CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The click of the frontdoor closing reverberated through the small house and into Lucy’s body. She groaned and buried her head under Niall’s pillow, seeking his scent. Decency and honour melded in the scent and the man, and she’d jumped him like he’d been a stud for hire. She’d been tipsy last night, a last hurrah for demons slayed. Or Clementine’s demons slayed. In the middle of second serves of gelato, Clem had blurted out she was going to accept Jamie’s proposal.
This morning Lucy had woken still shaken by Clem’s decision to become a wife and mother. Her world had turned upside down, and her mum’s story had stuck in her throat. Mindless sex had been an escape, and another mistake. She’d known before Niall rolled out of bed. He’d withdrawn emotionally. She shivered.
“A goose walked over my grave.” Lucy tried to dismiss the sense of foreboding, but it followed her on her search for a towel. “If you explain, he’ll understand.”
Opening a drawer, she found flyers for a Quinn exhibition and her foreboding became real, sucking the air from her lungs and dropping her to her knees.
An hour later, Lucy spread the promotional material she’d stolen from Niall’s bedroom drawer on her office desk. The tooled, green leather of the antique desktop framed the photographs and blurb promoting a Quinn exhibition. With unsteady hands, she pinned the top of a sample website page with her grandparents’ photograph. She used her laptop to pin the bottom. Then she brought up Niall’s internet site. No change since the last time she’d looked, but the date and the promise on the sample page was for a Quinn exhibition a week from now in a top Sydney gallery.
Nausea swirled in her stomach. Her body started to tremble as she did more searches of the internet, of social media, of any account she could find where the exhibition might be listed. When she wanted to gag, she covered her mouth with her hand.
He’d cancelled it.
Pictures scrolled through her mind. She’d sat at his Huon pine table the first time she’d met him, then it disappeared from the kitchen. Kate insisting on seeing the table, then whispering to Niall. Lucy hadn’t heard the words, but she’d picked up distress, which had made no sense then. A storeroom part-stocked with Quinn creations, none of which were listed on his website. He never talked about the occasional items in the middle of his workshop shrouded in sheets. He’d been preparing for this exhibition when Lucy had burst into his home accusing him of fraud and theft and cheating her grandpa.
“What have I done?” she whispered, gripping opposite elbows to control the shaking.
When her phone rang, she checked caller ID and identified Henry Dawson. She froze, fear keeping her silent.
“Lucy, are you there?”
“I’m”—she moistened her mouth—“Lucy McTavish here.”
––––––––
“Why didn’t you tellme you were going to refuse the bequest?” Lucy asked when Niall opened his workshop door a few hours later.
“Henry rang you.” His stance changed, bracing for attack, which was fine by her.
“Did you swear him to secrecy?” Lucy strode past him. “Of course he rang me.” Unease propelled her toward the side table where they’d shared so many meals and confidences. She halted, disgusted by the lie those memories represented, and spun back to face him. “You didn’t give him a plausible reason. Did you plan to explain your duplicity to me? Or just slink away without a word?”
“I never said I’d accept the mentorship.” His mouth set in stubborn lines. “Quinns pay their way.”
She dragged a hand through her hair and tugged hard. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t swear.” He looked stricken, and he damn well should, while Aretha sang low in the background, “Chain, chain, chain. Chain of fools.”
“I try not to swear for Gran, but your bastardry inspires me.” Lucy wanted him to know he’d hurt her in ways she couldn’t yet begin to count.
“I’ve refused the bequest. That’s between me and Cam. Nothing to do with you.” He was throwing a cover over his decision like he’d thrown covers to hide his furniture.
“Like hell it’s got nothing to do with me. Why now?” The memory of jumping him as if any male would do was dangerous flotsam in her jumbled emotions.
“Cam didn’t know he was robbing you by setting me up in the foundation. He’d never have put your financial security at risk.” He held his hands wide in a plea for understanding or forgiveness, and she snapped.
