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“Go out and have Darcy pull you a pint on me,” he began, then his head came up again as he heard the sound of voices through the back door. “No, wait. Follow along here.”
“Follow what?”
“Ladle the soup.” He gave a wag of his hand toward the bowls. “And just follow along.”
The back door opened, and Aidan stepped back to let Finkle go through. “The kitchen’s Shawn’s territory, as you can see. We’ve added this and that as he’s felt a need for it. Oh, hello, Brenna. This is our friend and occasional employee, Brenna O’Toole. Brenna, Mr.Finkle from New York.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Clueless, Brenna put on a company smile and ladled the soup.
“Mr. Finkle’s here about adding a restaurant to the pub,” Shawn began.
“A theater,” Aidan said in a tone so sharp that Brenna nearly bobbled the bowl in surprise. “The theater, Shawn. You’re confused again.”
“Oh, aye, the theater. Sure and I can’t keep business dealings straight in my mind for five minutes at a run.”
“But you make a lovely soup.” Brenna gave him an encouraging look, one she might have sent to a slightly slow twelve-year-old. And hoped that was what he’d had in mind. “Would you care for a bowl of it now, Mr. Finkle, or have you eaten already?”
“No, I haven’t.” The kitchen smelled like someone’s devoted grandmother’s kitchen, and it had his mouth watering. “It’s very aromatic.”
“And tastes better, I can promise you. What kind of theater are you thinking of?”
“A small, tasteful entertainment arena. My employer wants something traditional.”
“People like to eat and lift a glass or two before or after the theater, don’t they?” Shawn dressed the sandwich with a bit of parsley and radish.
“As a rule.” Finkle scanned the room, the shining pots, the scrubbed counters, the tidy workstation. The stove was enormous and looked older than Zeus, but it appeared to be in good working order.
It might do, he thought. He would make a note of it in his report.
“Well, then, they couldn’t do better than Gallagher’s for that,” Brenna assured him. “Would you like to sit here in the kitchen, sir, or would you prefer a table?”
“A table, if you don’t mind,” he told Brenna. The better to observe the business flow.
“I’ll get you settled.” Smoothly Aidan gestured toward the door. “You just tell our Darcy what you’d enjoy for your lunch. On the house, of course.”
Aidan shot one triumphant look over his shoulder as he led Finkle out.
“What’s this about a theater? And why were you acting as though you’d misplaced a few brain cells since you woke up this morning?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Go on and get your father his lunch, then come back and have your soup here, and I’ll give you the full story.”
When he had, Brenna sat back, gnawing her bottom lip as she did when thinking hard business. “I know this Magee.” “Do you?”
“Well, not personal like, but I know of him. Them, actually. Father and son, they are, but the son is more in the way of doing the running of things now.”
“A family business,” Shawn mused. “Well, that’s something I can appreciate.”
“A well-established one at that. He builds beautiful things, does Magee. Mostly theaters and arenas and such. He’s very big in America, and in England too, I’m thinking. My mother’s cousin’s nephew Brian Cagney went to work for one of his construction teams in New York. He wrote me a year or two ago and said if I were to come over, I’d have a job in a wink, as Magee doesn’t look at how a carpenter’s skin is stretched when he hires on.”
“Are you thinking of going to New York?” It was such a shock, even the possibility of it, that he had to work to keep his tone level and casual.
“No.” Her mind already elsewhere, Brenna answered absently. “I work with Dad, and we work here. But Brian writes me now and again. He says Magee treats his people well, pays top of the scale, and has been known to swing a hammer himself when the mood strikes. But doesn’t suffer fools, and if you fuck up, you’re out and gone. I’ll write to Brian, see what he knows of this or can find out.”
Then her eyes sharpened, latched on to Shawn’s. “Is he bringing in his own crews or hiring local for this?”
“I wouldn’t know about it.”
“Well, he should hire local. That’s how it should be. You want to build in Ireland, then you use Irish hands. You build in Ardmore, you hire from the village and Old Parish. Dad and I could use a piece of this.”
“Where are you going?” Shawn demanded when she got up.
“To talk to Mr. Finkle.”
“Wait, wait. God, woman, you never let a fly land on your nose, do you? Now’s not the time.”
