Page 49 of Quinn, By Design

He gave himself a few hours on the sideboard he’d started for the exhibition. Hoped to get a few more in this evening. Hoped even more he’d get another invitation from Lucy. She’d found her feet as Cam had prophesied and was as lovely and loving as her granda had declared.

“You can do this, Quinn.” Falling for Lucy convinced him he could move mountains. Scaling back his designs for the exhibition to smaller pieces was a workable compromise. He’d tell her when he put the exhibition catalogue in her hands.

* * *

Lucy was smiling whenshe finally woke. Niall had cast a spell over her body, so she responded to his slightest touch—the glide of his palm on her flank, a nudge from his nose under her breast and the slide of his ankle up her calf. Snuggling back under the blankets, she inhaled sandalwood, a hint of her own rose perfume and the musky fragrance of splendid and repeated sex. She’d expected pleasure and discovered the serious carpenter was a virtuoso at lovemaking.

With a single finger trailing a path from her breastbone to her navel, he’d fashioned desire. She should have guessed from all the times she’d seen his work-roughened hands handle a table, a Blue Italian Spode cup, a frame, her pearls, even a Vegemite jar as if they were precious. Seeing the elegant turn of his wrist and the spread of his fingers tracing patterns in rare, recovered timbers, she hadn’t fathomed the turmoil of having his hands on her. Her world had shifted on its axis. Her glance strayed to the open bedside table drawer, and a gurgle of smug satisfaction bubbled up from deep within her. They’d made good use of the condoms she stored there, after Niall rescued the two in his wallet.

Light sneaked under the Holland blind at her window, when she pushed herself into a sitting position, pillows propped at her back. The sky had been a dark inky blue the last time Niall had loved her, the street light casting shadows on her blind. He’d pressed his goodbye kiss to her inner thigh. She touched the spot.

He hadn’t just turned her understanding of sex on its head, he’d pulled her clear of the fog dulling her judgment for weeks. Her search of his website after their first meeting had been a trawl for clues to his sneakiness. She’d missed a key detail. None of the pieces she’d glimpsed in his storeroom during Kate’s visit were on the website.

Why wasn’t he advertising his work?

Lots of people didn’t have spare cash, because of the recession, but her grandpa had taught her there was always a market for quality. With the right promotion, Niall’s work would sell faster than he could produce it.

“Quinns pay their way.” The puzzle and solution to Niall Quinn.

“Whisht, Lucy. You’ve been wilfully blind.”

Rolling out of bed, she headed for the shower. With shampoo dripping into her eyes, the gears of her mind clicked into place.

He’s waiting until his debts to his brother are paid before focusing on his work.

Waiting until he could devote himself full time to his craft. And she and Grandpa had casually thrown more hurdles into his path. The foundation spelt more unpaid work.

And I arrogantly demanded he restore furniture for me.

A cash flow problem for an estate worth millions and she’d thrown a tantrum worthy of a two-year-old. Shutting off the water, she rested her forehead against the cream porcelain wall tiles. Dozens of expletives sprang to her tongue, and only her long-ago vow to her gran kept her from uttering them. But they bounced around inside her skull, forcing her to clearly see what she’d done.

She could fix this. Briskly, Lucy rubbed herself dry. A two-pronged attack—prove to him she wasn’t facing financial ruin and pay Niall for all his work.

“Child’s play,” she muttered to the ceiling. And then the barest inkling of a possible idea started to take shape. “Yes.” Maybe Sleeping Beauty had felt this optimistic, kissed awake by her prince?

Having spent weeks of Mondays there, Lucy could picture Niall in his workshop. A pot of tea finished, crumbs from hastily consumed raisin toast clinging to his discarded plate. Leopold’s driver would be around sometime to collect the latest batch of frames. Niall might well be poring over the new set of artworks, and the urge to share his morning had her hurrying out the door.

Leopold’s team was unloading the new set of paintings when she arrived. She parked off to one side and followed them through the warehouse.

“You came.” Niall’s smile banished her tiny doubt she was the only one changed by last night’s lovemaking.

“Hi.” She planted a chaste kiss on his cheek while her body and mind rioted.

Whisht! It isn’t the fabulous sex confusing me. I’m really falling in love with him.

Since Doug, she hadn’t let herself believe in love. Niall made her feel lovable, that lovemaking wasn’t the same as sex. Being his lover made her smile at the oddest times, and made her want to tend and nurture in return.

“One more load,” the delivery man said.

She inspected the fifteen paintings lining the wall while Niall followed the delivery man to the back of the warehouse. The roller door hit the concrete. Niall’s steps drew closer to the accompaniment of the jazz riffs on Katie Noonan’s albumThe Sweetest Taboo. It wasn’t the first time she’d arrived to Niall playing remixed songs from the seventies. Noonan was currently crooning “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” as a piano ballad, while Lucy itched to jitterbug.

“They’re richer in the flesh,” Lucy commented when he stopped beside her. He’d shown her the images weeks earlier.

“Yeah.” His approach, she’d worked out, was to look at the paintings and let their shapes and colours and features roll around in his mind before he started on the designs—designs he’d bring to life now the paintings had arrived.

Surreptitiously, she glanced around the workshop. No piece in a corner shrouded with a cloth. She knew now the cradle had been under one of those drop sheets. Her first sighting of the cradle was at Kate and Liam’s home, yet his habit was to live with his designs. Like he’d lived with his Huon Pine table or the cherry wood fruit bowl. He’d stopped his own work except for incidental pieces.

Had he also stopped advertising it because he only had the pieces in the storeroom—not enough to build a business?

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