her mind, she probably thought that grooming his thick black hair at all was unbecoming to a man of the cloth. She took her vow of obedience rather loosely, but she was good with the numbers and could pinch a penny until it bled. Which made her indispensable.
He suddenly had a searing headache and just barely suppressed the urge to bang his head on his desk. The last thing he needed was Sister Cortona telling him that he would ruin his pretty face that way in her perfectly annihilating deadpan voice.
“Could we do a fundraiser?” he asked. That, at least, gave him a concrete, external goal that would keep him from spending too much time in contemplation or trying to have a conversation with God, who never seemed to answer.
“It would have to be a mighty big fundraiser.” She did not sound hopeful, but that only motivated Father Patrick. There was something about her faint praise and dry insults that he found very inspirational. If he were in therapy, that would be something that he would look at.
“I’ll look into it.” He’d save the pre-K program, and he would feel good again. Probably. Definitely.
CHAPTER TWO
PATRICK HELPED HIS FATHER behind the bar at Dooley’s three nights a week. It was time that Patrick could ill afford away from his duties, but even Sister Cortona looked the other way because he did it in the name of being a dutiful son.
His father didn’t thank him, just looked him up and down and said, “I suppose you’ll do,” every time he walked in the door.
Danny Dooley was a hard, stubborn man from a long line of hard, stubborn men. Patrick’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all run Dooley’s their entire lives. Patrick’s great-grandfather had practically shit every brick of the exterior, the way that Danny told it.
Now that Danny wasn’t as hale and energetic as he had been, he couldn’t run the place all on his own. And, someday, he wouldn’t be able to work behind the bar at all. Patrick tended bar that night while his father went over the books at the end of the bar, near the doors that led to the office.
Even as an adult, Danny liked to keep an eye on his sons when they were in his domain. Didn’t matter that they were both adults and Patrick was a functioning adult. It still made him feel deeply cared for that his father wanted to be around him. Even if his father wasn’t much of a talker, he never worried about where his paperwork was. He’d never done his own taxes. His father might not have been free with pats on the back or words of affirmation, but he was steady.
Chris had started making noises about them selling and had gone as far as to field a few offers. He didn’t want anything to do with running the business now that he was an attorney on the way to making partner at his firm. Uncharitably, Patrick thought that his meteoric rise had a whole lot more to do with his brother’s gift for bullshit than it did with his smarts.
Patrick would never be able to take the place over, and Danny had never quite accepted it. His father would have liked to put any connection with the Catholic Church in the ground along with his wife, but Patrick had prevented that by entering the seminary.
All three of the Dooley men were at a permanent impasse when it came to what to do with the family legacy. The prospect for any legacy at all was in severe doubt at the moment. Unless Chris got his head out of his ass—which would take major surgery or a true miracle in Patrick’s view—his brother wasn’t going to find anyone willing to put up with him beyond a few weeks. And Patrick was obviously not going to be carrying on the family name.
Despite the cloud of uncertainty over the future of Dooley’s, it was comforting to be there.
* * *
—
IT WAS INCREDIBLY FOOLISH for Sasha to suggest that she and Nathan meet at Dooley’s bar on the South Side of Chicago. She’d known that as soon as she’d hit send on the text. But she’d been annoyed that Nathan left it to her to find a place for them to go even after he’d been the one to ask her out. Besides, Nathan worked for the baseball franchise on the South Side, and Dooley’s was convenient to his office.
Sasha was blowing this