“Why isn’t it if I want to get in on the ground floor of it?”
“Let Aidan set the deal first.” He caught her hand. “It’s still in delicate stages. Once we have it as we want it, then you can move on into who should have the building of it.”
She hated to wait, hated that she saw the sense of what Shawn was saying. “I need to know the minute the deal’s done, then.”
“That I can promise.”
“I’ll show you how it should be.” She pulled a pencil out of her pocket and would have sketched right on the wall if he hadn’t grabbed her and shoved a pad of paper under her nose. “This is your north wall. You open that up, an oversized doorway.” She drew quickly, all lines and angles. “And you put a breezeway sort of thing here, for people to move from the pub to the theater and back again. You keep it as much the same a
s the pub as you can, the same wood, the same flooring, so you have a— what is it—a symmetry that leads to the lobby part. Better if the breezeway fans out, spreads as it goes so that the lobby becomes part of the pub, as on the other way, the pub would become part of the lobby.”
She nodded, glanced up. And narrowed her eyes. “And what might you be grinning at?”
“It’s just such an education watching you work.”
“If I have my way, you’ll be watching me work for months down the line, and Dad can slip into the pub daily for his lunch and pint. I’ve got to get on.”
“Can you take an hour later?” He caught her hand before she could turn to go.
“I suppose I could. It shouldn’t take longer than that for me to get your clothes off and finish with you.”
“I had something else in mind. As for the other, I don’t want timetables and deadlines.” He brought her hand to his lips, rubbed them over her knuckles. “Have a walk with me on the beach.”
It was so like him, she thought. An hour on a winter’s beach with the sea and the wind. “Come and fetch me at Jude’s. If you manage the time, so will I.”
“Then come on and kiss me good-bye.”
Willing to oblige, she rose to her toes, leaned in, and had just touched her lips to his when the door swung open.
“The Finkle believes he can fit in a bit of that soup and some—” Darcy stopped short, gaping at the sight of her dearest friend kissing her brother. “Well, for the sake of Jesus, what’s all this?”
“It was just what it appeared to be before you interrupted. You haven’t finished,” Shawn said to Brenna, and started to pull her back from the full foot she’d jumped in retreat.
“Yes, I have. I’ve work to do.” Considering it the best line of escape, she dashed out the back door.
“Soup, you say?” Casually, Shawn pivoted to the stove.
“Shawn, you were kissing Brenna.”
“So I was, though I had hardly gotten a taste before you came barging in and scared her off.”
“What are you thinking of, kissing Brenna?”
He glanced back, his face bland. “I was sure our mother explained such matters to you, but if you’re needing a refresher course on the subject, I’ll do what I can to educate you.”
“Don’t smart your mouth off at me.” But she was too baffled to work up the kind of temper that entertained them both. “She’s the next thing to a sister to me, and I won’t have you teasing her that way.”
He ladled soup into a thick, generous bowl. “Maybe you should have a word with her before you flay into me.”
“Don’t think I won’t.” She snatched up the bowl. “I know how you are with women, Shawn Gallagher.”
He inclined his head. “Do you now?”
“That I do.” She said it in her darkest, most forbidding tone, added a toss of her head, and stalked out.
The minute she’d served Finkle his bowl and fussed over him enough to bring a rise of color to his cheeks, Darcy informed Aidan she was taking a fifteen-minute break. And was out the door before he could tell her different. In her hurry she forgot to take off her apron or grab her jacket, so her tip money jingled cheerfully in her pocket as she raced down to her family home.
As a result, she was out of breath and pink of cheek when she dashed through the door. She headed straight upstairs to the door of the nursery, where Brenna was rolling varnish onto the freshly sanded floor.
“I want to know what’s going on.”
“Well, I’m putting on this first coat of sealer. It takes a day or two to dry good and hard. Then I’ll put on another, and that will be that.”
“With you and Shawn. Damn it, Brenna, you can’t go around letting him kiss you that way. People’ll get the wrong impression.”
Brenna kept rolling. She hadn’t worked up the nerve to look at her friend. “Actually, I imagine they’d get the right one. I should’ve told you, Darcy, I just didn’t know how.”
Darcy braced herself with a hand on the doorjamb as the blood drained out of her face. “There’s—there’s something to tell me?”
