Page 8 of Dirty Pool

Gabbie grinned, and shook her head.

What else could she do?

This was her father.

Her life.

It was never going to change.

“Are you going to sit, lass, or stand back there and glare at me head some more?” her father asked.

Gabbie scoffed. “I wasn’t glaring at your head.”

“Be a first, yeah?”

She took her seat at the table next to her father on the left. Across from her sat her cousins, Aine and Aidan.

“Not a first,” she told her father. She made sure to give him the look that he liked to say reminded him of her mother when Betha was mad at him. “Eat your food, Da.”

“Are you coming tonight?” Aine asked Gabbie from across the table.

Charles had a whole mouthful of food as he mumbled, “Going where?”

Gabbie gave her cousin a look, too.

A shut your feckin’ mouth kind of look.

“Going where?” her father asked louder once he’d swallowed his food.

Grand.

This was just perfect.

Now, she was going to have to listen to her father bitch about all the sugar in liquor because her cousin couldn’t keep her mouth shut about hitting up a new club that their family opened the week before.

“A club,” Gabbie said, sighing.

Her father eyed her from the side.

“I know, Da. Check my sugars.”

Charles’ lips flattened into a grim line. “You’re my only one left, Gabbie.”

Yeah, she knew.

It meant a lot of things.

She was respected.

Adored.

Spoiled.

And entirely smothered.

“I won’t drink,” she told her father. “But I want to go have a dance, that’s all. I’m done with classes for the summer, so I don’t have to worry about getting up early, either.”

College was no joke. Especially not for an aspiring criminal defense lawyer.