Abigail tugged on yoga pants and a ratty Notre Dame sweatshirt then spent the next hour pissed off and letting her surroundings have it. The bar towels were thrown in the washing machine with a vengeance, the dryer kicked shut with a firm slam of anger, and a general storm spewed through the house, wearing down a path of fury while dealing with the daily chores.
She stopped, annoyed, only because she didn't want to actually fall through the ceiling as both Declan and the health inspector had suggested. And because it was an actual possibility, Abigail cooled long enough to make another cup of coffee and stand still while she sipped it.
But past memories mixed with the hot coffee, causing a bitter, burning mess. She made a face as she gulped it all back.
She itched with annoyance and worse, she cursed that she needed the money that'd been dangled in front of her. And she wanted to scream with every fiber of her being for agreeing to the deal, for needing to agree to the deal or face closing the pub.
But when she'd gone back inside after slamming the door in Declan's face—which was somewhat satisfying—she'd forgotten about the broken stair and had stepped back into the hole, scraping her ankle.
Practical matters taking precedence over pride, she knew her bank account needed that money for repairs—badly. And she'd negotiated, hadn't she? She thought, giving herself a momentary boost of confidence. But the confidence dwindled when she realized she'd have to face the intimidatingly opulent Fitzgerald estate once again.
She'd been there only a couple of other times. And that last time had changed her life entirely, she thought darkly, sipping more coffee, feeling her throat burn and her eyes well with heated pride.
"Abs! Where are the eggs?" Her brother Ben yelled from the bottom of the stairs. "And did you know there's a hole in your stair?"
She sniffed back the tears. "Don't you dare eat anything in the kitchen down there. It's spoken and paid for. And yes, I stepped through the damn stair this morning."
At the sound of Ben schlepping up the stairs, she yelled down again, this time half-heartedly while she fanned her misted eyes to dry them. "I'm half naked, don't come up here."
There wasn't even a slight hitch in the rhythm of his steps. "You never walk around half naked."
"What if I had a guy up here?"
"You never have a guy up here."
He was right but she didn't need the reminder.
"What's up?" He asked as he reached the top of the stairs, giving her face a stern once-over.
"Nothing, just drinking some coffee."
"Something's up." He wandered into the kitchen, poured a cup for himself. "You and I share the same genes. At least as far as we know. Same hair, same eyes, same absence of a father, so there's a pretty good chance. Give."
Because she needed to do something, she yanked open the fridge and pulled out a carton of eggs. "I accepted a catering job."
"We cater?" Ben pulled out the cast iron pan from under a stack of pots, muscled the thing onto the stove and took the eggs from Abigail's hands.
"We do tonight. Can you be available earlier than your shift?"
"How much earlier?"
"Hmm, starting in ten minutes?"
He frowned. "I guess. But tonight? What needs catering tonight? The Fitzgeralds are having their annual party. Anyone in town who would hire a caterer will be there."
"We're catering the Fitzgeralds' party."
He laughed as he cracked eggs into a bowl then tossed the shells into the sink. "Hilarious. Could you see them in their fancy gowns and expensive suits, eating Pub Pretzels."
"Well you don't have to imagine it for long, you'll be seeing it live and in person tonight."
Grabbing for the whisk from the canister on the counter, he glanced at Abigail. "You're kidding. You've got to be kidding."
"My jokes are funnier than that." Abigail dumped seasoning into the bowl of eggs, took over whisking when he stalled. "So you're cancelling any plans you had for today to help, right? And Beckett. He has to help too. It's an all hands on deck day."
She was being studied by her brother and didn't care for it, mostly because she was judging herself infinitely more harshly than he ever could.
"You don't like the Fitzgeralds." Ben's voice had gone rough and low. "Why would you cater their party? And why would they want you to cater their party? They don't eat food like ours."
"I'm not making you eggs if you're going to stand here and insult me and my food."
"I'm not insulting you or your food. I'm insulting them. They don't even do their own grocery shopping. I can't picture them eating Mac N' Cheese from a pub." He started the burner, tossed a cut of butter in the pan. "I guess I don't really care why they're doing it. Why are you doing it? This doesn't have anything to do with Declan does it?"
She left the kitchen instead of answering, paced around the living room, fluffing couch pillows, then returned as the egg mixture sizzled over the heat while Ben gripped a spatula and made quick use of it.
