Saving Christmas in the Little Irish Village (The Little Irish Village #5)

Chapter 12

12

‘Hi, Dylan.’ Hannah hoped she sounded casual and chilled and not like a mouse squeaking.

‘Hey. Sorry to bug you on the weekend.’ His voice rolled into her ear, sending a quiver through her that would make a girl blush.

Hannah absentmindedly stroked Princess Leia, whom she’d plopped on her lap, as the excitable quivers were replaced by a spasm of shame. He was probably ringing to see if she’d offloaded any Christmas seed cards. Doris’s boot was still full of the boxes she’d carted home with her, and she knew she’d missed a prime opportunity to flog them while manning the bar. She could have opened a box on the bar top and run through her bee pitter-patter with every free pint pulled. There was nothing like on-the-house ale to put Emerald Bay’s villagers in good humour.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday about being up against getting this garden centre thing stopped with Christmas so close, and I want to help.’

Hannah stopped petting Princess Leia. This was music to her ears! Wait until she told Nan! Dylan was a man who didn’t back down, and it was his dedication to what he believed in that had initially attracted her to him. That and his devastatingly swarthy good looks. She was only human, after all.

‘Hannah, are you still there?’

‘Yeah.’ She was at a loss for what to say other than, ‘Thanks.’

‘Have you put anything in motion?’

She didn’t want to say no, and Dylan didn’t like excuses. It was a straight answer he was looking for. So, knowing he wouldn’t want to hear she’d been busy with her family and manning the bar, she told him who they were harbouring at the Shamrock Inn. ‘I’m going to tell Tom Flynn what I think of his Greenhouse and where he can put it.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

That wasn’t the response Hannah had expected. ‘Why not?’

‘You’re better to keep your enemies closer. It’s how you get information, and information is king.’

‘Be friendly with him, you mean?’

‘You’ve more to gain.’

Hannah was shaking her head even though Dylan couldn’t see her because it sounded sneaky, and the sneaky gene wasn’t in her DNA.

‘What else are you going to do?’

She’d not thought about it, but again, this wouldn’t do, so she blurted,‘My nan’s on board. Together, we’ll get as many signatures as possible to take to the Department of Agriculture.’ Thanks to Google, Hannah knew the records for the old farm would have passed to the Department of Agriculture when the Land Commission was dissolved in the nineties.

‘Good luck with that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you go down the petition route, the thing will be built by the time any of those paper pushers even glance at it.’

‘Well, what do you think we should do?’

‘What I told you. Play nice with your man and find out who the purchaser is behind the land deal. You need a name, Hannah, so we can hit whoever is behind this where it hurts. Look, I’ve got to go. You get that name, and I’ll set things in motion.’

His use of ‘we’ saw the quivers return, and she sat staring at her phone for a long time after he’d hung up. Dylan’s suggestion that she get friendly with Tom wasn’t sitting comfortably with her. Still, sometimes, you had to take things further than you were comfortable with, especially for the greater good.

It was no good sitting here, Hannah decided. After plopping a disgruntled Princess Leia back in her basket, she pushed the connecting door open and headed back into the pub.

Hannah saw that Tom was still ingratiating himself with her mam. She ignored Imogen’s glare from behind the bar and sidled up to them.

Nora let whatever she’d been saying fall away mid-sentence as she focused on her daughter. ‘And where did you disappear to?’

‘I just ducked through to the kitchen to return a call.’

‘Well, I’m after telling Tom how we spend Christmas, and he’s after telling me about this French bistro in Dublin that sounds right up my alley he dined at last Christmas Eve. Your father and I have an anniversary coming up. I might see if I can talk him into whisking me away to the Big Smoke to celebrate in the new year.’

‘Mam’s a Francophile, but Dad’s more of a heathenphile, so I don’t fancy her chances,’ Hannah explained to Tom, making him laugh. ‘So are you a Christmasphile then?’

Tom’s smile faded. ‘Far from it.’

Hannah picked up on the change in his mood, but Nora was too busy talking to notice.

‘Don’t pay any attention to her. Liam can be as cultured as the next man when the fancy takes him.’

