By six o’clock, I’d had fifty-six patrons, rung up an impressive amount of sales, and discovered that I loved being a bookseller. I’d found my calling. Instead of serving drinks and watching people turn into drunken idiots, I was being paid to give people wonderful stories to escape into, full of mystery, mayhem, and romance. Instead of splashing anesthetizing alcohol into glasses, I was pouring fictional tonics to alleviate the stress, hardship, and drudgery of their lives.
I wasn’t corroding anybody’s liver. I didn’t have to watch balding, middle-aged men hitting on pretty young coeds, trying to recapture their glory days. I wasn’t deluged by the sordid sob stories of the recently and so often well deservedly jilted, while I stood behind my counter. I didn’t have to watch a single person cheat on their spouse, urinate on the floor, or pick a fight all day.
At six o’clock, I should have counted my blessings and closed early.
But I didn’t, and just when I was starting to feel almost happy and good about myself, my life went to hell again.
Chapter 7
Nice place you have here,” said my latest customer, as the door banged shut behind him. “I wouldn’t have thought the interior was so big from out on the sidewalk.”
I’d had the same thought the first time I entered Barrons Books and Baubles. The building just didn’t look large enough on the outside to contain all the room it held on the inside.
“Hi,” I said. “Welcome to Barrons. Are you looking for something special?”
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
“You’ve come to the right place, then,” I told him. “If we don’t have the book you want in stock, we can order it, and we’ve got some great collectibles up on the second and third floors.” He was a good-looking man in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, dark-haired and nicely built. I seem to be surrounded by attractive men lately.
When I stepped around the counter, he gave me an appreciative once-over, making me glad I’d dressed up. I hadn’t wanted my dad to go home carrying a mental snapshot of his daughter, bedraggled, bruised, and gloomily attired, so I’d chosen my outfit with care this morning. I’d dug out a frothy peach skirt that kicked flirtatiously when I walked, a pretty camisole, and gold sandals that laced up my calves. I’d woven a brilliantly painted silk scarf through my short Arabian Night curls, and knotted it at my nape, letting the ends trail across my bare shoulders. I’d taken time with my makeup, concealing my bruises, and dusting a shimmery bronzer across my nose, cheeks, and breastbone. Dangly crystal earrings brushed my neck when I moved, and a single large teardrop rested in my cleavage.
Glam-girl Mac felt fantastic.
Savage Mac was pleased only by the spear strapped to the inside of my right thigh. And the short dirk I’d found on a display pedestal in Barrons’ study and strapped to my left one. And the small flashlight tucked into my pocket. And the four pairs of scissors behind the counter. And the research I’d been doing in my spare time today on gun laws in Ireland and how to go about acquiring one. I thought the semiautomatics looked good.
“American?” he said.
I was beginning to get the hang of being a tourist in Dublin. In college the question was “What’s your major?” Abroad everyone guesses your nationality. I nodded. “And you’re definitely Irish.” I smiled. He had a deep voice, a lilting accent, and looked like he’d been born to wear that thick, cream Irish fisherman’s sweater, faded jeans, and rugged boots. He moved with easy grace, born of muscle and machismo. He was a rightie, I couldn’t help but notice. Blushing, I busied myself neatening the evening newspapers on the counter.
For the next few minutes we indulged in the light banter of a male and female who find each other attractive and enjoy the timeless ritual of flirtation. Not everyone does, and frankly I think it’s a lost art form. Flirtation doesn’t have to go somewhere; it certainly doesn’t need to end up in bed. I like to think of it as a little friendlier than a handshake, a little less intimate than a kiss. It’s a way of saying hi, you look great, have a wonderful day. A tasteful flirtation, played out by people who understand the rules, leaves everyone feeling good and can perk up the bluest mood.
I was certainly feeling perky by the time I steered the conversation back around to business. “So what can I help you find, Mr…?” I nudged delicately for a name.
“O’Bannion.” He offered his hand. “Derek O’Bannion. And I’m hoping you can help me find my brother, Rocky.”
Have you ever had one of those moments when time just freezes? You know, when the world suddenly goes deathly still, and you could hear a pin drop, and the squishing sound your heart makes is so loud in your ears you feel like you’re drowning in blood, and you stand there in that suspended moment and die a thousand deaths, but not really, and the moment passes and dumps you out on the other side of it, with your mouth hanging open, and an erased blackboard where your mind used to be?
I think I’ve been watching too many old movies lately, in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, because the disembodied voice that offered counsel at that moment sounded a lot like John Wayne.
Buck up, little buckaroo, it said, in a dry, gravelly drawl. You wouldn’t believe how many things that advice has gotten me through since. When everything else is gone, balls are all any of us really have left. The question is: Are yours made of flesh and blood, or steel?
When I shook Derek O’Bannion’s hand, the spear I’d stolen from his brother before I’d led him to his unwitting death burned like a brand from hell against my inner thigh. I ignored it. “Goodness, is your brother missing?” I blinked up at him.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“He was last seen two weeks ago.”
“How awful!” I exclaimed. “What brings you to our bookstore?”
He stared down at me, and I suddenly wondered how I could have missed the resemblance. The same cold eyes that had watched me two weeks ago from inside a mobster’s den wallpapered with crosses and religious iconography gazed down at me now. Some would have pegged Rocky and his brother Derek as Black Irish, but I knew from Barrons, who knows everything about everyone, that the fierce, ruthless blood of a long-ago Saudi ancestor runs in O’Bannion veins.
“I’ve been stopping in at all the businesses along this street. There are three cars in the alley behind this shop. Do you know anything about them?”
I shook my head. “No. Why?”
“They belong to…associates of my brother. I was wondering if you knew when they’d been left there and why. If you heard or saw anything. Maybe a fourth black car? A very expensive one?”
I shook my head again. “I really don’t go out back at all, and I don’t much notice cars. My boss disposes of the trash. I just work here. I try to stay inside most of the time. Alleys scare me.” I was babbling. I bit down lightly on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from talking. “Have you spoken to the police?” I encouraged. Go there, leave here, I willed silently.
Derek O’Bannion’s smile was sharp as knives. “O’Bannions don’t trouble the police with our problems. We take care of them ourselves.” He studied me with clinical detachment, all flirtation gone. “How long have you been working here?”
“Three days,” I said truthfully.
“You’re new to town.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What’s your name?”
“Mac.”
He laughed. “You don’t look like a Mac.”
Was this safer ground presenting itself? “What do I look like?” I asked lightly, leaning a hip against the counter and subtly arching my spine. Go back to flirting with me, my body posture invited.
He scanned me from head to toe. “Trouble,” he said after a moment, with a faint, sexually charged smile.
I laughed. “I’m really not.”
“Too bad,” he parried. But I could tell his mind wasn’t fully on flirting. It was on his brother. And something else I could completely understand; it was on a hunt for the truth, for retribution. What vagaries of fate had made kindred souls of us—me and this man? Oh, excuse me, it hadn’t been vagaries. It was me.