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.”