“Ah, those little shits I teach have primed me well. But you know what’s the perfect antidote to whining? Drooling. Panting. Moaning.” Mel squeezed Darcy’s arm tighter as she punctuated each huskily spoken word. “It’s hard to whine when your mouth’s filled with a sexy bartender’s tongue or other interesting body parts.”

Darcy considered her friend’s arguments. She had to admit that chilling with the walker-and-Jell-O set at Grams’s upscale nursing home had put a decided crimp in her love life. “My sex point average is at an all-time low.”

“Which is why you should be coming to this bar with me.” Mel linked Darcy’s arm like it was a done deal. “I can’t believe you’re all dressed up like a North Shore princess—”

“Watch your mouth, bitch. It’s Gold Coast. Higher property values,” Darcy said, referring to the tony Chicago enclave where she’d spent her formative years.

Her friend flashed a toothy grin. “And you don’t want to use those pearls to flirt with a little rough? Come on, help this J.Crew–clad pleb out.”

“You know I only got trussed up like this so I wouldn’t scare Grams with my usual threads.” Actually, Grams would have taken Darcy’s biker chic threads and all they revealed in stride. Not so the rest of the Cochranes. The glare her father daggered her way a few hours ago was evidence enough that she was still a crushing disappointment to him. And as much as she would have loved to grace the shoot in ripped jeans and a tank, it would have smacked of a tad too much teenage rebellion for a twenty-five-year-old woman. Instead, she’d donned the designer twinset of boring to keep the peace.

“Just a half hour playing my wing girl,” Mel pleaded. “I can’t go in alone. What would that look like?”

Sighing, Darcy inched away from the car. In truth, she didn’t want the night to be over quite yet. With the holidays just around the corner, her chances to hang with Mel were diminishing rapidly.

“Lead the way to bartender nirvana.”

Holding on to each other as they walked a couple of blocks, they managed to remain upright on the slippery walk, no mean feat for women sporting weather-inappropriate footwear.

They were laughing so hard at the sight of yet another drunken Santa lurching down the street, this one with a healthy serving of chalky butt cheek on display—“Shrinkage alert!” yelled Mel—that it took Darcy a moment to realize they’d turned a corner. This bite of Damen Avenue was hopping with a steady stream of bar crawlers, suburbanites, and friends meeting for preholiday drinks. It was also achingly familiar. With each crunch of hard-packed snow underfoot, icicles of dread jabbed Darcy’s chest.

“What’s the name of this bar, Mel?”

“I dunno. Something Irish, Dennehy’s or Donnelly’s.”

What was the likelihood there were two Irish bars on the same block?

Oh, balls.

“Dempsey’s,” Mel announced. The muted strains of the Pogues’ holiday classic “Fairytale of New York” pulsed against the bar’s heavy oak door.

Dempsey’s. Darcy had driven by it a few times since her return, and on each pass she had floored it. Ridiculous, she knew. It was just a bar and he was just a boy. A man, now.

He might not work here.

It might be under new management.

But the kick of her heart to her ribs said nothing had changed. The Dempseys still ruled this little corner of green in Chicago just like the boy she once knew still took up valuable mental real estate. A spot that ignited whenever Darcy saw firefighters or boxers or Irishmen or . . . damn . . . Suddenly curiosity overruled her dread. Benevolent gods would ensure he had grown into a potbellied troll with a receding hairline and bad skin from a diet of Portillo’s hot dogs and deep-dish pizza. A girl could hope, anyway.

Didn’t she owe it to herself to find out? If he was behind that door, didn’t she owe it to herself to show him what he had missed by walking away from her all those years ago?

Bring it on.

Letting determination flavored with old-fashioned payback fuel her steps, Darcy reached for the wrought-iron handle. But before she could get a grip, the door crashed open and Bam! a large red blur filled her vision—and dropped her on her ass. Her ankle twisted as she hit the cold, punishing street.

The blur—more of a sack, really—rolled off her leg.

Then it spoke.

“Christ, I’m sorry,” it slurred through a beer-stained slash of white cotton. “I didn’t mean to—”

Whatever it didn’t mean to do, she would never know. Red Sack was violently wrenched aside. Huge hands settled on her shoulders and pulled her to a sitting position.

Oh, God. Time and space contracted with her heart, bringing an onslaught of sensation in its wake. He smelled the same—a clean, male spice that made her light-headed. Seven years, and he still smelled like the boy she had held tight inside her soul all this time.

He spoke, the exact words inaudible above the beat of her silly heart. The timbre of his voice was deeper, huskier, but its power to ripple through her and set her quivering with need had in no way diminished. Or perhaps it was just the frigid temperatures. Yes, that had to be it. Her coat had fallen open except for one precariously fastened button; her wool skirt had ridden up to midthigh. She looked ridiculous, and not just because she was lying on a snowy street thanks to what she realized now was yet another wasted Santa. Seriously, there ought to be a law against that sort of thing.

With a bolstering breath, she lifted her eyelids to meet the gaze of Beck Rivera.

Who was not looking at her.

His unstinting focus was on her limbs, his sure hands tracing over her extremities, seeking out injuries. Weaknesses. Her heart cranked out a few more beats than were safe. Her mind scrambled for Zen. While it was startling to have him touching her so intimately, at least the moment gave her a chance to examine him unnoticed.

Scimitar-curved cheekbones, a nose broken several (more) times, and, mother of God, a scruffy lumberjack beard. That was so damn hot and not in the least bit troll like. He looked as serious as ever, but the gravity seemed more intensified on his twenty-six-year-old face. That dark hair, formerly a wavy handful of sin she loved tunneling her fingers through, was now close-cropped and split, not by a parting, but by a scar. Recent, by the looks of its raw, pink anger. He had cracked open his skull.

Idiot.

“What an asshole!” Mel shot a death glare at the Santa who had fallen—or more likely, was pushed—on Darcy. A trio of men in red were hauling up the troublemaker as he muttered something about a lawsuit that’d “send your Mick bar back to the Stone Age.” Ignoring the threat, Beck kept up his thorough damage assessment, hot hands moving over soft knees and trembling thighs.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, now treating her to a full proton blast of the Beck Rivera gaze. More navy than blue, the shade used to shift often with his variable moods. But now those eyes registered distant, polite. Was she hurt? Not physically. Just incredibly pissed that the boy she had adored for two years in a previous lifetime had blocked her from his mind.

For God’s sake, the shit head didn’t recognize her!

“I don’t think so,” she said in a clipped tone.

“Can you stand?” He was already dragging her up with those arms as thick as her calves.

Agh! Sharp pain lanced through her ankle. He caught her as she crumpled, sweeping her into his arms and moving toward the pub in one sinuous, catlike movement. She had no choice but to loop her hands around his neck, his body heat the perfect counterbalance to her freezing butt cheeks.

“Should we call an ambulance?” Mel asked, concern coloring her voice.

“No,” he said sternly. “Get the door.”

Mel jumped forward and pulled the handle. A gush of warmth, spiced with memories, escaped the bar, and Darcy realized that she really needed to speak up.