35. Jax
CHAPTER 35
Jax
N ot having a course close enough to train on was becoming a real problem. As a pro golfer, practicing my swing, short game, and course strategy was critical—and that couldn’t be done in a gym. It meant I was on the road constantly during the season, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
I liked being in Ballybeg despite the shite weather. I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t stay here with nothing to do. I played golf professionally, and that meant living the life of an athlete. We trained, worked on our fitness, and practiced relentlessly to keep every aspect of our game sharp.
But the truth was that I felt at home in Ballybeg like I never had in Charleston or anywhere else. When I told my friends, the ones who’d fallen in love told me, “She’s home, and she’s in that village, so that’s your home now. Enjoy the damp and gray!”
It wasn’t just her, though.
I’d spent years winning golf tournaments, signing endorsement deals, and living in the kind of luxury most people only dreamed of. But standing on the green in Ballybeg, surrounded by the people who’d fought tooth and nail to save their village, I felt like I’d finally won something that mattered.
And then it hit me. Maybe I could, as they said, have my cake and eat it too.
The idea came to me as I stood at the edge of Dee’s family farm, looking out over the rolling hills. The grass was damp with morning dew, the air crisp and cool, and I could see the faint outline of the cliffs in the distance. It was perfect.
Not for a resort. Not for some over-the-top luxury development.
But for golf. And not just recreational golf, either.
We could have a proper course—small, private, and focused on training and community. A place where people like me could practice without the distractions of the city, where aspiring golfers could come to hone their skills without breaking the bank. Practicing under different conditions—wind, rain, uneven terrain—was like altitude training for a runner. It pushed you to adapt, to refine your technique, to be ready for anything when it mattered most. Golf wasn’t just about sunny days and perfect greens. It was about control, precision, and mental endurance—even when the weather or the course wasn’t on your side.
The first person I pitched the idea to was Dee.
I found her in the kitchen of The Banshee’s Rest, peeling potatoes with the kind of intensity that made me think she was imagining they were Cillian’s head.
“Ronan late again?” I asked.
Ronan was dealing with animal issues at the farm, which meant Dee was doing things in the kitchen that weren’t to her liking, such as peeling potatoes.
“It’s Molly Moo. Her hip’s all messed up again, and Ronan thinks it might be arthritis. She’s limping something fierce, poor girl. We’re trying to keep her comfortable, but you know how stubborn she is—she won’t stay still for long.”
Molly Moo was a feisty old Friesian cow with a black patch over one eye that made her look like a pirate, though Ronan swore she had the heart of a saint. She was one of the last cows left on the Gallagher family farm, born during Dee’s childhood and raised by her sister Maggie, who had hand-fed her as a calf after her mother rejected her. Ronan had adopted Molly Moo when he started living in the farmhouse.
“Will we be having another wake for Molly Moo?” I asked.
Dee glared at me. “Don’t you be makin’ fun of the Gallagher family cow, now, Jax Caldwell. That’s just rude.” But there was amusement in her voice.
“You got a minute? I want to run something by you.” I leaned against the doorway.
“Sure.” She set her peeler down.
“I’ve been thinking.” I stepped closer.
“That’s never a good sign,” she muttered, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“Funny.” I pulled her into a loose hug.
She went on tiptoe and dropped a kiss on my lips. “Tell me what you’ve been thinkin’, Yank.”
“So, the farm, I have an idea,” I said and added in warning, “I haven’t thought it through though, so have patience.”
“With you? Always,” she mocked.
“I can’t keep going away to train, Dee. I need a place here,” I explained and then gave her the highlights of my new plan.
She seemed to think about it for a bit too long, and I worried she thought it would be a shit idea.
“You can have maybe a summer camp for children who want to learn from a pro golfer…you know, kids who can’t afford it,” she suggested.
“Aye, I can do that.” I brushed a curl off her forehead and gazed at her perfect beauty.
