combination.”
“Ask your girlfriend.”
“Right.” I flopped down onto the sofa and kicked my dress shoes off over the arm. “And she won’t wonder at all why I’m asking.”
“Who the hell cares what she wonders? You’ve already wasted way too much time trying to do things your way. I say we go over there right now, put this in his face—” He produced the gun from his waistband and waved it in the air. “—and get the damn book back.”
“Pop wanted to keep this quiet. He doesn’t want the police involved.” Even though there was truth in these words, my main motivation for talking him down was for Spencer’s sake. She’d be staying at Tommy’s for the next few days to help organize the caterers and decorators, and there was no way I was going to let her get caught in Judd’s crossfire.
“My old man’s always been a little too subtle for my taste,” Judd said, still brandishing the black pistol. “What’s the point in playing the long game when this’ll get the job done a hundred times faster?”
“Yeah, and get you killed if you’re not careful. Put that thing away before you shoot your own dick off.”
Judd huffed in disgust but put the gun on a side table and collapsed into the armchair next to it. “You’d be awfully sad about that, wouldn’t you, nancy boy?”
I laughed. “Trust me, Prince, if I swung that way, I’d have better taste.”
“You should be so lucky,” Judd sneered.
“Look,” I said, steering the conversation back to Tommy and the ledger. “I can get the book back without anyone getting hurt or going to jail. If I play it right on Friday, he won’t even notice it’s missing until we’re long gone.”
“That’s a big if, as far as I can tell, and I’m tired of waiting.”
“You know,” I said carefully, “there’s a chance the book isn’t even there. Tommy isn’t an idiot. He probably has it in a safe deposit box on the other side of the country.”
“Not a chance,” Judd said, effectively killing any hope I had of talking myself out of this mess. “He was stupid enough to steal from us, and he’s stupid enough to keep the book nearby. There’s no way he’d keep it somewhere he couldn’t check on it once in a while.”
“I guess.” I rested my head on the arm of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. It didn’t matter what I said or did; there was no getting around hurting Spencer. “Then it has to be in the wall safe. He might even have the combination written down somewhere in his office, and if it’s there, I’ll find it.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it, Buffer.”
“And when I do,” I said, pushing myself up to glare at him, “you better think of a new fucking nickname because I’m tired of this ‘buffer’ shit.”
“Oh-ho, big talk from the guy who’s made such a damn mess of things so far.”
“I may not be working on your schedule, Prince, but I’ll get what I came for.” I gave him a hateful smile. “And soon after that, you’ll have to start calling me brother.”
The muscle in his jaw flinched, but apparently he wasn’t in the mood to reassemble any more tables today. “Since I know you won’t be able to get your head outta your ass long enough to do anything useful, I ain’t too worried about it.”
I’d been ready for another fight, but my sore ribs were grateful I hadn’t been successful in provoking him this time. I was too tired to keep arguing, and we were both quiet for a long time.
“I would’ve thought you of all people would be okay with Tommy Costello getting hurt,” Judd said.
I looked up to see him sliding the gun back and forth across the tabletop. “Why’s that? He didn’t steal from me.”
“He did though.”
“What are you talking about? I thought he took the money and ledger from Pop’s safe.”
“I’m not talking about money, dipshit. I’m talking about Wiley Jim—your dad.”
I sat up again, this time pushing myself all the way so I could look him square in the face. “They worked together, I know that, and Pop said something about Tommy betraying my da, but he betrayed the whole clan when he stole the money, didn’t he?”
“He stole from the clan and took off, yeah,” Judd said. “But what he took from your father was far more valuable.”
“And what was that?”
“His life.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MY FACE WAS starting to hurt from the smile I’d plastered on when I’d reached the mahogany door of Tommy’s house. The party was already in full swing when I’d arrived, and it had taken me several minutes of fighting through the sea of designer labels and overflowing martini glasses to find Spencer. She was in the kitchen, directing a staff of uniformed waiters loaded with trays of hors d’oeuvres. Her efficiency would have impressed Bridget Sheedy, although she spoke in a voice much too kind for that old bat’s taste.
“There you are,” she said, skirting around the edge of the island to avoid knocking into one of the waiters. “I was wondering if you’d come to your senses and decided to skip this horrible event all together.” She crossed to the kitchen door and lifted herself on her toes to kiss me hello.
I kissed her back, though it was hard to revel in it the way I would have done before Judd’s revelation. She’d been so busy the last few days helping her dad that we hadn’t had much time to talk, giving me plenty of time to stew over what Judd had told me. Tommy murdered my da, and although his sins certainly weren’t Spencer’s, it was getting harder to separate the two. There was no denying I’d missed her the past few days, but finding out the truth had lit a fire under my ass. There was no way I’d be leaving this house tonight without the ledger. I might’ve thought I loved this girl—and maybe I really did—but I was certain I loved my mother and my brother, and what Tommy had done had nearly destroyed my entire family.
“Are you finished giving orders?” I asked, my arms still wrapped around her waist.
“I think so.” She glanced around the kitchen. “These guys cater every one of my dad’s parties, so they know what they’re doing.”
“Good,” I said, holding her at arm’s length to get a better look at the cranberry dress that hugged the curves of her body and ended around mid-thigh. “This dress is too good to waste on standing around in the kitchen.”
“You keep talking like that, and no one will be seeing this dress for the rest of the night.” She kissed me again, and this time whatever her father had done to mine twenty years ago didn’t stop me from returning it with all the heat and electricity I felt running through every nerve in my body. If there would’ve been any real chance that she and I could sneak up to one of the neglected guestrooms upstairs, I might’ve even put my mission to find the book on hold for a while.
But it didn’t look like that was going to happen, at least for now. She turned the open-mouthed kiss into a quick peck and leaned back. “I guess we should go see if my dad needs me to do anything else.”
We found Tommy in the living room, entertaining a group of suits. “So an American on vacation in Ireland decides to play a round with a few local gentleman,” Tommy said, waving the Scotch glass in his hand as he spoke. “He takes a few practice swings, sets up his tee, and proceeds to hook the hell out of the ball, which goes way out of bounds.”
“Is this a story about you, Richards?” a middle-aged guy with an orange spray-tan asked, eliciting a round of chuckles from the assembled crowd. Richards lifted his glass, offering a good-natured smile and a mea culpa nod.
“So the guy re-tees,” Tommy continued once the chuckles had died away. “He says to the gentlemen, ‘I’m taking a mulligan,’ then pounds one down the fairway about 280 yards. Proud of himself, he beams at his playing partners and says, ‘In the U.S., we call that a mulligan. What do you call it here?’ The locals stare at him for a long time and finally one guys says, ‘hitting three.’”
The room erupted into laughter. I glanced down at Spencer who shrugged at me, apparently less familiar with golf than she was with Phillies baseball.
