“It’s going to be alright, Irish.” He dropped a kiss on the top of my head before meeting my eyes again with a twinkle and speaking soft enough for only me to hear. “But I have to say… my life was fairly dull before I met you, you know?”
I bit back a laugh. “And how was that working for you Mr. Wilde? Or should I say Mr. Vanilla Bean?”
He squeezed my hand before letting go. “Don’t worry about dinner. I’ll explain to Bruce. Get your dad settled at the ranch. See you later?”
I nodded.
Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.
After begging a ride to the ranch from Stevie, my dad and I made our way into the bunkhouse and sat on the old plaid sofa in the main common room.
“So,” he began with a gentle throat-clearing. “You and the Yank.”
I nodded.
“Is it serious?”
“No,” I said, breaking my own fucking heart. “He’s mostly straight.”
“The fuck?” Dad’s temper returned to his ruddy face.
“It’s a long story. What happened with Daniela? Where is she?”
Dad’s face fell. “I found her in bed with another man.”
I winced, mentally adding her name to the list of cheaters. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Me too. But not more sorry than she was when she found out we weren’t really married and she wasn’t getting any money from me.”
I blinked at him. “What? What the hell do you mean?”
“Long story,” he said, parroting me.
“Try again,” I snapped.
He sighed. “I didn’t realize we needed to get married before entering Brazil. So I went on a tourist visa, thinking we’d get married with her friends and family in Rio. And we did. We had a religious ceremony. But I never did the courthouse part because it was going to be a big mess with the visa situation.”
“How were you there for an entire year on a tourist visa?” I asked.
“They didn’t realize I’d outstayed my welcome until I was leaving. And by then I was leaving, so what did it matter?”
I leaned back into the sofa and put my feet up on the coffee table. “Are you going to be all right?”
He nodded. “Course I am. I’m going back home to kick Dev’s arse first, but then I’ll sort myself out, don’t you worry.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Think you can stay here until after St. Paddy’s?”
“If need be.”
“The chef here sucks. We need you.”
“That’s music to my ears, Charlie boy,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe he needs to learn a thing or two from auld Sean Murray.”
I smiled and nodded. “I think you’re right.”
I told him a bit more about the pub, both the one back home and the one here in Hobie. I told him that after meeting the people in town, I’d come around to accepting the little franchise location. We spoke about Dev’s poor decision-making that had led to the financial predicament in the first place, and Dad apologized again for fucking off to Brazil and leaving us all screwed arseways on a Sunday. But I realized something I hadn’t thought about before.
If he hadn’t left for Brazil, I wouldn’t have met Hudson. And I couldn’t wish that away, even if it meant keeping the pub to ourselves.
“Where’s the girl?” he asked, referring to Mama.
“Oh.” I sat up and pulled my legs off the table. “She’s in the farmhouse flirting with a coonhound. Let’s go collect her. I’d like to introduce you to Hudson’s grandfathers. If we’re in luck, we can beg supper off them while we’re at it.”
My father got along well with Doc and Grandpa the way I knew he would. Sean Murray hadn’t spent his life as a publican without being a charmer around other people after all. While they swapped stories with each other, I wondered how Hudson’s dinner with Bruce was going. I checked my phone too often and even finally sent a text against my better judgment.
All is well here. You okay?
No answer. And when the answer finally came, it was Darci sneaking into my room in the middle of the night, not Hudson.
41
Hudson
Hudson’s Luck:
When I’m happier than I’ve ever been, Bruce drops a bomb on me. So much for my cheap-ass piece-of-shit four-leaf clover.
At dinner, Bruce informed me he’d been unable to get Ames’s buyer to agree to keep me in Dallas. They wanted me in their Chicago headquarters for at least a couple of years to prepare me to take over one of the smaller satellite offices. While the opportunity for so much responsibility was incredible, the knowledge it meant leaving Texas knocked the breath out of me like the time I’d accidentally gotten crushed against a fence by Otto’s horse, Gulliver.
The rest of the dinner was a blur. I couldn’t eat anything on my plate and spent much of the time mentally chastising myself for wishing for the impossible. I’d already made two different attempts to reach my career goals without leaving Dallas, and they’d failed. If I wanted the next level, I needed to suck it up. It was only two years. After that, I could look for a position back here with another company even if my current company wouldn’t relocate me to Texas.