5. Jax
CHAPTER 5
Jax
I ’d gone to see Paddy to check up on Nikolai’s car and found that the people of Ballybeg were wrong. Paddy had worked on a Porsche once before.
“It was 1963,” Paddy reminisced, leaning back against a wall, wiping his hands on a rag that was already filthy. “Belonged to a fella who got lost on his way to Dublin. Took me three days to figure out how to open the bloody bonnet. And by the time I had it fixed, the eejit complained he’d have already walked halfway there.”
“So…you fixed it?”
Paddy shrugged, his face dead serious. “Well, not properly. He had to push it the last mile out of Ballybeg, but I got her runnin’.”
I stared at him, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “That’s reassuring.”
“Ah, don’t worry, lad.” Paddy slapped my back. “That was years ago. I’ve gotten better since then. I can probably have your man’s car done before next Tuesday…if the parts arrive on time, of course.”
“Next Tuesday?” I repeated, eyebrows shooting up. “It’s only Thursday.”
“Exactly. You can’t rush these things. Porsche repairs are an art, not a science.” He pointed his grease-covered finger at me. “Besides, aren’t you stayin’ at The Banshee’s Rest? Not the worst place to wait, if you ask me.”
I chuckled, rubbing the back of my neck. “You’re right about that. Now, since I’m stuck here, what can you tell me about the…ah…well, Dee?”
He grinned, his teeth surprisingly white against his soot-covered face. “Oh, lad, now you’ve done it.”
“I have?”
The good news was that in a small village where everyone knew everyone’s business, there were no secrets. The bad news was that I’d had to listen to the stories of several people, not just Dee.
He’d given me the lowdown on the evil Cillian and his new, even more evil fiancée.
“How anyone can hurt Dee is beyond me.” Paddy handed me a bottle of beer. “Now, don’t get me wrong, she’s something fierce, she is, our Dee, but she won’t hurt a soul.”
That’s when I learned about how Dee had taken care of her sister, who had died of cancer. They’d run the pub together, and Maggie had been the cook before Ronan.
“That bloody gutless bastard tells Dee when she finds him with his pants down with Aoife that it’s Dee’s fault for being too busy with her sister and he had needs.” Paddy scoffed and took a long pull of his beer. “Broke her heart.”
No surprise there. They’d been together for three years, and that was a long time. So, when I walked into the pub and found the bloody bastard who hurt Dee fawning all over me, I knew I had to find a way to knee him in the balls without getting the garda involved.
One look at him, and I could see that Cillian O’Farrell was the kind of man I loathed—smug, entitled, and so polished his shit practically glowed.
What Dee saw in this asshole, I didn’t know, but what I could see now was that she was done with him. Not only that, she was disgusted by him.
And let’s not even get started on his fiancée, Aoife. She was every bit as irritating as her name was hard to pronounce, all sharp smiles and sticky compliments, and what was with all that grazing her tits against my arm?
“Well, we really wanted to talk with you,” Cillian told me, despite it being clear that I was not interested in whatever this jackass was selling.
“Talk about what?” I asked as if confused. “Dude, I don’t even know you.”
“He thinks you’re one of them ,” Dee informed me.
The bulb went off. Paddy had told me about a development company trying to open a big resort with spas, restaurants, golf courses, and you name it, which wasn’t a bad thing—after all, tourism was an earner in Ireland. But the resort was going to be all but in Ballybeg, smack in the middle of its fields and hillsides, where the sheep grazed, the rivers ran clear, and the ancient dry-stone walls told stories older than memory.
It wasn’t just the resort itself. They planned to carve up acres of the surrounding land for luxury villas and “eco” cabins—though there was nothing “eco” about bulldozing the rolling hills or the nesting grounds of rare birds that made this area unique. Worse still, an airport was being proposed in the neighboring town to funnel tourists in and out, and that alone would wreak havoc on the entire region. The quiet lanes of Ballybeg, where you’d see maybe one tractor or bicycle in an afternoon, would become clogged with rental cars, tour buses, and gawking tourists holding up traffic to snap photos.
The peaceful fields and greenways would be replaced with parking lots and access roads. Runoff from construction and new infrastructure would pollute the rivers, which locals still fished from. As for the cliffs in the distance, the developers were already making noise about glass-bottomed walkways and souvenir shops perched on the edge.
But the worst of it, according to Paddy (and I agreed) was that the resort would rip the soul right out of Ballybeg. This wasn’t the kind of village that could handle thousands of people a week trampling through its pubs, its farms, its lanes. Ballybeg was made of its people and their history—the craic in The Banshee’s Rest, the local bakery with its generations-old recipes, the whispered superstitions about fairies and stones, and specific fields you shouldn’t walk through after dark. Overpriced coffee shops and tacky merchandise stalls would drown out all of that.
For a second, I could picture it: the quaint charm of Ballybeg smothered by five-star luxury. The thought made my chest tighten. Sure, tourism was a moneymaker, but not at this price.