“My financial security isn’t at risk.” Knowing she’d beaten her debt phobia pumped fresh fire into her blood, despite the aching fear she was too late. “I don’t have a cash flow problem. I went into a funk after losing Grandpa. I became my ten-year-old self, terrified where my next meal was coming from.”
“Right now, you’ve still got the loan.” Niall sounded remote.
He wasn’t hearing what Lucy needed him to understand.
“I planned to explain last night. Tell you about that frightened little girl. But I had too much to drink, and this morning ...You know what happened this morning.” She walked closer and poked her finger into his chest. “Because you went straight from our bed to your brother, Liam, to sever our business connection.”
“That’s not why.” He threw his head back, the muscles in his throat tight cords of tension.
“But refusing the bequest means you don’t have to have anything to do with me?” Had the sex repulsed him?
He lowered his head. “I’m trying to separate us from Cam’s bequest and money.” His gaze was steady while she tried to untangle his reasoning.
“What’s us?” She poked him harder in the chest.
Aretha bellowed, “I”m just a link in your chain.”
“I’m not sure.” Niall rubbed a hand where she’d stabbed him in the heart.
“‘Not sure?’” She stamped a foot, the jarring from her court shoe slamming into concrete a different pain. “I’ll help you. You don’t want to screw me anymore.”
“Please don’t use that word.” He grimaced and stretched a hand toward her.
“Why not? Do you have a better one?” She crossed her arms, rejecting his overture, the adrenalin draining from her system when she spotted the empty spaces behind him. “Where are the new artworks?” She’d been so caught up with the gala she hadn’t seen the slides for the new batch.
“I finished the contract.” He stared at the empty space with her.
“You’ve paid Liam.” She clutched her stomach, the news a punch to her gut. He was clearing all his debts. “Quinns may pay their way, but that doesn’t make you honourable.” Aretha sang while Lucy’s heart stalled. “Why didn’t you tell me about the exhibition?”
* * *
Niall closed his eyes. She looked more fragile and lost than the day he’d met her. “How did you find out?”
“I went looking for a towel this morning and found Anna’s sample webpage printouts filed under face washers.” She retraced her steps to stand beside the table under the window.
His limbs ached with the weight of his decision.
“At first it wasn’t relevant. We were strangers. Your passion is antiques. Mine is crafting the new.” Niall studied his hands, then pushed them into his pockets. “Then I agreed to help you restore a few pieces.”
“Because you owed Grandpa?”
“I didn’t want my success to be at the price of your peace of mind.”
She’d needed him, whether she’d known it or not.
“You owed Grandpa, and you pitied me. That’s insulting.” She was visibly donning body armour, her shoulders straightening, her spine stiffening, because without meaning to, he’d painted her as a victim.
“I’ve just spent a year making bloody frames to pay my brother back. I didn’t want another debt I’d spend years regretting.” His justifications sounded pathetic spoken aloud. “But my feelings for you were—are—complicated.”
“You’re not making me feel any better.”
“Your dream is to keep McTavish’s running, and you worked out the best way to do that. My dream was my business. What right did I have to insist my dream was more important than yours? You needed some financial breathing space. I thought I could juggle all the balls at once. If I’d told you about the exhibition, you’d have felt guilty for asking me to work.”
“Or I might have seen the importance of the exhibition to Grandpa’s foundation,” she said solemnly. “You didn’t give me a chance.”
“What do you mean?” He was weary of fighting his critics, himself and now her.
“The chance to decide if my dream was more important than yours. If I could achieve mine differently. If your dream was a better way of honouring my grandparents.”
She’d been consumed by despair when she’d met him. Not the most rational starting point to make clear decisions. Niall knew because he’d been there.
“My brother put his dream on hold to pay back my father’s debts. I never knew the truth, until we talked last year.”
“And not talking to your brother gives you the right to make all the decisions in our relationship?” She shook her head at his highhandedness.
