing his palms flat against the counter like it might steady him.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He’d spoken to hundreds of women in this pub. Tourists, locals, flirts, drunks, heartbreakers, sweethearts. But none of them—none—had made the ground shift beneath him the way she had.
Ruby. If that was indeed her name. She was hiding something. He didn’t know what and in truth he didn’t care.
He rubbed the back of his neck, his skin still hot where she’d touched him. That handshake had short-circuited something in him. Her fingers were small but strong, and the way she looked at him… Christ.
Her voice haunted him already. That soft Irish lilt, not quite Kerry. Her eyes—sea green and stormy, wide like she’d just been struck by lightning and was still trying to figure out if she’d survived it.
He sure as hell hadn’t.
The moment she looked up at him with that shy smile and the lie trembling behind her eyes, he was gone.
It wasn’t just attraction. It was gravity.
And now he couldn’t think. Couldn’t cook. Could barely breathe.
He opened the walk-in cooler and stuck his head inside just to feel something cold. It didn’t help.
Ruby was in the front room eating her salad. His salad. The one he’d arranged like a sheep—what the hell had possessed him to do that? Cute salad?
But it had made her smile. That was the thing.
He wanted to see her smile again, wanted to hear her laugh. He wanted her story. Her truth. Not whatever she’d half-mumbled about a dead father and handling things alone.
He’d seen the lie. Clear as a flare in the dark.
But instead of making him wary, it only made him curious.
Who was she?
And why was it like he’d known her in a thousand other lifetimes?
He pushed away from the cooler door and stalked back into the kitchen, hands on his hips, jaw tight. The fryer hissed beside him. The radio buzzed softly in the background. But all he could hear was her voice, and all he could feel was the weight of that yes—her yes—burning a hole in his chest.
They were closing at eleven.
And after that?
God help him.
He wasn’t sure if he was about to fall in love or fall apart. But he’d be there, waiting.
And as he stood there, heart pounding with the weight of her yes, his mind drifted beyond the moment—beyond Gwen—and to the stories that had come before.
