The Player and the Pixie(89)

I was an ape.

Disgusted, I turned from the mirror. I stormed to my suitcase and dressed in my workout clothes. I let fly a string of curses when I realized I’d forgotten gym socks.

When the hell had I ever forgotten gym socks?

I’d been eager to see her and rushed through packing. All I had were gray argyles for my suit. I might have been mentally unhinged and enraged, but I was not without sensibility for fashion decorum. I wasn’t completely insensible. Not yet at any rate.

I wore my shoes without socks—which I abhorred—and slammed the door after me, not caring if I woke or offended any of the hotel’s prissily stoic inhabitants. I needed to use my body, run until I was numb, or else I would decimate the interior of my hotel room.

Perhaps I would do both.

Anger pumped through my heart, stitching together the broken pieces, hardening and cooling the blood in my veins. Too impatient to wait for the lift, I took the stairs, deciding as I descended that I was going to hate her. I needed to loathe her.

I’d already begged. Leaving after promising to stay meant she’d refused me. I would not pine.

Bursting into the lobby just minutes later, I made a beeline for the west corner of the hotel, irritated by the plaster pattern on the crown molding. Were those fish? Flowers? I hated it. Garish and appalling.

Since the K Club had an extensive world-class golf course, they also had a pro shop with a small collection of clothing. The hour was late, but not too late. The shop was still open.

A man lifted his head as I entered, his greeting dying on his lips at my glare.

“Socks,” I demanded.

His eyebrows jumped, his eyes widening in alarm. Swallowing nervously, he lifted his chin to the back wall. “Yes, sir. In a basket, just there.”

I grunted my non-response and marched to where he’d indicated. I glowered at the basket. It was full of the most ridiculous and tasteless patterned socks I’d ever seen. Golf balls on cartoonish smiling tees, golf clubs arranged in a heart, little golfing men swinging a club.

Atrocious.

I lifted my head to shout at the man, demand he bring me socks for actual athletes, when a streak of color caught my eye. More precisely, many colors. All the colors of the rainbow.

Lucy.

Heart and lungs seizing, I stumbled a half step back, blinking at the sight of her entering the shop, not trusting my eyes. Yet, there she was. Shopping.

She’d left—ended us—no more than an hour ago. Apparently that’s what one does after breaking someone’s heart. They browse the goods at a pro shop within a gaudy golfing hotel in Kildare.

Obviously.

My original errand completely forgotten, I stalked over to her. Because I had to. It wasn’t a conscious decision and I had no idea what I was going to say or do.

I just . . .

Christ.

I just wanted to see her.

The last month had been torture without her easy smile and teasing laugh. My only reprieve had been the daily text messages.

I sought to hold fast to my anger, yet I couldn’t manage it. Raw, swelling sorrow choked me as I halted my approach and studied her profile.

Fuck.

I hated this.

She’d been crying. Her eyes were puffy, her lips swollen and abused, the tip of her nose red. The rest of her typically glowing skin was white and drawn. Observing her misery didn’t help. Rather, it fueled a sudden desperation to ease her discomfort. Unthinkingly, I began closing the remainder of the distance between us, intent on taking some action.

But then she did something rather unexpected and it brought me to a full stop. She picked up a three-pack of expensive golf balls and slipped them into her handbag. Afterward, she stood frozen for several seconds. She then proceeded to pick up four more three-packs—the obnoxious neon yellow kind—and placed those in her bag as well.

Then she darted for the exit.

I gaped at her, unable to fathom what I’d just witnessed.

Unless she’d developed an insatiable penchant for expensive golf balls in the last forty-five minutes, Lucy was shoplifting to soothe acute emotional distress. I’d only witnessed her habit once—months ago now—and I’d brushed it off as a harmless, meaningless diversion.

Two hundred euros in golf balls was not a diversion. It was a compulsion.

She’d nearly made it to the perimeter of the shop when I shook myself from the grip of stupor and charged after her, not wanting to lose her in the lobby of the hotel. But then my stomach dropped, because the shop alarm gave a loud whoop whoop. A previously unseen detector flashed red and white, alerting all within that someone was trying to escape with fancy golf balls.

I quickly glanced around, horrified to see the man I’d interrogated about socks just minutes prior jogging toward a paralyzed Lucy, his expression thunderous.