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“Yeah,” she whispers.
As we pass through the gates, I glance in the rear-view mirror. Sera remains in the middle of the yard, watching us leave with the shotgun lowered at her side.
Whatever happened between us ended in that field and with the two men we left behind.
She disappears from the mirror when the road bends.
Next time I see ya, I won’t aim for the sky.
The little wild thing should know better than to challenge me.
Chapter 4
Sera
A week later
The doors behind me swing open, and I glance back to check the latest arrival. Another married horse breeder strolls inside, not Fionn.
Clonmore racecourse has opened its doors to the wealthiest breeders, councilors, and developers in the south of Ireland, along with several powerful men whose revenue streams aren’t talked about.
I take a drink before Eilish notices me looking. I keep telling myself I only need warning if Fionn shows up, but that excuse stopped working four glances ago.
“The male stock isn’t getting any better,” my best friend murmurs next to my ear. “There goes my chances of a wild one-night stand.”
The two of us walk another circuit of the crowded function suite, collecting filled champagne flutes as we go and avoiding creepy men who eye us up while standing beside their wives.
I lean closer to Eilish. “The guy beside the windows looks like his teeth come out at night.”
Eilish follows my gaze to the suited man who’s spent the last ten minutes boring people about his superior bloodline. “He keeps checking his reflection in the glass.”
“Maybe he’s making sure he still has one.”
“Do you think he arrived on the Demeter?” Eilish considers him. “I mean, I’m all for a brooding man who waits centuries for my rebirth, but I’d prefer his teeth to be immortal too.”
I lift my glass towards him. “Welcome to Ireland, Count Dentula.”
Eilish chokes on her champagne and grabs my hand, squeezing it as the man looks across the room and smiles at us.
“Shit, he can hear us,” she giggles, angling away from the windows. “Fucking bat sonar.”
Her gold satin dress glints under the overhead lights and the diamonds at her throat cost way too much to even think about.
Everyone knows she’s a Kinnane.
More importantly, they know her da answers to the Irish mafia in Dublin, which prevents most of them from doing anything more ambitious than gawking.
We met in a bar when we were eighteen, back when she carried a fake ID with a different name, and I had blood under my thumbnail from breaking a lad’s nose behind the bins. She bought me a double vodka and said my punching technique lacked finesse.
I called her a stuck-up Kinnane princess. She called me a Tallon gobshite.
By the end of the night, we were drunk enough to sing together like feral cats and sober enough to know we’d chosen each other.
A breeder’s son detaches himself from the group at the bar and wanders toward us with the hopefulness of a man approaching the last lifeboat.
Eilish catches my wrist. “Keep walking.”
“He might be good in bed.”
