by K. C. Crowne
“I swear,” I said. “That man’s got one thing in his head and one thing only.”
Collin chuckled. Aiden finished up, shaking hands with Sidney one more time before making his way into the car, Sidney shutting the door after him, a big smile on the producer’s face.
Then we were off, the car driven by a chauffeur hidden behind a partition of mirrored glass.
Aiden was all smiles. He clapped his hand hard onto Collin’s shoulder, opening his mouth slightly as if to say, “can you believe our luck?”
“Now, how about that, boys?” he asked, nodding in the direction of Sidney and his crew as we drove off. “We just put the ink on what might very well be a million-Euro deal!”
“Right,” Collin said, “and all we had to do was sell our souls in the process.”
“Not to mention our dignity.”
Aiden waved his hand through the air. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said. “You two are acting like we just signed a deal with lord of the underworld himself.”
“Well,” Collin replied with a smirk. “LA does get rather hot in the summer, from what I hear.”
That got a chuckle out of me. As I had my laugh, I opened the small bar and took out a little airplane bottle of whiskey.
“One of those for me too, brother,” Collin said. “I need it after all that.”
“Same for me,” Aiden agreed. “Pass that on over – I’ll take it straight. I want to celebrate!”
I passed around the little bottles, deciding that I didn’t need a glass either. Once we had them all in hand, we said “slainte,” tapped the bottles, and cracked them open.
I let out a satisfied ahh as the good stuff made its way down and settled in my belly the way quality whiskey did. After Collin sipped, I watched as he began to look around the car with a skeptical expression on his face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“So, we signed the contract, yeah?”
“I do believe that was what the meeting was about,” Aiden replied with a smirk.
“Then that means we’re on the show, as in, they’re going to be getting footage of us whenever they can. What if…” here leaned closer, as if what he had to say next was top-secret, classified information. “What if he’s got this car wired for sound, yeah? Sidney was all kinds of insistent that we take this car, and that might be for a reason, you know? I mean, what if it’s in the contract that whatever footage of us he can get is within reason?”
Aiden snorted, sitting back and shaking his head. “Someone’s bleeding paranoid.”
“Well, he might have a point,” I said. “I don’t trust Sidney as far as I can toss his arse.”
“I swear,” Aiden said with a shake of his head. “We were all just handed the chance of a lifetime and all you two can do is look on the negative side.”
“The chance a lifetime?” I asked, barely able to contain my laughter. “You’re a real gas, Aide. Tell me how the hell this thing is going to be any more than a royal pain in the arse.”
“You see that assistant back there?” he asked. “The fine thing with hair as bright as the California sun? Imagine your pick of women who look like that. Once this reality show starts making the rounds, we’re not going to be able to walk through town without getting mobbed by stunning American women like that.”
“So,” Collin piped up. “We’re not going to be getting a moment’s peace, is what you’re getting at.”
“Hey, if it comes to the boring silence of our day-to-day and a little fun, I’ll take the fun. Especially if the fun looks like her.”
He scanned our eyes, and it was clear he could tell that his arguments weren’t finding purchase.
“OK, then think about the money – you know, the reason why we all agreed to thing to begin with?”
“We agreed to this,” I said. “Because we want to buy that house across the street from our clinic and turn it into a women’s shelter. And with all our money tied up in the clinic expansions, we’re in desperate straits if we want to buy that house before someone else scoops it up.”
“Right,” Aiden said. “The shelter’s the number one goal. But you can’t tell me that a little extra money doesn’t sound nice? And more than that, getting some publicity’s the best way to get more patients into the clinic.”
“But we’re going to need to be careful on that front,” Collin interjected. “Remember, we broke off from the hospital and started our own clinic because we wanted to get away from that big-hospital assembly-line style of care. If we start taking on every Tom, Dick, And Harry that comes to us because they saw the show, we’re going to become the very thing we hate.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Aiden answered. “But we’re not going to get like that. And the three of us are some of the best OB/GYNs in Ireland! We’d be able to take on double the number of patients without letting quality of care suffer.”
“You’re mighty confident of that, Aide,” I said. “Just keep in mind that we said we wanted to keep things small and intimate at the clinic that we never forgot a single patient’s name. I start hearing you flub on that score and-”
“I won’t, alright?” he asked. “My head’s in the clinic, one-hundred-percent. Well, I can spare a percent or two for the show. And for the women it’ll bring into our orbit. But you know what I mean.” He followed this up with his usual, broad smile.
“Speaking of which,” Collin said. “Did you ever hear back from the lawyers about the house?”
I sighed, running my hand through my hair, the mere mention of the house making want to reach for another whiskey. I held back, not wanting to get too hammered in the middle of the day.
“Not yet,” I said. “We just sent the papers over to the States not too long ago. But we should be hearing back from them before too long.”
“And think about it,” Aiden said, raising a finger as if a great point had just occurred to him. “Buying the house is only half the battle. Say we manage to get the owners to sign on the dotted line. We’re still going to have to pay to renovate the place to make it suitable as a shelter. And you know the reality show money will be perfect for an undertaking like that.”
