Quinn, by design

CHAPTER ONE

A visitor was rareenough to summon Niall Quinn to his front porch. “Don’t worry about the squeak,” he called to the huddled figure inspecting the hinge on his lop-sided gate. He was close enough to recognise his landlady’s elegant calves and ankles. “It lets me know I’ve got a visitor.” Noticing she had shapely legs might be excused as artistic interest, but it was a distraction he wasn’t ready for.

She spun toward his voice, her coat floating on the breeze, before settling around her too-thin figure. Niall stepped out of the shadows.

“I’m Lucy McTavish.” She crossed the yard and stretched out her hand.

“I know.” Instead of the formal handshake she offered, Niall gripped her hand to draw her up the two wide wooden steps to his porch. Without makeup, Lucy’s pallor was hauntingly evident and matched the sadness in her almond-shaped hazel eyes. She smelled of roses, with a hint of vanilla, transporting him back to carefree afternoons in his mother’s cottage garden at lilac time.

“How do you know?” She withdrew her hand, pointedly reclaiming her own space.

“I saw you at your granda’s funeral.”

Niall had stood at the back of the church. Not a close friend, his time with Cam had been too short to claim that honour, but he’d miss the old man’s advice and encouragement. Mutual respect and a passion for fine craftsmanship had forged a special bond.

Lucy’s courage at the funeral had earned his respect, while her vulnerability roused protective instincts he’d tucked away for the sake of his sanity after his bust-up with his ex-fiancée, Sinead.

“I’m glad you’ve dropped by.” Niall gentled her as he would a lost child. “Please. Come in.” He gestured for her to precede him through the front door.

He’d been considering how to introduce himself since the funeral. Texting was out because he didn’t have her number. Using social media seemed wrong for the words he had to say. Her arrival on a Sunday, in unrelieved black, less than ten days after the funeral, gave the encounter an ominous urgency.

“I didn’t see you.”

“You were too caught in your grief to see me.”

She’d been too caught in her grief to see anyone. Her eyes had shimmered with tears, her fragility brittle enough to shatter with a blow. She’d held herself ramrod straight. Her self-discipline awed him, and her anguish had compounded his own, re-opening the hole left by his da’s death.

Already partway down the hall, she pivoted, met his gaze, then focused on a spot over his shoulder. “I’m sorry for my rudeness.”

“Whisht, lassie. There’s no need for an apology. I lost my da a few years ago, didn’t care who saw me cry like a baby.”

The colour drained from her cheeks, leaving them chalk-white, and drawing Niall’s attention to her dark auburn hair. The tight bundle at her nape punished, rather than tamed her thick tresses.

“I learned ‘whisht’ from Grandpa.” She sounded bereft, and he’d been raised to tend any animal in pain.

“I picked it up working in Ireland. Cam used it when he was about to impart some piece of wisdom to my eejit self.” Niall smiled encouragement and waved toward the doorway at the end of the short hall. “I was in the kitchen.

“The loss is a constant, learning to live with it is the challenge,” he murmured before cursing his cack-handedness.

For feck’s sake. Cam had said he was Lucy’s only immediate family. She probably knew more about loss than Niall hoped he ever would. He couldn’t recall who’d used the expression, but the words fitted her—“She knew her way around in the dark.” Grief could be endlessly dark.

Neat, black, serviceable pumps continued up the narrow hall and into his neat, serviceable kitchen, their rat-tat-tat shutting a door on his words of condolence. She pressed a—praise the saints—dark-charcoal bag to her side. The woman should wear green, any shade, not this unrelenting black that made her look forbidding, when in truth she was stripped naked by mourning.

“You call him Cam.” She stood stiffly beside the three-by-two-metre, bark-to-bark Huon pine table he’d finished in the early hours this morning, then muscled into the kitchen so he could live with it a few days.

“He asked me to. Said Cameron McTavish made him feel ancient.” Niall stepped around her, his arm brushing against hers in the space made smaller by his table. She shivered. Not fear. Maybe cold? Grief could also make you cold from the inside out.

