Dublin Debacle (Brotherhood Protectors International #4)

Chapter 1

“Em, deary, get me another pint, will ya? And one for me mate, Derek,” a voice shouted from the other end of the bar.

“You’re already pissed, Sean.” Emily O’Brien finished filling the glass and straightened the tap. “Go home to your wife and sleep it off.” She set the pint of Guinness in front of the tall, dark stranger who’d taken up residence at her bar fifteen minutes ago.

He was American. Of that, she had no doubt. She’d served enough locals and tourists to recognize certain nationalities. And, based on how he carried himself, he’d served time in the military. He could still be in the military, given the way he’d trimmed his hair tight on the sides and short on top. A hint of a beard made her think he was either on extended leave or no longer on active duty.

“Can I get ya anything else?” she asked, wanting to hear the sound of the Yank’s voice again. It should have brought back good memories of her childhood. Instead, it made her think of the Hollywood heartthrobs she’d spent many hours streaming when she should have been studying for an exam.

“No, thank you, ma’am.” He picked up the glass and drank a third of the amber liquid before setting the glass back on the counter.

“Like it, do ya?” she asked.

He nodded. “It’s good. But then I’ve always liked a good Guinness.”

She lifted her chin toward him. “What brings ya to Dublin?”

He shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to visit Ireland and finally got around to it.” He gave her a half smile.

“And?” She rubbed a cloth over the counter, cleaning where it didn’t need cleaning. “What do you think of the Emerald Isle and the land of leprechauns?”

“Since I just got here, I haven’t seen leprechauns, pots of gold at the ends of rainbows or anything else enough to form an opinion on anything but the beer.” He lifted the glass. “So far, so good.”

“Brilliant,” she said with a nod. “Doin’ the tourist route, are ya?”

“A little,” he said with a shrug. “I’m interested in Irish folklore and current politics.”

Her hand with the rag stilled. “Why? Are ya some kind of spy for the British government?”

He chuckled. “Hardly. However, I’m a freelance journalist looking for my next story.”

“Any reason why you chose Ireland?” she asked.

“Ireland’s beauty and history have always intrigued me. Even more since I had my DNA analyzed and found I was forty-two percent Irish. Exploring my family roots caught my interest.”

“And did you find actual relatives in the country through your DNA testing?”

“Not anyone specifically. I came to explore options for a good story and hope, in the process, to discover my heritage.”

Em snorted. As someone who wanted to escape her own heritage, she didn’t understand why anyone would want to learn about their ancestors when they had the potential of coming back to haunt them. “You may learn your heritage isn’t always a good thing. Perhaps your Irish ancestors left Ireland to be free of persecution or maybe prosecution . They could be thieves, murderers or on the wrong side of the political flavor of the time.”

The American grinned. “Even more interesting.”

A man at the other end of the bar called out for another pint. Em hurried to fill the order and worked her way back down the bar to the American, picking up the conversation where they’d left off. “And where might you begin your story search?”

“As I came without much of a plan, I thought I’d spend some time in Dublin—you know, get to know the city and the people in it. Any suggestions for places to go?”

“You’ll want to do the tourist thing to see what the city has to offer in the way of history. I’d start with a visit to the library at Trinity College and take a peek at the Book of Kells. Then there’s the Guinness factory since you’re so fond of their product. There are a number of distilleries if you have a taste for good Irish whisky. Kilmainham Gaol Museum is interesting and perhaps one of the most depressing places in all of Ireland. I don’t recommend it if you’re at all suicidal.”

The Yank chuckled. “Fortunately, I’m not suicidal. I’ve read about Kilmainham and the Easter Uprising. Seems Ireland has come a long way since the Troubles.”

“Hasn’t been that long. Many of the old timers still remember. The young people have no recollection as they were born after the Troubles died down.”

“Are the Troubles well and truly a thing of the past?”

Em’s brow twisted. “We like to think so, but there are those who would argue they’re still brewing beneath the surface and even more who’d like them to return with a vengeance.”

“You sound like somebody with experience,” he said. “Yet your accent isn’t nearly as thick as others I’ve run into. You sound more American than Irish. How does that work?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “It’s a mystery.”

The man seated beside the American lifted his chin toward Em. “That would be because Miss O’Brien’s mother took her and her brother, young Finn, off to America to raise them after her father’s family tried to drag the children back into her Irish heritage.”

