“I do,” Noah said. “I actually studied and practiced counseling before the seminary. I have a degree and everything.”
“What am I going to tell Luke?”
“Everything or nothing,” Noah said. “The most important thing right now is not what you tell other people, it’s what you tell Rosie. She’s a little girl. Whether she knows it or not, she wants a father. She needs a father. You’re that person. Good luck—you’re going to have to learn fast to fully understand what that means.”
“The next person who needs to know about this has to be my mother. In case you haven’t noticed, my mother is a very strong woman with very firm ideas.”
“I’m not as good with mothers,” Noah admitted. “You’ll be fine. I bet she loves you.”
Sean shook his head. “It never kept her from whacking me in the back of the head if I didn’t do what she liked. Strict. My mother was strict. All five of us were altar boys. She’s wanted grandchildren for a long, long time. The fact that she’s had one for this long without knowing? Oh, man, I’m never going to hear the end of that.”
Noah chuckled. “Just duck,” he advised.
On Sunday mornings after church, it wasn’t unusual for Paul Haggerty to set up a work station at Jack’s Bar. He had an on-site construction trailer and a small office in his home, but he liked getting a little work done here. He’d set up his laptop at the end of the bar, jump on Preacher’s satellite for the Internet connection, kibbitz with Jack a little. It wasn’t quite as dreary as the trailer and there weren’t a couple of toddlers running around calling Daddy this, Daddy that. At home, he’d have one, if not two, kids on his lap.
So after church, Vanni promised to take the kids home, give them lunch and put them down for naps. Then she winked at him and said, “Naps,” again. Paul intended to get a few things done at the bar and then hurry home.
Jack brought him a cup of coffee. “Big project?” he asked.
“Small project made big. Remember Ian Buchanan’s old cabin? His sister-in-law, Erin, wants to spend some time there next summer, but she is definitely not the outhouse kind of chick. She wants it completely renovated, enlarged and furnished. She sends me pictures of her ideas and I send her pictures back of what I have available.” Paul shook his head a little, looking off at nothing. “She doesn’t plan to be on site even once before she arrives for the summer. Busy lawyer type.” He grinned. “One tough taskmaster. Not much gets by her.”
“You have to buy her furniture?” Jack asked.
“No.” Paul laughed. “It’ll be shipped from Robb & Stucky when the interior is done.”
“Robb and who?” Jack asked.
“Top-end furnishings, pal. Ms. Foley will be living in style out on that mountain. We’re moving real fast right now to get an add-on bedroom and bath, the roofing and wiring done and a hole dug for a septic system before the first snowfall up there. I’d say we have another month and then we’ll be close to having the big stuff done. We’ve been at it since September. And there’s always spring if we get pushed. We’ll do some interior work during the winter.”
“I remember her,” Jack said. “Kinda uppity.”
“Never met her,” Paul said. “Her e-mails, which are pretty frequent, are real businesslike, but I figured her being a lawyer, they’d be that way. She definitely knows what she wants,” he said, clicking on a picture and turning the laptop toward Jack. There on the screen was a beautifully furnished rustic living room with rich leather furniture, shining wood floors, rough wood paneling, classy window treatments and a big, stone hearth. Included were accessories from rugs to throws, from artwork to bric-a-brac.
Jack whistled. “I thought Ian had himself an old wood-burning stove.”
“Uh-huh. Stonemason’s been out there for a week building the fireplace. That old place is not the same, if I do say so myself.”
“I hope she’s paying well.”
“She put the work out for bid,” Paul said with a laugh. “The girl knows what she’s doing. But this is the first time I’ve ever completely rebuilt a house via e-mail.” He pushed Send on something and said, “That ought to do it for today.” He closed the laptop. “I have to get home before I miss nap time.”
“Pretty soon you’ll have cartoons. Well, they used to call ’em cartoons,” Jack said. “Now it’s something else, but they still look like cartoons. Mel says they were invented so the parents could have sex.”
Paul lifted one eyebrow with interest.
“The downside is, every time I hear the cartoon music I get a woody.”
After chatting with Noah, Sean went home to Luke’s and found three expectant faces in the house, looking at him oddly. They were all seated in the small living room as if waiting just for him. Luke, Shelby and Art. “What?” he asked. As if he didn’t know.
“Your Jeep was at Jack’s, but you weren’t anywhere to be seen. You didn’t come home last night. What’s going on?”
“I’m going to catch a shower, then I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days. Just a couple of days. I’ll be back. I’ll explain everything then.”
He was answered with complete silence. “All right, fine,” Luke finally said. “Or you could tell us now, before you leave town for whatever reason. What’s going on?”
Sean sighed heavily. “If I tell you, can you keep your big mouths shut till I square things away with Mom?”
“If that’s what you need,” Luke said with a shrug.
“Shelby?” Sean asked, and she nodded. “Art?” That man just stared at him, not quite getting the gist of this. “Okay, here’s the deal. It turns out Franci had a reason for drawing her line in the sand—marriage and family or she’s gone. She was pregnant. She didn’t tell me. I found out by accident this morning. She has a—” He cleared his throat. “We have a daughter. Rosie. Age three and a half.”