“I have some questions for you, Mr. Quinn.” She straightened her shoulders, tilting her chin to signal her return to business.

“Please sit down, Ms. McTavish,” he replied with equal formality. Then, without waiting to see what she did, he continued to the kitchen bench. “I was making tea. Share a cup?” He spoke over his shoulder. Tea was his mother’s cure for every ill.

“I won’t be here long.” Politeness jostled with annoyance in her answer.

“Tea doesn’t take long.” Niall kept his back turned.

“Thank you,” she said. He heard a chair being placed on the floor and learned Lucy McTavish didn’t pull chairs across stone tiles. Instead, she lifted them before setting them in the correct position.

After filling the kettle, Niall opened the fridge and eyed ingredients before making his choice. A seeded sourdough loaf, a mature cheddar, tomatoes and lettuce. He added pickles. “Milk?”

“Milk, no sugar, please.”

He assembled sandwiches, poured the boiling water into a large teapot, and let it sit. The overlong silence told Niall she was struggling to find the words she wanted. He slowed his movements to give her time to marshal her arguments. While he brought the kettle back to the boil, he drained the water from the pot into two waiting cups. Covering the full teapot with a cosy, he emptied the now warm cups and carried everything to the table, including two plates and the jar of pickles. “I’ll let you fix your own.”

“I didn’t ask for that.” She made a face at the oversized sandwich he’d set in front of her.

“It’s lunchtime.” Niall took the chair opposite her.

Her guilty glance at her smartwatch told him she’d lost track of time, while her unfashionably baggy clothes told him eating was a faint memory. Loss of appetite was another by-product of heartache.

He’d been there too. “I hate to eat alone.”

“I thought you lived alone.” She cut one half of her sandwich in half and added pickles. Eating his food was another nod to politeness. Referring to his living arrangements was her opening salvo in hostilities.

“What else did your granda tell you?” Niall waited for her to swallow her first mouthful, then took a bite of his own, setting himself the task of keeping her in his kitchen long enough to finish her sandwich. Food was his currency for sympathy, although Lucy McTavish’s unannounced arrival declared she wasn’t here for comfort.

“Months ago, Grandpa talked about meeting a furniture restorer at an antiques auction.”

“I’ve done the odd bit of restoration.” Niall was pretty positive Cam had offered those pieces as a sop to Niall’s dignity. While the profit from their sale had covered the rent, over time, Niall worked out Cam had become his patron rather than his landlord.

And wasn’t that a feckin’ indictment. At thirty-four, he needed an old man’s patronage because his passion for making bespoke furniture had yet to deliver a decent living.

“Three pieces.” She placed her left hand on his table as if drawing strength from the age and beauty of the timber. “Three pieces of furniture were delivered to McTavish’s Antiques five months ago.”

“Cam said they earned a good profit.” Niall wrapped both hands around his Blue Italian Spode cup, watching as she raised the Flora Danica, Royal Copenhagen to her mouth; a distraction while she framed her answer. Like most of his cups, the matching saucers were lost in the mists of time.

“They did.” Her chin jut signalled a full stop on McTavish profits.

“Cam said he told you about our arrangement.” Niall’s doubts were growing. Furniture restorer was a half-arsed description of him.

“He told me he offered you accommodation in return for restoring furniture. Three pieces of furniture over eight months gives you a higher hourly rate than a top-class hooker.” The insult rolled off her tongue, the barb sinking deeper than she could have known. Unaware, she popped the last morsel of the second quarter of sandwich into her luscious, bow-shaped mouth.

“Cam was an astute businessman.” After a tussle, which had included consultation with his lawyer brother, Niall was at peace with his conscience. “He controlled how much restoration he wanted.”

“From his sick bed?” She licked a pickle off her thumb, her tongue sexily practical as it brushed along her knuckle to collect the smear of sauce. The lapse in table manners gave a hint of the warm-hearted woman Cam had talked about. Today’s disciplined fa?ade was a slap at Niall.

