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“What about me? I mean, what about everything…?”
As in, am I free? Am I still a prisoner?
“It’s over. All of it. You have your life, your career. This is where you belong.”
“Can you stay for a while? Just for tonight, even?”
I consider her request. “One night, then I have to go.” Or more accurately, I need to leave while I still can. Before it becomes just too difficult, too painful.
Before I have to finally admit what this woman means to me.
CHAPTER19
Tony
Ethan regardsme across the expanse of his desk. “What was she thinking?” he asks, as much to himself as to me.
It was a rhetorical question. It doesn’t require an answer, so I don’t offer one.
“Vinny McSweeney’s been wanting his own place. He can have the Hope.” The matter settled to his satisfaction, Ethan moves on. “I’m thinking of acquiring this place.” He shoves an estate agents’ brochure across the desk. “I need you to check it out for me.”
I ignore the glossy leaflet extolling the virtues of the converted cinema previously in use as the Top Pocket snooker hall. I’m more interested in other premises. “You don’t need to take her pub.”
His dark eyebrows go up. “Do I not? I can’t trust her anymore.”
“I think you can.”
“And I think your judgement is clouded. You have a thing going on with Jenna Delaney, and I can live with that. It’s the main reason I’m prepared to let this go with just replacing her in the pub. You know well enough if it had been anyone else…”
I do know. Blood would have been spilt, an example made.
“She’s learned her lesson,” I argue. “She’s still recovering from the battering she had from that bastard you have in your cells.”
“He’s not in my cells anymore. Fuller’s somewhere out in the North Atlantic now, feeding fishes.”
“I’m glad hear it. But the Hope has been in Jenna’s family for thirty years. Her grandfather ran it, then her dad. It’s the Delaneys’ place…”
“It’smyplace,” Ethan growls. “And I don’t want it turned into a kindergarten or some sort of soup kitchen. I run a business there, not a fucking charity.”
I draw in a breath. “It could be both.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Not everything we do is for profit. You’ve done good things, just because you can. What about Janey?”
“What about her?”
Janey was working as an underage prostitute when Ethan met her. He brought her home to Caraksay and gave her a job as a trainee cook. He arranged for her to go to college, and eventually she’ll be running at least one of our restaurants. She’s a good kid. She works hard, and she’s bright. But there was nothing in it for Ethan when he took her under his wing. He helped her for no better reason than he could, and he wanted to, so he did.
“She was a project,” he replies.
“And those kids are Jenna’s project. It’s her community, and mine for that matter. She wants to help, to give at least some of them a chance of a better life, a way out of poverty. And don’t forget, they’re the punters of the future. You could see it as a long-term business investment.”
His jaw hardens. “Or I could see it as an employee who thought she saw a chance to pull a fast one. If you and Jack hadn’t spotted the discrepancies in the accounts, do you really believe she’d have paid me back what she took?”
“I do, actually.”
“Well, we shall never know, will we?’