“We can…I don’t know, build cabins for people to stay. You know, at the far end of the property, by the lake?”
“That won’t be touristy for you?”
“No, not if we’re helping people.”
“So, what you’re sayin’, darlin’ Dee is that you’re all in.”
She laughed. “Yeah, Jax, I’m all in.”
And I knew she was saying she was all in with me, not just the golf course that I’d have to build and probably wouldn’t have ready until the next season, so this season was still going to be shite unless I convinced Dee to leave the pub and travel with me.
That evening, I brought it up at the pub, and everyone had an opinion and a whole hell of a lot of questions. But this was how things were done at Ballybeg. You brought the entire village on board.
“You know, Jax, I heard that they do these things called charity golf things,” Paddy mused. “Can we do that? I mean, bring people in for a short time, and that would help the whole village, wouldn’t it?”
“But where would people stay, Paddy?” Noreen asked.
“We all have places,” Eileen Nolan suggested. “I have a barn I can convert.”
Everyone thought they could host celebrity golfers in their homes. I wasn’t sure how that would go over with some of my colleagues, but hell, then they could stay in Cork or Ennis.
“Like Ballybeg’s own Airbnb.” Saoirse nodded approvingly.
“Just a minute here.” Mickey raised his hand. “And we’re talkin’ real golf, not one of those fancy places with virtual screens and robots?”
“How would you even know of such a fancy place, Mickey Byrne?” Mrs. O’Leary chided. She’d started coming out more often since the protest march.
“I have lived a life outside of Ballybeg, Muriel,” Mickey shot back.
I raised both hands. “No robots, Mickey. Just real golf.”
“Good.” He let out a long, dramatic breath. “Robots give me the creeps.”
A ripple of laughter spread through the room, and I felt the tension ease.
“Now, who’s going to pay for this?”
Cormac O’Murphy, who had met every problem a body could come up with, raised his hand. “And how do you plan to pay for all this, Yank? Golf courses aren’t exactly cheap, you know.”
“Now, Cormac, don’t start with that,” Dee warned.
“I’m just sayin’ that I don’t like some rich yank throwing his money around Ballybeg as if he owns it,” Cormac grumbled.
“Jax is one of us now, Cormac.” Mrs. Nolan slapped the back of the barber’s head. “Now stop being a feckin’ eejit and let the man talk.”
“I’ll cover the upfront costs.” I met Cormac’s gaze. “I’ll reach out to some of my sponsors to see if they’ll back the project, which we will run as a nonprofit.”
“Will there be jobs?” Darragh Nolan, Eileen’s nephew, asked.
“Yeah, of course. This will be a Ballybeg initiative that we’ll set on Dee’s land. We’ll have all kinds of jobs, won’t we, Dee?”
“We’ll need to maintain the course, build the cabins, I mean…I don’t even know all the work that we’ll have to do.” Dee was hopping with excitement, just as everyone else was.
“I mow everyone’s lawn.” Darragh stood up as if going for a job interview. “You’ll need a man to keep the grass in order, Jax, and I’m your man for it.”
“Hired.” I felt my heart grow three sizes. Had I ever felt like this before? Ever felt at home like this amongst people who cared about each other?
Speaking of caring for each other, there was one sodding Irishman who could go fuck himself up, and he certainly did while he crashed our happy gathering.
The laughter was still rippling through the pub when the door slammed open so hard it rattled the windows. Every head turned toward the entrance as Cillian O’Farrell, looking like he’d crawled out of hell, walked in. His suit jacket was rumpled, his tie half-undone, and there was a wild, desperate look in his eyes that made most everyone pause mid-sip.
“Ah, Christ,” Ronan muttered under his breath.
Cillian stumbled inside, his cheeks flushed, and his mouth twisted in anger.
“There you are, Jax feckin’ Caldwell,” Cillian spat, his voice slurring slightly. “Big man, aren’t ya? Ballybeg’s bloody savior.”
