Quinn, by design

CHAPTER FIVE

Niall steered her outthe front door and away from interested ears.

She’d done it again, slipped past his barriers with a simple show of courage. He’d easily understood the kind of bravery holding her spine stiff at Cam’s funeral. The valour of necessity and pride, both personal and to show respect to the person you’ve lost. Anger had turbocharged the fearlessness propelling her to his door when she’d decided he’d cheated her granda. This was different. She’d held her ground against a hazy yet real fear, making it more terrifying.

Tomas Bechet carried the scent of a man who’d known her mum. Whatever the feck that meant, it wasn’t a good memory.

Niall pieced together the bits of information he’d picked up. No father. Mother an addict, dead by the time Lucy was ten. She’d needed a bed and food. She was a fighter and a survivor. And hell, a scent could shut down the urge to fight or flee and make her freeze as the only way to protect herself.

“Cam liked to talk about the loves in his life, about establishing the business, about meeting his Liùsaidh, about you.” Love had been the thread linking all the old man’s stories, and another part of why Niall had been so comfortable in his company.

“Grandpa always called Gran by her full name.” Lucy’s mouth softened, and her gaze turned wistful at an old man’s reverence for his wife’s name.

Niall had used the name because he liked the way it rolled around his tongue, liked the light in Lucy’s eyes when he called her Liùsaidh. What kind of man would Lucy choose as a lover? “I reckon he told you most of those stories.”

A tender smile curved her mouth, and Niall was hooked.

“We can compare,” she said.

“In his version, it was the perfect love story.” Niall was beginning to think he might enjoy having Lucy around a bit more. I’m turning into a masochist! Her demands and her presence would make a tight timetable even tighter, before he added the hours needed to choose the first scholarship holder.

“A fairy tale?” She giggled.

Niall hadn’t believed she could. Joy made her radiant, carefree for the first time since he’d met her. His chest puffed out knowing he’d wrought the miracle. “You think he made it up?”

“Maybe Grandpa embellished.”

Looking at her, snatches of conversations with Cam came back to him.

“She’ll need a distraction.” Cam had offered that morsel as part of a general conversation about loss and death.

“It might take longer than you hope before you get the recognition you deserve.” Cam had stared at the photo of the Huon table and sighed before throwing out his “wait for glory” line. Niall had thought the old man was giving him his regular pep talk on the patience needed for his craft.

“I’m sorry.” He’d been purely baffled by Cam’s apology offered during Niall’s last visit. At the time, he couldn’t see any reason for regrets between them.

Cam was a strategic thinker, three moves ahead in any chess game. Niall had always matched Cam’s offers, a matter of his pride and honour to ensure each trade was fair. Cam had changed his will for a reason. He’d never asked Niall directly to keep an eye on Lucy, but increasingly, Niall was convinced those fragments of conversation were connected.

Did Cam propose the foundation so I’m on hand to fill some of the empty void in Lucy’s life?

Niall didn’t fancy the position of guard or lap dog. He tuned back in to Lucy’s words.

“The first time I asked him how they met was for a family project for school. He gave me the short version, but he pumped me every day on what the other kids were saying. And he added and added, tracing all the way back to meeting her when they were both six and stuck their tongues out at each other.”

“A time-honoured way to show you care.” Niall nodded. “What are you looking for in a mate?”

“Interesting word—mate. One minute we’re talking about my grandparents and the next you’re back to sex.” She rolled her eyes.

“To hear Cam tell it, it was a mighty passion. Lots of lusty sighs, passionate glances and tackling each other onto any reasonably comfortable surface.”

“I got the edited version for my school project.”

“I’m asking about your life, Lucy.” The inconvenient desire she’d stirred in him when she’d been in his arms made him reckless. “Everyone should have at least one passionate affair in their life.”

She tilted her head and narrowed her gaze. “Are you offering?”

Well, feck! The rush of blood from his head to his groin made him dizzy. Having already noted her courage, he was a fool to offer her a challenge, although he was sorely tempted. “At the risk of repeating myself, you control this.”

* * *

Lucy was at the workshopon the dot of eight the following Monday, because in her experience, tradespeople started early. When she drew close enough to press the buzzer, the spine-chilling beauty of k.d.lang singing the last chords of “Hallelujah” wafted out a part-opened window. He’d sound-proofed the workshop. Another improvement since her childhood. An insurance request? Given what Lucy was learning about Niall Quinn, consideration for the neighbours probably figured as well.

