Page 41 of Tee’d Up For Trouble

I was about to tell her that wasn’t going to happen when she walked up to Cillian and stood nose to nose. “Get out.”

Cillian hesitated, glancing around the room. The regulars were watching him like wolves circling prey, and for once, he seemed to realize he wasn’t welcome.

“Fine.” He looked at the door and then back at her. “Think about it, Dee. Because once the taxes are due, you’ll be begging me to take that land off your hands, or they’re going to auction it off for buttons.”

“Get the feck out, arsehole,” Ronan cried out, stalking out of the kitchen, a butcher knife in hand.

Dee groaned. “Lord, give me patience,” she muttered.

Aoife and Cillian all but skedaddled, that was the only way to describe it.

The door slammed shut behind them, and the tension in the room broke like a snapped wire.

Liam raised his pint and shouted, “Here’s to telling that gobshite to feck off!”

A few cheers went up, but I couldn’t focus on anything but Dee. She was standing, staring at the door, her fists clenched and her breathing shaky.

I took a step closer to her, lowering my voice. “You alright?”

She turned to look at me, her eyes softer now. She exhaled slowly as we walked to the bar. “Yeah. Thanks for letting me handle it.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, torn between pride for her and frustration for having to let her deal with that dickhead. “That was really hard, Dee. You know I wanted to deck him, right? Just once. Right where it counts.”

She chuckled. “I know. Me too. And I appreciate it.”

I crossed my arms, leaning against the bar as Ronan joined us, still muttering curses under his breath about Cillian, his butcher knife still in his hand.

Dee glanced at me again, mischief in her eyes. “You really wanted to punch him, aye?”

I grinned, shaking my head. “Dee, you have no idea. But you handled him like a pro.” I raised my beer. “To Dee.”

Everyone cried out, “Slainte.”

She didn’t say anything, but the look in her eyes told me I’d done the right thing—even if it killed me to sit back and let her fight her own battle.

So, is this what it meant to fall in love? That you suppressed your urges and respected those of the person you loved, even if it crushed you to do it.

Fuck, but the singer who saidonly love hurts like thiswas freaking right because it feckin’ hurt to see my woman in distress and not being able to do shite to make it better.

CHAPTER16

Dee

If he had stood in front of me and taken down Cillian, I’d not have felt this way. The fact that Jax overrode his instincts to give me the space I needed to tell Cillian to feck himself off was more precious than him punching my ex in the balls.

I knocked on Jax’s door after we finished our drink on the bench, after I’d cleaned up, put perfume on my pulse points, and slipped into my sexy, lacy knickers. I knew he’d taken a shower because I’d heard him.

He wore nothing but a pair of boxers, those tight black ones that left nothing to the imagination. I almost lost my courage then. This beautiful Adonis of a man couldn’t want me, could he? I mean, I was Dee Gallagher. I hadn’t worked out in my life. The only weights I’d ever lifted were barrels of beer.

“Dee, all okay?” he asked.

I licked my lips.

So, how was this done? How did a woman walk up to a man who looked like Jax and say, “Hey, I’d like a tumble with you?”

I stood still as a statue.

“Dee?” He took my hand in his and led me into his room. “Baby, talk to me?”

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