Quinn, by design

CHAPTER TEN

Niall stared into space, his mind on Lucy and the bed he’d forced himself to leave. She—it—was warm and welcoming. Closing her eyes and saying she wanted to learn him by touch smashed all his barricades. She’d ambushed him with his idea to go slowly. He’d promised her self-restraint, but it was a near thing. Making love to Lucy was shockingly wonderfully intimate. She exposed needs he’d tried to lock down.

Whisht, I’m going all dewy-eyed and daft like a girl.

The kettle screamed. He shook his head and came back to the workshop, the pot of tea he was brewing, and the day’s labour ahead of him. She’d asked to come today. But that was before they’d spent a night in each other’s arms. Would she come?

Bad idea, Quinn.

Pouring the first cup of tea, he surveyed his workshop. A night with Lucy, and he was ready to believe he could have everything he’d dreamed of.

Leopold’s would be by at ten to pick up the finished frames and deliver the new artwork. In a few weeks his twelve-month contract with the gallery would finish, his share of his da’s debts paid.

His debt to Cam had become more complicated. His dealings with Lucy’s granda had been based on fair exchange. Until the will.

Niall would join the foundation, but he’d pay full rent. His work for Lucy was stemming the hole in her cash flow problem. Not so different from his deal with Cam.

All up, the profits from his Mondays with Lucy would put a serious dent in a year’s commercial rent. When the new contract started, he’d restore more pieces to satisfy himself he was meeting the McTavish’s as equals, not sponging off their charity.

He drained his cup. Delivering on the mentorship was doable. He’d have a full year to research ideas, talk to fellow artisans, reflect on his own learning and devise a program he could be proud of.

His exhibition was the lynchpin. Recent professional success would attract the high-quality candidates Cam and Lucy envisaged.

“Your work is every bit as important as Liam’s or Mr. Property-developer Hunter’s.” He grinned at the recollection. Thank heavens Lucy understood it took time to craft beauty. She’d chosen him as her lover, not a man who hired a Merc. She would always be antiques royalty, but he was finding his place. They were finding their rhythm.

He gave himself a few hours on the sideboard he’d started for the exhibition. Hoped to get a few more in this evening. Hoped even more he’d get another invitation from Lucy. She’d found her feet as Cam had prophesied and was as lovely and loving as her granda had declared.

“You can do this, Quinn.” Falling for Lucy convinced him he could move mountains. Scaling back his designs for the exhibition to smaller pieces was a workable compromise. He’d tell her when he put the exhibition catalogue in her hands.

* * *

Lucy was smiling whenshe finally woke. Niall had cast a spell over her body, so she responded to his slightest touch—the glide of his palm on her flank, a nudge from his nose under her breast and the slide of his ankle up her calf. Snuggling back under the blankets, she inhaled sandalwood, a hint of her own rose perfume and the musky fragrance of splendid and repeated sex. She’d expected pleasure and discovered the serious carpenter was a virtuoso at lovemaking.

With a single finger trailing a path from her breastbone to her navel, he’d fashioned desire. She should have guessed from all the times she’d seen his work-roughened hands handle a table, a Blue Italian Spode cup, a frame, her pearls, even a Vegemite jar as if they were precious. Seeing the elegant turn of his wrist and the spread of his fingers tracing patterns in rare, recovered timbers, she hadn’t fathomed the turmoil of having his hands on her. Her world had shifted on its axis. Her glance strayed to the open bedside table drawer, and a gurgle of smug satisfaction bubbled up from deep within her. They’d made good use of the condoms she stored there, after Niall rescued the two in his wallet.

Light sneaked under the Holland blind at her window, when she pushed herself into a sitting position, pillows propped at her back. The sky had been a dark inky blue the last time Niall had loved her, the street light casting shadows on her blind. He’d pressed his goodbye kiss to her inner thigh. She touched the spot.

He hadn’t just turned her understanding of sex on its head, he’d pulled her clear of the fog dulling her judgment for weeks. Her search of his website after their first meeting had been a trawl for clues to his sneakiness. She’d missed a key detail. None of the pieces she’d glimpsed in his storeroom during Kate’s visit were on the website.

Why wasn’t he advertising his work?

Lots of people didn’t have spare cash, because of the recession, but her grandpa had taught her there was always a market for quality. With the right promotion, Niall’s work would sell faster than he could produce it.

