Long Shot

Chapter 20

In no way did Leith want to know where, when, or on whom Jen had learned to give head like this. He literally had to bite his tongue to not shout out. The sensations were plenty amazing—the hard suck and the stroke of her gentle hands drawing every drop of blood to where he needed it most—but it was the sight of her that shoved him hard against the wall of insanity.

He hadn’t meant to look down. Hadn’t meant to slit open his eyes to see her mouth surrounding him, her eyelids closed tightly over the green emeralds he adored. Hadn’t meant to see how her thighs were spread, and how her hips undulated with every pull of her mouth on his dick.

The need for her would never go away. It would always be there, a constant thing, ready and waiting. She held his desire in her fists, and to release it all she had to do was open her fingers. It was that simple. It was that potent.

He forgot where he was—in what town, in which state, on what planet. His eyes rolled back in his head. She was picking up the pace, taking some sort of coaching advice he must have been wordlessly feeding her, because she was doing it absolutely perfectly. Hand still wrapped in the smooth silk of her hair, his thighs started to shake.

All the emotion he’d ever owned fled from every corner of his body, rushing, rushing toward his groin and pushing into his cock. The power of the pleasure stole his brain and sent him flying into the heavens. He came in her mouth, unable to hold back his sounds anymore. He couldn’t hear himself, didn’t know what sort of gibberish she’d reduced him to.

Then she pulled off him and sat back on her heels, and . . . smiled. Leith wasn’t really capable of reaction just then. Even the feel of his kilt drifting down and touching him was too much, and he winced. But she somehow got him dressed again, T-shirt tucked back in and everything, and he could stand without having to lean against the stranger’s van.

He touched her face. “Seems a bit uneven, wouldn’t you say?”

Her smile was brilliant and confident, and he loved the knot he’d made in her hair by her ear.

“You’ll get me later,” she said.

He kissed her and said against her lips, “Yes. I will.”

“But now I have to get back. Thanks for the cigarette break.”

He barked out a laugh. “You’re thanking me? I’m the one who needs the cigarette.”

“Taste of whiskey instead? I need to check in on Shea.”

This time it was he who reached for her hand and pulled her gently through the maze of cars. The band’s music got louder and louder as they made their way back to the grounds. Chris sounded excellent on his fiddle, as usual. The kid really needed to play more solo, maybe even ditch the other guys. Scott, the drummer, didn’t look so good, like maybe he’d fallen off the wagon, which might explain why Chris had been on edge the past couple of days. Jeremy, the piper, was giving the rest of his bandmates hard looks. There were people dancing though, and the beer and whiskey tents had turned raucous, so maybe no one else noticed.

Just hold it together for this weekend, guys, Leith thought. No bullshit tonight or tomorrow. For Jen. For Gleann.

As he and Jen ducked into the whiskey tent, Shea jumped up onto the bar to a chorus of whistles and cheers, which faded when she gave the offending whistlers a withering glare.

“Supposedly it’s my duty,” she called out over the heads, “to hand over this case of whiskey, handpicked by yours truly, to the winning tug-of-war team: Manhattan Rugby.”

A great hoot went up from a mess of about ten guys wearing red and black striped T-shirts. One of them, a big guy with a haircut that had Manhattan written all over it, his body half-covered with mud, and already a little red-faced from drinking, came forward to accept the case. He took an awful long time sliding it from Shea’s hands, staring at her with a look Leith knew all too well. The rugby player tried to chat her up, but she just gave him a polite nod and went back behind the bar.

“Dougall! Holy fuck, I thought that was you!”

Leith turned to find three of his old throwing buddies weaving around the crowded tables toward him. Damn but it was good to see them, a blast of the not-too-distant past that somehow felt forever ago.

“You just dropped off the face of the earth,” Ward said with a sauced grin. “Not even on the online forums or anything anymore. What the hell have you been doing?”

“Throwing for a PR tomorrow?” Leith said, changing the subject with a laugh, and clapping Ward hard on the back. “Because there’s no fucking way you’re winning if Duncan’s throwing. He’s pretty sick right now.”

Ward guffawed. “No shit. He twisted my arm into coming. Haven’t been back here since I took second to your scrawny ass.”

“Thanks for coming and competing on such short notice,” Jen piped in, stepping to Leith’s side. “It’ll be a great day tomorrow. I promise.”

Leith looked down at her with pride, loving how new people and situations didn’t scare her at all. He introduced Jen to the athletes and they all shot the shit for a while, the old camaraderie coming back to him. Once Duncan found them, he did a couple of quick shots and the volume of the party jumped up several notches. Leith fell into the easy rhythm of competition talk, and found himself eager to know how all the other guys had been doing on the circuit.