“I told you my da died suddenly. Shortly before he died, Da was swindled by an Irish woman. Da asked me to check out someone when I got to Ireland. I made a few calls, got a few ‘not available at the moment’ brush-offs, and didn’t push hard enough. After all, I was doing something important. I was a big man. I’d won a prized mentorship. People were keen to meet and be with me.” He’d swaggered all over the place, keen to buy strangers a beer, stuffed to the gills with ill-fitting pride.
“If I’d pushed harder, sooner, I might have found out she was a swindler.” He stared at Lucy, breathing hard, his heart and mind still ruptured. “My da might have kept his money and his life.”
“Does Liam know you blame yourself for your father’s death?” Her face had softened, and her pity was as unwelcome to him as his was to her.
“I’ve told him about what Da wanted me to do.”
“What did he say?”
“That he and a private detective spent months trying to track the woman and the funds down. They drew blanks again and again when they thought they had a lead.” Niall had interviewed the private detective and found no gaps in their research.
“But if you’d persisted in those few days you had before his death, you’d have solved everything. That’s remarkably arrogant. It’s worse than arrogant not to tell me about the exhibition when it has material bearing on the success of the foundation. And it’s monumentally stupid to think Grandpa would class me as disposable property in his will.”
“You think I’m a patronising idiot. Face facts. You can rent or sell this property as you originally planned. You’ll have the funds to establish Cam’s foundation, and I can stop second-guessing myself about what the hell crazy plan he had in his head.” Niall cursed himself for his incoherence.
“You’ve got no idea what you’ve done,” she accused. “Whereas I have to live with the knowledge that every decision I’ve made from the day I met you has led to you having no workshop, no home, and no exhibition.” Each criticism landed like a whip tip on the tenderest of his extremities.
“I didn’t expect to fall for you.” Not the time for this confession, Quinn.
“You’re claiming you’ve fallen for me?” She scoffed, and he deserved her disbelief.
“Restoring furniture took time out of my schedule.” Niall took a half-step toward her, and she stepped back. “Wanting to be with you was the bigger issue. I didn’t want you to feel responsible for me not doing my own work.”
“Arrogant and blind. Not a pretty combination from where I’m standing.”
“Maybe not.” He’d spent hours trying to balance all the equations and failed. “But my self-respect is important to me. I’m not a good provider.” In defence, he voiced the bitterness building since he’d added up all the contributions she, not Cam, made to his budget. Poison she didn’t deserve spilled out of his mouth, because self-respect had to count for something. “Not the right kind of man for the heir to the McTavish estate, who, when the dust settles, is stupidly rich. I can’t be a pet poodle, bankrolled by your money.”
“Screw you, Niall.” She threw a hand in the air, like a toreador signalling the coup-de-grace was imminent. “Now you’re being offensive. You object to me cooking you a few meals, paying for a few groceries. Your family has shown me hospitality.
“You keep adding to my debts.” Like a punch-drunk fighter, he listened to himself blame her.
Her head jerked back, as if hit by an uppercut to the jaw. “You don’t owe me anything.” Her voice cracked. “If anything, I owe you. That’s what I wanted to tell you last night. I finally figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“My demand for you to restore furniture was miserable, bloody, unreasonable, and unfair. You should have called me on it.” She whirled in a circle, her distress like a whirling dervish’s skirt, keeping him at a distance. “I was incapable of seeing the bigger picture—the connection between your work and the mentorship. You should have told me. Instead, you’ve rejected Grandpa’s bequest.”
“I don’t need charity.” His hands formed fists.
“Grandpa wasn’t offering charity—”
“I’d be taking money under false pretences. I’m not a suitable mentor.”
“The exhibition would have given you publicity and showcased your work. Grandpa knew that. I bet he also knew how stiff-necked you are and how you dread being beholden to anyone. He was offering you a chance to repay a debt that’s largely in your head by mentoring people in his foundation.
