Thirteen
Mulligan’s was more alive tonight. Perhaps because two important football games were on at the same time, so The Cat’s Meow didn’t have enough seating for everyone in town who wanted to watch them. Sitting with Con, Quinn didn’t want to offend Paul by suggesting his place was usually slow, but he was curious to hear his take.
He swigged back the rest of his black stuff. “Eh, Paul?”
“Aye, Quinn.” Paul wiped down a section of counter that had already been wiped several times.
“The other night was emptier than a whorehouse during a chlamydia breakout, and now, there’s a few cats here. Explain that.” Quinn turned to watch the people in the tavern—a group of five women in their thirties who kept eyeing him, giving each other knowing looks, and a few scattered men watching the game between the Dolphins and Jets.
“Ah, your guess is as good as mine. Way I figure, the games are on, but some folks like to watch in quiet, so they come here.” He shrugged and turned his attention back to the TV. So that was it. Quinn could tell that Paul was tired of trying to figure out his low sales and just didn’t care anymore. “To be honest, if I could sell this place right now and retire, I would.”
Dara swiveled in her seat and murmured over her shoulder. “What he means is, if you want to take it off his hands, he’s open to it.” She winked at Quinn, went back to whispering things in Conor’s ear, then glanced at her father who gave her a chastising look.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Stay out of it, lass.” Paul poured himself another beer and focused his attention back to the game. “Though I wouldn’t be opposed to it,” he mumbled.
Looking around at the mostly empty tables, Quinn considered, Hmm, maybe… Ever since he’d first visited Mulligan’s, he’d thought this place could do with some updating. It had a great wooden floor and just needed new booths, new tables and paint, some updated artwork on the walls, and definitely more modern light fixtures. If Paul hired a cook, he could put out some fantastic, easy plates and attract more customers, but as it was, all he served were drinks and frozen cheese sticks.
“How much would you want for it, just curious?” Quinn asked, not at all convinced he’d want to buy it, but it wouldn’t hurt to know.
Paul cocked his head and shrugged. “Let’s see…we’re a fully licensed 2,500-square foot establishment. I would have to do a comparison online and see…”
“Just a ballpark. I won’t hold you to it.”
Down the bar, Conor craned his neck to stare at his brother. What, you want to buy this place? his bright green eyes seemed to ask.
Quinn shrugged, giving him a wide-eyed look. What? I’m just asking.
“Alright. My guess would be something around $80,000.”
“Ah, come on, Paul,” Quinn chuckled. “Your land alone has got to be worth that.”
“Well, like I said, I have to do some research. Why? You wanna buy it?”
“I have no fecking clue, Paul. Just asking. I honestly don’t know. Looks like you could get some pretty decent sales. After all, you’re right near a busy highway cutting right through wine country, and this town seems to be pretty keen on its American rugby—eh, football. There’s more than enough people over at The Cat’s Meow to cleanly divide between the two of ya.”
While everyone watched the next few plays once the Dolphins reached 1st down, Quinn pulled out a clean napkin from the dispenser. “Pass me a pen, please, would ya?”
Paul pulled a pen from over his ear and rolled it along the counter toward Quinn. Immediately, Quinn began working some numbers on the napkin. His share of the sale of the restaurant, plus his share of the life insurance money…plus if he got a reasonable business loan or even borrowed off the house…
After a quiet while, Paul tapped the counter and looked up at the photo of Maggie Phillips and Grant O’Neill. “Wouldn’t that be something? You taking over this place that your father helped open?”
Quinn stared at the old photo. His father had been good at what he did, but he’d never listened to Quinn’s ideas for taking The Cranky Yankee up another notch. Quinn always felt he could have helped the family restaurant more than his dad gave him credit for, if only he hadn’t been so proud. He really did enjoy managing the place after his father died, though there was much he couldn’t fix. Too many problems engrained in the fabric of the business’s framework that would require an entire reboot and too little capital. Buying Paul’s place, however, would give him that reboot. Besides, his mother left behind boxes and boxes of recipe cards. He could easily help develop an authentic Irish menu with the help of a cook. Maybe Lilly could recommend a good one. “Aye, it would.”
Two women from the corner table sauntered up to him and perched their rumps on the stools either side of him. “Are you from Ireland?” one asked. She was brunette with big brown eyes, perfect makeup, and a beautiful smile. Classic American accent.