He could admit it now. He missed this.

Jen touched his waist. “I think Shea is beckoning to me.”

“I’ll go with you,” he said, wanting to say hi to her, too. To the guys he added, “I’m announcing tomorrow. See you then.”

Ward threw a knowing look at Jen and nodded. Leith just smiled, not hiding a damn thing.

“I recognize a lot of the people in here. Not just the other athletes,” Leith said to her as they made their way to the bar.

“You should,” Jen said proudly. “Old Hemmertex employees. I marketed the new format of the games and Shea’s presence in their new headquarters, gave them a good reason to come back for the weekend.”

Leith rubbed his face. “Damn smart of you.”

She batted her eyelashes and gave him a faux-coy look over her shoulder. “I know.”

They passed by two tug-of-war teams who were reliving the tournament and making challenges for next year. Hearing that, Jen pressed her lips together in a small, confident smile.

“How’s it going?” Jen asked Shea. “Need anything?”

Shea smoothed back her nearly white hair as she surveyed the stacks of empty boxes of whiskey bottles teetering behind her. “Yeah, cups and napkins, if tonight is any indication of what tomorrow will be like.”

Jen had her phone in hand before Shea even finished. Even late on a Friday night, she could get stuff done. The woman pretty much blew his mind.

Shea pulled out two new tasting cups and set them in front of Leith and Jen. With a stone face, she dragged up a bottle of whiskey from underneath her makeshift bar, one that she hadn’t been tilting for the masses.

“If you’re pouring,” said a man’s voice on the other side of Jen, “I’m drinking.”

Both Leith and Shea looked up to find the rugby player/tug-of-war champ/hopeful flirter leaning both elbows on the bar, his plastic tasting glass extended toward her. Shea just glanced at his glass. He gave her the kind of smile that guys reserved for girls they wanted to see naked.

“This is a special bottle,” Shea said in a tone that might have been taken for flirting if not for the severe arch of a single eyebrow, “reserved for the games organizer.”

Then without breaking eye contact with the new guy, she splashed the whiskey into two glasses and pushed them across to Jen and Leith.

The guy straightened, his smile fading but not disappearing. A new glimmer came to his eye though, and Leith knew full well that Rugby believed he’d just been given a challenge he was ready and willing to accept. Rugby turned away with a nod and a toast of his empty glass to the whiskey expert.

“Nice rejection,” Jen said to Shea as she tapped off her phone. “You’re quite the pro.”

Shea shrugged and swiped a damp towel across the table. “When I’m on this side of the bar, I talk about the good stuff only. It’s just my rule. If someone wants to chat me up, here isn’t the place.”

Leith hid a grin in his glass. Thank God Jen didn’t have that rule.

He took a sniff and a sip. Damn. Shea really knew her stuff. She’d poured them a smooth, peaty mouthful that he savored.

Jen also drank and groaned in approval. “I don’t know; it sounded to me like he wanted to talk whiskey.”

“No, he didn’t,” Leith and Shea said at the same time.

Jen laughed. “Maybe you’re right. He’s standing over there now, trying to make it seem like he’s not looking at you.”

Sure as hell, that’s exactly what the guy was doing. Only when Shea followed Jen’s finger, Rugby turned and gave Shea a smile that said he didn’t really care that she’d turned him down before. He was coming for her, and the both of them were going to enjoy the chase. Then he gave her his back, leaving her wide-eyed and, if Leith dared to say it, intrigued. Well played, Rugby. Well played.

Jen told Shea, “Well, when you’re done here you should go for it. He’s hot.” She took Leith’s hand. “Come with me to the beer tent and listen to some music.”

“Yes ma’am.”

They bid Shea good-bye; she was still blinking at Rugby as though she was equal parts offended and interested. Maybe she’d let her rule go lax tonight; maybe she wouldn’t.

The band sounded like it had found its groove, and Leith breathed a sigh of relief to see that all four members had loosened up. Chris’s fiddle transcended everything, and every time a solo of his came up, the crowd erupted in applause. He played with his eyes closed, one shoulder to the audience. He really didn’t know how good he was.

As Jen texted someone, Leith went over to grab two beers. Both hands holding cold plastic cups of the Stone’s stout, he turned around to head back to Jen. In one eyeful, he took in all that she’d accomplished in such a short time . . . and froze.

The old Gleann Highland Games were gone, replaced by this fun, classy, but simple affair that seemed to have breathed new life into everyone. No more rickety, cheesy castle decorations. No more warm beer hand-pumped out of kegs by old ladies. No more terrible athletes who couldn’t turn a caber.