He was that kind of thinker. Observing details, observing reactions—a different kind of “treat thy neighbour as you’d have them treat you” to Grandpa and Gran. Gran had fed her, bought her clothes that fitted, and read her to sleep with stories Lucy could read herself. Nothing overwhelming, just small acts of service building daily into a pattern of love. There was a different element to Niall’s practical she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Compared to any man she’d met, there was a different element to his sexual challenge as well. You control this. He couldn’t have any idea how enticing those words were to a woman who’d spent the first decade of her life with no control over anything, except her dreams. An affair with him would be discreet and harmless.

Lucy pants-on-fire McTavish.

An affair with Niall Quinn would be incendiary. Nuzzling his way up her throat, he’d started a fire inside her, a conflagration still blazing when he’d held her hand to inspect one piece of furniture after another. Like being close to a woodstove—the radiant heat was immediate, but the promise of bone-deep warmth over time kept you close. He’d purely smouldered when she’d asked if he was offering an affair. She’d waited for the bushes flanking the path outside the deceased estate house to spontaneously combust.

This morning he pulled open the door within seconds of her pressing the buzzer. She sensed impatience in him, as if she’d interrupted some task, then his expression cleared. Leaning forward, he sniffed the air. “Well, feck! Same scent, so it must be Liùsaidh McTavish beneath those overalls, old sweater and”—his gaze dropped to her boots—“are those steel-capped?” He patted his chest. “Be still, my beating heart.”

“Are you quoting the poet Dryden or the musician Sting?” Her stomach dropped to those steel-capped boots hearing her full name roll off his tongue.

“Whoever you’d like me to quote.”

“The boots are because this is a work site.” She inhaled wood smoke and exhaled the jittery nerves making her question her reception. Discreet, incendiary and laced with affection—a short affair might work for both of them. “I’ve done basic occupational health and safety courses.”

“I’m impressed.” He drew her inside, and his welcome scrambled her good sense. “Why?”

“About five years ago, Grandpa organised to do some renovations at the house. I needed to do walk-throughs, keep an eye on things.”

“Given your dislike of chaos and dust, you must have had a pretty strong motivation.” He spun on his heel and headed toward the table under the window: their lunch spot on her first visit to his workshop.

“Gran insisted on supervising,” she explained. Niall’s friendship with her grandpa, and the stories Niall had to trade, neutralised her usual caution talking about family.

He glanced over his shoulder, his smile understanding. “And you supervised your gran.”

“Grandpa installed an elevator, modified a bathroom, and built a balcony from the main bedroom overlooking the garden.” To protect her gran, Lucy had studied in forensic detail what was safe and unsafe behaviour for an invalid in a home converted to a building site.

“Cam told me his wife was ill for some years before she died.” Niall Quinn’s discretion equalled his kindness.

Her grandpa had never sugar-coated hard truths. “Gran was physically frail, then was diagnosed with dementia.”

“Dementia’s an ugly and terrifying word.” His lilt almost disappeared under the weight of his compassion. “And unspeakably cruel to lose the love of your life twice, mentally and then physically.”

“She lost the capacity to comfort others. Gran would have hated that.” Lucy had hated the loss of dignity on her gran’s behalf. “She was good at comforting others. In a practical way. If a family was rocked off-centre by a tragedy, she’d be the first with a casserole.”

An act of service had killed her grandmother. Her cat had meowed at a closed window. In her rush to open it, Gran had fallen, hit her head on a footstool, and broken her neck. In the video clip lodged in Lucy’s mental library, the cat’s complaint had sounded a fraction of a second before her gran’s cry. Heart pounding, Lucy had sprinted down the hall, skidding to a halt in time to see her gran roll off the footstool. Too late to be useful. Soon enough for endless what-ifs.

“You know where the kitchen is. Help yourself to tea whenever you want it.” His abrupt change of topic startled her out of memories carrying the force of a stun gun.

“Do you want a cup?” She remembered her manners.

He pointed to the large teapot on the table beside him. “Just drained this.”

“You’ve started work already? Is the furniture here?” Lucy glanced around.

“Due any minute. I was filling in my time while waiting.”

A laptop sat on the table with a sketchpad to one side. She sidled closer, unable to hide her curiosity. “Can I see?”

He turned the laptop around. “I’ll have to swear you to secrecy if I show you these.”

“Stop.” She covered her eyes after he’d scrolled through a few pages of artworks. “I think they’re paintings, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Conceptual art is not my style.”