“Now, darlin’, Dee, we talked about how I wasn’t one of them ,” I flirted.
Dee narrowed her eyes, but then, as if understanding that I was yanking her ex-fiancé’s chain, she cocked an eyebrow. “Well, Jax, love, I know that, but he doesn’t.”
I turned to look at Cillian and Aoife. “I’m not one of them .”
Cillian moved his fiancée out of the way and sat down on a stool next to me. “You’re going to love what’s being planned, especially as a golfer.”
I shrugged. “I doubt it.”
Dee smiled smugly.
Cillian glared at her and then put on a plastic smile when he looked at me. “Why don’t we take you for a drink to?—”
“Hey, O’Farrell, I’m having a drink right here.” I picked up the Irish whiskey and waved it in front of him.
“Jax,” Aoife purred. “You’re a golfer. Surely, you understand the value of a resort like this.”
I stared at her for a beat, long enough for her smile to falter just a little, before I said, “Not really.”
We were putting on a show. Everyone at the pub was not even pretending to be doing anything else but seeing what the hell was going on between Dee’s new boarder and her bastard of an ex.
I didn’t do public brawls or scenes, but fuck this asshole was tempting me.
“Look, ma’am, I’m simply not interested in whatever it is you’re sellin’,” I drawled, adding a little extra Southern to my accent.
“Once you know the details, you certainly will.” Cillian perked up. “We want to sell you a piece of the resort that we’re planning here in Ballybeg. With your endorsement, it’ll be a huge success.”
Dee scoffed, and everyone groaned.
“You’re all clinging to the past.” Aoife was worked up as she gestured to one of the framed black and white photos on the wall, which I’d studied this morning. It was a photograph of Ballybeg’s main street from sixty years ago.
“Exactly,” Cillian agreed, like a man who thought he knew everything. “But progress waits for no one. They’ll come around eventually. People like Dee always do.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dee pounced at Cillian.
“Yeah, what does it mean?” Ronan wanted to know.
“I’m people like Dee,” another said.
Aoife sighed, leaning against the bar counter, and crossed her legs in a way that I assumed she thought was attractive. It was cheap. I’d had better women throw themselves at me.
“You’re all being foolish. You’ll put up a fight, and Dee will try to interfere with the vote, but in the end, what choice do you have? This pub, this village, can’t survive forever, not with the way things are going. You’re all clinging to something that’s already dying.”
“Christ!” I shook my head. “He always this charmin’, Dee?”
“Always,” Dee assured me tightly.
Ronan smirked, folding his arms across his chest. “Charming? That’s one word for it. Gobshite is another.”
I snorted a laugh. “ Gobshite it is.”
Cillian let out a hiss. “Come on, Jax, don’t tell me you’re one of these sentimental types. This village could use a little improvement. And by little, I mean a hell of a lot.”
That was it. My patience snapped like a badly struck nine iron.
“I think Ballybeg’s fine just the way it is,” I said evenly. “You know what it doesn’t need? People like you waltzing in and acting like you know what’s best for a place you don’t even live in.”
Paddy told me that O’Farrell, though born and raised in Ballybeg, moved to Cork with his family when his father and uncle started their real estate development company.
Cillian’s smirk froze for half a second, then he laughed again, though this time it sounded forced. “Touchy, aren’t we? You sound like Dee.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I quipped and rose. “Now, I do believe you’ve worn out your welcome.”
“There never was one,” Dee retorted.
The bar fell silent for a moment, the regulars staring at me like I’d just punched someone, but then Ronan let out a low whistle. “Feckin’ hell. I think I like you, Yank.”
Seamus, one of the older men sitting nearby, raised his pint in a toast. “Here’s to lads who say what needs saying.”
“Aye! Amen to that,” agreed Liam.
Cillian’s smile was tight now. “Well,” he said, his voice smooth but laced with tension. “It’s good to know where you stand.”
“Yeah. It is.”
As Cillian and his fiancée flounced out of the pub, I worried that they’d try to use my presence in Ballybeg to advance their resort nonsense—which would bring the wrong kind of people to the village. I didn’t know much about this development bullshit, but I’d ask Brian to do some research so I could find out who Cillian was in business with. I knew most of the players in the industry—maybe I could help in some way.
After a few minutes, the pub settled. Ronan returned to the kitchen, and the other patrons went to their drinks and conversations.
Dee pulled out a bottle from below the bar counter, poured me a glass of whiskey, and slid it in front of me.
“Is that from your stash?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she mused. “Since you’re making yourself useful, I thought you deserved some of the good stuff.”
“I’m honored that you’re letting me into your stash.”
She flushed. “Oh, don’t make a whole thing about it, now.”
Now that she’d let me have her good whiskey, I wondered what else I could convince her to let me have. Yeah, I was regressing into a horny teenager.