Finn grimaces. “Aw, fine. I’ll move the tarp to the back seats.” He sighs. “If she shites, vomits, or pisses, I’m going to make her regret it.”
I nod, believing him. And then I help heft her up and haul her to his car where we duct tape her wrists and ankles together and tape off her mouth.
For what it’s worth, she’s beginning to look much more sober.
“There now,” Finn declares when we step back and shut the doors. “She’ll keep.” With that, he strolls back to the house.
His windows are cracked enough that she’ll have a bit of a breeze, which is better than she’d have had in his trunk. Since this woman has let men hurt her daughter—and rather than defend her, only hurts her more by chasing her down and calling her a lying bitch, a word that’s much more loaded when uttered by a human—I don’t particularly care how comfortable she is so long as she survives. I turn and dutifully follow Finn.
He knocks politely on the door, and I wait behind him on the steps, feeling the heat of the concrete seep into my bare feet.
The door cracks open. Only part of Charlotte’s face and eye is visible. “Hello?”
“All’s taken care of, love,” Finn tells her kindly. “May I come in and speak to Ginny, please? Send her out if you’d rather, but let me in the backyard then. We need just a little bit of privacy if it wouldn’t be a bother.”
A long pause ensues. Not where Charlotte is communicating with Ginny either.
Finn steps back with one foot and knocks me in the head with his elbow. “Boyo, she’s waiting for you to tell her that you vouch for my character.”
Shocked, my gaze flies up to Charlotte’s. She is indeed waiting… because she wants to know if she can let Finn in, and she’s trusting me to tell her.
Dumbly, I bob my chin.
Finn sighs and knocks me in the head again on purpose as he turns back to her. “That’s a big fat yes, if you couldn’t tell.”
Smiling sheepishly, Charlotte opens the door and invites us back inside.
“Ginny,” Finn calls. “Can I have a word with you?”
Ginny comes up cautiously from the basement. “What?”
Finn gestures. “We can talk down there, or in Charlotte’s room or the back—”
“Tell me here,” she says, wary as all get out and staring at him hard. “I’m not going anywhere alone with you.”
Finn’s eyes lower from hers. An extremely rare thing from an alpha. “I don’t blame you, faolán.”
Little wolf.
He meets her gaze again, face serious. “Do you happen to know who your father was?”
Ginny’s chin goes up, her jaw turning hard. “Not really. Why do you care?”
“Because your mam’s got some werewolf blood in her.” Finn tips his head, studying her. “But you have more.”
CHAPTER 14
SUSAN
To be honest, I was dreading working with Finn today. I was half-convinced that because he’d solved the obstacle of a babysitter, he’d pounce on me the minute he found the opportunity, and ask to go out on a date.
He didn’t.
Twice he approached me during my shift, but he was distracted both times and the second, he was literally called away. From his expression, whoever was on the phone with him was telling him something of urgent importance.
“Star of the County Down” is blaring from the stage where we have live musicians playing the banjo, a mandolin, a bodhran drum, a guitar, and an honest-to-God accordion.
One of the pub’s bouncers, a guy everyone calls Rooker, is the one wielding the last instrument, and he’s doing it really, really well. His arms look huge as he squeezes and yanks on that thing, his thick fingers nimbly flying. Before this gig, my only experience with anyone playing an accordion was watching Steve Urkel on Family Matters.
In real life? Accordion players are kind of badass.
“He really likes you,” Kelly, another (human) waitress, tells me as Finn hustles out of the pub to take his call where he can hear the other party.
“Who?”
“Finn!”
“Oh yeah?” I say noncommittally, stacking glasses. A signed dollar bill flutters down from the wall, and I pause to tack it back up. Our pub, like a few other famous Irish pubs, adopted a tradition of having dollar bills autographed and taped or tacked to every surface in the bar, right up to the rafters and even papering the ceiling. The money is counted as an asset (and therefore, insured) as it adds to the pub’s ambiance and experience.