Page 49 of Tee’d Up For Trouble

“I get it.” I brought her hand to my lips and kissed the back of it. “You’ve been through hell. And you think that if you don’t let anyone in, you won’t get hurt again. But that’s not living, Dee. That’s surviving.”

Her lips parted like she wanted to argue but couldn’t find the words.

“And for what it’s worth,” I added, my voice softening even more, “I’m not Cillian. I’m not going to hurt you. But I can’t prove that to you if you keep running away.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” she conceded, her voice barely above a whisper.

I tilted her chin up so she had to meet my gaze. “I’ve never felt this way before, either. How about we find out together how to do this?”

“You’ll leave.” There was a tremor in her voice.

“I’ll always come back.”

“But—”

I put a finger over her lips to silence her. “My grandma used to say, don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow. Yesterday is in the past. We learn from it, but we don’t let it stall us from moving forward in the present.”

She nodded. “I have to get the bar ready to open.”

“I’ll be down as soon as I get a shower to help you.”

After she closed the door behind her, I ran a hand through my hair as I let out a long, frustrated sigh.

Dee Gallagher was the most stubborn, complicated, infuriating woman I’d ever met. And she was also the only one I’d ever been willing to fight this hard for.

There were a lot of things I wasn’t sure about—how the wind would play on a blind shot, whether I could sink a tricky downhill putt, or if my driver would hold up under pressure. But if there was one thing I was certain of, it was that Dee Gallagher might be scared, but she wasn’t the only stubborn one in this equation.

“Guess I’ll just have to push out your distrust and doubts, Wild Cat,” I muttered to myself.

CHAPTER18

Dee

Imanaged to get through the lunch service and thenescaped.

I told Ronan the pub was his until I was back. He didn’t ask for explanations as he could see I had a lot on my mind. I didn’t tell Jax because I didn’t know what to say to him. He was behaving like he always did—flirting, smiling, poking fun—pretendingthat he and I were together. Now that we’d had sex, were weactuallytogether?

I didn’t know what I was feeling—but it was a mix of panic, anxiety, satisfaction, thrill, and the big bad:fear.

I wrapped my coat and scarf around me, put on a woolen hat, and headed out from the kitchen door so no one would spot me sneaking out. So, Jax wouldn’t.

I was such a coward.

I didn’t know where I was going when I left, but when I got there, I knew that I’d been heading there all along. By the time I reached the hill behind the village, the sky was the soft gray of early evening, and the air smelled like damp earth and wood smoke. My boots crunched against the gravel path as I made my way up to the small plot where Maggie rested.

We had kept it simple, the way Maggie wanted. Her headstone was in the Gallagher plot. My parents were buried here, as were my grandfather and grandmother, uncles, and aunts. Most Gallaghers had left Ballybeg, some in America and others across Ireland and the UK. Uncles and aunts used to fill up the farmhouse when my grandmother had her Sunday dinners. They were gone or scattered. The farm came to my father and then to Maggie and me. And now, it would go the way of so much of our heritage had—to business.

I knelt in front of the headstone, brushing a stray leaf off the engraved letters.

Maggie Gallagher

Beloved Sister, Friend, and Heart of Ballybeg

Maggie had chosen the spot herself.

"It's peaceful," she'd said, with that little smile of hers, "and a good distance from the church," she'd added as a joke.

And it was, while still being in the cemetery and the family plot.

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