“While I delivered the last piece five months ago, Cam spent a lot of happy hours here. Until these last two months.” And when Niall had visited Cam’s hospital-in-the-home, Cam had demanded updates on progress with Niall’s upcoming exhibition.

Cam’s favourite design was for the Huon table his granddaughter was currently stroking. Sorrow pressed on Niall’s chest. A few months ago, Cam would have been in the workshop with him on a Sunday afternoon, sharing his large pot of tea and a sandwich.

“He didn’t invite me to be his tenant just for my restoration.”

“Why did he invite you?” She focused her irritation on sawing the second half-sandwich into two quarters. She was eating, which he counted as a win.

“Are you asking as Cam’s granddaughter or as my new landlord?” Niall got that anger was better than fear or sadness for dealing with her despair. Rage gave her a purpose, a reason to get up every day. Directing it at him was disrespecting her granda’s right to make his own decisions.

“You knew he was dying!” Her voice deepened into loathing, as if Niall had killed Cam.

“Not soon enough.” Niall’s obsession with work had fed his ignorance. Although Cam had deliberately downplayed the cancer stealing his life. “He was a kindred spirit, who talked about wood and design and what made a piece of furniture prized. More tea?” He played host, tilting the enormous teapot in her direction.

“Thank you.” She was either innately polite or trained to it—another interesting discovery. He guessed politeness was the only constraint on the passion boiling below her surface.

“He told me his doctor wanted him to slow down.” Niall topped off his own cup. “Cam said he’d earned the right to indulge himself.”

“By letting you stay in a large inner-Sydney property rent free.”

“You don’t know the history to our agreement,” Niall concluded, a sense of foreboding kneecapping him. Or she knew a bit, and in her distress had extrapolated from it being a mutually beneficial arrangement to something less savoury.

Why hadn’t Cam kept his promise?

“I found a copy this morning.” Her left hand returned to the table, her thumb curving around the edge, brushing the newly shellacked wood. Her unconscious fascination nourished the artist in him and vindicated his decision to make the table the centrepiece of his upcoming exhibition. “Three pieces of furniture restored in exchange for twelve months’ free rent looks like fraud to me.”

Niall’s cup landed on the table with a thump, causing his guest to wince. She opened her mouth, and he expected her to say “Be careful of that cup.” Instead, she took another bite of sandwich, probably to stop herself from taking a bite out of him. “I’ve made repairs. I’ve paid utilities and insurance for the full twelve months. With an enterprise like mine, a lease less than twelve months isn’t viable.”

“This is prime, commercially valuable space.” She looked exhausted, as if survival was taking every ounce of energy she had. “You took advantage of him.”

“My mum would tan my hide if I took advantage of anyone, much less a man old enough to be my granda.” Niall tried to defuse the situation—near impossible when he was operating with minimal facts. Sharing her sense of loss handicapped him further.

“An agreement signed in the last few days of his life.”

“Ms. McTavish—Lucy. I can see finding out about our arrangement is a shock to you. I sympathise with your loss.” Niall wrapped his hands around his cup to prevent himself reaching for her. If he offered a friendly hug in her current mood, she’d charge him with harassment as well as fraud. “Cam was in full possession of his faculties when we signed our updated agreement.”

“It’s theft!” Having made the cruel accusation, she deflated like a lung starved of oxygen.

“It’s a legal contract,” he stated. She was pissed off and munching the last quarter of her sandwich as a gesture of defiance. Her cheeks showed colour for the first time since she’d arrived. Niall was pissed off Cam had left her in ignorance, yet inexplicably grateful to see her come alive. “There were witnesses. Cam’s lawyer can answer any questions, as can his accountant.”

“But we’re not talking about the eight months you’ve been here and the four in your so-called updated agreement. We’re talking about another year.” Her voice deepened, a musical contralto vibrating with disbelief. “We’re talking about him changing his will in the last days of his life. He’s bequeathed you a second twelve-month occupancy of this property, rent free.”

“You’re wrong.” Niall’s instinctive protest propelled him to his feet and toward the window above the sink. Cam’s secure, purpose-built woodwork studio at the end of the brick path loomed like a mirage. Niall had believed Cam’s assurances Lucy was comfortable with his tenancy.