Em scowled at the Irishman who’d outed her and then transferred her glare to the Yank. “Look away,” she said. “I’m not your next article to be written about.”

“Maybe not, but now I’m curious,” the American said. “Was your father part of the Irish Republican Army?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed, and she shifted her glare toward the man beside the Yank.

“Hold your tongue, Liam. I am not, and never will be, part of my father’s legacy. He fought hard enough to keep our family distant from them.”

The Yank turned to the man beside him, eyebrows lifted. “Them?” he asked, a question mark practically written on his forehead.

Liam tipped his glass and swallowed a long gulp before answering.

“Them being Travellers, you see. Emily O’Brien’s father was born into the Irish Travellers. Only his mother saw fit to send him to university with the money she’d squirreled away from her thievin’ husband. She had the good sense to send him all the way to the Americas—far enough away to escape family ties, if only for the four years he was in school. That’s where he met and fell in love with Em’s mother, Katie.”

Em’s lips pursed. “Haven’t you had enough to drink, Liam? Isn’t it time for you to head back home to your wife?”

The old man chuckled. “Aye, it is.” He slapped some euros on the counter and slid off the barstool.

“Wait,” the Yank said. “You can’t leave me hanging on just the beginning of a story.”

“I am deep in me cups and me bed be a’callin’,” Liam said, lifting his chin toward Em. “Let Miss Emily fill in the blanks.”

The American’s gaze followed the old man as he shuffled through the tables in the barroom and out the front entrance. By the time he turned back toward Em, she’d shifted her attention to another patron at the opposite end of the bar, intent on avoiding the man and his questions.

Em kept her head down and her gaze averted, although she watched the Yank out of the corner of her eye. The last thing she wanted was to get into a discussion about her family history. She filled orders for others and finally worked her way back down to the American, whose glass was almost empty.

“Can I get you another?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

She refilled his glass and set it in front of him.

“So, if your father met and married an American, how did you end up here? I take it he brought his bride back to Ireland?”

Emily drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Not at first,” she said. “They lived in a suburb of Boston for a couple of years after they graduated. My father worked hard to build a business in financial planning, and my mother was a nurse. When she was pregnant with me, my father received word that his mother had fallen ill and had no one to care for her. My father offered to bring his mother to America. She could have lived out the remainder of her life comfortably, but she refused and begged him to return to Ireland to be with her in her final days.”

“So, he returned to Ireland?” the journalist asked.

Em snorted softly. “He refused. He didn’t want to go back. But my mother insisted that somebody needed to take care of his aging mother. My mother, being a nurse and too soft-hearted, offered to do that while she was pregnant with me. So they packed up their lives and moved back to Ireland.”

“And you were born here.” The Yank’s brow furrowed. “That doesn’t explain the American accent.”

“What my father’s mother hadn’t told him was that she’d inherited her family’s pub and left his father. She was the only one running the place, and she feared her brother, my Uncle Paddy, would mismanage the finances and drive them into debtors' prison. She was on the verge of having to sell it, though it had been in her family for centuries. She wanted to pass it down to her only son, my father, thus keeping it in her family.”

“But if you were born here,” the Yank said, “you must’ve taken after your mother’s accent. I’d still think you’d have a deeper Irish accent.”

Emily grimaced, imagining the story the Yank would concoct about her dismal family tree. “My father’s pub came with strings attached.”

The Yank frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Another man nearby piped in, “Em’s Irish grandmother married the man in charge of the Travellers at that time. When she inherited the pub from her father’s family, she left her Traveller husband to keep the family business going. Though Em’s father eventually inherited the pub from her, he was still considered a Traveller choosing to live independently of them. They exact a tax on members of the community who choose to live outside their realm.”

Emily nodded. “Before my father agreed to come to Ireland, my grandmother’s husband was leaning heavily on her to pass the pub down to one of the other members of their community to hold for her absentee son. She begged him to come back under false pretenses. She wasn’t sick at the time. She wanted him back in Ireland to inherit the pub and not be forced to hand it over to the Travellers because she couldn’t afford to keep it running. But shortly after my father returned, his mother became ill with cancer.”

The Yank’s head tilted. “Go on,” he encouraged with a grin. “The story is convoluted, but interesting.”