“Quinns pay their way.” The puzzle and solution to Niall Quinn.

“Whisht, Lucy. You’ve been wilfully blind.”

Rolling out of bed, she headed for the shower. With shampoo dripping into her eyes, the gears of her mind clicked into place.

He’s waiting until his debts to his brother are paid before focusing on his work.

Waiting until he could devote himself full time to his craft. And she and Grandpa had casually thrown more hurdles into his path. The foundation spelt more unpaid work.

And I arrogantly demanded he restore furniture for me.

A cash flow problem for an estate worth millions and she’d thrown a tantrum worthy of a two-year-old. Shutting off the water, she rested her forehead against the cream porcelain wall tiles. Dozens of expletives sprang to her tongue, and only her long-ago vow to her gran kept her from uttering them. But they bounced around inside her skull, forcing her to clearly see what she’d done.

She could fix this. Briskly, Lucy rubbed herself dry. A two-pronged attack—prove to him she wasn’t facing financial ruin and pay Niall for all his work.

“Child’s play,” she muttered to the ceiling. And then the barest inkling of a possible idea started to take shape. “Yes.” Maybe Sleeping Beauty had felt this optimistic, kissed awake by her prince?

Having spent weeks of Mondays there, Lucy could picture Niall in his workshop. A pot of tea finished, crumbs from hastily consumed raisin toast clinging to his discarded plate. Leopold’s driver would be around sometime to collect the latest batch of frames. Niall might well be poring over the new set of artworks, and the urge to share his morning had her hurrying out the door.

Leopold’s team was unloading the new set of paintings when she arrived. She parked off to one side and followed them through the warehouse.

“You came.” Niall’s smile banished her tiny doubt she was the only one changed by last night’s lovemaking.

“Hi.” She planted a chaste kiss on his cheek while her body and mind rioted.

Whisht! It isn’t the fabulous sex confusing me. I’m really falling in love with him.

Since Doug, she hadn’t let herself believe in love. Niall made her feel lovable, that lovemaking wasn’t the same as sex. Being his lover made her smile at the oddest times, and made her want to tend and nurture in return.

“One more load,” the delivery man said.

She inspected the fifteen paintings lining the wall while Niall followed the delivery man to the back of the warehouse. The roller door hit the concrete. Niall’s steps drew closer to the accompaniment of the jazz riffs on Katie Noonan’s album The Sweetest Taboo. It wasn’t the first time she’d arrived to Niall playing remixed songs from the seventies. Noonan was currently crooning “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” as a piano ballad, while Lucy itched to jitterbug.

“They’re richer in the flesh,” Lucy commented when he stopped beside her. He’d shown her the images weeks earlier.

“Yeah.” His approach, she’d worked out, was to look at the paintings and let their shapes and colours and features roll around in his mind before he started on the designs—designs he’d bring to life now the paintings had arrived.

Surreptitiously, she glanced around the workshop. No piece in a corner shrouded with a cloth. She knew now the cradle had been under one of those drop sheets. Her first sighting of the cradle was at Kate and Liam’s home, yet his habit was to live with his designs. Like he’d lived with his Huon Pine table or the cherry wood fruit bowl. He’d stopped his own work except for incidental pieces.

Had he also stopped advertising it because he only had the pieces in the storeroom—not enough to build a business?

“I wasn’t sure you’d come today.” Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close. His scent a promise of passion and shared delight.

“I thought of staying away.” A part truth, because the child in her feared Niall was a creation of her imagination, the hero her adolescence had conjured when she’d dreamed of a man she could love. “Then decided we could be trusted to be responsible during office hours.”

“Maybe you’ve got more self-discipline than me.” He slid a hand down to cup her backside and press her into his body.

“I doubt it.” She gripped two fistfuls of his hair and tugged his face away from hers. “Maybe you could follow me home and have dinner with me?”

“Just dinner?” The circles he was rubbing on her butt made forming words of more than one syllable difficult.

“I’m open to other offers.”

“You control this—” he started to say.

She covered his mouth with her fingers. “Then I’ll have to be more explicit with my invitation. Please, Niall, come to dinner, make love to me until I’m dazed and boneless, then hold me while I sleep.”

“That’s a lovely invitation.” His slow smile blossomed from a quirk at the corner of his mouth to a wide grin—an even lovelier response. “Will seven work for you?”

