The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

again, then adjusted the fire under the pot of meat filling with a sharp turn of his wrist.
    “You’d know best what suits and what doesn’t. I’ll just say there comes a time when your head’s telling you one thing, and the rest of you just won’t listen. A man can be a child when it comes to a woman, wanting what he shouldn’t have and taking more than he can handle. Knowing something’s not good for you doesn’t stop you from wanting it.”
    “I wouldn’t be good for her.” Calmer now, Shawn took out a bowl to make the pastry for the pies. “Even if there weren’t other factors involved, I wouldn’t be good for her. So that’s the end of it.”
    With the flour and water mixed to a firm dough, he covered the bowl and stuck it into the refrigerator. “I’ll be making poundies,” he told Aidan while he creamed butter and suet for the next stage of the pastry. And I’ve some samphire that young Brian Duffy picked for me that I’ve pickled into jars, so we’ll have that tonight as well, as it goes nicely with the salmon you bought this morning. You tell Jude to come over so I can fix her a plate.”
    “I will, thanks. Shawn—” He broke off as Darcy shoved through the door again, looking aggrieved.
    “You ask me to come down early, then you push me back out the door. If the pair of you are going to stand in here and tell your little men’s secrets, I’m going back upstairs and do my nails, since we don’t open for nearly an hour as yet.”
    “Let me pour you a cup, darling, for I’ve abused you something terrible.” Aidan gave her a little pat on the cheek, then pulled a chair out at the table with a flourish.
    “Well, I’ll have a cup, but I want some biscuits with it.” She folded her hands on the table after she sat and gave her brother a challenging smile.
    “Biscuits, then.” Aidan got down a tin and set it in front of her. “I need to talk to both of you, as it concerns the pub.”
    “Then you’ll have to talk while I work.” Shawn retrieved the bowl from the refrigerator and began to roll out the pastry.
    “Well, you were late, weren’t you?” Aidan said easily. “The man from New York, the Magee? It seems he’s interested in the idea of linking the theater he’s planning with Gallagher’s. It was my thought to lease him the land, long term, but he’s holding out to buy it outright. If we do that, we forfeit the land, and some of the control we might have.”
    “How much will he pay?” Darcy asked and bit into a biscuit.
    “We’ve only danced about the terms for the moment, but he’ll meet the price we set, I’m thinking. I’ll need to call Ma and Dad on this, but as the pub is in our hands now, the three of us need to decide what we want to do.”
    “If he pays enough, I say sell it to him. We don’t use it for anything.”
    “It’s land,” Shawn said, sending Darcy a glance as he covered the rectangle of rolled-out pastry with the mixture of suet and butter. “Our land. It’s always been ours.”
    “And it’ll be money. Our money.”
    “I’ve thought on both ends of that.” Aidan pursed his lips while he turned his cup of tea around and around. “If we don’t agree to sell, Magee could find himself another plot for his project. And the theater could be a benefit to the pub, if we keep some sort of handle on it. He strikes me as a sharp one, and one I’d rather deal with face-to-face than over the phone. But he says he can’t come here now, as he’s into some other business and can’t leave it until it’s done.”
    “So send me to New York.” Darcy fluttered her inky lashes. “And I’ll charm him into opening his wallet wide.”
    Aidan let out a quick hoot. “I don’t think charm is what works with this one. It’s a pounds-and-pence matter to him, to my thinking. I’ve a mind to ask Dad to take a trip into New York to meet with this Magee, as Dad’s as sharp as any Yank wheeler-dealer. But before we do that, what do we, we three here, want from this?”
    “Profit,” Darcy said immediately and finished off a biscuit.
    “That, yes, but what in the long term?”
    “Reputation,” Shawn said, and Aidan looked up at him. “We’ve been working around to making Gallagher’s a center for music over the last few years. Have our name in the guidebooks, don’t we, as a place for good food and drink, and for the music we have or bring in? Haven’t you had bands calling you now, or the managers of them, inquiring about