“I haven’t offered charity either. Friends help each other. But you won’t accept help from me. You throw it back in my face, with the most obscene insult you can think of—charity! I haven’t shown you an inch of charity.” She turned on her heel and paced across the floor. “I demanded you restore furniture when you’d already squared your account with Grandpa. I offered your skills to rich collectors who could wait for their restoration. You turned me into a thief. A thief.” She stopped, her gaze stricken. “I didn’t focus on the right things,” she groaned.
“What things?” he asked, afraid of the defeat dragging at her body and echoing in her voice. She was revealing something important, and he couldn’t read the cues.
“It doesn’t matter.” She waved him away.
“What things?” he almost shouted.
“You’re a brilliant craftsman. I kept wondering why you didn’t do more with it. Why you’d settle for restoring furniture, even though it’s a desperately hard time to crack the market. I accepted your excuses despite them being inconsistent with the man I was getting to know.” She shivered, tears filling her eyes. “Because I didn’t push, didn’t ask the right questions, didn’t open the right door, I’ve left you to die.”
“That’s melodramatic crap,” he protested, although her insight, that cancelling the exhibition was a kind of death felled him. Watching tears he’d caused spill down her cheeks, he took a step forward, but she held up a hand to stop him.
“It’s not melodrama.” She scrubbed the tears from her cheeks. “It’s a tragedy.”
“I care about you, Lucy.”
“Not enough to tell me what’s important to you. Not enough to trust me with your dreams. Not enough to tell me you’re dying inside, because that’s what the last few weeks have been about. You’ve been locking me out bit by bit.” She lashed him with the truth.
“I’m thirty-four and can’t make enough money to support myself much less anyone else.”
“You need to take a hard look at yourself. You’ve been making a living for yourself and profit to share with your brother. You have numerous options to make a living for yourself, but you claim the only real one is Furniture by Quinn. Maybe you’re just afraid, Niall. That you haven’t got what it takes to be a master craftsman.” She cut through to the underbelly of his insecurity. “That if you come out into the harsh light of day, you’ll be shown to be wanting.”
“Without Cam’s advice and money, I wouldn’t have considered an exhibition.” Creatives breathed doubt every minute of every day, although he’d started stockpiling pieces before he met Cam.
“Keep telling yourself that bullshit. At the risk of repeating myself”—she sounded annihilated—“you’ve cancelled the exhibition. You’ve refused the chance to do your own work and mentor others. You’re moving out.”
He nodded. “I’ll leave at the end of the initial agreement period.”
“So, you’ve decided that in a few weeks you’ll give up your home and your workshop.” She skewered him with her contempt. “Worst of all, you’ve shown disrespect to my grandpa.”
“You’re wrong. I respect him. More than I can say.”
“Look around you.” Her gaze travelled around the room. “You’re squandering his belief in you. Why? Sainthood or martyrdom?”
“I don’t have the pieces for an exhibition,” he roared, his hands forming fists.
“Your brother and his wife have a cradle and a table, maybe more ...” She stopped with her back to him, her spine rigid, and her courage highlighted his cowardice. “You’ve made other sales. You could assemble an exhibition by borrowing back some of your best pieces instead of wallowing in manufactured guilt about Cam and me.” She grabbed her bag and headed for the door.
“Don’t leave,” Niall called, searching for a better way to explain himself. He’d made the wrong choices, not her.
“You’re the one who’s leaving,” she said.
The door banged shut.
* * *
Lucy clung to her righteousrage for three blocks because he had left her. He’d bolted from her bed and torpedoed their business and personal relationship. Her hands gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles bled white. Damn the setting sun. Bouncing off her rear mirror, it was an obscene reminder the planet continued to turn on its axis, when her world had come to a stumbling halt. She tried to swallow the sobs building in her body. Chest heaving, she pulled into the side of the road, her blurred vision making it impossible to identify hazards.
“Don’t leave.”
Meaningless words when his actions and the dramatic changes in his workspace screamed “I’m moving on.”