“Seven’s fine.” She eased herself out of his arms. “Pasta and beer okay?”

“Perfect.”

“Okay.” Time to start fleshing out her plan. “If you don’t have a specific job for me today, I’d like to work on a new project from here. I promise I won’t disturb you.”

“You can work in this noise?” He waved a hand around the workshop.

“I can work anywhere.” One of the useful skills she’d retained from a childhood of perpetual upheaval.

“What’s your project?”

“I’ve decided to hold Grandpa’s annual spring gala.” She’d intended to cancel this year, but the hairs on the back of her neck prickled with anticipation. The gala usually delivered a profit and attracted a whole host of existing and new clients. Clients who might be interested in a gifted restorer. She’d surrender her Mondays, and Niall would be paid for his work.

“What’s involved?” He followed her to the kitchen, leaning against the bench while she made tea.

“I’ll need to identify inventory from storage to shift to the shop. Choose a theme, price a few pieces competitively to attract regular customers. Grandpa did this every year. A fancy opening to clear out stock we’ve held for a year or longer. We send invites to everyone on our client list.”

“Sounds like a lot of extra work.” He brushed a hand over her hair. “You sound happy.”

“I am happy.” She stilled, absorbing the encouragement in his caress. “My team will help. The fact I’m holding it despite Grandpa’s death might bring a few more people than usual out of the woodwork.” That was her goal, to shift interest from her to Niall, to seek paying work for him, so he’d clear his debt faster. “Will you come?”

“When are you planning to hold it?”

“In a few weeks. Late afternoon, early evening. I’ll get it catered, finger food and drinks.” And I’m not asking you to do any of the work.

“I’m not—” he began, and she sensed a refusal, when his presence was essential.

“Please say you’ll come. I’d love your support.”

“Of course.” His reluctance created an itch between her shoulder blades. Telling him her plans might hex them. Promising something she couldn’t deliver would be even worse. He took the tea she handed him and went back to the restoration work she’d steamrollered him into.

Propping her computer on the table under the window, she sipped her tea. A cliché, but he was poetry in motion. Competent, focused, his body bent, stretched, squatted, reached as his muscles responded to the demands of his task. With his attention absorbed, she rechecked his website, confirming her concern—no new pieces for sale. The site was unchanged since the first time she’d looked at it. Niall was too kind for his own good—a fruit bowl for her and a cradle for his brother and sister-in-law. She admired his professional integrity. He’d redirected the florist to a friend when the woman had pushed for a higher number of the frames she wanted at a cheaper price.

But he’d lost income.

Her fear of debt stopped her brain and made her flounder like a beached whale, who knew safety was on the other side of a breakwater but couldn’t find its way there alone. Niall wasn’t so much afraid of debt as uncomfortable at the stain on his self-respect. Love leavened his actions, a commitment to honesty and excellence in whatever he did. Taking advantage of others wasn’t in his DNA.

Why had she taken so long to work that out?

Her hand crept to her throat. She’d stolen his time and his skill. Saying sorry wouldn’t cut it. Niall let his actions speak for him.

Like her gran, he showed he cared through acts of service. So could she.

* * *

Dawn was breaking ona crisp autumn Sunday morning. Niall had been in his workshop for an hour. Pushing himself for an extra fifteen minutes or a half hour or an hour had become routine. Alerted by his system of flashing lights, he pushed himself upright, pulled his goggles around his neck and rolled his shoulders. He checked the message from Anna on his phone, drained his tea and returned to dismantling the second Gothic chair for Lucy.

“You can avoid me for just so long, boyo, then you’re dead meat.” Anna pocketed her phone when he swung the door wide thirty minutes later, and tilted her head to one side, listening. “Paul Simon’s ‘Wristband.’ That’s a blast from the past.”

“Lovely to see you, Anna. He suited my mood.” A six-foot-eight guard baring all comers from Niall’s door would have been welcome this morning. “How can I help you?” He braced for her succinct annihilation of his excuses.

“You can answer my texts and emails and tell me why your page for the exhibition isn’t live on your website yet?” Anna stabbed a finger into his chest. “It should have been live two weeks ago.”

“I’m having second thoughts.” He turned his back on her, always a dangerous move.

She grabbed his arm and, because she worked out and was stronger than she looked, she tugged him back to face her. Scanning his face, her expression went from irritated to concerned at what she saw. The woman could read body language across a crowded room, so what hope did he have?