I sighed. Aiden was right and the look on Collin’s face made it clear he felt the same way.
A bleeding reality show. My life was about to turn into a zoo.
Chapter 4
RONAN
“You’re gonna be thrilled, Ro!” Aiden had shouted out of the window of the luxury sedan yesterday afternoon when he’d dropped me off at my place. “Best decision of your bleeding life!”
Just thinking of the fine mess I’d gotten myself into was more than enough to bring a wry smirk to my face. I was in it to win it, as the Yanks said, and there was no going back. Before too long the endless Tik Toks that Brendan had made me be a part of would seem like nothing.
It was Sunday morning, and I’d decided to swing by the clinic to take a look at the property across the street, the house we’d put a bid on that I was hoping to hear back about before too long. As I stood in front of the place, my steaming mug of coffee in my hands, there was no doubt in my mind that it was perfect.
The house was two stories, done in a classic Irish cottage style, the structure of rustic gray stone and the roof thatched. What made it slightly less classic were the Tudor embellishments on the façade, dark beams of wood that cut across the stone in straight lines.
I loved it. Even if weren’t planning on making it into a women’s shelter, I could find myself wanting a place like that; a gorgeous little spot to relax and savor the countryside. I stood on the curving, stone road that separated the clinic from the house. A few other properties were down the way, a pub called McCarthy’s, named for the ancestors of the owner of the cottage, was next to the clinic. Needless to say, the spot was a frequent stop for me and my brothers after long day at the clinic.
The clinic itself was near the small town of Sandy Cove, which was situated on the north shore of the Broadmeadow Estuary. The largest town, Swords, w
as just to the west, and Dublin city center was around ten kilometers away. It was perfect. We were near enough to the city that we never felt isolated, but we were far enough from it that we never felt smothered.
The house would be bleeding perfect for the shelter. We’d wanted someplace where the women who came to stay could feel safe, at ease, and the cottage was perfect for that. The building itself had three bedrooms, though we’d planned to put another building or two on the property -all done in the style of the main cottage, naturally- in order to accommodate more guests.
At the moment it was all seeming a fantastical sort of pipe dream. The boys and I had put a ton of cash into the clinic to get it all up and running. While I had no doubt the clinic would make us all very, very wealthy men down the line, for the moment we were strapped. The house would need to be bought, first and foremost. Then we’d have to redo it, get it up to code for our intended use. Then we’d have to build the new buildings and then there’d be all the hidden costs that you never knew about until a project was under way.
“Hell,” I said, shaking my head as I regarded the house. “We’re going to have to do this damn reality show thing, aren’t we?” I said the words to no one in particular, puffs of air coming out with each syllable.
In the meantime, it couldn’t hurt to dream, could it? I took a sip of my coffee and started across the way. It was a gorgeous morning for a little trespassing – the sun was out, the sky was a brilliant blue, and the air had just enough chill to it to let you know that winter was just around the way.
I kept my hand over my coffee as I hurried up to the house, taking a sip when I was over on the other side. Once there, I made my way around the back of the cottage and smiled broadly as I took in the sight of the property. The house was great, no doubts at all, but the property was the other big reason I wanted the space. Out behind the house was a long stretch of rolling hills, the land dotted with oak and ash trees, a few grand willows draping their branches over the small pond. The pond was lovely too, with a small dock and enough space for fishing or a little dip if weather permitted.
It was easy to imagine the place once we’d had our way with it. I could picture the women there, women who’d come for shelter, to get away, if only for a time, from the troubles they’d run from. I could already picture them lounging under the trees, going for walks in the grass or hikes in the thick wooded area behind the property. Here, they’d get a taste of a life that many of them hadn’t known for a long, long time.
“Well, well,” spoke a familiar voice behind me. “Doing a little trespassing, eh, good doctor? We’re not going to have to call the guard, are we?”
I turned to see Annie and Michael Byrne, the couple who’d been serving as caretakers for the land for as long as I’d known. They were a charming couple, both in their late sixties, Annie with a slim, friendly face and a head of silver hair, Michael on the heavier side, his face fleshy and open, not a hair on his head and his usual forest-green cable-knit cardigan wrapped around his big upper body.
I laughed. “That’d be quite a way to start the day now, wouldn’t it?” I asked as I came over to them.
“What’s the craic, Ronan?” Michael asked as I approached. “It’s your day off, isn’t it?”
“Now, I could say the same for you both,” I replied. “Or did a full Irish breakfast at McCallister’s get you coming around on a Sunday morning?”
“That does sound good, now that you mention it,” Annie said. “But no, we’re here for work.”
I cocked my head to the side, confused. “You’re here for work…on the weekend? Tell me you two aren’t that bored in retirement.”
Annie and Michael laughed, but before they could say a word, rain began sprinkling down. The three of us looked up to see that, while the sun was still out, a few dark clouds had rolled overhead and were dumping their rain.
“Devil’s whipping his wife,” Michael said. “That’s what me grandma always called a sunshower.”