Or maybe he’d wanted to believe?

“You said it yourself. Anything less than twelve months isn’t viable. So you tricked him in the last days of his life.” Her voice wobbled.

“Lucy. I’m sorry Cam didn’t tell you about our arrangement.” Niall swung to face her, disquiet roiling his gut. “I won’t deny I’ve thought of staying here longer. On commercial terms”—he sounded unconvincing to his own ears—“I promise you, we never talked about his will.”

She cocked her head to one side, considering him and pronouncing him untruthful.

Her sceptical gaze dragged a clarification from Niall. “Okay, he told me he wanted to update our agreement to bring it in line with his will. Update the original twelve months to be clear I had four left. Cam said you’d be inheriting everything. Maybe a few bequests here and there.”

“So you did discuss his will?”

“Making a statement is not a discussion.” He pushed his hand through his hair, blindsided by the direction the conversation was taking. Niall feinted, she parried, and questions hung between them like rusted nails in a broken-down fence, dangerous unless handled with care. “Are you sure you haven’t mixed up two things?”

Feck! That had to be the answer.She was muddled by grief.

I hope to hell she’s muddled by grief.

“I rang my lawyer when I found the agreement.” She looked at her left hand now, fingers spread, palm flat on the golden-hued pine. She treated his table with the reverence many women reserved for precious jewels while accusing him of a scam. “Henry told me the will gave you more. So, I need to know. Who are you? And what hold did you have over Grandpa?”

“No hold.” Why the hell had Cam kept secrets? About their relationship. About their contract. He sure as hell should have given Niall a hint of what he planned. “We were friends.”

“You mean you pretended to be friends with a sick old man.” The daft woman kept one hand on his table during their entire conversation, seeming blind to the tactile connection to him.

“He wasn’t sick when I met him,” Niall insisted. “The last time I saw him, he was alert and engaged.” His last conversation with Cam had been about Cam’s fear of leaving his granddaughter alone, not the will. And Cam had apologised.

Praise the saints!Was this what Cam was apologising for? A debt Niall could never repay.

Niall’s mouth dried. “You must have misunderstood.”

* * *

She’d finished the sandwich.Lucy stared at her empty plate.

He sounded sincerely baffled about the will. Baffled, with an edge of panic.

Touching the tip of her forefinger to her tongue, Lucy used it to pick up sesame seeds scattered on her plate, nibbled the seeds, then repeated the exercise. A private indulgence, not one for sharing with a stranger. Heat rose up her throat when she found Niall Quinn watching her—she a hypnotist to his willing subject.

He was charming. Conmen were supposed to be charming. The crooked grin, the laugh lines fanning out from the corners of his soulful grey eyes, the russet-coloured lock of hair hanging over his forehead, even his movements were charming.

Manly and charming, economical and practical, heroic even, with broad shoulders and the solid strength of someone who worked with his body, while his clean, sandalwood scent with its tart hint of citrus reassured. Lucy refused to be pacified. The constant parade of men through her mother’s life and bedroom during Lucy’s entire first decade had taught her the futility of relying on men. Still, she’d finished the sandwich. The largest meal she’d eaten in ... forever.

“Whisht! You’re hiding something.” She’d read the first clauses of Niall Quinn’s agreement and stalled at the words “rent free.” Henry Dawson, her lawyer, had been at his daughter’s wedding and unable to talk. He’d mentioned the changed will, Quinn as a beneficiary, and asked her to wait until they spoke. Except her rage had been liberating and propelled her straight here.

“I know nothing about a changed will,” he repeated, his voice steady, his body language unthreatening.

“You’re avoiding the question.” Again. Lucy sucked in a breath. “What do you do here?”

“That would fall into the category of my business.”

His business conducted on her property.

