The Whole Truth (A. Shaw 1)
“Your consultancy work slowing down?”
“Come on. I have a place I want to take you to.”
Shaw could feel the strain in his voice and sensed that Anna could too.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “You’re acting very mysteriously.”
Shaw tongued his dry lips and attempted to smile. “I thought that was one of the things you liked about me. Mystery?”
He didn’t believe his own words and it was clear she didn’t either.
He rose. His legs quivered a bit and he silently cursed himself.
I jumped into a damn canal from four stories up and beat a gang of nuclear terrorist nutcases almost single-handedly. You’d think I could manage this without acting like a lovesick teenager.
A little later they entered a small pub north of the Liffey, which was the decidedly poorer and less glamorous half of Dublin. Yet Shaw liked it here, as did Anna.
As she’d once said, “How can you possibly not love every molecule of a city that produced Swift, Stoker, G. B. Shaw, Yeats, Wilde, Beckett, and Heaney? And the master, Joyce.”
Just to see her reaction he’d answered, “I’m more into Roddy Doyle.”
“And I’m more into Maeve Binchy,” she’d shot back.
He ordered for them, which was unusual. When it arrived she said, “What is it?”
“Barm brack. It’s sort of a fruitcake.”
“Fruitcake! Don’t they use those for doorstops and to poison people?”
Shaw cut her a slice. “Just try it. You’re an adventurous gal.”
Anna stabbed the cake with her fork and it clinked against something. Her wide eyes grew even wider as she probed the barm until her fingers closed around it.
Shaw said, “Legend has it that if you find the ring in the barm brack, you’re destined to be married.”
There was no turning back now, he knew. The next few moments would decide his entire life, and the sweat burned through his shirt. He drew a deep breath, slipped from his chair, and rested one knee on the old plank floor that was worn smooth from centuries of drunks and at least one man proposing. Taking her shaky hand in his firm one, he slipped the ring on her finger and said, “Anna, will you marry me?”
CHAPTER 13
THE DRUM-DRUM OF THE RAIN woke him. As he tried to get back to sleep the vibration next to his head elicited a small groan from him.
Shaw snatched up the device and read the message he’d just been sent.
Frank.
In the bed next to him was Anna. They’d properly consummated their engagement and then drank a bottle of Dom, glasses balanced precariously on flat bellies.
She slept soundly as Shaw rose, walked into the adjoining room, and punched in a number, knowing it would be answered immediately.
“Your gig over in old Dublin?” Frank said cheerfully. Shaw could imagine the man lounging in a chair somewhere, probably several time zones away, wearing the smug, shit-eating grin that masters reserved for conversations with their servants.
“What, your men not checking in with you regularly? Not that you need them to.” Shaw stared at his right side when he said this, where the old scar was. “And by the way, it’s 3 a.m. here. The thought ever run through that thick head of yours?”
“We’re a 24/7 op, Shaw. You know the rules.”
“Your rules.”
He yanked open the drapes and stared out at a dismal curtain of rain drenching the area.