He laughed. “We call a spade a shovel in my family as well. Comes from growing up on the land, I thought. Then I figured out my parents valued honesty above bullshite.”

“You don’t like these paintings either?” At the gallery opening with Grandpa, Lucy had decided she and the anonymous frame maker lived in wildly different universes.

“Not this particular batch. But the last lot were still lifes, painted with meticulous detail, the shadows worthy of Caravaggio at his best. The painter, a woman, lacked his volatile temperament, which made negotiation easier.”

“What do you negotiate?” Another detail she hadn’t considered when she’d planned to skim his profits.

“The artist has to like the frames. They send me the images. Using a software program, I send some designs, and we go from there.”

“How often do you do this?” Guilt at her glib dismissal of his frames created an itch between her shoulder blades.

“Leopold’s opens a new exhibition about every three weeks. Sometimes the artist has already arranged for frames or thinks frames will distract the viewer from focusing on their work. It’s a balancing act, the frame and the painting. The frame has to be discreet enough not to draw attention away from the work, but to subtly enhance it.” He added a few lines to a doodle on the sketchpad and recreated a section of the Mona Lisa’s frame.

“You’ve studied art.” The insight explained a bit more of the Niall Quinn puzzle. Like why Grandpa enjoyed his company. But it left other questions unanswered.

“Part-time at night for a year,” he admitted. “Mostly art history.”

“In preparation for making frames?” Lucy asked, although that made no sense.

“Because I was interested.” His mouth twisted at the implied criticism in her question.

She thought back to the frames at the exhibition she’d seen. “They’re all unique.”

“That’s the brief.”

“I mean unique to every single painting at every single exhibition.” The enormity of the design task struck her. And his skill. She was the antiques expert, and she hadn’t twigged to the tradition he was copying. “In eighteenth-century France, frames stood as works of art in their own right.”

“Uh-huh. Partly furniture and partly sculpture. Although I don’t claim to be as good as the bloke who created the gilded frame to go with Raphael’s portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici.”

“The scrolling vine and foliage of the frieze echoed the leaf pattern on Lorenzo’s torso.” She recalled an art history class. The frame was worth more than the painting.

“That’s the one.”

“Why don’t you make money from your furniture?” And why haven’t I asked this question before?

“The million-dollar question.” His phone buzzed. “That’s your delivery. I’ll open the loading dock.”

“I’d like to know.” Lucy’s interest had become personal, not just an explanation for Grandpa’s actions.

“The economy. A bespoke piece takes more time. You need to consult with the buyer, submit a design, determine a wood, make the piece. The wood’s a major cost.” He shrugged as his steps ate up the distance. “I use only recycled or recovered Australian timbers. Add in labour costs. We’re coming out of an economic downturn. Bespoke furniture is a luxury item, and there’s a sizeable part of the luxury market that likes shiny and new rather than sustainable.”

“The same part of the luxury market who might buy one of these paintings neither you nor I like.” She scoffed.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” He unlocked the door beyond the kitchenette. It opened onto an empty space running down the right side of the building and included a long driver’s bay.

“I know everyone’s tastes are different, but why someone would want one of those paintings when they could have Grandpa’s memorial fruit bowl is a mystery to me.” She caught his arm, halting him.

“Keep moving, Lucy, and thanks for the vote of confidence. I’m focusing on the colours in this latest batch of paintings. They remind me of a valley I know—sky, hills, forest, a meandering river—so I’ll make that my inspiration.” He stopped short of the steel roller doors, marking the end of the bay and the shed.

“What’s in these rooms?” Lucy gestured to two huge double doors on the left of the building. In her adolescence, this had been one large open space, difficult to navigate because of the amount of timber, old masonry and damaged furniture.

“Storage for what was left of Cam’s materials. Storage for mine.” He pressed switches on the back wall. The roller doors slid up to reveal back gates swinging open to allow the delivery truck to enter the property. With a circling gesture of his hand, he directed the driver to reverse into the bay.

“Right on time,” he murmured to Lucy. “Did you threaten them with hellfire if they were late?”

“I asked if we could have the first delivery of the day,” Lucy replied. “Why are you looking at me like I’m from Mars? I’m prepared to wait for a day when I can be first delivery. Nobody suffers.”

“If you say so.” He turned to the driver and his offsider. “Hi. I’ll get you to take the sideboard through to the front. Lucy, maybe you can lead the way? I’ll move the washstand into a storage bay while you’re sorting that piece.”

