“It wasn’t a fight at all with Shawn.” She glanced over at the kitchen door, wondering how they were going to deal with it all, and with each other, now. “Got drunk, did he? Well, now, I wish I’d thought of that. Let me go on to work, Darcy. It’s going to be a long night, and the sooner it’s started, the sooner it’s done.”

If anyone expected her to leave it at that, they didn’t know Darcy Gallagher. At the first opportunity, she was in the kitchen. She took a good look at her brother as she relayed orders. Though he was a bit rough around the edges still, he appeared sober and steady.

“Brenna’s come in.” Darcy noted with interest that Shawn’s steady motion with the rolling pin broke. “She looks unhappy. And so do you.”

He went back to rolling out the pastry for meat pies. “We’ll be all right.”

“I’ll help you.”

He flicked his eyes up. “Why?”

“Because she’s my oldest and dearest friend in all the world, and you, though an accident of fate, are my brother.”

Humor flickered across his face. “We’ll be all right, Darcy,” he repeated. “It’s for us to work it out.”

“You’re turning down the assistance of an expert in this particular field of battle.”

He began to score the dough, measuring it into neat squares. “I’ll hold you in reserve, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Well, it’s your choice, after all.” She started out, stopped, turned around. “Does she matter?”

Knowing how well his sister read faces, Shawn kept his head lowered. “Do you think I don’t know what comes out of my mouth goes in your ear, then off your tongue and into her ear?”

“It won’t. If you ask me.”

He looked up then. Loyalty was her finest trait, as far as he was concerned. And he knew she’d sooner break her arm than her word. “Then I’m asking you. I feel it’s my life up on a thin and slippery line. Step off one way, the ground’s solid, off the other it’s a bog. You sink in, and it’s over.”

“Then watch your step,” Darcy advised, and went back into the pub.

The noise level was already rising. It would be a din, hushed down once the music started, and peaking again at every break the band took. Brenna worked the taps with both hands, even while she listened to Jack Brennan lumber his way through a joke he’d heard about a princess and a frog. Though her heart wasn’t in it, she laughed at the end.

When the band began to set up, she ordered herself to pay no mind, no mind at all. But her gaze wandered over nonetheless and locked on the blond singer.

Just the type Shawn would drift back to, she thought. Shallow bastard. What would it take him? A month, a week, a bloody night before he rolled atop another woman?

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Jude said as she slid onto a stool. “But can I have a mineral water?”