"Money," she told him, finally answering.
He said nothing more and Abigail was grateful for the moment to think.
"Pull out a couple plates?" He asked through the quiet. "I'll finish up here."
After setting plates near the stove, she hoisted herself up onto the counter to sit instead of leave like her instincts told her to do. "I didn't want to take it. But this place is falling apart and it's not going to stop until I pay money, money I don't currently have, to fix it."
"How long did the health inspector give us? We have a few months right?"
"Six weeks to repair the floors in the dry storage area, behind the bar, and the ceiling beneath my bedroom, above the kitchen. Apparently it's not a total remodel, it can be repaired, but the estimate I got was a beast. The good news is that the guy said we'd only have to close for a few days."
Ben clicked off the burner. "Okay. We get a loan and we take care of it right? It's not fun but you'll get a few days vacation. Have you ever even taken a day off? You deserve it."
Her throat ached. Swallowing hard and hollow pride held in place by a nasty claw of need hurt like hell. "The bank turned down my loan application. They said I don't have enough assets. Which is true, given that I have one asset and it's falling apart."
Ben paused, reading her, then slid four slices of wheat bread into the toaster. "So what does that mean for us?"
He always was good at listening, she thought, her heart swelling just a little bit. He was a good kid, which she considered him even though he was only four years her junior. He was a good kid and she'd done everything she could to make sure the sting of things—life, family, their absent parents—had been met with some sort of solace and stability.
"It means we cater this party and see how far the money will get us. I didn't want to accept the job, but it's what's best for us. I had to do what I had to do."
"I know that. But you should've told me about the bank loan, you know. We're family and we're in this together. We're better when we figure this out, the three of us."
"I know that, Ben. Thank you. I just don't want you or Beckett to shoulder the burden."
He shrugged, "It's what shoulders are for. So since you're not jumping for joy about this job tonight, how about you fill me in on why you don't like the Fitzgeralds. You never told me why you hate them so much."
She took a deep breath as she watched her little brother plate the eggs then pull out a mostly empty bottle of hot sauce from the fridge. "I guess I don't really hate them. They're just themselves."
"That's not a very good answer," he pointed out as he scraped butter onto toast.
"Yeah. It's all I've got for now though."
Ben gripped both plates. "Well then you should get your thankfully-not-naked butt off the counter and let's go eat these eggs. It's going to be a long day."
"Thank you, Ben. Really. Thank you." She trailed behind with her heavy metaphorical tail tucked.
"Always," he said to her as they fell onto the couch and chair, respectively, in the cozily small living room. "Just don't tell me I have to wear a tux or bowtie or anything."
She forked some eggs into her mouth and grinned wickedly. "I didn't agree to uniforms. Wear any damn thing you want. Where's Beckett by the way?"
"Hurting at home. Took the drunk train in from the city last night."
"Enjoying his first year of drinking, I see."
"His first year of legal drinking," Ben corrected.
Abigail nodded, thinking back to when she'd turned twenty-one. She'd been in the throws of preparing to open the pub and taking care of her seventeen and sixteen-year-old brothers. "It's good he's enjoying himself. But today we need him. After breakfast, you go home and get him, bring him in, prop him up, and give him a Guinness and some eggs and fries. I need his cooking skills. He can whip up Bangers n' Mash better than you and I can."
"Truth," Ben said, shoving the last of the eggs in his mouth. "But I make mean scrambled eggs. How many guests tonight?"
"A hundred and fifty." She ignored the glaring pair of eyes that zeroed in on her, and kept eating.
"You're kidding."
"You must think very little of my humor today because that wouldn't be funny either. Or maybe it would be. It's crazy, I realize."
"It is but we've served a hundred people on St. Patrick's Day. Not much difference. What're we making?"
She un-tucked her legs, stood, hauled the empty plates to the sink, grateful that Ben was playing it casual when they both knew her decision was a ridiculous one. She loved her brother for that. "Let's go see what we've got in the kitchen. I'll change and meet you down there."
They could do it, she decided, pumping herself up with a pep talk as she changed clothes. They would do it together because that's how it'd always been, her and her brothers. They were her family, her everything. And together, they'd survived crazier, hadn't they? They could certainly survive the Fitzgeralds' annual Autumn Harvest party.
She zipped up her flat riding-style boots over skinny jeans and did a little karate kick in the air.
Of course they could do it.