“I am.” Propping his fist against his hip, Quinn leaned back in his seat to get a better look at them. Nowhere near as beautiful as Lilly.
The other woman to his left giggled. Blond and brown-eyed, she was busty and clearly a love veteran who knew how to trap a man using her charms. “We love your accent. We could hear you talking all the way over there. Say something else.”
“Something else.” Quinn gave them his practiced smoldering grin. It wasn’t every day he was flanked by two American hotties. “How’s the craic, ladies?”
“The what?” the blonde laughed.
“Craic, the goings-on, the banter…you know?”
“I have no idea what you’re saying, but just keep talking. I’m Bernie.” The blonde held out her hand with long, manicured nails.
He shook it gently, kissing the top of her hand. “Bernie? A man’s name, eh?”
“Yes, but that’s where my manliness ends. You, however…” She pursed her lips, casting a glance at her friend opposite him, who buried her face in her arm and giggled while shaking her head. Bernie lifted her chin at Paul. “Hey, Paul.”
“Evening, Bernadette. How’s your mom doing?”
“Starting a new line of pottery, hoping to sell them to a restaurant in San Fran.”
“Wonderful. Please give her my best.” Paul nodded, going back to the game.
“And I’m Monica,” the other woman said, shaking Quinn’s hand as well.
Quinn could see Conor dying to cut in and partake of the flirt fest, but Dara clung to him, giving the two women less-than-enthusiastic looks with her sharp eyebrows. Apparently, they’d worked through whatever they’d argued about.
“Evening, ladies, name’s Quinn O’Neill, newly arrived from Ireland. Over there is my brother, Conor. Lovely country you have here.” He smiled, taking quick glances at their low-cut T-shirts the moment they turned to wave at Conor. Fantastic hills and mountains.
The bell hanging on the front door chimed, and everyone turned to look. In from the blustery autumn night blew the familiar form and face of Lilly Parker. His heart began beating a bit faster. Unwinding her scarf from around her neck, she glanced around, eyes landing on Quinn flanked by the two cougars. “Oh, hey Bernie,” she said with a blunt expression, turning to leave. “Quinn…I see you’re busy.”
“Lil, wait,” he said, getting up from the stool.
“You two know each other?” Bernie asked, drawing an imaginary line between Quinn and Lilly. “Thought you just arrived.”
“Remember they’re staying at Penny’s place down the road? Nana told me about them yesterday. I told you,” her friend said.
“Oh, that’s them?” Bernie asked.
Quinn left the catty banter behind. Lilly’s disdain was written all over her face, and he just wanted to address it quickly before she got the wrong idea. “Lil, wait for me.” He followed her out the door into the parking lot.
“Lilly?” he heard one of the women mutter to the other.
Lilly whirled around, snaking her scarf back on. “I didn’t realize…I didn’t mean to…”
“I thought you were working tonight,” Quinn said, realizing how bad that both sounded and looked, as though he had taken advantage of the fact that she was busy to go hang with other women. “I don’t know those birds. They just came up to me and started talking to me.”
“That’s fine, Quinn. It’s not like you’re not allowed to talk to other women,” she said, shrugging in that clearly disturbed way women did when they insisted nothing was wrong. “I understand.”
“I don’t think you do. I’m actually…” He held onto her shoulder to make her stop walking and reached for her hand. She let him take it. “Really happy to see you. Come in and talk.” But her worrisome expression told him that something had shifted in her again, though he didn’t know what it could be. “Are you alright?”
“I need to talk to you,” she sighed, worry at the corner of her eyes, “but not inside there. Too many people.”
“Er…there’s only like ten people in there, Lil.”
“Ten too many. In this town, everyone talks, and I don’t want anyone hearing me.”
“Let’s take a walk then? Just…wait for me.” Quinn ran back inside, grabbed his jacket, and slapped a twenty dollar bill on the counter. “Keep the change, Paul. Conor, text me later. Let me know you’re not floating in a river somewhere, eh? ‘Night, everyone. ‘Night, ladies.”
“Leaving so soon?” The blond woman pouted, disappointed that her cornered mouse was getting away.
“I’ll see you around town. Be here for a while.” Quinn saluted them with two fingers to his temple then blew outside, meeting up with Lilly. They walked slowly down the sidewalk toward a small park with a water fountain offering up a misty spray in the breeze. “So, what’s up? You look out of sorts.”
