We’re all laughing when the door opens, and a man walks in. Suddenly, everyone stops laughing.
They stop smiling altogether.
“Fecker,” Kane mutters under his breath.
I look around in confusion as the faces that were joyful and happy a moment ago turn to disgust as if someone put spoiled fish on their plates.
“Joey, you’re back,” Maggie says with a happy smile and bounces over to give him a hug. “You didn’t call.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Joey says, but there’s no joy on his face. “You know I don’t like you waiting tables here. There’s no need for you to work.”
“And you know I don’t like just sitting at home by myself all week. I’m happy here.”
Joey sighs and glares daggers at Kane and Keegan. When his angry gaze sweeps the room, he does a double-take on me. His eyes narrow as though he recognizes me. Should I know him? He looks vaguely familiar, but I see hundreds of people every week. Not to mention, my face is all over my marketing materials, so that’s most likely where he’s seen me.
“Well, get your stuff together so we can go home.”
Maggie rolls her eyes and turns to the bar. “Can you do without me for the rest of the night?”
“If I must,” Keegan says. “It’s a quiet night.”
Maggie reaches for a chip in one of the baskets on the bar, but before she can pop it into her mouth, Joey says, “Do you really need to eat that, babe?”
She pauses and then shrugs a shoulder. “No, I’ve probably had too many already.”
She tosses the chip into a nearby garbage can, gathers her purse and jacket, and kisses her brothers on the cheek. When she reaches me, she grins and hugs me. “I’m so glad I got to meet you.”
“Me, too.”
“Mags, we need to go. I’m tired. I’ve been traveling all day, for God’s sake.”
“Coming.” Maggie joins him, and he hustles her out of the bar, letting the door swing shut behind him.
“I feckin hate that guy,” Keegan says as he dries a glass with a white towel. “I’ve hated him since the day she first brought him home when she was sixteen.”
“I take it that’s her husband?” I ask.
“Aye,” Kane says, his voice hard and full of frustration. “She married him right out of high school, despite all of us telling her not to.”
“Probably because we all told her not to,” Keegan adds.
“He’s a spineless arse,” Kane says. “You heard the way he speaks to her. I want to feckin punch him senseless.”
“And she’d hate you for it,” I say, patting his arm gently. “We can’t choose who our loved ones end up with.”
“Do you like your in-laws, then?” Keegan asks.
“I love my sister’s husband, Wyatt. He’s a good man. Funny. Obsessed with her, which is awesome. My brother, Archer, is single.”
I won’t even go into Archer’s past. That’s a long story for another day.
The music starts up again, another slow tune about missing a boy who went off to war.
“Why do the Irish always sing about death and battles?” I ask.
“Do we?” Kane asks, listening as he thinks it over. “I guess we do. I don’t know why.”
We stay long enough to finish our beers, and then we say our goodbyes to Keegan and the others, and Kane tucks me into his fancy car.
We drive about fifteen minutes before he pulls into a long, windy driveway, and up to a beautiful house hidden in the trees.
“You can’t see it because it’s dark,” he says as he turns off the car, but doesn’t make a move to get out, “but out that way is the Pacific. We’re up on cliffs here. My barn is that way.” He points to the left. “And this is my home.”
“No neighbors.”
“No, I bought this and the properties on either side so I’d have my privacy. I wanted space. I like being alone, Anastasia. More than most.”
“You didn’t have to bring me here.”
“That’s not what I’m meaning,” he mutters, that lilt thick in his voice again. “I’m happy to have you here. But when I was making a home for myself, I knew that I needed solitude. And the cliffs with the ocean crashing on them.”
“Why the cliffs?”
“Because they remind me of Ireland,” he says softly. “I’m from the west coast of the country, with rolling green hills and cliffs next to the sea. This place is as close to home as I found, and I scooped it up as soon as I was able.”
“You’re homesick.”
“Sometimes.”
“And is that what you meant in the museum when I asked you what you were doing? You were remembering Ireland?”
He looks at me now, his face illuminated by the light of the full moon. “I did. That’s what I was thinking of when I blew the glass in that room. The water as it hit the cliffs.”