Chasing River (Burying Water #3)(15)
He stretches the bottom out and I notice a name scrawled across the banner. “Delaney’s?” he reads, as if in question. “Not far from here. But . . .” He smirks, his gaze scanning my face, my shirt, my bangles, dangling with sparkly charms. “I’m not so sure it is a place for you.”
“Thank you.” I dismiss his warning easily. If I have the chance to find this guy so I can thank him, then it’s the perfect place for me.
FIVE
River
“She keeps turning me down.” Rowen tosses the bar rag over his shoulder, freeing his hands to lift the rack of dirty glasses going to the back for washing. “I don’t know why.”
“She must smell your desperation.” A swift kick to the back of my knee has me cringing but laughing.
“Me? You’re one to talk. I haven’t seen a bird walk out of your room in months.”
“You know damn well why.” Since our brother was released. Six years locked up with a bunch of bastards meant Aengus has been humping anything he can fool into coming home with him. Plus, there’s no way I want anyone I spend the night with to have the misfortune of running into him on their way to use the one toilet in our house. Aengus has no shame when it comes to ogling birds.
Growing up, Aengus and I were the ones attached at the hip, even though Rowen and I are only eleven months apart. I’d like to think that I was the buffer between the two of them, keeping Aengus from recruiting the youngest and most naïve Delaney boy to follow in his footsteps.
Fortunately, Rowen figured out that Aengus is a f*ck-up all on his own.
“Hopefully we’ll have the house sold soon. We can get a nice apartment in the IFSC and be done with him.” When our nanny left the house to us, she said that we should live in it until we all went our separate ways. I think she meant marrying good Irish Catholic girls and fathering children.
He sighs. “I wish things were like the good ol’ days.”
I know the good ol’ days he’s referring to. The period was short. A summer, really. Aengus was twenty-two, I was eighteen, and Rowen seventeen—legally not allowed to pour pints, but he did a good job of hiding it. The three of us basically ran this place, giving Da a long-deserved break. Sure, Aengus had been helping Da for years already, but that had more troubles than merits. Aengus had a knack for weeding out the good servers from the bad with nothing more than a five-minute interview. His brute strength and affinity for manual labor meant Da rarely had to do anything besides pour pints and chat up customers. But a lot of what we do here involves keeping a smile on customers’ faces and making them want to come back. Aengus was never good at that part. And he’s as useless as tits on a bull when it comes to taking care of the books. He could hand out a paycheck, but figuring out how much we owed someone? Odds are half the staff would get paid too much and the other half would get ripped off.
None of that mattered, though, the day the cops slapped handcuffs on him. Da told him that as long as he was involved with any of these dissident IRA groups, he didn’t have a job here. In our father’s eyes, having the likes of those madmen associated with Delaney’s was like spitting on his family’s graves.
I think Rowen was under the impression that Aengus would be reformed and slinging pints behind the pub with us again when they released him. But I’m the one who visited him the most while he was away, and while I had my own hopes, I knew better. Aengus has been out of the Delaney’s picture for so long, I forget what it’s even like to have him here.
Rowen’s arm muscles strain as he disappears through the narrow solid door and into the back with the dirty glasses, only to reappear a moment later with another rack, this one steaming hot, fresh from the dishwasher.
“Have you seen Da lately?” I ask.
“He was supposed to come in yesterday but his leg was acting up again. Ma rang here, asking where you were.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“That you were bucking some bird all night and she broke your cock.”
There’s no way he said that to Marion Delaney. The pint-sized woman would have appeared on our doorstep to drag me out by my ear and knock Rowen good across the cheek.
Before I can come up with a proper retort, a chirpy waitress—Selma, from Spain, who Aengus never would have hired—steps up to the computer by the bar, tray tucked under her arm. “Three Guinness and two Smithwick’s please,” she announces as she punches the order in, batting her eyelashes for Rowen. She used to do that to me, but I’ve given her so much flack about getting the pints of Guinness to customers as soon as they hit the counter that she avoids me now.
“Sure thing, love.” Rowen grins. He waits until she moves on to another table of customers before muttering under his breath, “And she sure is . . .”
“And that’s why Greta keeps telling you to f*ck off.” I grab a glass and start pouring. “I’ll go see Ma and Da tomorrow morning, if you’re good with opening. Unless you want to go instead?” While our da can’t tend bar and lift things anymore on account of his bad leg, he still takes care of all the books.
“No bleeding way. Ma’s still on my back about messing things up with Irene.” Rowen’s focus roves the bar as he pours the rich stout with the expertise of a man who’s been doing it since he was fourteen, long before the law said he could. That’s the thing about a pub like Delaney’s.