She took a deep breath and continued the saga. “Nevertheless, my father stayed to help his ailing mother. She had, after all, been responsible for getting him out of Ireland to discover a whole free world beyond the stormy coastline of this island.”

“So, you were born here,” the Yank concluded.

“Aye. A year passed and another. Before they knew it, my parents had been here ten years. My grandmother passed, my brother was born and a new, more radical, leader emerged among the Travellers. He sent his minions out to bring the outliers, like my father, back into the fold. The Travellers urged my father to rejoin his gypsy family.”

“More like threatened his life and limbs if he didn’t.” Daphne, the fiery redhead, Emily’s friend and the only barmaid for the evening, plunked a large round tray filled with empties on the counter beside the Yank. “Don’t gloss over the truth.” She lifted her chin toward Emily. “They threatened your father with bodily harm if he didn’t pay his tithe to the family. When her father refused, they threatened to harm Emily’s mother, Emily and Finn, her little brother.”

“That’s a rough crowd,” the Yank said.

Daphne nodded. “Enough to send Katie scurrying back to the States with her chicks under her wing.” She gave Emily her orders to fill and hurried around the bar to clean off the tray, preparing it for the next round of drinks.

Anyone who’d been around the Tap and Tankard Pub for long knew the O’Brien’s story. Emily was happy to let Daphne tell the tale. She’d grown tired of having it rehashed by the regulars whenever a newcomer stumbled on the pub and dug into its history.

The two women worked in harmony, cleaning and filling glasses. Emily didn’t know what she would have done if Daphne hadn’t answered her ad for help when she had. The woman worked harder than most men, especially Irish men who seemed more intent on telling stories, getting drunk and picking fights than actually working for a living.

Emily had to admit she didn’t get away from the pub often enough to form any other opinion. Living in the flat over the bar didn’t help. Other than Daphne, she hadn’t established many friends since she’d been back. Since her father had passed, her only friends were Uncle Paddy and Daphne.

“Are the Travellers still putting pressure on your family?” the Yank asked.

Emily shrugged. “From time to time. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have work. My customers can get testy when I withhold their beer.”

“I’d like to hear the rest of the story,” the stranger said. “Like how you ended up back in Ireland?”

“It’ll have to wait. My customers won’t.” Emily loaded Daphne’s tray and took up an empty one for herself. Daphne took off in one direction, and Emily came out from around the bar and headed in the opposite direction. She waded through the tables collecting empty glasses, bottles and snack bowls, taking new orders as she went. When she returned to the bar, she tossed the beer bottles into a bin and stacked the glasses in the dishwasher. Within seconds, the tray was empty. Daphne arrived back at the bar with another full tray of empties and a long list of orders.

For the next fifteen minutes, Emily focused on filling the orders for her tables and Daphne’s. Pour drinks, serve and clean. Rinse and repeat many times each night. Emily could almost perform the tasks from rote memory. Maybe even with her eyes closed. She didn’t mind the work.

Once both trays had been emptied and refilled, the two women lifted heavily laden trays onto their shoulders and marched out among the tables again.

Emily had only served half the drinks on her tray when the front door of the pub slammed open and her Uncle Paddy burst through, his brow heavily furrowed and his mouth set in a grim line.

She was in the midst of depositing a pint of beer in front of one of her customers when her Uncle Paddy whisked past her. “Uncle,” she called out, sensing all was not well. “Are you okay?” He was supposed to have been at the pub a couple of hours earlier to man the bar while she filled in for the waitress who’d called in sick.

It wasn’t unusual for Uncle Paddy to be late. The man was getting older. The younger brother of her paternal grandmother, he had only been a couple of years older than Emily’s father. They’d been inseparable before Emily’s father had gone to university in the States.

Uncle Paddy weaved through the tables toward the back of the pub. “I’m not here,” he tossed over his shoulder. “If anyone asks, you didn’t see me.”

Derek called out, “Are ye a ghost, old man?” His mate, Sean, chuckled along with a few others.

Uncle Paddy glanced over his shoulder toward the door and then ducked down the hallway that led to the office and the bathrooms.

Distracted by her uncle’s obvious distress, Emily plunked a whisky in front of the wrong customer in a hurry to empty the tray. She wanted to find out what was causing her uncle so much distress.

“I didn’t order whisky,” her customer said.