Lucy had calculated the washstand would be the fastest and therefore the first job. She had two wash basins and jugs in her car on the strength of her guess. Niall’s instructions seemed to overrule that. She held her tongue while she led the men through to the workshop, held it when they returned to the loading bay to find Niall had unloaded the washstand and moved it into Cam’s storage.

“Thank you.” Lucy signed the delivery receipt, waited for the truck to depart and the roller doors to hit the ground. “I thought we’d discuss the order in which you restore the pieces.”

“Let’s discuss.” Not waiting for her, he went into Cam’s storage, where he’d set the washstand in an open space. Then he hoisted three sheets of marble—as if they didn’t weigh a ton—from some sort of shelves on runners and placed them nearby. “We’ll have to replace the marble top. Which piece do you want? Have you chosen a wash bowl and jug?”

Miffed to discover she couldn’t immediately decide between the marble slabs, she scowled at him. “I’ve chosen two sets.”

“Why two?” He tucked his hands in his pockets, seemingly more interested in walking around the washstand and considering the marble slabs than in her uncharacteristic indecision.

“Because one set has a bowl to fit the exact dimensions of the table.” She wasn’t prevaricating. Well, maybe a bit.

“Verity is important in restoration.”

“But the second set belonged to Gran.” Lucy dug for patience because his teasing was an irritating prod to her indecision. She knew verity mattered, but Gran’s wash bowl and basin set had been sitting on the deep window ledge in her bathroom when Lucy had moved in. Decorative rather than useful. Gran had sat on the floor with Lucy and woven magic into that first history lesson, a story of function, design, and how easy it was to become attached to an inanimate object.

“Wild guess here, but your gran’s set doesn’t have its own washstand?” He moved a rippled pink marble slab closer to the table and stood back. “Breccia Oniciata from Italy. The other possibles are the Val Venosta, another Italian marble or the Rosa Patara from Turkey.”

“Right,” she muttered, off-balanced by his knowledge of marble. Keeping everything that belonged to her gran and grandpa meant she’d be living in a museum, not a home. “Replacing the marble means you can adjust the cut for the basin.” The idea sounded like sacrilege even as she said it. “A few millimetres. That’s all.” She watched his head swivel toward her.

“That’s a mighty decision.” His gaze was considering. “Use your gran’s set and it’s not restoration, plus you could lose the set when you sell. Use the alternative set and your gran’s things don’t have a basin. There’s a third option.”

“What?”

“Look for another washstand.” He sank to his haunches, the strength evident in his bunched muscles making Lucy’s mouth water.

“That’s another purchase.”

“Haven’t you stitched up the business loan yet?”

“We have room to breathe.” A stupid thing to say when the breath hitched in her chest saying the words aloud. A business loan to cover the bequests, as a buffer for mistakes with the business, and to provide seed funding for the foundation hadn’t come cheap.

“You have room to breathe.” He pushed to his feet, and the bleakness in his eyes confused her. “Sounds like you’re not ready to make a decision on the washstand yet. Although I’m betting the Breccia Oniciata is a perfect match for your gran’s jug and basin set.”

“Why did you decide on the sideboard first?” she asked, because she could hardly press him for information on his situation when she’d insisted her business was her business.

“Because the washstand needs discussion, whereas I can start straight away on the sideboard. Time is money, as they say. Sale of the sideboard will cover your first loan repayments. Isn’t that the deal?”

“That’s the deal.” It was a bit late for Lucy to start feeling uncomfortable about her request. She, not Grandpa, had enticed him into restoring more furniture. Although “enticed” had started to smell a bit like “taking advantage.” His eyebrows rose when she crossed her hands over her chest. “I’ll take the basin and jug sets home then.”

“Where I grew up, taking your bat and ball home the first time you’re asked to share—in this case your jug and basin—was called a tantrum, not a negotiation.” He gestured for her to precede him out the door.

Great.The noise of her boots hitting the concrete floor echoed loudly, while he moved with the silence of a big feline. Each heavy footfall sounded like a two-year-old pummelling her fists in a tantrum. Tiptoeing would make Lucy look even more of an idiot. She’d been given a lesson, several lessons, in his ability to read his customers and his expertise at his craft.