Something niggled at the back of Lucy’s mind. Months ago, her grandpa had bought a supply of paintings they’d never be able to shift. When she’d queried the accounts, he said he’d bought them for a friend. Later he’d taken her to an exhibition at Leopold’s Gallery. Modern, abstract art, the antithesis of Grandpa’s taste. She’d followed him around completely bemused, until he’d told her to look at the frames. Cleverly made new frames from antique timbers, each one different, each crafted to showcase the artwork.

“Grandpa bought a lot of old frames earlier this year.” Lucy hadn’t questioned his purchases after the visit to Leopold’s.

“He bought a lot of things.” Quinn’s expression gave nothing away.

“He never bought stock we couldn’t use. Until recently.” Lucy hadn’t connected the furniture restorer to the friend who wanted frames either. Grandpa could easily have made the connection for her.

“And a man’s not allowed to change his habits,” he muttered.

“Breaking the habits of a lifetime is a reason to argue diminished responsibility.” She probed more carefully. If her grandpa had deliberately kept Niall Quinn a secret, she might be making a mistake about the carpenter. She hated making mistakes.

“That’s insulting.” He looked affronted on her grandpa’s behalf.

Spreading her palms on the table, Lucy leaned forward. His gaze dropped to her hands, as if mesmerised. “Did Grandpa buy those frames to provide you with timber?”

He hesitated a fraction of a second too long.

Use that pretty Irish lilt to talk your way out of this, she thought.

“He occasionally bought frames and antique timber on my behalf. If you can’t find the repayments in your accounts, I can provide copies from mine.” The charming woodworker claimed respectable accounting habits.

“I’ll be checking all transactions for the last year. With our accountant.” The re-energizing rage that had driven her here abandoned Lucy. Until she’d found the agreement, she’d assumed the property was hers to do with as she wished. She wished to sell it and make her current financial problems disappear. She couldn’t lose the business her grandpa had spent his life building. Not after losing him.

And Niall Quinn wasn’t telling her everything about his relationship with her grandpa. Guilt, or a close cousin, had flashed across his face when she’d first accused him.

“Did Henry mention anything else?” He looked more concerned for her than guilty. A charming, disarming hunk.

“That would fall into the category of my business.” She plastered a neutral expression on her face while mimicking his earlier answer. Making sure McTavish’s thrived was her first order of business.

The antiques world would be watching Lucy’s moves closely. A whisper of financial difficulties and even old friends would be eyeing her stock and attempting to poach her staff.

Her grip tightened on the Flora Danica cup. A perfect example of its type. With a saucer, it would be a valuable set. Instead, someone had made a mistake—dropped it on a hard floor, thrown it in a moment of frustration, or chipped it when washing it in one of those long-gone, unforgiving porcelain sinks.

For most people, an imperfect cup and saucer were the mistake of a moment, a regrettable accident. Any breakage reminded Lucy some mistakes can never be undone.

“I don’t want to know about your business.” Impatience added a rumble to his very appealing lilt, making her toes curl in her polished court shoes. “Did Henry say anything else about me?”

“What should he have said?” His intense scrutiny troubled Lucy because she hadn’t waited for Henry’s explanation. She’d read the agreement and welcomed the righteous indignation that had flooded her numbed brain. Accusing Quinn of being a conman was better than hiding at home missing Grandpa.

“That I didn’t ask for anything beyond my existing agreement with Cam.” His bewilderment slowed her down.

Simple mistakes had enormous consequences. Lucy’s mum and gran had died because of an instant’s inattention. With Grandpa, she’d drained her personal account, then his, before taking out a personal loan to pay for twenty-four-hour-a-day professional care for the last few months of his life. She’d made sure someone was always in the room when she visited. Not within earshot, but an objective witness to her actions should one be needed. Lucy’s mistake was not foreseeing the threat to McTavish’s. By spending their savings, Lucy risked the business her grandpa had spent a lifetime building.

“That we were friends as well as business partners,” Quinn finished quietly.

“Grandpa never said.” Blaming Niall Quinn for taking advantage of her grandpa when he’d been defenceless had been a welcome distraction from her despair.

He looked poleaxed, and Lucy was terrified she was spinning out of control.