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“Oh, simmer down, princess,” she grumbled, as she snatched up the packet and moved for the opening at the other end of the bar. “I haven’t had a smoke all morning. I’ll be five minutes.”
“Bitch,” I growled—and not quietly—as once again I picked up the slack for my coworker.
Once I had taken and fulfilled all the drink orders on my section of the bar, I reluctantly moved to Julie’s section and started pulling pints and quenching thirsts. It wasn’t until I reached the end of the bar that I recognized a pair of familiar brown eyes staring back at me.
“Tadhg.” My heart leapt in my chest. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” he replied, tone hard as he sat on a towering barstool and stared back at me, unyielding. “It’s important.”
Yeah, I figured it had to be if he had traipsed across town to track me down.
“Tadhg, you know you’re not allowed in the bar without an adult here with you.”
“I have you, don’t I?”
“Yeah.” Emotion racked through me, and I nodded. “I guess you do.”
“He’s back.”
My heart jackknifed in my chest. “Joe?”
The younger Lynch offered me a stiff nod and I choked out a huge sigh of relief.
Leaving Joey at those gates last night was about the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life, but I did it with the knowledge that if I couldn’t get to him, then neither could Shane Holland. He was temporarily appeased with the wad of cash I had borrowed from a boy I barely knew, but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Shane was gone forever. Right now, temporary was all I could hope for. “Is he okay?”
“No.”
My heart cracked in my chest. “No?”
“There was a big fight between Mam and that blond lady with the posh car who brought Joey and Shannon home,” Little Alpha came right out and told me, blunt as always. “Shannon was crying over the posh lady’s son, Mam was going mental, and Darren stormed off.”
“What about Joe?”
“After he put Mam to bed and fed the boys, he locked himself in his room.”
Jesus.
With my heart bucking wildly in my chest, I looked around the bar, desperate to drop everything I was doing and go to him, even though I had another four hours of my shift left. But then I thought about the lack of funds in my bank account and the growing intruder in my womb, and I paused. I couldn’t afford to lose this job. If I walked off, they would fire me, and nobody was going to hire me in my condition.
I needed the money, dammit.
“By the way, I know about the baby,” Tadhg blew my mind by saying. “My brother got you pregnant.”
My blood ran cold. “Who told you?”
“Nobody,” he replied flatly. “I overheard Mam and Darren talking about it.”
“Okay.” Clearing my throat, I quickly popped the cap on a bottle of Coke and set it down in front of him, along with a couple of bags of cheese-and-onion-flavored crisps. “Listen, I’m due a break in twenty minutes. Can you wait here for me until then?”
“Don’t worry.” Nodding stiffly, he tore open a crisp packet and tucked in. “I’m not going anywhere.”
______________________
“So, does your mam know you’re here?” I asked, sitting down on an old barrel in the smoking area. “Because I have to say, Tadhg, your mother isn’t exactly my number one fan. I don’t think she’d be too happy to know that you’re here with me.”
“Do I look like I give a shit about what she thinks? Besides, I already told ya she took to the bed again,” he responded harshly as he sat on the empty beer barrel opposite me and polished off his fourth bag of crisps. “I’m here for my brother.”
I sighed heavily. “Come on, Tadhg, we both know Joe didn’t send you here.”
