Relief washed over me. “Aye? What’s the craic?”
Her eyes lit up as she pointed at us. “You said it! Like they did in the show!”
I kept my attention on Finn as he spoke. “Private conversation, sad to say. This man’s the newest doctor at Pitt Medical – got to go over a few things with him before the night’s over.”
The excitement on the woman’s face turned to disappointment.
“That’s boring. You’re really going to talk about work stuff during a party?”
“I am indeed,” Finn said. “Being a doctor’s not all glamour, you know.” He flicked his green eyes onto me. “Now, mind if I peel you away from the lass?”
“Sure, sure.”
I shrugged, giving the woman a, “sorry, but what can I do?” look as I walked off with Finn. Moments later we were back in the crowd, making our way through the tight knots of the city’s elite.
Even with the masks, I could still make out some familiar, famous faces – the DA and the Mayor, for starters. Pitt Medical was absolutely huge, and when Duncan and his team threw a party, it was always a successful turnout.
The DA went out of his way to give me a nod and a wave. My daughter, Cammy, worked at his office, so we’d met each other more than a few times.
“You know,” Finn said as he led me through the party with his arm around my shoulder. “That has to have been about the most damn pathetic sight I’ve ever seen in all my years on this earth.”
“What’s this about?” I asked. I glanced up to see that he was leading us to the bar. Good thing, too – my drink was almost gone.
“Noah bloody McMurray, I swear to Christ. You had one of the most gorgeous women at this party ready for a ravishing and you appeared as if she was trying to sell life insurance or some such.”
I put together at what he was getting. “Finn, don’t tell me you were watching the entire time.”
“Of course, I was! I looked up and saw you and that sexy little thing and started wondering, could this be the night that my nearly celibate friend is going to actually make a connection with a woman? I swear, for a second, I thought I saw the old Noah, the one who’d left a trail of broken hearts through Oxford during our premed years. Then, I got a closer look, saw underneath that mask of yours,” he reached up and gave my red and gold mask a tug, “that you couldn’t have been more bored.”
We arrived at the bar, and he raised his hand. A black-clad bartender hurried over, and Finn quickly ordered a couple of whiskeys.
“I wasn’t bored,” I said. “I just…wasn’t all that interested in talking.”
“Uh-huh,” he sarcastically replied. “In other words, you were bored.”
A fresh drink in hand, I glanced through the crowd and spotted the woman I’d been speaking to. She was already in the middle of another conversation with someone else.
Judging by the way his hand was resting on her hip, it appeared she was going to be making up for all the time she’d wasted with me – and good for her.
Finn sighed, turning around, and leaning against the bar. I took a sip of my whiskey and leaned next to him.
“I get it,” he said. “I do. Well, as much as I can.”
I tensed, knowing where this was going.
“Finn…”
“Now, now,” he said, raising his hand. “Hear me out.”
“I know what you’re going to say. I mean, Christ, we’ve had the same bloody conversation more times than I can count.”
“Well, maybe we need to have it one more time. Bud, you’ve been single, for how long?”
“You know the answer to that one.”
“I do. You’ve been single since Saoirse passed, almost two decades ago. Now, you don’t need me to tell you that your wife was a damn good woman – brilliant and beautiful and all the other reasons you married her. But she was my friend too, and I knew her well enough to know that she’d bekicking your arseif she knew that you were languishing in eternal bachelorhood out of respect for her.”
God, just the mention of Saoirse was enough to make my heart hurt like mad. Seventeen years it’d been since she’d been taken from our daughter and me. “It’s not just out of respect. I’ve been too—”