“Whoa,” Luke said with a groan, lowering his head to his hands.
“How wonderful!” Shelby said, jumping to her feet. “Oh, how wonderful!”
“Rosie doesn’t know about me yet. I have to take care of that. And I have to tell Mom. I’m going to have to go to Phoenix to tell her in person, because I have no idea what she’s going to do. She’s…you know…dramatic about some things. I think I’d rather auger in than tell Mom.”
“What do you mean Rosie doesn’t know about you? Weren’t you with Franci last night? You weren’t out all night trying to drink this away, were you?” Shelby wanted to know.
“Yes, I was with Franci, but Rosie was spending the night at her grandma’s down the street. I think Franci was just about to tell me when Rosie came through the door and jumped into Franci’s arms.” He put his hands in his pockets and smiled contritely. “Red hair, green eyes. She calls herself the Wide Iwish Rose.” His shoulders shook in a soundless chuckle. “Ah, no question about the DNA.”
“Well,” Luke said. “Talk about a revelation.”
“Yeah. So I’m going to get a shower, pack some things, go back to Franci’s to talk to my Wide Iwish Rose, then fly to Phoenix to tell Mom, who is going to beat me to a bloody pulp for every bad thing I’ve ever done.”
“She’ll be thrilled,” Shelby said.
“No, she will not,” Luke and Sean said in unison.
“She will be happy to have a grandchild,” Sean added, “but unhappy that she is three and a half and doesn’t know her Riordan grandma. And she’s going to want to kill me for not being married to Franci. If I don’t take a little time to talk her off the ledge, she’ll take over. She’s going to be a giant pain in the ass.” He looked at Art pointedly. “Ass is a swear word. I won’t say it again and don’t you.”
“I know which ones are the swear ones,” Art said indignantly. “Sometimes when we’re fixing the roof, we don’t say fuck piss shit, right, Luke?”
“That’s right, Art. We don’t say that. Good—you remembered.” Luke rolled his eyes. Then he swiveled his head toward Sean again. “Now what?”
“Now I’m going to have to get this straightened out. Franci will have to marry me. Or something.”
Shelby laughed and immediately covered her mouth. Sean was glaring at her so she said, “I was just thinking—you’re going to work on the proposal a little, right? Because, as proposals go, that one sucked.”
Sean ground his teeth. This whole thing was way bigger than he was. “I’m going to get that shower.” And then he took the stairs two at a time, hoping he could spend some time with his daughter and get to Phoenix before Luke told on him.
Seven
Dan Brady lumbered into Jack’s and headed up to the bar. He took his Shady Brady off his head and sat it on the stool next to him. It was early Sunday afternoon and he was the only person in the place. It took a minute before Preacher came from the back.
“Yo, Brady,” Preacher said, whipping a napkin onto the bar. “Don’t usually see you around town on Sundays. Your day off, isn’t it?”
Dan nodded. He worked for Paul Haggerty and had been promoted to the foreman’s position, which not only brought more responsibility, but more hours. He was on the job five and a half days a week, and that half day, Saturday, usually stretched into a full day. “How about some coffee?”
“You got it,” Preacher said, pouring. “Don’t you usually have a date with your girl on Sundays? Or did Cheryl finally get smart and dump you?”
The normally serious Dan grinned. “She’s meeting me here.” He looked at his watch. “In about twenty minutes. Where’s Sheridan? Taking a day off?”
“We switch off on light days like Sunday afternoons. Mel has a long list of honey-do’s for him.” Preacher leaned on the bar. “It’ll be nice to see Cheryl. Don’t see enough of her around here.”
Dan looked up at the big man somewhat apologetically. “I doubt she’ll come in and visit, Preach. Since she found sobriety, she likes to stay away from the memories of her hard-drinking days.”
“Yeah, I get that. Our loss, though.”
“She’s planning to face a big memory today,” Dan said. “If she doesn’t change her mind. She’s coming to town to look at her old house. She’s only been inside a couple of times since she left for treatment a long time ago. She’s going to have a look today and, if she likes the shape it’s in, she’ll be talking to a real estate agent about selling it.”
“Then what’ll you do for a place to hang that Shady Brady of yours?”
“I’ll find another place nearby. I work around here—you’re not getting rid of me that easy.”
They were silent a moment. Preacher was thinking. You could always tell when he was concentrating; his heavy black brows knit together, his eyes narrowed, his jaw ground a little. Then he came out with it. “Maybe sometime you can tell Cheryl from me that it stands to reason she’d think about those hard days a lot, but she probably thinks about it way more than anyone else does. Folks around here, we mostly think about how amazing she is, whether she comes around to visit or not. We’re all real proud of her, real happy for her. She’s good people. You tell her that, if you ever get the chance.”
“I’ll do that, Preach,” he said. And he thought, Preacher’s one sweet dude.
Preacher put a thermos coffeepot on the bar. “I’ll be in the back. I’m making pies.”
