Cutting Loose. Susan Andersen

turned to Jane. “How about you, Janie? Do you want your club soda freshened?”

      “No, I think I’ll have a glass of wine-whatever the house white is,” she added to the waitress.

      Her friends whooped and drummed the table and generally made a huge fuss over her unusual selection and Jane leveled a look at them when the waitress left with their order. “Contrary to popular opinion, you two, I do know how to make an exception on occasion.” Then she grinned. “And this is definitely the occasion.”

      “Amen to that, sister,” Poppy agreed.

      When their order arrived, Ava raised her glass. “To being new home owners.”

      Jane and Poppy clinked glasses with her. “To new home owners!”

      Jane took a sip of her wine, then raised her glass again. “To Miss Agnes.”

      They clinked again. “To Miss Agnes!”

      “Man, I miss her,” Poppy said.

      “Yeah, me, too. She was like no adult I’ve ever known.”

      Then Poppy raised her glass. “To you, Jane. May you speedily catalog Miss Agnes’s collections.”

      “To me,” she said while Ava and Poppy exclaimed, “To Jane!” Then in a rare exhibition of uncertainty, she added, “What if I mess up the job?”

      They stared at each other as the possibility of failure hovered in the air above them. Then Ava laughed, Poppy made a rude noise and Jane shook her head, her momentary nerves dissipating.

      “Nah.” If there was one thing she was completely confident about it was her abilities in her chosen field.

      “That reminds me.” Poppy twisted in her chair to glance around the bar. “I asked the head of Kavanagh Construction to drop by if he had the chance so you guys could meet him. And there he is!”

      To Jane’s astonishment, Poppy hailed one of the men at the table she’d been watching earlier, then popped out of her chair and sashayed across the bar.

      With her usual aplomb, she stooped down next to the bald guy Jane had thought was maybe forty and started talking with the confidence of a woman assured of her reception. After a brief conversation she rose to shake hands with the other three men at the table, then gestured in Jane and Ava’s direction and said something.

      To Jane’s horror, not only did the bald guy get up and follow her back across the room, so did the hot redhead. The latter stumbled over an unoccupied chair a couple tables away and lurched the remaining steps to theirs, where he had to slap his fists down in order to catch his balance. He swore a blue streak beneath his breath.

      “Dev!” the bald man snapped. “Cool it!”

      “’Scuse my language, ladies.” The redhead gave them all a loose, sheepish smile. “I’m seriously jet-lagged.”

      “More like seriously drunk,” Jane said sotto voce.

      “Jane, Ava, this is Bren Kavanagh and his brother Devlin,” Poppy raised her voice to say over her. “As I told you earlier, the Kavanaghs are going to be in charge of our construction. Bren was just telling me that Devlin here will be the project manager on our remodel. He’ll oversee-”

      “No.” Pushing back from the table, Jane surged to her feet, her heart slamming in outrage. It was one thing to put up with an inebriated man in a bar for a single evening. She’d be damned if she’d put up with one while she was trying to catalog the most important collection of her life.

      Devlin, who’d been staring owlishly down at his knuckles where they bore into the rich wood tabletop, raised his hazel-green-eyed gaze and blinked at her. Then, apparently not liking what he saw in her expression, he narrowed his eyes, his devil-black brows snapping together over the thrust of his nose. “Say what?”

      “No. It’s a pretty simple word, Mr. Kavanagh-what part don’t you understand?”

      “Hey, listen-”

      “No, you listen! I will not have some damn drun-Hey!” She yelped as Poppy grabbed her by the wrist and nearly jerked her off her feet.

      “Excuse us,” Poppy said as she turned and strode toward the back of the bar.

      Leaving Jane no choice but to follow in her wake or be dragged behind her friend like a toddler’s pull toy.

      D EV WATCHED the uptight brunette being hauled from the table. “Okay, then, I’m outta here,” he said, and knuckled himself erect. Whoa. He flattened his hand back against the wooden surface. Damn room was starting to sway.

      Bren’s eyes narrowed as he studied him. “Man, you are wasted. You’d better go sit down before you fall down.”

      Good plan. He started to pull out the chair next to the redhead with the great ti-

      “At our table, bro.”

      “Oh. Yeah. Sure.” He gave the redhead with the killer bod an acknowledging nod for her sympathetic smile, then made his unsteady way back to Finn and David.

      What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He should have fallen straight into bed to sleep for ten solid hours. He’d sure as hell known better than to let Bren guilt him into going out to discuss how he could take over for his brother while Bren went through treatment. Or, alternatively, having caved, he at least should have been bright enough to forgo the two shots of tequila he’d slammed back after downing a generous dram or two of Da’s treasured Redbreast. He was from good Irish stock; he could usually put away his fair share without showing the effects.

      Tonight, however-well, he’d been up for more than thirty-five hours, nineteen of which had been spent traveling from Athens, Greece. He’d already been flattened with exhaustion when his brother Finn met him at the airport.

      But there was no rest for the wicked as far as the Kavanaghs were concerned. When a chick came home to roost, a celebration was not merely expected, it was a given. And a get-together wasn’t a get-together unless it included all six of his brothers and sisters, their respective spouses and kids, his folks, both grandmas and his grandpa, his two uncles, four aunts and their families. Fair enough-he knew the drill.

      But he should have paid less attention to Da’s whiskey and a little more to Mom’s food.

      “Way to go there, Dev,” his youngest brother said with a sly grin when Devlin made it to their table. “Back in town a few hours and already you’ve managed to get sent back to the kiddie table so Bren can talk to the grown-ups.”

      “You’re a riot, David, you know that?” Hooking the crook of his elbow around his brother’s neck, he staggered slightly, steadied himself against his brother’s side, then scrubbed his knuckles in David’s brown hair. “You oughtta take it down to open mic night at the Comedy Underground.” He turned him loose and dropped into the chair Bren had sat in earlier. “I gotta admit, though, that’s kind of what it feels like. Apparently my drunkenness offended one of the potential clients.”

      “Can’t imagine why,” Finn said dryly.

      He smiled crookedly. “Yeah, me, either. Shit.” He rubbed his fingers over lips that felt rubbery. “I didn’t realize how trashed I was until I stood up to go with Bren to their table. Had to concentrate like a son of a bitch just to walk a straight line.”

      Finn looked at him, deadpan. “How’d that work for you?”

      “Not so great.” He glanced over his shoulder at his oldest brother, still talking to the redhead across the room, then turned back to the others, abruptly feeling a whole lot soberer. “So how’s he doing, really?”

      “He’s got his good days and his bad. I think he’d rather tell you about it himself.”

      “Yeah, him being such a talkative son of a bitch so far.” He gave his brothers a look. “I’m still hacked that I didn’t even hear about it until three days