“I’m fine and well, Brenna, and you?”

“The same. You’re not falling in love with our Darcy here, now, are you?”

He blushed like a ripe beet. Jack had a face as big as the moon and shoulders wide as County Waterford, and he never failed to color like a schoolboy when teased about women.

“I’ve more sense than that. She’d squash my heart like a bug.”

“Ah, but you’d die a happy man,” Darcy told him.

“Don’t listen to her, Jack.” Aidan worked the taps as he spoke, expertly building the Guinness. “For she’s as fickle and flighty as they come.”

“All true,” Darcy agreed with a careless and beautiful laugh. “I’m holding out for a rich man, one who’ll set me on a pedestal and strew jewels at my feet. But in the meantime . . .” She played her fingertips over Jack’s flushed face. “I enjoy the attention of big and handsome men.”

“Ah, go on and take my father his pint, before our Jack here loses all power of speech.” Brenna cocked her boot on her knee and lifted the glass Aidan passed her. “You’re safe with me, Jack darling.”

“You’re as pretty as she is.”

“Don’t be saying such things loud enough for herself to hear you, or she’ll skin us both.” Touched and amused, she kissed his cheek. And Shawn came through the door.

It would have been comical, she decided, and was a pity that no one noticed but herself the way he stopped dead in his tracks, stared, then jolted when the door swung back and slapped him in the ass.

Secretly delighted, she merely lifted her eyebrows and left her hand cozily on Jack’s broad shoulder. “Good evening to you, Shawn.”

“Brenna.” So much was going on inside him he couldn’t separate one sensation from the other. He knew one was irritation, another was discomfort. And, damn it, another altogether was straight lust that had no business being there. But the rest of it was just a mess.

She sipped her beer, watched him over the foam. “I had some of your soup at lunch today with Jude. It had a fine flavor.”

“We’ve ciste on the menu tonight; Mrs. Laury butchered some pigs this week.”

“Well, that’ll stick to your ribs, won’t it, Jack?”

“That it will. Are you staying to eat, then, Brenna?”

“No, I’m for home after my Guinness.”

“If you change your mind, you can have a meal with me. I’ve a fondness for ciste , and Shawn makes it well.”

“He’s a hand in the kitchen, isn’t he?” She smiled when she said it, but the expression in her eyes was sharp and derisive. “Do you cook at all, Jack?”

“Sausage and eggs I can manage. And I can boil a potato.” Being Jack, he took her question seriously and furrowed his brow as he thought through his culinary repertoire. “I can make a sandwich well enough when I have the fixings about, though that’s not the same as cooking when it comes to it.”