He snorted. “Whatever you have to tell yourself.”

Good God, the man was pricklier than a cactus. She was already tired of being on the pointed end of his questions—especially when every answer she gave was met with a response like that. “What about you? You don’t strike me as the type to enjoy historical monuments.”

“Now who’s throwing stones?” The bartender finally got up the courage to approach, and Luke ordered two beers without even asking her. Before she could correct him, the man was gone. High-handed much?

Luke turned his attention back on her. “Maybe I went up to kiss the Blarney Stone.”

Her gaze dropped to his mouth. She could almost imagine those wickedly curved lips pressing against the cool stone…and other things. His mouth twitched up, and she jumped. Crap, had she really just been checking him out? And worse, he’d caught her. Alexis tried to push down her ridiculous reaction. “If you did, the gift of gab didn’t take.”

“So quick to kick me while I’m down.” His tone dropped a full octave and took on a downright sinful edge. The anger didn’t go away, exactly, but it focused in on her like a laser. “It makes a man think unforgivable thoughts.”

She couldn’t get over how… Alexis had a hard time putting it into words. How male he was. He took up that stool like he owned it, as if he’d never been unsure of his place in the world. And that accent—she’d bet he could charm the birds from the trees if he got that stick out of his ass long enough to do it. But she couldn’t afford to forget just how little he obviously thought of her. Strange attraction or not, she wasn’t going to touch him with a ten-foot pole. “Do they involve a hacksaw and a pig farm?”

That was what she thought of him? A goddamn serial killer? Luke growled. So maybe he deserved the judgment, but that didn’t make it stick in his throat any less. He’d been an ass and he damn well knew it, but there was something about Alexis that got under his skin—like an itch he couldn’t reach. “That’s rich coming from a woman who goes around attacking innocent bystanders.”

“Oh, please. There’s nothing innocent about you, and we both know it.”

Yeah, he did. He wouldn’t be over here in Ireland in the first place if he didn’t have ulterior motives. The fact that they weren’t his ulterior motives didn’t change a damn thing. He owed Flannery his life a couple times over. A man didn’t forget a debt like that. So when Flannery called, Luke didn’t hesitate to drop everything and hop the first plane over here, no questions asked.

Last time he was in Wellingford, Luke had met Alexis’s sister, Avery. The sisters shared some superficial similarities—both Chinese and beautiful—but it ended there. Avery might be brash, but she didn’t have the ability to hit below the belt like Alexis did. And Alexis…she looked like she’d wandered out of a fairy tale, yet there was none of the inherent sweetness of those princesses he compared her to. But when push came to shove, she’d seen as little of the horrors of life as they had. It must be nice to sit on her golden throne and look down her nose at broken men like him.

And yet… He wanted her.

Luke paid the bartender and took a long pull of his beer while he dealt with that unwelcome realization. He hadn’t had the time for or interest in women since his nearly full recovery from the IED hit. No, that wasn’t the truth. He’d tried, that single time, with the woman he met at his local watering hole. Anger and shame burned through him all over again as he remembered the disgusted look on her face right before she hightailed it out of his room.

It would be his shitty luck that his cock would perk up in the presence of this haughty woman who didn’t hesitate to hit him where it hurt—physically and otherwise. He couldn’t deny that she was gorgeous, with her long black hair and her body that just wouldn’t stop. But then she opened her mouth and shot it all to hell.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

He should back off. Poking at her was just going to make the animosity between them grow, and he was supposed to be keeping track of her until she got the bug out of her ass and went back stateside. Until then, like it or not, they were stuck with each other—even if she didn’t know it.

Considering the runaround she’d given him over the last few days, he’d have to be a damn fool to complicate things further. Even if she were interested, she’d react the same way the last mistake had. Pretty princesses were looking for knights in shining armor to ride out and save them from their problems.

He was a battle-scarred old wolf, far more likely to eat her whole than give her the sweet kind of sex she craved. But he couldn’t stop himself from leaning a little closer and crowding her. “Like what?”

“Like you’re about to start a brawl or…” She hesitated, licking her lips. There was definite interest sparking in those hazel eyes. So the princess liked to play on the dark side? She wasn’t stupid—in the middle of some kind of quarter-life crisis, sure, but not dumb. She knew he couldn’t give her the sunshine and rainbows that another man could.

Let it go. He couldn’t. “Or?”

Another swipe of her tongue over those pale pink lips that he’d been doing his damnedest not to stare at since she sat down next to him. Alexis looked away, seemed to gather herself, and met his eyes. “Or drag some woman out of here by her hair.”

Just like that, he could picture hauling her ass out of here. Not by her hair, no. He wasn’t that much of a savage. But it was all too easy to imagine dragging her behind him and pinning her against the nearest wall to teach that mouth of hers some manners.

Christ, he was in serious trouble. He’d bet the last thing Flannery had intended when he called Luke was for him to get into a compromising position with Alexis. But the brakes were gone, and he was dangerously close to losing control. “Who said I’m not planning on doing just that?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, it’d certainly be in character, wouldn’t it? You’re not exactly a bundle of surprises at this point.”

This woman had taken one look at him and acted as judge, jury, and executioner. It made him twitch, though hell if he could decide if he wanted to toss her out on her ass or kiss her until she got off her high horse—or just got off. Thoughts he couldn’t afford to be thinking, especially about her, but Luke couldn’t let it rest. There was something about this woman that scraped at his control, and he’d be damned before he let her get the last word. “Says the woman who’s one giant cliché after another.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look at you.” He waved a hand in her direction and somehow managed not to focus on her breasts again. “You have no connection to reality. I bet you just woke up one day and thought it’d be a lovely idea to jaunt halfway across the world and see some of Europe.”

“I had my reasons.”

Warning bells went off in his head, but he was too far gone to shut up now. “So you’re running from something—in the most cliché way possible. What, did you read Eat, Pray, Love and figure that if it worked for her, it’d work for you, too?”

Alexis’s mouth went tight. “Please. You should listen to that old saying about throwing stones from glass houses. You have ‘runner’ written all over you.” Her eyes dropped to his knee and then rose to his face. “Though I doubt you could outrun a turtle at this point.”

He wanted to shake her until some degree of sense popped into that gorgeous head of hers. His injury had been life-ending, even if he’d kept right on breathing through the worst of it. There were days, dark days he didn’t like to think about, where he wondered if maybe it was all a mistake. If whatever passed for a God in this world had lost interest for the few seconds it took for the doctors to pull him back from the edge and patch him up. Aunt Rose would whup his ass to know he thought like that, so he didn’t tell her. He didn’t tell anyone.