Page 74 of Tee’d Up For Trouble

“It’s easier for me to talk about the plan when I have your tits close to me,” he replied with aggravating calm.

He cupped my breast, and I slapped his hand away. “Go on then, unveil your super plan to save Ballybeg and my eternal soul.”

“Your soul I saved by making you fall in love with me.”

I pressed my lips into a line because I was about to burst out laughing. No one made me laugh as Jax did. With his easy way, his sense of humor, and his honesty (how on earth did I even think he’d lie to me about something as big as wanting to hurt my village and me)—he just made everything better. Aye, I was starting to sound like one of those romantic lasses from romance novels that Saoirse loved to read.

“Before I start telling you, I want you to know that it’s going to take some work, and you’re not going to like it.”

I rolled my eyes. “What a way to keep my expectations low!”

“I believe in under-promising and over-delivering.”

I arched an eyebrow as I put my hands on his shoulders. “And me not liking it soundsverypromising.”

He maneuvered me to sit on his lap.

I was sitting on a man’s lapin broad daylight in my pub. Aye, the world had turned upside down.

He let out a soft laugh and kissed my hair. “Dee, I’m serious. I can save Ballybeg. I can save your land, the pub, all of it. But you’ve got to trust me.”

Trust didn’t come easily to me—it never had. But this wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about Ballybeg, the village that had shaped me, the pub that had been in my family for generations, and the land that held my memories of Maggie and my parents.

It was about all of us.

“I do trust you,” I said without an iota of hesitation.

His eyes softened. “Good girl.”

“Who’re you calling a girl?”

“Y’all call yourselves lass all the time,” he protested.

I tilted my head. “Tell me your grand plan, Jax, before I murder you.”

He turned us around so we both could look at the monitor of his shiny Apple computer. “The first thing we need to do is make the resort project too messy for the developers to push through.”

I frowned. “How?”

“By messy, I mean to put public pressure on the county.” His blue eyes were full of mischief and glee. “The council’s already made their decision, but that doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. If we can make enough noise—get people talking about what the resort will do to Ballybeg, how it’ll destroy the village’s character and hurt the locals—we can push the council to reconsider.”

“Jax, we’ve tried that,” I said, my frustration bubbling to the surface. “We’ve written letters, we’ve gone to meetings?—”

“Not like this,” he interrupted. “I’m talking about going bigger. Social media, local news, and even international coverage if we can get it. People love stories about small communities standing up to big corporations. We can turn Ballybeg into a symbol of what’s worth fighting for.”

“How will we do that? No one cares about Ballybeg.”

“They will when a two-time PGA Golf Champion asks them to save his girlfriend’s village.”

I felt everything inside me seize into a painful ball. “But you don’t ever talk to the media about your personal life.” He was militant about it. I knew that. Hell, if you did even a little bit of research on him, you’d know that.

He smiled, stroked my cheek with his finger, and, with love shining in his eyes, floored me by saying, “This is too important.”

“And you don’t think bringing the media here could ruin Ballybeg? Make it the tourist trap we’re afraid that it’ll turn into when those gobshites turn my pub into a parking lot.”

“It could,” he admitted. “But we’ll control the narrative. We’re not inviting the paparazzi in to turn this into a circus. We’re using the media to shine a light on what’s happening here. It’s a risk, I know. But it’s better than sitting back and letting the developers win without a fight.”

I chewed on my bottom lip, the weight of his words pressing down on me. “And what happens if the council doesn’t budge?”

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