The wind howled around the small car as she turned her key for the third time, the engine sputtering and gasping before culminating in nothing. She intertwined her fingers and rested her chin on the steering wheel, staring out at the trees and bushes swaying angrily in the inclement weather, the rain hammering down on everything. She glanced out the passenger window at the small Irish pub she had spent the evening singing in, it's warm lights inviting, promising heat. She scowled.
"I can't believe this... I have to be in Dublin tomorrow afternoon." She slipped the keys out of the ignition, grabbed her coat and locked the car before dashing inside, out of the rain.
Sure enough, the fire was still crackling away in the stone hearth and the smell of whiskey warmed her as she tossed her coat over a chair and pulled off her scarf.
"Back again, Miss Cassidy!" drawled a thick Irish brogue from the group of men by the fire.
"Back again, Douglas. Shocking night out there. Looks like I'll have to have Niall fix me up with a room. How are you and the lads getting back?"
The Irish brogue known as Douglas slurred his words. "Sure Big McCusker has his four by four, and it's for driving in any aul weather. We'd take ye, but I know you're for Dublin the morra."
She smiled, and leaned across the bar, smiling fondly at Niall, the owner of the place. "What does a girl have to do around here to get a nightcap?"
He chuckled lowly, before looking up at her, his hands already pouring her a Drambuie. "Och god it's not you again. Sure didn't we have enough of your warbling already this evening?" He set the small glass in front of her and closed her purse as she went to pay him. "Don't worry about payin it. I'll charge it to your room." He winked at her and she snorted derisively at him.
"How generous of you, Niall, you tightfisted...-" The two of them chuckled at each other, before she settled herself on a stool, nodding at the group of men with Douglas headed out the door, muttering their farewells.
She took a sip of the Drambuie and shivered, smiling as she felt the warmth spread from her stomach through her limbs. Niall went to the door, pulling the locks and bars across it and drawing the heavy curtain.
"You know, you weren't that bad tonight."
She nearly choked on her drink as she looked up, her emerald eyes twinkling with unheard laughter. "Why thank you."
He nodded, laughing himself as he picked up empty glasses from around the little pub. "You're a wild inconvenience tonight you know. I was for staying, but this place only has two rooms and the wee box one has a cracked windowpane."
"Well maybe if you weren't so tight, and put in double glazing, you wouldn't get cracks from birds flying into the windows." She raised herself off the stool and walked to the window, her glass in her hand as she looked out at the rain and wind. "I can't believe that weather. I'll be stuck here all night, and I've to be in Dublin by three tomorrow."
Niall finished wiping the tables down and loaded the dishwasher. "Stop your whinging, Aine. You'll get there. You want another drink? I'm having one myself. On the house."
Aine Cassidy nodded and turned to walk back to the bar, setting her drink down as he poured the amber liquid into the glass, filling it almost halfway before pouring one for himself and nodding towards the fireplace. "Might as well keep ourselves warm while it's lit."
They sat and made conversation, Niall kept the Drambuie flowing until the flames had gone down and Aine was singing lowly, her head tilted back against the leather couch, her eyes closed. Niall took a sip of his drink, and narrowed his eyes a little to look at her. Her long, red hair fell across her shoulders in large curls, and she kept having to lick her lips between lines of the ballad she sang. Niall smiled, his eyes noticing her in a way he'd never noticed her before.
The firelight gave her skin a rosy hue, or maybe it was the Drambuie. Her lips curved in this way when she smiled and it made his heart jump. He shook his head. 'You're drunk, man. She'd never look at you that way.' He swallowed the rest of the contents of the glass and kept it in his hand, lest the noise disturbed her song. Her voice took the words of poems by Irish fathers, and wound them into the most beautiful songs. He was mesmerised by her. His eyes wandered down over her loose white shirt, trying not to look at the black patterned bra underneath, and her floaty black skirt that glided along the ground when she danced, her hand beating on the bodhran.
He lost himself. "God Aine, you're beautiful."