“Tell Anna all about it.” She tucked her hand through his arm and half-pulled, half-dragged him to the table under the window. She pushed him into a chair but remained standing. “And I mean all about it. This is not a good move.”

“I haven’t finished enough pieces,” he said the words aloud for the first time, although his head was near to bursting with the brutal reality.

“Stop everything else and make more.” Anna excelled at identifying solutions.

“I’m still under contract with Leopold’s.” For another two weeks, until the last job was finished, but non-negotiable. He’d promised his brother the money, and he’d never broken a contract in his life.

“That’s a self-imposed penance, and why the Quinn brothers have to compete for saint of the week is beyond me.” The flamenco tap of her boot heel was a dance of frustration.

“He’s carried the load a long time.” He played his strongest card. “Don’t you think he and Kate deserve a cushion now the babe’s coming.”

“Not gonna catch me on that one. I can be as sooky as the next person about babies, but this isn’t about Leopold’s contract.” She paced off the line of finished frames resting against the side wall. “You were juggling the frames and the pieces for the exhibition very nicely six weeks ago.” She came to the end of the line and stopped in front of a set of two mahogany Gothic revival side chairs. “More restoration for Lucy.”

“Perhaps.” He shrugged.

“No perhaps about it. They’re antiques, they’re broken, and they’re sitting in the middle of your workshop on a Sunday.” She invested the word with all the loathing of a vegetarian for a piece of rare steak. “There’s not even a scent of a Quinn piece in the place.”

“I owe her granda a lot.” He gripped the back of his neck and rotated his head, although the ache was in his heart more than his muscle memory. Cam had put both Niall and Lucy in an impossible position with his will.

“She didn’t strike me as a selfish cow.” Anna tipped up one chair and examined the fracture down the straight back leg. “She said she liked your work.”

“She’s not. She does. Cam left complications for Lucy too.” Niall would defend her as long as he had breath. His quibbles were with the old man’s machinations.

“Just a guess here, my carpenter friend. We all had to keep shtum about the exhibition last week because you haven’t told her about it.”

“Correct.”

“Single-word answers don’t cut it with me.” She wandered back toward him, her arms crossed—Athena on the warpath. “You must be confusing me with my sweet, somewhat distracted sister.”

“Never.” He loved Anna’s loyalty to friends and family, her pushiness when she was worried.

“Another one-word answer,” she muttered.

“Couldn’t resist.” He rose and wrapped his arms around her, resting his cheek on her crown, so she couldn’t see his face. “Her granda gave me this workspace, gave me the opportunity to create the pieces for the exhibition. She needs some help to get through this early grieving period.”

“I’m guessing you’re giving her more than your days.”

“Lucy’s working on a special opening at McTavish’s, but yeah, we’re spending some time together.” Late meals, snatched lovemaking, falling asleep in each other’s arms, and getting up early to do it all again. In the hushed conversations before sleep, mostly he asked about how her plans were progressing, and kept shtum about the collapse of his own.

“You’re in love with her,” she said, half-question, half-statement, and her words made his heart race with impossible longings.

“I can wait a bit longer for my exhibition.”

She pushed back in his arms until she could meet his gaze, gripping his upper arms and shaking him. “Lucy won’t forgive you for not telling her what her little requests for restoration are costing you.”

“They’re costing me feck all. I didn’t have a big market before I planned the exhibition. That hasn’t changed.”

“You had a dream. And everyone who loves you has a share in that dream—Liam, Kate, your mum, me, even the babe. It will kill”—she searched his face and praise the saints; she kicked him metaphorically in the balls—“it is killing you to let this go. If you care for her, don’t do this.”

“I care,” he said.

Lucy had lost the first stable home she’d ever had. Cam’s generosity to him had helped tip her into debt. Niall wasn’t blind about his choices. A successful exhibition might attract serious monied buyers and prove he was a worthy mentor for the McTavish foundation.

“She needs to feel in control of her granda’s business.” Lucy was adrift. She’d asked him to help. Whatever the cost, he wouldn’t let her down. “It’s for a short time. I can give her a short time.”

“How long before you have to make the decision to cancel the exhibition?” Anna was back to brisk efficiency.

“A few weeks.” It was sheer stupidity not to do it now.