doing. Instead, she scraped up some self-respect and pretended everything was fine. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had ample practice doing that over the last nineteen years.
“What can I get for you?”
It didn’t take Jessa long to decide. She was already so far outside the parameters of normal, she had nothing left to lose. “An Irish car bomb.”
The bartender’s left eyebrow arched high, and he chuckled. “A lady with taste.”
There was a moment to collect her thoughts while she waited for the drink. It was hard to believe her life had been utterly unexciting less than twelve hours ago. Only that morning, she’d gotten up with the alarm clock, fixed breakfast for herself, and hurried off to help plan a charity dinner auction. How was it possible to go from charity housewife to chic-in-a-bar carrying porn-in-a-bag in less than one day?
The facts were obvious. Will left for Ginny. Not really a big surprise. Jessa was okay with that. They were getting a divorce after nineteen years of marriage. She was okay with that, too. But everything else definitely fell under the heading of not okay .
Women like Jessa didn’t ask explicit questions. They didn’t dwell on inappropriate behavior and lewd conduct. She shouldn’t have gone into a store like Accessories and More. And she had no business sitting at a bar drinking car bombs in the middle of the day.
Or was all that just a cop out? Deep down, if she were brutally honest, Jessa knew she’d see things differently. Thoughts of rebellion had littered her entire married life. But Jessa had always been one to sit and stew about it, hoard her rebellious desires and examine them privately behind closed doors. Now, it was almost as if the situation with Will had ripped her inhibitions away and dragged her into the open.
Jessa wasn’t entirely certain she was comfortable with that.
The arrival of her drink interrupted her self-recrimination. “One Irish car bomb,” the blue-eyed bartender said with a wink. “If you manage to drink that properly, I’ll give you two more for free.”
A challenge? It had been years since Jessa had spent time in a bar, before Will, before marriage, before she’d settled down and become a grown up. Jessa lifted first the Guinness, then the shot glass, and sniffed. The complex combination was deep, dark, with a hint of sweetness. A lot like the man at the door.
Breathing deeply, she dropped the shot of mingled Baileys and Jameson into the Guinness and inhaled them both as fast as she could swallow. The Guinness was thick, but the Baileys and Jameson turned the flavor to chocolate by the time her tongue registered the taste. Slamming the glass down on the bar, Jessa swiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Two more it is, then.”
“You’re trying to get me drunk on purpose,” she accused. “I didn’t think bartenders were supposed to do that.”
He plunked another car bomb down on the bar. “This is an old-fashioned kind of place. We encourage drunkenness.”
The obsidian-tinted Guinness gleamed in the dim light, and a grin kicked up the corners of Jessa’s mouth. “Well, bottoms up to you, then.”
The second one went down just as easily as the first. Without another word, the bartender set a third drink on the bar and hustled off to help another customer. Jessa took the opportunity to grab a second look at him. He had blue eyes, tousled blonde hair with a touch of curl and a beautifully proportioned body. The guy was kind of hot. Not that it should matter, not that it did. Jessa wasn’t in the market for another man. She wasn’t even certain she was sorry she’d been dumped by the first one.
The colors around her swirled, glistening as her vision first hazed and then became sharper. The room noise began to blur and the first pangs of a good buzz slipped down her spine. More people entered the bar. The music seemed loud, but wasn’t. It took a moment for Jessa to realize that the pounding in her ears was the