The second was from Declan, time-stamped an hour earlier, asking how I was. There was nothing more than friendship between Declan and me, but I still felt guilty for what had happened just now with Cian. Yes, I’d stopped his kiss, but I wondered if I’d encouraged him somehow.
Thinking it over, I decided I hadn’t and that made me angry. Two times now I’d walked away when he made a pass at me. You’d think he would have gotten the message loud and clear the first time, but maybe I needed to be more direct? I hated that he’d put me in a position where I had to be “the bad guy,” but it was time for me to tell him in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t interested.
The other thing that pissed me off was because of Cian, now I didn’t feel like getting into a flirty back and forth with Declan, the guy I was interested in.
Yeah, I’d have to have a word with him.
Chapter Eight
Declan
“How’s it then?” Cian asked, concerned over the sound thrashing the team had taken at the weekend.
“Feck me, it was brutal,” I groaned, rubbing the bruise on my shoulder. “It’s like they were trying to take me out on purpose.”
“Fecking mercenaries,” he hissed over the line. “Most of those eejits aren’t even French.”
Cian hated athletes who went wherever the biggest paycheck could be found. Right now that was in France, where team standings were bolstered by the biggest and baddest southern hemisphere players they could hire.
Which is how I’d taken a beating from some Fijians during a tougher than usual match in Paris. At six-foot-one, I was smaller than most of their team. Pitting my speed and agility against their size and strength, I’d done my best to manage the match, which had resulted in a handful of successful penalty kicks and a late-game try, but they’d come at a price. Getting out of bed the next couple of days was going to hurt.
“When are you coming back around?” Cian asked.
“I dunno,” I evaded.
The truth was I was tired of my mam’s constant questions about when I was going to bring a nice girl home and make her a granny. When I reminded her I was only 27, she reminded me she’d had both of her kids by then. I’d stopped trying to explain why that sort of life wasn’t going to work for me.
“Come on, it’s been over a month since we’ve had a proper pint.”
“You could always come here,” I offered, knowing he wouldn’t.
Cian hated Dublin. Even when he lived there, he’d gone home often to get away from the crowds and noise.
“Nah man, I got real work to do.”
Yes, he did. I knew that, but I was starting to hate when his tone made it seem like he had a real job while I was just playing around with rugby. If things had turned out differently he wouldn’t be so flippant.
“When are you next off?” I asked.
I was hoping I could get him to come down for the next match. It’d been months since the lads had seen him. More than that, it’d been forever since we’d gotten shit-faced and went in search of pussy.
As the thought crossed my mind, Sophie’s face flashed through my head. I’d made some inroads with her and I was beginning to think she secretly enjoyed our banter. But if she knew what I was really like—the man who went out every weekend and fucked a new girl—she’d want nothing to do with me.
Note to self: no bar hopping.
“I could probably do with a visit next weekend. Would that work?” Cian asked, breaking into my thoughts of the green-eyed beauty.
“We’re off to Wales then.”
“Looks like you’re on your own then, boyo.”
I was about to tell him I was never alone when two blondes recognized me. It used to be that I could grab a bite or a cup of coffee at the cafe by my place without being harassed, but those days were gone.
“Hang on,” I told Cian, holding the phone to my chest while the taller of the two approached.
Up close she was a lot younger than I’d initially thought, her age masked by the vast amounts of makeup she wore. Now that she was in front of me, I guessed her to be about 16 or so but when she giggled and turned pink under all that face paint, I pegged her for even younger.
“Oh my god, are you Declan O’Shaughnessy?” she squealed.
I gave her my most charming smile and watched her melt. “I am,” I acknowledged, putting my hand out to shake.
She hesitated, then reached for me while looking over her shoulder to make sure her friend was watching.
“Oh my god, it’s him,” she screeched.
“And you are?” I asked, trying to be kind instead of annoyed.
“Peggy,” she chirped, holding my fingers in a death grip.
As gently as I could, I pulled my hand from her grasp.
“Hello Peggy, thank you for coming by.”
Generally speaking, I was always happy to greet fans—after all, them coming to see me play every week and talk about me on social media was how my agent justified my salary—but sometimes you had to know exactly when and how to nip an awkward encounter in the bud. Not that Peggy and her gal were bad sorts, but if I let them, they’d gawk at me all day.
“Can you sign something for me?” she blurted and I prayed it was something innocuous like a napkin.
“Sure,” I answered cautiously.
More than once after agreeing to an autograph, a woman had bared her tits and a Sharpie. The scary thing was it didn’t matter how old or young the bird was; teenagers and grandmas alike had been known to flash their boobs at me.
When she reached inside her bag and pulled out a folder covered in pictures I sighed with relief. And then I laughed when I saw photos of two of my teammates affixed to the corner. When I searched for a spot for my signature, she grabbed it out of my hands and flipped it over.
“Oh no, you’re right there.”