‘Nora Kelly, c’mere t’me now so we can toast your Shannon’s happy news,’ Clare Sheedy, unusually chipper thanks to the third glass of sherry she was waving about, called out.

Nora excused herself, and Hannah sent a silent thank you to Clare, even though, with Mam gone, she and Tom were left standing alongside one another in awkward silence. Oh, how she wished she was the flirtatious type, but witty tête-à-têtes didn’t trip easily off her tongue. So she said the first thing that came to mind. ‘What do you like doing in your spare time then, Tom?’

Jesus wept , she thought. I sounded like I was touting for business on Tinder.

Tom lowered the pint he’d been about to sup from and replied, ‘To be honest, my work doesn’t allow for much spare time. Trying to master work-life balance might be a New Year’s resolution. What about yourself?’

That threw her. What did she do? ‘Erm, I think that might be one of my resolutions, too. I kind of live and breathe my causes.’

‘That’s admirable, though.’

‘Thanks.’ It was also lonely. That was something a lot of people didn’t understand. How you could be lonely even when you were surrounded by like-minded people. Hannah thought of Dylan. ‘Although, I am going to be taking up knitting.’

‘Knitting?’ Tom raised an eyebrow.

She recounted how she’d been roped into learning the craft by Eileen Carroll.

‘It would be quite therapeutic, I’d imagine. What with all that repetitive hand movement.’

‘Better than smoking,’ Hannah replied, unable to tell if he was being serious or not. ‘And it will be that – or incredibly frustrating.’ She wasn’t a natural-born craftswoman either.

Tom laughed.

Hannah grinned back, thinking he had a nice laugh. She pressed further. ‘It can’t be all work and no play in Ireland’s fair city, though.’

‘Well, I fit the gym in when I can, meet my mates for a drink, the usual stuff, and once a week, I hang out with this great kid, Sean, for a couple of hours. I started volunteering for For?ige as a big brother at the start of the year.’

Hannah forgot about pretending to like Tom as he told her about the relationship he’d established with Sean, a thirteen-year-old whose father had died when he was eleven. ‘We both like beachcombing, so I pick him up on Saturday afternoons, and we head out to the beach to look for treasure.’

‘Have you found any?’ Hannah’s eyes were wide as she pictured Tom earnestly hunched over a metal detector with a young lad by his side.

‘It depends on how you define treasure. We’ve found lots of sea glass. Bray in Wicklow’s a favourite spot.’

Hannah was intrigued, and found herself leaning closer to him. ‘So you’re kind of a father figure to Sean?’

‘No. I’d say I’m a friend who’s a good listener with more life experience than him.’

Hannah nodded slowly and was disappointed when Tom downed his pint, nearly brushing her hand as he popped it on the bar, before glancing at his phone and saying he had to run. ‘I’m meeting a client,’ he explained.

She watched him go and said softly to herself, ‘Well, that didn’t exactly go to plan, Hannah.’

It was late by the time Hannah slipped between the cosy sheets of her old bed. The afternoon’s hoolie had stretched into the evening with only a fish-and-chip-supper intermission. Her feet ached because Mam and Dad had got their pound of flesh. Once Tom had left, Imogen had collared her, and she’d manned the bar until closing. Still and all, she thought, wiggling her toes and luxuriating in stretching out, it wasn’t every day your sister announced she was pregnant.

Who had Tom gone to meet? she wondered, faffing with the pillow until she had it just right. Maybe she’d get to ask him outright in the morning over breakfast. Mam had let her off Mass so long as she cooked Tom the breakfast that was part and parcel of the full board he’d booked into the Shamrock for.

She was tired, but her brain had gone into overtime thinking about how she hadn’t expected to like Tom. That wasn’t how things were supposed to go. She’d have been completely useless as a femme-fatale spy during wartime or the likes. What Dylan would have to say if she were to tell him she was having trouble separating Tom the person from Tom the architectural arse who was a partner in crime to this Greenhouse project wasn’t something she wanted to think about. Instead, her thoughts turned to the strange American woman interested in her mam, and she huffed into the darkness.

It was going to be a long night.