Page 42 of What Love Can Do
Suddenly, the older woman stood and walked over to a small cellar she kept in her office. It was like a closet with a few steps leading down. She paused at a dark cabinet and removed a set of keys from her pocket, thumbing through them until she found a small, gold one. Pressing it into the keyhole and turning, she reached into the back of the cabinet and wrapped her hand around a golden bottle of what Lilly guessed was chardonnay. “Here, take this please. I would invite you to stay a while longer, but everyone is arriving, and my attention is needed outside.”
“Sure, no problem,” Quinn mumbled, still stunned, reaching out for the bottle of wine. Lilly leaned over to get a look and saw a gold family label with the name Maggie’s Valley right on the front. “What’s this?”
Suzanne locked up the cabinet, closed the cellar door, then shuffled over and placed a red, manicured fingernail on the label. “A long time ago, my father named some of his wines after my mother and sisters. This was Maggie’s. After she moved to Ireland, he pulled them off the shelves—every last one. I found them one day, while looking for some old menus I wanted to revise, in a big box in the trash. Took them home. Still have them all, but I keep one here with all my special labels.” She smiled and gestured to it. “You can have it.”
Lilly watched Quinn shake his head and break down right there in the middle of Suzanne’s office. “Why didn’t you talk to your father, convince him to let her talk to you all or visit?” Quinn demanded to know. “You were on my mam’s side the whole time, but…”
“But I didn’t do enough, I know,” Suzanne interrupted. “You’ve never met your grandfather, Quinn. It’s his way or the highway. I’m sure you’ve heard,” she said to Lilly.
Lilly widened her eyes and nodded. She didn’t feel this was the time nor place to talk about it, but she’d heard of Richard Phillips’ hard ways her whole life, seen him at church and town meetings, but she’d always been intimidated by him. “Thank you for your time, Suzanne. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it,” she said, handing Quinn a tissue.
He pressed it to his eyes then quickly tossed the tissue into a trash can by the desk. “Yes, thank you for this. I’ll take it home to show my brothers. You have four more nephews, you know.”
“Goodness!” Suzanne said, standing and showing them to the door. There, she paused and reached up to caress Quinn’s face. “Yes, but I bet none of them have Maggie’s smile like you do. Thank you for coming by, Quinn. I’ll try talking some sense into my father. It’s the least that I owe you.”
They thanked her once again and headed out. Lilly wasn’t sure if she’d done the right thing by stopping by the winery last night and talking to the first family member she could about Maggie O’Neill, but she was glad it’d been Suzanne and not Beatriz or Old Man Phillips himself walking through the foyer. When they reached the cool outdoor air, and Quinn took a long, cleansing breath again, pulling her in tight and muttering a “thank you” into her hair, she knew it’d been the right choice.
As soon as they returned from Phillips Winery, Quinn told her he’d be calling his brothers about extending his and Con’s stay in America and mobilizing the others to join them to spread their mam’s ashes. Later, he told her Brady and the “wee ones” were making plans to arrive in America in just over a week.
Lilly laughed. “How wee are we talking?” she asked.
“Twenty-three, both of em—twins.” She smiled, imagining two younger versions of Quinn. She couldn’t wait to meet the rest of the O’Neill men.
For the next week, Lilly worked and met with Quinn, worked and showed Quinn around, worked and snuck Quinn into her room every chance she got. When she was working, Quinn and Con took their time exploring Green Valley and the surrounding areas.
On Thursday morning, when her mother announced she and Mellie and Cook would be leaving for the day, attending a bridal show in San Francisco in the evening, Lilly checked the register. The only guests who’d stayed on from the day before were Quinn and Con, and the next wave of guests wouldn’t be arriving until the afternoon. She still had baking to do, but for the first time, it looked like she might actually be able to work and play at the same time. Thrilled at the prospect, she knocked on Quinn’s door, greeted Conor with a handful of two chocolate chip muffins, and asked for Quinn.
He emerged freshly-showered in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt like he was going somewhere special. Although she had seen his eyes every day for almost two weeks now, she still got giddy upon seeing him. And by the huge grin on his face, it seemed he was equally glad to see her. “Are you doing anything right now?”
He cocked a brow. “I can think of one thing I’d like to be doing.”
She laughed. Little did he know how similar their thoughts were. “Well, I’ve been meaning to try a few new recipes before heading out to Miami. Want to keep talking in the kitchen, or were you going somewhere? By the way, you look nice,” she said, kissing him again. “Really hot, actually.”
He chuckled. “Nah, not going anywhere. This was just my last clean shirt.”
“Well, it’s fine by me. Come on.” She clasped her hand into his and guided him down the hallway. When they reached the kitchen, she pointed to a stool and said, “Sit.”
Quinn barked deeply like a Rottweiler, which made her laugh, as well. “Yes, madam.”
“It’s ma’am. Say it like this, like a cowboy—ma’am. You’re in the good ol’ U.S. of A. now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, drawling like a proper Southern gentleman wearing spurs and a cowboy hat.
“There you go! That was awesome!” She giggled, pulling out a bevy of assorted ingredients and laying them all over the counter. All of a sudden, a vision of her and Quinn cooking side-by-side in their own kitchen formed in her mind. Staring at the sugar canister, she lightly traced her finger across the lid. “Quinn? You mentioned you’d considered buying Mulligan’s Pub, but you haven’t mentioned it since. Was that just a whim, here then gone?”
He’d been playing with a frozen pack of mango pulp, but when she asked the question, he froze and looked up at her. “It wasn’t a whim, and the idea’s not exactly gone but…”
Upon hearing the qualification, she held her breath, wondering if he was about to tell her he’d decided to move back to Dublin. Wondering what that would mean for them.
“But when I think too long about it, the idea of actually buying the pub makes me nervous. I have lots of ideas, ideas I told my dad about, only he didn’t believe in them, and I can’t help wondering if he was right not to. Plus, while I really enjoyed the work I did managing the family restaurant in Dublin, what if it was because I didn’t feel I had any other choice? What if I invest all the money I have in my own place and a few months later, I realize it wasn’t what I wanted after all? And what about my brothers? I’m close to them, Lil. One or two might decide to stay in America with me, but what about the others? To live that far away…”
His voice trailed off when he realized she was smiling, not because his fears were silly, but because they mirrored all the ‘what ifs’ she’d run through her own mind over the years.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just…you sound just like me. That day on the beach in Jenner. Second guessing yourself. Cataloging the ‘what if’s’. Do you remember what you said to me then?”
“I said a lot of things that day,” he admitted.