Oh my.
My face took up the entire back. I suppressed a smug smile, gratified I warranted more real estate than Liam and Aidan combined.
“Good picture,” I said with a wink as I signed my name.
“Thank you so much,” she replied breathlessly before running back to join her friend.
Remembering I still had Cian on the line, I pulled the phone from my chest and put it to my ear. “You still there?”
“Yeah, what was that all about?”
I could tell he was annoyed.
“Just a fan,” I muttered, not wanting to make a big deal about it since the last time we’d gone out, no one had recognized him.
“Must be rough, having women throw themselves at you.”
“Look man, she was practically a kid,” I barked, a little louder than I meant to. I glanced over to make sure the girls hadn’t heard me but they were still chattering away. “She turned red before she even said a word and I swear she was seconds from pissing herself when I shook her hand.”
“Speaking of pissing yourself.” Cian remarked cryptically. “You’re gonna want to come home soon.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Let’s just say there’s something going on here you’re going to shit yourself over.”
“Which is it, piss myself or crap my pants?”
“Probably both,” he said chuckling.
“And you’re not going to tell me what it is, are you?”
“Hell no! Not when I know you can’t stand being in the dark. It’s killing you right now, isn’t it?”
He was right. I hated not knowing something everyone else already did. It was a critical character flaw both Cian and Aoife had spent years exploiting. They knew if they had a secret, I’d move mountains to figure out what it was.
“And I have to come for a visit to figure it out?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
And that’s how Cian got me to call my mam and tell her I was coming for a visit.
Chapter Nine
Sophie
“So Gramps, fill me in on what’s really going on with the pub.”
I sat down on the sofa
to join him for our daily cup of tea.
“The pub’s fine,” he responded gruffly and wouldn’t meet my eyes. If he had his way we’d put of this conversation indefinitely.
“Oh really?” I stared, waiting for him to crack.
Recent experience taught me if I didn’t speak he’d eventually cave. He hated when women looked at him with expectations.
After several seconds of tense silence, he relented. “It’s the economy.”
Setting his mug in front of him with a thud, the liquid sloshed over the side of the cup and onto the sturdy pine table. Before he could strain himself, I scooted over to wipe up the mess.
“I can do that Sophie. You’re not here to play nursemaid.”
“I know you can, and no, I’m not,” I agreed. “But I’m closer and I don’t want to give you a chance to dodge my question by focusing on something else.”
I smiled and he grinned back. We both knew that’s exactly what he’d do if I gave him the chance.
“And no, it’s not the economy,” I added, cognizant of the direction the conversation was heading and my need to tread lightly.
I found it difficult to talk about money with my grandparents since they’d never had a lot of it to begin with and the financial downturn following the collapse of the Celtic Tiger had hit them hard. But that had been a years ago and Dublin was booming again. And, as Declan had point out, there was a lot of money being funneled into the community. It was inconceivable to me that a place as well known and loved as Fitzgerald’s hadn’t benefited from the latest upswing.
The other difficult thing about any conversation around money was the two-ton elephant in the room: the other half of my family was quite wealthy and I had a large trust fund that would revert to me when I got married or turned thirty. An economic crash meant something entirely different to the Fitzgeralds than it did to the Newports, and I needed to make sure I didn’t wind up hurting his pride.
“Ballycurra’s not Dublin, you know,” he answered churlishly.
“You’re right, it’s not. But it’s close enough that some of that money has found its way here,” I explained. “And I’ve looked at real estate listings for Ballycurra and the surrounding area. I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but this place is a gold mine.”
He scoffed and turned his face away from my probing gaze. It was hard for me to tell if he didn’t want to admit the reality of the current situation or if he actually didn’t know.
“We’re not selling and that’s all I’ll say about that.”
“I’m not asking you to sell, Gramps. At least not yet. But it’s clear the pub could use an injection of cash. I’ve only been here a couple of weeks and I can see there are repairs that need to be made. And who knows about the things I can’t see?” I added, hoping that’d give him an opening to talk about where else there might be problems.
Unfortunately, he closed the door on that line of thinking when he responded, “The pub is fine. Everything’s fine.”
He moved to stand but I grasped his hand a little tighter.
“No, please. Stay and talk to me. I might be able to help you.”
“You don’t have to do that, Sophie.”
I smiled, my heart overflowing with love for a man so proudly obstinate even in the face of obvious need.
“It’s not a matter of having to do anything, Gramps. I want to be here. I want to help. But I can’t do that until you give me a clearer picture of what we’re dealing with.”
He flopped back down in his chair with a wince, then held up his hand. “No, I’m okay. Just a twinge in my back. All this sitting, and not my heart, is going to be what finally kills me.”
“Not funny,” I admonished.
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
He sighed and rubbed his weathered hand over his balding head. “Okay, fine. I can see you’re not going to let go of this, so tell me what you want to know.”