Locals mingled with people from across the lake and, hell, rugby teams from New York. This was his town and he barely recognized it.

Correction: it used to be his town.

Gleann had exhaled, shaking off its bad times. Or maybe that was Jen. She’d succeeded where DeeDee and even Hemmertex hadn’t. All this in two weeks. All this to help a town that had been left to rot. She hadn’t been born here, but now that he knew her history, she considered this place home. She was part of Gleann.

She’d started something exciting here that he was positive would bloom even after the two of them were long gone.

The crowd parted and, for a split second, he thought he glimpsed an older man wearing the same kilt Leith wore, pipe clamped between his teeth, flat gray cap slightly crooked on his thinning hair, cane held between his legs, as he sat tapping his heel to the music.

But then the crowd shifted again and the man was gone.

Shaking off the moment, he started back for Jen.

It took a little while for him to recognize Mayor Sue. She wasn’t wearing Syracuse regalia, but instead a blue long-sleeved T-shirt with Edinburgh done in some sort of stitching across her giant boobs, and she was making a beeline for Jen. A man with a scraggly, mostly white beard and the most impressive gut Leith had ever seen trailed the mayor.

Leith reached Jen just as the man was saying something to her about the Scottish Society board reconsidering withdrawing their funding of this event for next year. “If this is what you did with tonight,” he told her, his whiskers dancing, “I can’t wait to see what you do with tomorrow.”

Leith all but whooped, but Jen’s response was a modest smile and bow of the head. “I’m positive that when you do, you’ll not only continue to fund the Gleann games, but also increase your investment for next year.”

The man—the society president, Leith assumed—shook Jen’s hand and moved on. Mayor Sue merely said to Jen, “We’ll talk tomorrow. After the whole thing’s over.”

“Unbelievable,” Jen muttered as the two of them left and Leith pressed the beer into her hand. “I don’t know what I have to do to get that woman’s approval. Turn lead into gold?”

Leith watched Sue go over to scratch the heads of her Yorkies, which had been tethered to one of the tent poles. “Why do you care so much?”

“I suppose I don’t,” Jen said at the end of a long swig of beer.

“Of course you do.”

“Okay! I do! It’s killing me! If you have to wake me up from the grave to get me to hear her tell me ‘Good job,’ do it. Please.”

He chuckled.

“I’m serious, Leith. Not even in front of the society president could she say it. Not even in front of you.”

He took a seat on a folding chair and pulled her between his legs, positioning her so her body fell back into his. The perfect little puzzle piece.

On stage, the band finished an upbeat folk song. As Jeremy, the piper, was saying something about how they’d updated the next song for modern times, Chris took a swig of water from a bottle. Scott reached for one of the cups of beer that had been set in a line next to his drum set and finished it in one long drink. Tossing the cup to the side, he pulled a cap from his back pocket and fixed it on his head.

Jen went still in his arms. “Is that—”

“Yeah. I think it is.”

The red potato chip logo cap they’d seen in the hidden corner of Loughlin’s barn before it had burned down.

She sagged against him. “Do you think he did it? Maybe on accident? There were cigarettes there and you need a lighter for those things.”

“Maybe.”

“We’re going to have to tell Olsen about it.”

“Okay.”

She leaned back, settled in to him again. “But not now. The barn’s already burned and I’m not pulling the drummer off the stage when they’re doing so well. As long as he can hold it together.”

Come on, asshole, Leith thought. Hold it together.

The warm June breeze swept through the open tent, swirling her scent around him, and he briefly closed his eyes as his cheek rubbed her hair.

“You knew this would go off like fireworks,” he said. “Didn’t you.”

“Fireworks . . .” She tried to pull away, to sit up. “That’s an idea for next year.”

He yanked her gently back against his chest. “Don’t even think about going for your phone.” She relaxed, but just slightly. Then he asked, “Would you do this again next year?”

It took her a while to answer. Her hand came to rest on his forearm, and she drew light lines up and down his skin with her fingernails. “I don’t know if I can. The timing for this was . . . unique.”

It was exactly the same kind of pause she’d given him when he’d asked if they could try to be together. He’d tried not to read too much into it. He had yet to hear her not speak the truth. Her word, even if he hadn’t always agreed with it, was gold, as far as he was concerned.

“Ah, that’s right,” he said. “Your crazy job.” He was joking, but his stomach felt strangely sour.

A silence fell between them as they rocked to the music, clasped together. Then he got up to get another beer, and by the time he got back, she was dancing with Bobbie and Rob and looking gorgeous doing it. Thoughts of crazy jobs and guesses over odd pauses vanished.