“I am…out of sorts,” she muttered, hands in her pockets. She didn’t want to hold hands or look at him, that much was evident. “Quinn…” she began, a churning quiet storm turning her blue eyes steel gray. “In your mother’s journal, did you read anything about another boyfriend, someone she knew in Green Valley before meeting your dad?”
He thought back to all the times he’d read through Mam’s journal. “Not a boyfriend as such. She mentioned that bloke who took her to see Star Wars and didn’t drive her down the coast like she wanted to one night. Wasn’t Ken the name? Why, do you know him?”
“Yeah, I do. I did. Quinn, Ken was my father—Ken Parker.”
Quinn stopped walking, felt his lungs squeezing out a gasp of air, as they both hung opposite each other waiting for more oxygen intake. “Whoa.”
“I know.”
“This is sort of Star Wars-ish too, I have to say. Lilly, I am your father…” He imitated Darth Vader’s deep, breathy voice, then remembered that she seemed perturbed from the moment she walked in, and returned to normal. “I mentioned Ken before. Why didn’t you say something then?”
She paused underneath a pine tree and looked at him with tears in her eyes, nodding. “Quinn, there’s more. I don’t know if you know this—I don’t know if your mother mentioned it in her journal, but your mother was engaged to be married…to my father. Not only that, but your mom broke my parents up when they were going out in their early twenties, then your dad came along, whisked her away to Ireland, and my parents got back together.”
“I see.”
And he did. Suddenly, it was all very clear, why everyone was so cold to him, why Mam’s family had shut her out. She hadn’t just been casually dating other men when she’d met his dad. She’d been promised to another. She’d wreaked havoc on two families by making her choice to move to Ireland.
“Quinn, according to my mom, my father was never the same. She hurt him very much when she left him for your dad, then when she left for good, she hurt everybody.”
This explained why his grandfather was sour with him too, pretended not to know who he and his brothers were, but really? Still? To go to such an extreme just because she fell in love with someone else? Quinn couldn’t understand it. Wasn’t family supposed to forgive you, no matter how crazy you were? No matter how cross he was with his daughter, he still should have found a way to talk things through with her. “There was no reason to shut her out,” Quinn said, walking ahead of Lilly. He needed to think this through.
“But Quinn, this whole town is like family. She hurt a lot of people by leaving.”
He spun around to face her. “You’re the one who’s going to hurt a lot of people when you leave, Lilly.” Damn, he couldn’t believe he’d said that.
“What?” she gasped.
“Nothing, forget I said anything.”
“You think I’m doing the same thing as your mom? Quinn, you’re the one who told me to go, follow my heart, go up against my mom. I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
He couldn’t believe he was saying it either. What did it mean? That she’d be hurting him when she left for Miami? That all the encouragement he’d been giving her was bullshit, and what he wanted most was for her to choose Green Valley, to choose him? “Look, I’m sorry. All I meant was, we’re no one to judge. If my mother made a choice, there was good reason for it, and that’s all anyone needs to know. Whatever happened to forgiveness?”
A lamppost behind her illuminated her silhouette, making her look like an angel—a quiet, stunned angel. Her hands slapped her sides, as though she had no answer for that.
He felt her frustration and helplessness in spades. It was suffocating him, the idea that he didn’t know what he wanted her to do. He just wanted her, and he couldn’t have her.
“Ah, what does it matter? She’s gone. Dead. Nobody has to worry about what Big, Bad Maggie Phillips did to anyone anymore. She’s gone.” To his shock, tears threatened to build up and spill, and he turned away from her to blink them back.
“I know, and…I feel the same way too. It’s not your problem what she did. It’s just that—augh—I have to keep hearing about it from my mom, from Avery Benson, even Cook and Mellie are starting to talk about it.”
He whirled back around to face her. “Do you have to listen? Can’t you ignore them? What are you saying, Lil, that you don’t know who to be loyal to?” He wasn’t sure why this was hurting him so much, why he was acting like a jealous boyfriend, except that maybe he’d grown to care for her more than he thought he had, despite his deepest efforts not to.
“I did ignore her! I just had a fight with her tonight, and it was because of you.”
“Me? So now I’m to blame for any trouble between you and your mam?”