“I want to know how much you’re really spending each month to run the pub against how much you actually bring in. You told me before, but I’ve learned you left some things out. Like the fact that you sometimes offer temporary employment to people off the books. I want to see if there’s somewhere you can cut spending or raise prices to offset those costs.”
He grumbled under his breath about females that were too smart and demanding for their own good before standing and making his way from the room.
“Come on with you then,” he said, crossing into the hallway that led to his disheveled office.
For the next two hours he showed me the books and described the relationships he had with suppliers, going over what a regular month looked like versus a busy one—or worse, a slow one. One of the things I found most surprising was the pub didn’t bring in a ton of revenue during the summer months and he explained it was because people wanted to be outdoors with their friends and family instead of in a dark pub with low ceilings. Not surprisingly, their best business occurred during autumn and winter when customers came in to warm themselves by the pub’s turf fires while they listened to a featured musician or watched a match on the big screen TV.
“Have you ever thought about using some of the space out back to put in a beer garden?” I queried some time later. “With the right atmosphere, you could get people to spend their money here instead of buying alcohol and drinking at home. And what about having some live musicians play outside too?”
“There’s probably zoning codes prohibiting that sort of thing,” my grandma interjected as she breezed past with a bottle of furniture polish in one hand and an old, soft rag in the other. “And besides, the neighbors would hate it.”
I closed my notebook and set the pen I’d been using to jot down notes on top of it. I refused to be stonewalled again by more excuses.
To the right of the pub was a small clothing store that, to my eye, had been shut more than it’d been open. And to the left was a dentist’s office that closed promptly at 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday and didn’t open at all on Fridays or the weekends.
“I’m pretty sure the dentist won’t care since he’s gone before 4 p.m., but the clothing store is a wild card. What other neighbors do you think would object?”
My grandma pulled a chair from the corner and plopped down. “Well, the bank won’t want music blaring at all hours either, that’s for sure.”
“The bank that’s closed by 5 p.m. and not open on weekends?”
I was pretty sure the bank wouldn’t be a problem.
“Well, you might have a point,” she conceded.
“There’s still gotta be some rules about noise or something,” my grandpa said, not warming to the idea. “And besides, we don’t have space for it.”
He was wrong. I’d spent enough time drinking in bars across the globe to see how easily it would be to set up. I envisioned the space out back and how it could work. We had a wide, flat gravel lot, there were no trees to work around, and best of all, it had direct access into the pub from rear double doors. Unfortunately, it wasn’t only a matter of a build out. In order to make the space inviting, we’d have to paint the entire exterior of the building as well and invest in some easy maintenance landscaping and sturdy patio furniture.
“Not to mention the money,” he added.
There, he wasn’t wrong. They didn’t have any spare cash to invest in improvements right now, but I hoped that wouldn’t always be the case. Maybe after we’d poured over the books with a fine-toothed comb we could free up some money to put back into the place.
Despite some roadblocks, I wasn’t ready for them to write the idea off. I knew it had merit, I just had to find a way to piece it all together, and then present a cohesive plan to drive additional revenue without eating into what cash they managed to save in the meantime.
Thank god I had a degree in business. I couldn’t imagine trying to help them if I didn’t.
“If I do the research and determine there’s a way to make it work, will you at least consider it?”
I looked to both my grandma and grandpa. The pub was his pride and joy, but word had gotten back to me that it was my grandma who’d been the one running the place for the last several months. She deserved to have as much a say in its future.
They shared a long, speaking glance, during which I realized they were having a whole conversation I wasn’t privy to.
That’s what you get after fifty years of marriage, I thought, as I watched the silent exchange take place.
It couldn’t have lasted more than 20 seconds but it seemed like much longer from where I was sitting, an outsider to their easy intimacy.
“I tell you what Sophie. We’ll consider your idea, but not yet. It’s not the right time.”
My shoulders slumped in defeat. Short of me investing my meager nest egg, I was out of ideas on how to get our hands on the cash they needed to bring Fitzgerald’s back to its former glory and a viable business once more. My grandparents couldn’t run the place forever, and if we were going to sell it—which I thought would be the eventual outcome—I wanted them to get top dollar. To do that, we needed to turn it into a property investors coveted. As I looked down at the paperwork spread out in front of me, I was stumped on how to achieve that goal.
“Alright then.” I stood and gathered my notes. “Keep me updated,” I added, resigning myself to their wishes.
Disappointed, I ventured back to my room and splayed out on my bed while mentally reviewing the notes I’d jotted down. I didn’t know what I expected to uncover that I might have missed the other 3012 times I’d gone over the situation, but I was desperate.
Not to mention despondent.
It was a Friday night and rather than going out like I used to, I was holed up inside my childhood bedroom. It was like 1999 again, except unlike Prince—may god rest his fabulous, bitchy soul—I was not partying.
Trying Sophie: A Dublin Rugby Romance Page 7