Page 113 of After Indigo Irish Nights
Declan rolled his carry-on inside and sat down in the ugly brown chair in front of a battered gray desk. “I’m not in any kind of trouble.”
Robbie sat behind the desk and kicked back. “You’re in a police station. You look like you just got off the plane. You have bruises all over your face.”
Yeah, he’d noticed people staring at him weirdly. “Can you believe no one asked why?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I can. Trust me. You’re in some kind of trouble. You’re the asshole who broke my sister’s heart, right? She hasn’t said anything, but I know her. She didn’t just come home because some asshole vandalized the arts center. I could break you into a million pieces for hurting her,” Robbie finished conversationally.
His chest filled with tension, but he nodded. “I would deserve it. Robbie, I’m here to make it right. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Kathleen says you’re the oldest, the one everyone looks up to.”
Robbie put his hands on the top of his desk and leaned forward. “So you figured you’d persuade me to help you with my sister. Boy, this had better be good, or I’ll give you a personal police escort straight back to Logan Airport.”
As a boxer, he knew plenty of men who radiated toughness and menace. Kathleen’s brother all but rolled in it. He decided the tack he would take. “How do you feel about sharing your deepest, darkest secrets, Robbie?”
He scoffed. “I fucking hate it,” he said, sounding very much like Mark Wahlberg.
Declan almost smiled. “What about sharing your emotions?”
“I fucking hate that too.” His eyes narrowed. “What was this secret you kept from my sister?”
He was too smart by half. “I didn’t tell her—or anyone, not even my twin brother—that the boxer I fought a few days ago had slept with my fiancée before our wedding nearly five years ago.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. Now that’s an asshole.”
He grew hopeful. “He’s been called a lot of bad words and deserves every one.”
“Yeah.” Her brother fingered the edge of a black notepad on his desk, the kind Declan had seen police use to take interview notes. But he didn’t open it and start writing, thank God. “So you didn’t tell anyone. I get it. I wouldn’t have either. Don’t tell Kathleen I said this, but women want us to be all tough and strong, and then they expect us to wear our hearts on our sleeves when we’re with them. Some of the girls I’ve been with want me to tell them how I feel when I’m processing a murder site. Like I want to relive that or share it with them. Hell, the whole thing makes a man feel like he’s on a teeter-totter in the romance department.”
Damn, but he really liked Robbie O’Connor. “I think I have a way to show Kathleen how I can give her more of what she wants in a relationship. In a marriage.”
Robbie tapped his notepad against the desk. “You want to marry my sister, huh?”
“If she’ll have me, yes.” He leaned forward and looked the man straight in the eye. “I’ll talk to whomever I need to in your family for permission, your dad included, but first, I need to talk to your sister, I’ll be thinking.”
Robbie laughed darkly. “You’d be thinking right. Damn you talk funny, but I dig it. All right, so you want another shot at my baby sister. I’m thinking a public place—in case she wants to storm out or cry for help. A place where all her brothers can look out for her.”
All seven, he recalled. “That sounds more than fair. I didn’t want to just show up at your family’s pub or ask Ellie where she was staying.”
“I’m glad you didn’t put Ellie in that position. She’s like a sister to us. If you’d made her cry too, we’d have to kill you for sure and throw you into the bay.”
Declan cleared his throat as the image rolled through his mind. It wasn’t hard to imagine.
Robbie stood, cracking his neck. “I’m just kidding. Mostly.”
Yeah, mostly. “You probably have a slew of ideas from your ‘stupid criminal’ videos on how not to dispose of the body, right? I was thinking they were amusing before, but…”
Robbie’s shoulders started shaking. “So she showed them to you. You come up with the drunk leprechaun video she sent me?”
“That’s right. Don’t judge us Irish by his example.”
He punched him in the shoulder none too lightly. “Ace, I might be starting to like you. Come on. You can sit in one of the interrogation rooms until I arrange everything with my brothers. Everyone’s getting off work about now.”
Inside the interrogation room, he concluded Kathleen’s brother was having the time of his life trying to intimidate him. He stared at the bare walls and the two-way mirror and wondered if Robbie was observing him. In a few days, Declan hoped he’d be in a position to see all this as a bit of goodcraic.
When Robbie finally opened the door, he lifted his chin. “Let’s go, tough guy. Everyone’s meeting up at O’Connor’s. You have one chance. Here’s the rules.”
He raised his brow. “There are rules?”
The man made a rude sound before saying, “One, you don’t touch her. Two, if she walks away, you don’t follow. Three, if you blow it, you never talk sweet to her ever again.”