* * *

Niall pulled down hisgoggles and rolled his shoulders. The old railway clock on the far wall said it was a bit after one. Close enough. At the table, Lucy’s head was bent, her entire focus on cleaning the handles for the sideboard. Another plait, this time for safety, and still he resented her hair being confined. Bright light streamed through the window, highlighting the subtle tones lurking in her sun-kissed auburn hair. He sought and discarded words to describe its colour—burnished copper, dark cherry, or a deep red wine, the myriad colours of his favourite timbers.

She’d been skittish when she’d arrived, rocking from foot to foot in her steel-capped boots, more appealing in work clothes than her uniform of black business suits. Not as bowed down by grief. She moved differently. Looser, more confidently, showing the decisiveness Cam had boasted about, and a weight lifted from Niall’s chest. To survive the dark, you needed moments of lightness as well as anger.

Restoration required an exact replica of the original marble slab. Preservation would allow him to cut the replacement slab to fit her gran’s jug and bowl. She’d been irritated because he’d called her on preserving rather than restoring the wash basin. He’d bet she was scrupulous in her requirements for McTavish’s. Her hesitation revealed a secret yen to combine her granda’s marble with her gran’s knickknacks.

With the sideboard, he’d assessed options and begun dismantling the piece. She’d danced around him, badgering him with questions. Logical questions about the construction of the sideboard, about the steps he intended to take, why he moved in a particular order, and what materials he was going to use. Her scent had competed with the familiar workshop odours of sawdust and linseed oil, her voice drowned out by the occasional electric tool. Half an hour ago, he’d set her up at the table with the handles, rags and some brass cleaner, and to his surprise, the task silenced her.

“How’s it going?’ He strolled to the kitchenette to wash his hands.

“Slowly.” She looked across at him. “But you expected that.”

“A lot of restoration work is slow, painstakingly slow, if you want to get it right.”

“I like the rhythm, the process.” She picked up a second brass handle, rubbing it gently with the soft cloth. Her gaze returned to her task. “I won’t finish these today.” She was patient with the manual task. Another surprise. Niall had assumed she was the classy chatelaine of a famous antiques business, oozing elegance with a rehearsed patter to convince any passer-by to part with their money while never getting her hands too dirty. He’d been in McTavish’s when she’d been absent on a buying trip. The genteel elegance suited her pearls and black suits.

“Let’s take a break. Want some lunch?”

Her head swivelled back to him, her smile tentative. “I didn’t bring food today. Didn’t know if you’d send me packing after a morning of my company.”

“I can feed you. You’re being productive.” Niall grinned. “And quiet.”

“I can’t guarantee the quiet will last.” She wrapped the handles in the cloth he’d provided and cleared them off the table. He could add neat to patient in his list of her habits, although tidiness went with her dislike of chaos. “Can I help?”

“I’ve got egg salads in the fridge, if that suits?” Niall reached for the kettle, musing on his earlier conclusion: debt was another form of chaos for her—and equally scary.

She joined him in the kitchenette, and her scent, more muted now, invaded his senses. “Better than any offering in my fridge.”

“Who cooked for you and Cam?” Niall continued his tea ritual, impishly selecting two small Toby mugs from the cupboard above the bench.

“Toby mugs? For tea? Please, no.” She dried her hands and moved behind him to reach the fridge.

“What do you use them for?”

“As little as possible. I’m not a fan.” She carried the salads to the table, returning for knives, forks and serviettes.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re remarkably conservative in your taste?” Niall swapped a Toby mug with a traditional Japanese teacup, this one with a handle, and carried them to the table. He enjoyed teasing her. His mismatched crockery collection was a running family joke, the result of a lifelong haunting of op shops.

“Not in such a perplexed tone of voice. Mostly, they use it to imply old-fashioned or boring. I’ve never been called conservative for refusing to use a mug as a teacup when it was designed for ale. You have an unusual way with an insult.” She took the chair she’d taken for their first shared sandwich in his workshop.

“Swap places with me.”

“Why?” She put her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand, her clear-eyed study flipping his stomach into a double somersault. “I sat here the other day, and you didn’t see a problem.”

“You don’t want to get set in your ways.” Niall liked distracting her, seeing her smile.

“Has anyone ever told you, you’re crazy?” She took the chair Niall offered and moved the Japanese teacup to her allotted place.

“Crazy, pig-headed.” Niall waved a hand in the air, acknowledging the hit. Crazy for thinking he could make a living from custom-made furniture when countries around the world churned out perfectly useful items at a fraction of the cost. Pig-headed because whenever push came to shove, his craft mattered more to him than money, his next meal and any girlfriend he’d ever had. His single-mindedness was why he missed important signals, like his brother’s sudden fixation with making money after their da died. “You didn’t answer my question about cooking.”

