Page 18 of Irish Legacy

“Sure.” Quinn shrugged out of her coat and draped it over the back of a chair. “The only plans I have for today are to meet Margaret Donovan at six.”

Emma settled at the table with her mug. “No better woman to be in charge of that statue. She was my English teacher. Retired a good while now, though. But she’s so organized and really cares about anything she gets herself involved in.”

Quinn took the seat across from her. The wood was worn smooth from decades of use. “I think she just wants to meet before the unveiling. So we’re just going to have dinner and get to know one another.”

“She’s lovely.” Natalie whisked the eggs with a fork. The metal scraped against the ceramic bowl. The domesticity of it snagged Quinn’s attention. Natalie Clarke, with her acting awards and her name on movie posters, stood in her grandmother’s kitchen scrambling eggs in an oversized sweater and faded leggings.

She appeared entirely settled. Natalie had chosen this stone farmhouse and its creaky floors over the endless churn of Los Angeles. Quinn tried to picture a morning without an alert from her manager or a scheduled appearance. Just a quiet kitchen, a pot of tea, and someone who didn’t care about the cameras. A heavy, hollow sensation expanded in Quinn’s chest.

The smell of melting butter and onions filled the space. Her body carried the ache of the long walk with Natalie, a physical fatigue from the damp air instead of a twelve-hour shoot. Jet lag had finally loosened its grip. The lingering clarity only left more room to focus on Trish.

Trish’s hands had been so sure last night, pulling Quinn in, her mouth opening with a soft, helpless sound. And then this morning’s polite retreat. A woman who wouldn’t risk a single night because she refused to be anyone’s souvenir.

Quinn shifted in her chair. Most women in her circles would have taken the flirtation without a second thought. It sounded arrogant, but it was just the reality of her life in LA. Trish had met her gaze and chosen self-preservation instead.

It made Quinn want to push back. To show up day after day until Trish admitted that what happened between them hadn’t just been an impulse. But that was dangerous thinking. Quinn was leaving, and she had a career that demanded her presence. Burnout or not, the machine kept turning.

She pushed those thoughts aside.

Trish had made her choice. Quinn needed to respect it, even if her body still remembered the heat of that kiss.

11

Four o’clock on a Sunday and the usual locals had settled into their corners with their pints. No rush. No demands. Just the low murmur of conversation and the occasional clink of glass. Trish liked these afternoons. They gave her room to breathe between the weekend chaos and the week ahead.

The door opened, pulling a slip of cold air and the October damp inside, and Trish looked up out of habit as Quinn stepped in. She had changed since the kitchen that morning. The jeans sat close to her hips, and the neat cream blouse and black blazer carried the kind of expensive taste. Sunglasses were pushed back into blond hair.

Quinn’s eyes found hers straight away. That easy smile curved her mouth, the one that probably worked on half of Los Angeles. The weight of it landed low in Trish’s stomach anyway. She kept her face still. No point letting on.

“Hey,” Quinn said.

Trish set the cloth aside. “What can I get you?”

“A favor, actually.” Quinn rested one hand on the bar. Her nails were short and clean. “Margaret Donovan sent me here in search of some photos of my grandfather. We’re meeting for dinner later. I’d asked her if she had any photos, if she could bring them. The only ones I have of him are from his time in California. But she said your father knew him and that if there were photos, they’d be here.”

Trish considered that. Her father had kept everything. Boxes and tins and old envelopes stuffed with pictures from every decade. She had never sorted them. There was no point when the past stayed upstairs where it belonged. “Yeah, my father was great for keeping photos, but I don’t know for sure that your grandfather’s in any of them.”

She turned toward Jack. He had just come back from his break, shrugging off his coat and stepping behind the bar like he had done since he was tall enough to reach the taps. “Can you take over for a few minutes?”

“Sure thing,” Jack said. He gave Quinn a polite nod, nothing more.

Trish lifted the hinged section of the counter and stepped out. The wood was familiar under her palm, a solid boundary. “Come upstairs. I have a few boxes of photos. They’re not in any way ordered, though.”

“That’s fine,” Quinn said. She followed close enough that Trish caught the faint trace of her perfume, something clean and subtle that didn’t belong in a village pub.

Trish led the way through the side door and up the narrow stairs. The carpet on the steps had worn thin in the middle from decades of feet going up and down. She had meant to replace it. Never did. The flat waited at the top, quiet the way it always was when the bar hummed below.

She pushed open her bedroom door before she could think better of it. The room shrank the second Quinn stepped across the threshold.

Trish crossed to the wardrobe and pulled the doors wide, dragging the ancient biscuit tin from the bottom and dropping it onto her bed. She reached blind along the top shelf for the shoebox, bringing that down too.

“There should be one more,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

She bent again, knees protesting, and dragged the cardboard box from the very back, setting it beside the others.

“You’re going to have to dig through forty years of my family to find anything of Anthony.”

The words came out flatter than she meant. Her father’s handwriting marked the lids in faded marker with dates and names, but there was no real system to it. Just years of village life stacked together, a blur of weddings, funerals, and endless Sundays after mass. Quinn would see all of it if she looked long enough—an accidental, unwanted intimacy that made Trish’s collarbones prickle with heat. She should carry the boxes down to the kitchen table, but standing this close to Quinn beside an unmade mattress was already doing things to her head.