Page 10 of Blood in the Water
She was still tingling from her time with Nolan, still caught in the space between the glow of their hours together and the pain of their goodbye, between hope for the future and fear that they wouldn’t make it through the present.
At first, she’d rebelled against his plans to rent them an apartment, but after the FBI raided the Cat and Seamus’s house, she’d agreed it made sense. By then she’d known that she wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to him a second time. It had been hard enough the first time when she’d accepted half a million dollars from Nolan’s mother to leave him. Cashing the check had felt like selling her soul, like sinking her heart in the bay, but Owen had only recently been diagnosed with ALS, and she’d known his care was going to exceed the limitation of their insurance by the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The secret blanketed her like a shroud. Sometimes she was able to forget it had happened, to forget she hadn’t yet confessed the truth to Nolan about the reason she’d left him the first time. Other times she could hardly breathe for the weight of it.
He would understand. Or he would say he understood. But the knowledge would destroy his already fragile relationship with his mother, a Boston blue blood who had someone other than Bridget in mind when she thought of her future daughter-in-law.
Nolan would never forgive his mother, and while he’d say the rift was her doing, they would both know Bridget was the one who had driven the wedge between them, even if it had been unwillingly.
And then there was her other fear: that Nolan would never look at her the same way again. That even though he would forgive her, deep down he’d know she was willing to walk away from him for money. It wouldn’t inspire confidence in someone like Nolan, someone who’d spent his life trying to deny his wealth, trying to prove he was more than the trust fund left to him by his father.
She sighed as she pulled into the Cat. She had to tell him. She just needed to find the right time, some time when they weren’t both worried about being found out by Seamus, when they weren’t fresh off one crisis or heading into another.
She parked in the small parking lot between the Cat and the liquor store next door and took a deep breath. She’d never enjoyed coming to the Cat, but her nervousness had increased exponentially since Baren Maguire and his crew had arrived from Ireland. She’d known by then that Seamus had a history with the IRA, but she’d known Seamus her whole life, could pretend he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer long enough to make small talk at the Cat and get out.
There was no way to pretend with Baren and Oz and the rest of the Ireland crew. They looked at her with a combination of suspicion, lust, and disgust. She was the lone woman in their midst, and she had a feeling her education didn’t endear her to them. She made an effort to be friendly within the bounds of professionalism, but she knew they thought she was an uppity, know-it-all bitch.
She got out of the car and made her way to the sidewalk that ran in front of the bar. Music drifted onto the street before she even opened the door.
It was after one in the morning on a weekday and the bar was empty of customers except for Tim O’Doyle, the father of one of Bridget’s classmates from Quincy High. Connor looked up from behind the bar when she entered, a smile breaking out across his face.
“Hey! You’re here late,” he said as she made her way through the room.
She suspected he had a crush on her, but while she registered his good looks, it was a dispassionate kind of observation. No one compared to Nolan. No one ever had.
She smiled. “Duty calls.”
He nodded and she thought she caught a glimpse of camaraderie, an acknowledgment that they had both ended up working for Seamus O’Brien through circumstances they could not have foreseen. She suddenly hoped he stuck around when it was all over, that they would have a chance to become friends, compare notes on the strange paths that had converged to bring them both to the Cat.
Mick was standing at the back curtain along with Sean, Baren’s son, both of them watchful even though she was alone. She could hardly remember the old days, when Mickhad half-heartedly guarded the door to Seamus’s private room, the odds of anyone daring to stage an attack against Seamus in his neighborhood, at his bar, slim to none.
She forced herself to meet Mick’s eyes, if only to show him she wasn’t going to cower when he leered at her. He’d always given her the willies, one of the few guys from the neighborhood who didn’t feel like some distant relative.
“Hey, Mick.” She looked at Sean. “Hi, Sean.”
Sean’s blue eyes were guarded, the perpetual chip he carried on his shoulder still embedded there. She felt sorry for him. She could almost smell his desperation to prove he was man enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with his father.
“He expecting you?” Mick asked.
She nodded. “He called.”
Mick tipped his head at Sean, who ducked behind the curtain. She heard him give her name and she stepped into the room, forcing herself not to wave away the smoke in the air. She was surprised Seamus hadn’t dropped dead from lung cancer, and the rest of them too, given how much secondhand smoke they all breathed.
“There’s my girl!” Seamus said as she stepped into the room. His face was ruddy, a product of the cigarettes he chain-smoked and the beer he drank like water. “I can always count on you.” He turned to Baren, sitting at his side and watching Bridget through narrowed eyes. “Didn’t I say I could always count on her?”
“That you did,” Baren said, his accent thick.
They were alone except for Brendan, a new recruit Seamus had brought in right before everything went to hell at the end of last year.
Seamus nodded at one of the empty chairs at his table. “Want to sit? Have a beer?”
“I shouldn’t,” she said. “My mother might need my help with Owen.”
Seamus shook his head and looked at Baren. “Didn’t I tell you she was a good girl? They don’t make them like this anymore. Taking care of her little brother, helping out at home, we should all be so lucky.”
Baren didn’t say anything and Seamus rifled through the envelopes on the table near his elbow until he found the one with her name on it.
“There you are, lass. And how is Owen?”