“By the time I arrived, Grandpa and Gran had a rhythm. They took turns, although they each had their specialties.” She let Niall doctor her tea. He hoarded these tiny surrenders of her ironclad independence because they showed she was relaxing around him. “Gran made the best casseroles; Grandpa had a delicate touch with pastries. They made me a third wheel.”

“What’s your speciality?” Niall guessed she’d have wanted a speciality, something she could excel at.

“From an early age, I mastered the art of a fine pasta sauce. I have more than a dozen in my repertoire.” She liked contributing, which provided more context for her care with the handles.

“I’m impressed.”

“After Gran died, we struggled to find a new rhythm.” She nursed the delicate teacup between her hands, her words coming slowly. “We did it. I’ll have to find another rhythm now.”

“Cam talked about her. His Liùsaidh.” Niall had caught her attention and brought the haunted look back to her eyes. Distressing her hadn’t been his intention.

“What did Grandpa say?”

“That for him, talking about the people you’ve loved and lost helps grieving,” Niall replied. She folded in on herself, a physical and emotional withdrawal painful to witness. He burned his bridges anyway. “Cam said grieving is unique to every person, and loneliness is an enticement to drunkenness and despair.”

She flinched.

“Did he drink?” Niall doubted it. Cam’s calm discussion of “tha demon drink” as a secret seduction showed the wry understanding of a man who’d conquered temptation. Had Lucy’s mother?

“The occasional single malt whiskey. Self-discipline was important to him,” she said.

Niall figured out she’d absorbed the lesson of self-control through her pores, along with a love of antiques, while shadowing the old man.

“Cam loved you, loved sharing a home and business with you. He was grateful you’d grown up with them, and he could talk to you about your gran after she died. This wasn’t Cam’s first time on grief’s merry-go-round. His body and brain had fashioned a rhythm.” Niall pushed ahead because she was sitting in his workshop on her one free day of the week. She’d lost her entire immediate family. How she’d jammed a stopper in the Vesuvius of emotions doing battle inside her was becoming a puzzle he wanted to solve. Accusing him of fraud had been a tiny release of steam.

“I miss him.” She gripped the delicate teacup tightly enough, he feared for its survival. “I’m rational, sensible. I’ve always been good at managing the business.” Her shoulders sagged, but tension still radiated from her. “I found a hand-written note tucked in the back of Grandpa’s desk the other day. I couldn’t stop crying—messy, loud sobs until it hurt to breathe.” She turned her head, her gaze meeting Niall’s, a mixture of confusion and embarrassment at her reaction. “It was a shopping list: coffee—beans not ground, chocolate biscuits—any sort, birthday present for Lucy.”

“Do you remember what you got?” He bet she still had every gift Cam and his wife had ever given her.

“The note was dated. I was thirteen. They gave me Mum’s music box.” She swallowed a sob. “It played the same Brahms’ lullaby she sang to me as a child.”

“When I finally came home from Ireland, my mum gave me my da’s tools. I didn’t want to touch them at first. Thought I’d wear them out if I used them, and then he’d really be dead.” Niall had kept that bit of craziness to himself until now.

“It’s like that, isn’t it?” Half-question, half-statement, and her face relaxed. “You don’t know yourself. You don’t make sense to yourself.” She sighed, adding almost inaudibly. “And if you don’t know yourself, how can anyone else?”

“I should get back to work.” Because Niall was tempted to stay, to ask where Lucy had been when her mum died. What she’d seen, where her friends were, and if she wanted more from life than running the family business. Where the hell had that come from?

“You loved him,” she said, as if making a discovery.

“Yes.” Niall collected the plates and turned to go.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.”

Praise the saints.The woman surprised him every other minute. She’d just admitted they had common ground, and her acceptance felt every bit as good as holding her in his arms at the deceased estate viewing.

When she left, Niall finished sanding the pieces for the cradle, his hand testing the smoothness of the timber, while he absorbed the features of the grain and the marks of wear on the recycled ash. Spending time with Lucy McTavish had been easier than he’d expected. In overalls, her hair coming loose from her plait, and humming over brass handles, she fit into his workshop as easily as her be-suited persona fit McTavish’s. She wasn’t supposed to fit in his life.