“Your grandma also drank six pack of Killian’s every day. Let’s get inside and have some coffee, shall we?”
I glanced down at my mug to see that it was nearly empty.
“That sounds mighty fine, Annie.” I was speaking true – a top-up sounded right. I was also eager to take another look inside the house.
Michael opened the door for Annie and I and moments later we were inside. The house was just as cozy and quaint as I remembered, but it was more than that – it smelled fresh and seemed even cleaner than it had been when I’d been asked in for coffee a few weeks before.
Coffee was brewing on the stove, a few bags of groceries on the long farmer’s table that cut through the kitchen. On top of it all, a bouquet of flowers sat on the counter in a powder-blue vase.
Something was going on.
“So,” I said. “There’s a whole heap of groceries here on the table. And you two are working on your day off. What’s the story?”
“You want some cream in your coffee?” Annie asked as she took my cup and hurried over to the counter. “I picked it up fresh on the way over – it’s from the Ryans’ farm.”
“That would be grand,” I said as I eased into one of the open chairs at the farmer’s table.
“The story,” Michael said as Annie prepared the cups. “Is the owner’s coming back.”
“Thank you, Annie,” I said as she set down the steaming mug of fresh coffee in front of me. “And the owner? I’m guessing you’re not talking about the good Mrs. McCallister?”
Annie chuckled. “No, last I heard she was still up with the good Lord. We’re talking about one of the current owners of the place.”
“Wait, one of the American sisters? Get up the yard with that now! They’re coming to Ireland? Why?”
“Your guess is as good as ours on that front,” Michael replied. “But yesterday we received an email from one of the sisters that said she was coming in on Monday. So, she paid us a little extra to open the place up, get it nice and fresh, clean the sheets, fill the fridge with groceries. Not like we had anything better going on today.”
“Plus, they really pay us more than they ought to keep this place looking right. Guess they’ve got a sentimental attachment to the place.”
“Well, it belonged to their grandmother, Annie – of course, they’re attached to it.”
Annie sat down in the seat across from me, next to Michael.
“Ah, Mary. Now, she was a real dear – one of the kindest, sweetest women I’ve ever known. And she loved those girls.”
“That’s right, she did,” Michael said. “Damn shame that they didn’t bother to come see her more often.”
Annie knitted her brow and gave her husband a slight swat on the arm.
“Now, darling, you know it wasn’t a matter of wanting. They didn’t have all that much money, from what I heard. And it’s not like Mary’s pockets were bursting with gold coins.”
“Aye, aye,” Michael said. “And be careful with your smacking – I’m always telling you that you hit harder than you think.” Michael followed this up with a wink and Annie playfully shoved him back.
“As for why she’s coming now, well, your guess is as good as mine.”
“I know what it’s about,” Michael said, leaning forward and tapping on the table with his fingertip. “She’s coming because she wants to know who offered to buy the place.
I sat back, letting out a sigh.
“What’s that all about, Ronan?” Annie asked. “You’re worried she’s going to mess about in your business?”
I shook my head as I reached for my coffee. “No, it’s not that at all. More that I’m planning on buying this place, yeah? And I was hoping to do it nice and easy – all through mail, no meetings or anything. The good Lord knows I’ve had enough of those these days. But now that she’s coming, that means she’s no doubt going to want to meet with me.”
“As well she should,” Annie replied. “Hell, if some random person had wanted to buy a piece of my family’s
land out of the blue, I’d sure want to know why.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Michael asked. He leaned forward and waggled his bushy eyebrows, a glimmer in his eye. “What if she’s a looker? I’ve heard what sorts of things those American girls get into.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard a bleeding thing,” Annie countered with a roll of her eyes. “And these are the little girls we’ve met here back when they visited Mary! You’ve got quite a mind to think that way.”
“All I’m saying is that if she’s single, and Ronan’s single…”
I held up my palms. “Alright, alright – that’s quite enough of that.”
“Well, crass as my husband’s being, he raises a point. You’re a handsome doctor, Ronan – no reason you shouldn’t be married.”
“Far too busy to be thinking about anything of that sort. I’ve got the clinic and dealing with my idiot brothers – I say idiot with great affection, by the by. And…I don’t know, I dated like mad when I was a young man, more than enough to carry me through my thirties without needing a woman by side.”
“Fine talk,” Michael laughed. “When I was your age, this one here had already given me two sons and two daughters.”
Annie laughed. “Now you’re making it sound like I was a breeding cow!”
“Oh, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the part I played in those wee ones coming into the world.”
Annie laughed again, this time giving her husband another playful slug.
I smiled right along with them, but as soon as the reality of the situation came back, the easy grin faded from my face.
“Now, what’s the matter with you, then?” Annie asked, reaching across the table and giving my arm a quick pat. “You look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, boy.”
I shook my head before taking a sip of my coffee.
“It’s nothing – just bothering myself about nothing.”
“Well, out with it,” Annie commanded, a sly smirk on her face. “Nothing wrong with a wee bit of gossip.”