No new frames only told half the tale. Niall was working on Peter’s half-finished piece on a Saturday, not using the Mondays she’d handed back to him. The other half of the story leaked through his small resentments. He objected to her filling his fruit bowl, cooking him the occasional meal, whereas he’d offered her cake and conversation and a space to grieve too many times to number. He’d locked her out, even if he hadn’t admitted it to himself.
“You lied by omission,” she whispered to the shadows sharing her car. “You didn’t tell me about the exhibition.”
Fear beat a relentless tattoo in her blood because she’d hurt him. She loved him, and if the major gallery he’d been booked with spread the word he was unreliable, no other major gallery would take a chance on him for years. Realising the harm she’d caused, she screamed every cuss she’d learnt as a child, filling the car with curses.
Damn me to hell because I lied too.
Lucy hadn’t told him about her demons; she was irrationally terrified of having no money, she still blamed herself for not being able to save her mother and gran. Even when she’d had the chance to tell him this morning, she’d frozen. Last night, her girlfriends had issued a new challenge—a week to exorcise her childhood devils. But Clementine and Kelly didn’t know all Lucy’s secrets.
And Niall’s unhappiness had bubbled too near the surface for Lucy to take the risk, especially when she couldn’t put her finger on the cause of his discontent. This morning, she’d promised herself there was time, without realising time had been up days, if not weeks, ago. She dashed a hand across her cheek to swipe away fresh tears. The McTavish wealth repelled him as well.
Automatic doors and sensor lighting guided her safely into her garage. The bright lights stung her eyes, hurrying her from the car and into the quietness of the garden, where the scent of Gran’s beloved gardenias hung in the air. Lucy sank onto the stone bench set amongst them, letting their soft perfume comfort her as it had when she’d first arrived here.
She’d sabotaged whatever she and Niall might have had. At their first meeting, she’d accused him of theft and fraud as a distraction from missing Grandpa. He’d served her sandwiches and tea in mismatched crockery and absorbed every blow she’d delivered. Her grief-charged rage had set the tone for their relationship. Niall had been a stranger, yet he’d provided a bulwark at her back when she’d worried about money, and when they’d met the over-perfumed Tomas Bechet.
He”d allowed her to hide in his workshop Monday after Monday and pretend she was helping.
An honourable man, who saw her as an obligation, while she’d been falling in love for the first time in her life.
He’d pitied the grieving granddaughter and resented the antiques heiress.
“I don’t want to be seen as less or more but equal.” She sighed to the night breeze. Lifetimes together aren’t built on power games or secrets.
She pushed herself to her feet, her limbs dragging on the walk to the door. Her house smelled of Niall, and that was pure imagination. His woody fragrance might linger in her room because he’d left a few of his clothes and toiletries there, but nowhere else. She baulked at her bedroom door, unwilling to sleep alone in the bed they’d shared. Arriving in this house as a world-weary ten-year-old, she’d claimed she was too old to climb into Gran and Grandpa’s bed. Gran had poohpoohed her objections after Lucy’s first nightmare. Night after night, Gran had spooned against Lucy’s back when she couldn’t sleep, ready with a made-up story about one of the shop’s treasures. Her soft-voiced stories were part history lesson, part travelogue and pure comfort.
“I miss you, Gran.” And the safety of discovering I was still lovable.
Why did Niall’s desertion have to be darker and heavier than other losses?
Aching in every cell of her body, she crawled between the sheets of Grandpa and Gran’s bed. Her grandparents had owned the big four-poster all their married life and by example had shown her the best of love. She curled into a tight ball.
When she woke, her body was stiff. Glancing around the room, she was momentarily disoriented, before the memory of her conversation with Niall tumbled back.
“You’ve shown disrespect to my grandpa,” she should have added, “And me. You’ve disrespected me.”
Anger had always worked for her, a crutch to propel her through the worst moments of her life. In the past, a lot of her anger had been self-directed. When her mum had died, she was child enough to accept the blame. Anger deserted her now. Black misery was her new companion, and it made her clear-sighted.