I’d been in enough bar fights in my younger days to recognize when someone was spoiling for one, and Cillian looked like he was ready to swing at the first person who crossed him.
“Cillian, don’t do this.” Dee stepped forward, and I put a hand on her shoulder, fuck, no, was she putting herself in front of a drunk eejit.
“This is all your fault for leaving me in the first place,” he snapped, pointing a finger at her.
“Stop being a feckin’ gobshite, Cillian and get the feck out of here,” Seamus shouted.
“Stay out of this.” Cillian swayed where he stood.
At this rate, he’d crash before he landed a punch, which would be the best possible outcome of this ridiculous showdown.
“This Yank waltzed in here with his deep pockets, and now look at me. I’m under feckin’ investigation. My uncle fired me. Aoife’s left me…she left me . And Fiona Hennessey stole the Shamrock Global Venture deal right out from under me.”
Ronan put a hand on Cillian’s shoulder. “You need to go home and sleep it off.”
“We shouldn’t let him drive like this,” Eileen Nolan warned.
I looked pointedly at Dee. “He’s not sleeping upstairs.”
She made a face. “I wasn’t about to suggest that.”
“Sure you weren’t.”
She shrugged. She hated the gobshite, but she wasn’t mean. Prickly, my Dee could be, but she had the biggest heart.
Cillian stumbled into Ronan and said pitifully, “I’ve got no home, mate. No job. No future. They took all that from me.”
Ronan patted his back. “Now, Cillian, you’re to blame for your shite decisions, you know that, don’t you?”
Cillian pushed Ronan away. “It’s his fault,” he bellowed and lunged at me. His fist swung wide, and since he was drunk and unsteady, I missed the blow with ease, and he tripped on his own feet, landing flat on his arse .
A few muffled laughs broke out around the room, but I raised a hand, silencing them. As much as I wanted to let the man stew in his misery, I wasn’t going to kick him while he was down.
“Cillian, man, you got to get your head out of your arse.”
But he wasn’t listening. He was still muttering, his words slurred and incoherent, and I glanced up at Ronan. “Let’s get him out of here.”
With Darragh and Ronan’s help, we hauled Cillian to his feet. He protested weakly, but he was too far gone to put up much of a fight.
“What’re we gonna do with him?” Darragh asked, his nose wrinkling as Cillian’s whiskey-soaked breath hit him.
Ronan shrugged. “We’ll dump him on the bench outside, and then he isn’t our problem.”
“He’s a gobshite.” Dee picked up her phone. “But we can’t just leave him out there. I’ll call his uncle and tell him to get his eejit of a nephew before he causes more trouble.”
While Dee took care of that, I helped Ronan prop Cillian up by the bench where Dee, Ronan, and I met for a nightcap after closing the pub.
The night air hit the drunk moron hard, and he groaned. “You think you’re so much better than me,” he mumbled, his eyes half-closed. “But you’re just a smug American bastard who thinks he can fix everything.”
“I don’t think I’m better than you, Cillian,” I remarked dryly, feeling sorry for the dumbass despite myself. “But I do think you’re your own worst enemy.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “Go to hell.”
“I’d say the same to you”—Ronan shook his head in pity—“but it looks like you’re already there.”
His uncle showed up forty-five minutes later when Cillian was snoring soundly. He thanked Dee, and we watched the taillights of the car that drove Dee’s ex away.
“You dated that gobshite?” I asked incredulously.
“So says the man who was with a woman called Francia ?”
I shrugged. “She’s hot. She’s a freaking supermodel.”
“How do you know that underneath that wrinkled suit, Cillian doesn’t have the body of a god?” Dee suggested saucily.
“I doubt it.” I wrapped an arm around her.
“I’m telling you, that man has hands like?—”
I hauled her up in a fireman’s hold and smacked her ass with some force, but it only made her laugh hysterically.
“Shut up, bar wench, and let me show you what a man with good hands can do for you.”