Page 27 of Quinn, By Design

“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.

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