“YOU BOYS SURE y’all know what you’re doing? Running a bar ain’t like throwing a party. Hell. You take this on, and you’ll be managing a party seven days a week.”
Finn had to laugh at Pete’s description. He wasn’t wrong.
His new business partner, Barry Grant, chuckled at Pete. “We’re young, strong, and stupid. Perfect recipe for success. Isn’t that how it goes?”
Pete took off his Stetson, tipped his head back, and guffawed at the top of his lungs. “Been taking notes, have you?” he asked Barry. Both men fist bumped as the old man looked at his barkeep with obvious affection.
Finn liked Barry a lot. He was smart as fuck, had an awesome sense of humor, and knew every nook and cranny of Whiskey Pete’s. From the moment they met one night when Barry was tending bar, he’d come to think of him as a friend. Just like Finn, Barry’s family considered him a royal fuck-up and made no secret of looking down their noses at the choices he made.
It didn’t hurt that Pete regarded Barry as the son he wished he’d had. It made taking the legendary honky-tonk off the old guy’s hands a lot easier than if he’d been trying to make the deal blind and by himself.
“Tell you what,” Pete thundered in a voice big and gravely enough to be heard across the empty room. “How ‘bout we just jump headfirst with a ninety-day opt-out if you fuck up or can’t handle the pressure? I’ve had enough of this fucking summer heat. Thinking about heading to Vancouver for a spell to hang out with some buddies from ‘Nam who run a chopper business.”
Finn sat forward. He liked where this was headed.
“My boy Barry here is already running the saloon. And Finn, son! With your badass experience as a firehouse cook, you’ll give this old place what it’s always needed. Good food.”
He and Barry looked at each other. What Pete was offering was basically a trial run. Goddamn. Really? How many people got a test period with a new business? Things were looking up big time.
No discussion was necessary. Each of them stuck out their hand at the same time and said, “Deal.”
A round of drinks followed. Non-alcoholic because Pete was a bigger stickler about limiting alcohol during daylight hours than Finn’s former station captain was. Not that he was an advocate for the ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere’ believers. Let’s face it, being an Irishman in Boston had given him VIP seating when it came to watching people he knew, and sometimes loved, drink themselves into strangers.
Was it weird then? Buying a bar? Wow, he thought. Maybe. After all, despite everyone here being briefed on the Finn O’Brien as a fuck-up situation, he certainly did not see himself that way.
He’d been a damn good student. Straight A’s to prove it. But as Deval and Mike O’Brien’s little brother, he was mostly invisible. He’d wanted to pitch in Little League, but Mike had been a pitcher and Dev, a star shortstop, so he’d been banished to the outfield. Didn’t matter that he could hurl a supersonic fastball.
Such was his life growing up in obscurity as his older siblings set records, earned praise, found successful careers, and started families.
Nothing he ever did seemed to matter, so Finn never really tried. Two weeks after starting college, he realized that shit wasn’t for him. Not when he was constantly compared to Dev, or Mike, or even worse, Meghan. He didn’t care how cool his sister was—no guy wants to be compared to a girl.
So he switched gears and invested his energy into doing something he thought would matter. He became a paramedic, and a kickass one at that, earning high praise and a commendation for the way he handled himself as a young and woefully inexperienced first responder on the scene of the Boston Marathon attack.
Oh sure, he had some hoopla around him for a short time after that, but within a year, goody two-shoes Meggie hit the fucking lottery with a group of her teacher pals and Finn slid once more into deeper obscurity.
Barry and Pete were telling bar stories and going out of their way to crack each other up. He sat there and grinned at them, enjoying the easy camaraderie between the two very different men.
Folders and papers from their business meeting covered the wooden table they’d commandeered along with a big ass bowl of some shit Pete insisted was chili plunked on top.
Jesus. Who was even willing to eat that crap? No wonder the kitchen was operating at a substantial loss. Bar food was as a huge deal where he was from and firehouse fare was something at which Finn excelled.
His ma could make a comfort meal out of two cornflakes and some butter, so he pretty much grew up learning kitchen skills from the best. But holy fuck had his world exploded once he found himself under the wing of Poppy Shaughnessy—an acclaimed firehouse cook who taught Finn how to make gourmet feasts for the first responders at his station house.
He might have to do a bit of research into local tastes when it came to some simple chili, but aside from that, he was fully capable of blowing Pete’s bowl of disgusting crap off the menu with less than half an effort.
As if he was reading Finn’s thoughts, Pete slammed his mug of iced tea onto the table and reached over to slap him on the back.
“Boy! You gonna show these dusty cowboys how to get ‘er done ‘Bah-stan’ style,” the old fuck drawled with a mocking Boston accent. “Make your sister proud.”
Barry snickered and shot him a comical look. Finn hadn’t exactly been quiet with his new friend about how much it fucked with him that his older siblings were regarded as God’s gift to mankind.
“Meggie can’t cook worth a damn,” he muttered.
Pete’s gruff chuckle was part understanding and part challenge. “Don’t think Major Marquez married that little filly for her kitchen abilities.”
Yeah, no shit. Meghan was the only person he knew who could burn water; so of course, it made sense that she’d end up in a friggin mansion with a staff to make meals and pick up after her.
Barry took that moment to throw down his two cents. “I like the Justice crew. Good guys. Don’t take no crap.”
Pete nodded solemnly. His whole demeanor changed quite abruptly, and Finn sat back as he took in the sudden shift in the conversation.
“I owe Alex. Big time. Guy saved my ass when the Feds tried to shake me down.”
Seriously? This was a new wrinkle in the Justice legend.
Before he could ask, Barry filled in a couple of blanks. “I remember my dad calling bullshit on that whole thing. Running drugs out of the bar, right? A bunch of hardcore bikers got caught making deals in the desert, and of course, those government boys tried to pin it on a run-down watering hole in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
Both men made a series of disagreeable noises letting Finn know exactly what they thought of the whole thing.
“Justice wasn’t even a thing back then. And Alex, well, fuck—he was a certifiable mess. Guy’s lucky he can walk after what them assholes did. Suicide bombers, what the fuck,” he muttered darkly.
Barry nodded his agreement. Finn knew about his brother-in-law’s past, but seeing it through the eyes of people not living on his property was interesting. And enlightening.
Adjusting his bolo tie just as he would if the Pope were about to walk in the room, Finn read Pete’s instinctual show of respect for Alex as an absolute. He just wished so much as a dropperful of those feelings existed for him where his sister’s new husband was concerned.
“Vets, we look out for each other. Y’know?”
He and Barry nodded as Pete kept on.
“Alex never doubted my side of the story. It was”—he paused—“a turning point for me, boys. Until then, I was just another forgotten soldier with a lingering case of ‘Nam clinging to everything I did. But when a decorated officer, a war hero with deep connections in Washington, believed in my grizzled ass, well, it changed everything. Feds backed off. The bar started making me a decent living, and my reputation went from crazy old fuck to businessman.”
Silence hung over them when he finished talking. Finn nursed his soda and thought about what he had just learned. Barry took the straw out of his iced tea and started folding it like an origami project. Pete swirled the ice in his glass in an unconscious circular motion as he stared off into space.
“Hey, Pete,” a loud voice barked. They looked in the direction of the kitchen where the line cook currently fucking things up was holding open one of the swinging doors and waving around a piece of paper. “Got a delivery that needs signing for.”
Barry hollered at the guy—and not in a friendly way. “Can’t you do anything, man?”
Pete sighed heavily and fixed Finn with a sheepish look. “Leaving you with a shitshow, boy.”
Word.