“I wasn’t to blame for Mum’s death.” She rolled her shoulders, shedding doubts that had dogged most of her life. “I made mistakes with Niall, but I won’t take all the blame for his unhappiness. I deserve to be trusted.
“I deserve the right to help.
“I deserve to be loved.”
Lifting her head in the shower, she let warm water cascade over her hair, her face and down her body. She turned around, nudging the temperature up a notch. Hot needles of spray massaged her back, and a plan plopped fully formed into her mind.
A black suit, a white shirt and the reflection in her mirror showed a pale-faced businesswoman, who’d probably spend her life alone. Adding Niall’s green scarf was an act of defiance. In the kitchen, she made tea and started making calls.
“I’ll be late at McTavish’s. If you need me urgently, I can be reached through Henry Dawson’s office.”
I have options, if I choose to use them.
I can change my mind.
I can—I do—refuse to be powerless.
Lucy loved Niall, but love didn’t mean a damn thing without mutual trust. She’d dared to dream Niall was beginning to love her. She’d been wrong. “I’m sorry for your loss” had metastasized to an obligation, which for him had drifted from the friendly to the lustful to the how-the-hell-did-I get-myself-into-this-mess?
She’d probably never get another chance to tell Niall her secret. That she was terrified of making mistakes that led to physical harm for the people she loved. She’d been so busy guarding against one kind of mistake, she’d tumbled over a different precipice. She’d worried about his physical well-being, even his financial well-being, whereas self-confidence was his soft underbelly.
Pity it took you so long to work that out.
“Stop your dreamin’.” She shivered as the loneliness of the empty house pressed against her. Her new plan might not work, but fair play demanded she try. Grandpa had written a story about his wishes and Niall’s future. She needed to finish that story.
An hour later, Lucy sat in her lawyer’s office.
“What you’re proposing isn’t legal.” Henry was probably regretting giving up his weekend for her.
“It’s ethical”—she’d driven her staid, pillar-of-the-community lawyer to uncharacteristic snappiness—“and the only way I can think of to ensure Niall benefits from Grandpa’s bequest.”
“It’s his right to refuse.” He lifted a hand, and she waited for him to snatch at his hair in frustration, but he lowered his beautifully manicured paw and pressed his palm flat on his desk.
“Whisht! He’s only refusing because I messed it up.” Lucy’s heart sank. She couldn’t fail at the first hurdle. “Tell me honestly. If you’d notified him, and I’d stayed out of it and away from him, do you think he’d be refusing the bequest now?”
“Maybe. He’s a proud man.”
“Pride and stubbornness are second cousins.” She huffed out a breath.
“What’s going on, Lucy?” Henry was back to being calm and calculating, having dissected her outlandish request into its various parts.
“He’d scheduled an exhibition. Given his skill, it’s likely it would have cemented his name and reputation and been a launchpad for his mentoring role in the foundation.”
She’d stolen every moment of time she could get with Niall, stolen time from his work.
“I was floundering, missing Grandpa so much I wasn’t seeing straight. We both know I didn’t really need money from Niall. Imagining debt everywhere I looked was sheer panic on my part. But he gave up days to my restoration projects, and minutes and hours and half days when I dropped in unannounced to talk about Grandpa. He cancelled his exhibition.”
“You blame yourself?” He steepled his hands on his desk.
“The bulk of the evidence points that way.” Although I’ve decided to apportion blame equally. “He’s convinced he’s not a suitable mentor.”
“You do know anyone in Australia can ask to see a copy of a deceased’s will?”
“Isn’t there some other kind of legal agreement that might work? A codicil?” She sighed. “I’m trying to buy some time here, make him rethink his decision.”
“A cooling-off period?” Henry’s eyes twinkled. “What are you planning to do in the meantime?”
“I’m still working on it.” Niall had said “don’t leave.” He’d left a door slightly ajar. She’d be a fool not to look inside.