twisted the cap from the beer and took a long swig. “I was supposed to refuse? She was thirteen. And she had the nicest knobs at St. Clement’s. I’d have been off my nut not to take advantage of a deal like that. Besides, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
Ian turned to Marcus, sending him an inquiring look, but Marcus shook his head. “Don’t look at me.”
“By the time Marky was old enough to have those thoughts, Alicia had got herself knocked up by Jimmy Farley and closed up her little schoolyard enterprise,” Dec explained.
A comfortable silence descended over the boathouse. The Friday-night ritual between Marcus and Ian and Declan had begun. Usually they’d meet for a few beers, sometimes at a pub, sometimes at Ian’s place in town and sometimes in the old boathouse at their father’s boatyard. They’d catch up with the week’s events, the talk centering on work or sports. But occasionally they talked about women.
Marcus grabbed the bucket of varnish and climbed the ladder he’d propped up against his newest project, a twenty-one-foot wooden-hulled sloop that had been commissioned by a Newport billionaire for his son’s sixteenth birthday. He’d been designing and building boats for three years now, working out of the old boathouse and living upstairs in a loft that was half studio and half apartment.
“Considering the number of women we’ve collectively been with, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d shared a few others,” Declan murmured.
“There’s a code among brothers,” Ian countered. “You just don’t mess with your brothers’ girls, current or ex.”
“You’re right,” Dec said. He crossed the room and held out his hand to Ian. “Sorry, bro. Won’t happen again. You’ve got my word.”
Marcus smiled to himself. The three Quinn brothers had formed an unshakable bond at an early age. After their mother’s illness had been diagnosed and they’d been shipped off to Ireland to live with their grandmother, they’d learned to depend upon each other. From the moment they’d arrived in Dublin, they’d been outsiders, wary Americans forced to live in a culture whose rules they didn’t understand.
And after they’d returned from Ireland, they’d become known as “those” Quinn boys, with their odd Irish accents and their independent ways, young men who could string curse words together like seasoned sailors and beat the stuffing out of men twice their size in a fistfight.
Ian had been eighteen when they’d returned and had immediately enrolled in college, anxious to get a start on his adult life. When he was accepted into the Providence Police Academy, he’d continued his education at night, graduating with a degree in criminal justice. Two years ago, he’d left the Providence PD and taken the job as police chief of their hometown, Bonnett Harbor, a picturesque Rhode Island village on the western shore of Narragansett Bay.
A year younger than Ian, Declan returned in time for his senior year in high school, bringing his grades up so he could apply to MIT. Four years of college, a knack for electronics and a stint with naval intelligence had paved the way for a job in corporate security. Declan’s security consulting firm was the favorite among corporate bigwigs and multimillionaires along the East Coast.
Marcus had made the most difficult transition. He’d spent the majority of his childhood on Irish soil, away from his parents from age five to fourteen. He’d come back to a country that was as foreign to him as Ireland had been nine years before. School had been hell, and he’d avoided it whenever possible, retreating into solitude and avoiding close friendships. His brothers had been his only friends.
But his talent in art, especially carving and sculpture, had set him on an odd career path—first art school and then a few years working as a wood-carver with a boat-design firm in Boston. He’d been recruited as an instructor at a small school for boat restoration in Massachusetts. Now he ran his own show, doing commissioned wood carvings and building pretty wooden sloops based on vintage designs.
“Maybe we should take a break,” Dec suggested, flopping down next to Ian on the sofa and kicking his heels up on the battered crate that served as a coffee table.
Marcus glanced up from the cockpit combing he’d been varnishing. “I’m the only one doing any work here, unless you call drinking my beer and eating my food ‘work.’”
Dec grabbed the can of peanuts from Ian. “I was talking about women. We should take a break from women. You know, step back and try to gain a little perspective. We can’t see the feckin’ forest for the trees.”
“What are you saying?” Ian asked.
“He’s saying, in order to understand women, we should give up women,” Marcus translated.
Giving up women would be impossible for Ian. He lived on his charm, able to navigate the most difficult situations with ease. While Marcus had few friends, Ian knew everyone and they loved him. Dec, on the other hand, was more focused. He was the thinker in the family, the one guy who was driven by the need to succeed. Any challenge, whether it was in his professional or personal life, was met with unrelenting resolve.
“We should study them,” Declan suggested. “We’re three relatively clever guys. If we put our heads together, we should be able to figure women out. But you can’t figure them out while you’re sleeping with them, I know that. I’ve been sleeping with them for years and I’m no better off than I was the night I first did it.”
Ian nodded. “The more women I know, the less I understand them.”
Marcus rested his arms across the top of the ladder. “Maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe we are.”
“Speak for yourself,” Dec said. “I know what the hell I’m doing in the sack. No one’s ever complained.”
Marcus shook his head. “I mean with … relationships. Isn’t that what you’re talking about?”
“And what the hell would I do with a relationship?” Dec asked. “I don’t have time for that.”
Marcus chuckled. “I rest my case.”
“He’s right,” Ian said. “We want what everyone else wants. To get married. Start a life. Have a family. Look at our cousins, Uncle Seamus’s boys. There are six of them and they’re all married now.”
“So we’ve got issues,” Dec said defensively.
Ian straightened, as if offended by the comment. “What issues? If I had issues, I’d know about it.”
“Not necessarily,” Dec continued. “I once dated this psychology grad student, and after she heard about our childhood, she said it wasn’t any surprise that I had an attachment disorder. She was right, because after I listened to a few more hours of her psychobabble, I detached her from my life.”
“You have this disorder?” Ian said.
Marcus climbed down the ladder as he spoke. “We all probably do. You gotta admit, after we were separated from the family, the only people we really trusted were each other.”
“What about our cousins?” Ian asked. “They had the same start in life as we did, their da off working the Mighty Quinn and their ma disappearing on them. Did they have this disorder?”
Marcus shrugged. “Maybe. But they obviously overcame