“That’s not what I meant, Quinn. I just meant that I’m starting to stand up to her. I’m on your side, but I’m on theirs too. I guess…ugh, I guess I just feel trapped in the middle. My mom asked me not to see you anymore. She says you’re going to hurt me, leave me, same way your mom did. I don’t believe it, Quinn, but it makes this harder just the same.”
Quinn felt his blood starting to boil. What the fuck did Penny Parker know about him? Nothing. What a presumptuous woman to think she knew anything about him. To judge him just because she was bitter that his mam had left Ken Parker back in Green Valley for a new life in Ireland. The best man won, fair and square. “Sometimes, when you follow your heart, you hurt others. Tell your mam that.”
“Believe me, she already knows that, Quinn. And so do I.”
He stared at her, her expression filled with hopelessness, the same emotion that had invaded every pore in his body, making him feel weak and helpless, which wasn’t to be borne. “Ah, what does it matter?” His hands flew to his hips. He could feel his irrational, snotty self coming to the surface.
“What do you mean?” she asked, hurt blossoming on her face.
“You’re leaving, Lil. Whether I stay here or go back to Dublin, how can I hurt you if we’re not together?”
“Oh. So that’s it? That’s how it’s going to be? You get angry at me, that way you have a contrived reason to stay away from me? Good decision, Quinn.”
He simmered, wondering why he couldn’t just come clean and tell her how he felt—that he might be falling for her. No, that he had fallen. He was in love with her. “Lilly, I’m not the one confused by my feelings. You just said you felt torn—on one hand, there’s your mam and all her friends, and on the other—there’s me. I’m sorry you feel that way. I never meant to come between you and your well-established life. All I’ve cared about since I got here was being with you and making you happy. As happy as you’ve made me.”
“And you did. You have. I just…”
Just…but… Why did those words have to end everything she said? Was she listening to the bullshit about his mam on purpose, just to make it easier for herself? He understood family. He understood how important it was to have one’s parents’ complete respect, but his mam had at least given him the gift of freedom and choice without guilt, to go and choose. He just wished Lilly could experience the same with her mother.
“Listen, for whatever it’s worth,” he said, staring her in the eyes, reaching out for her hand. He shook it lightly for emphasis, so she would listen and listen good. “I didn’t know your dad, and I don’t know what went on between him and my mam. And guess what? I don’t care. It won’t change my feelings about you and me, Lil. I really care about you—a lot. And I was considering—foolishly, it seems—about possibly staying here for good. Paul was talking…he’s thinking of selling the pub…”
“And what? You’re going to buy it?”
Quinn stared at her expression for a long time. There was a touch of excitement mixed with fear in her eyes. Like it was all sinking in and getting real.
“Quinn? Are you really thinking of staying here?” she asked, twisting her eyebrows.
He hesitated. If she knew Quinn was considering staying in town, would she change her mind about her internship? Would she still go to Miami, but return to Green Valley afterward? His own selfish desires aside, he didn’t want to be responsible for her loss of flight. He wanted her to soar, to explore, and see the world. He wanted her to discover the options life had in store for her. Though he’d started to believe that Lilly was the perfect woman for him, he didn’t want to be responsible for her getting stuck in Green Valley.
That was her mother’s job.
But what about love, the other part of his brain scolded. What if together you can be happy, have a place in Green Valley, but also explore the world together?
The possibility sounded amazing, but he couldn’t forget the friction that had already been created between Lil and her mam because of Quinn. His mam had chosen love and lost her family as a result, and right now, the thought that he’d ever be the cause of Lilly having to make that same choice was too much for him to handle.
Besides, he wasn’t even sure what he wanted to do or how his brothers would affect his decisions, so he couldn’t let the possibility that he might stay here influence her one way or the other. “No, I don’t see why I should,” he said. “I thought I had something for me here in Forestville, but this is all turning out to be so complicated, Lil.” He felt the knot in his stomach grow tighter. “Say what you will about my mam, but when she met my dad, she knew. They knew. They had even more standing between them than we do—my mam’s engagement to your dad for one—but that didn’t stop her. She didn’t hesitate because of what others thought.” When she winced, he realized he’d landed a blow without meaning to. God, he had to get out of here before he said anything more to hurt her because that’s the last thing he wanted. He began walking away. “You and I are just on different paths, Lil. And it looks like neither one of us is willing to make the leap to get on the same one. That should tell us something right there. And I think what it’s telling us is to accept our time together here is coming to an end.”