Title: Quinn, by design
Author: Jennifer Raines
Genre: Contemporary romance
Publisher Inkspell Publishing
Book Blurb:
She’s antiques royalty, he’s relentlessly modern
Master carpenter NIALL QUINN’s passion is creating bespoke furniture. Everything else comes second until his ex-fiancé ditches him when he gifts another creation to a friend, and he discovers his brother has been carrying his dead father’s debts. Niall’s self-respect demands he pay his share. He’s landed a prestigious exhibition of his work with a top gallery, possible in part because of the support of an antiques dealer who’s been mentor, patron, and generous landlord. Niall’s hoping the exhibition will establish his reputation and boost his bank balance.
LUCY McTAVISH’s grandfather, antiques supremo Cameron (Cam) McTavish raised her. His death leaves her totally alone. Lucy drained their personal accounts to provide twenty-four-seven in-home palliative care for Cam. The thought of poverty paralyses her, a crippling reminder of life before Cam found her. Laden with debt, she plans to sell Cam’s workshop to ensure his antiques emporium survives.
When the will is read, Niall Quinn holds the keys to Cam’s workshop. Lucy’s convinced he conned her grandpa in his last days and demands he restore antiques for her. Niall is blindsided by the bequest, but worries about yet another debt and agrees to the work.
Lucy and Niall circle each other. In sharing stories and drawing closer, Lucy figures out debt is her childhood bogeyman resurrected by Cam’s death. Niall has real debts and, unaware of his exhibition, she looks for clients who’ll pay him for the work she’d been demanding for free.
With the exhibition drawing closer, it’s crunch time. Will Niall choose his exhibition or Lucy? Does Lucy want a man who won’t share his dreams with her?
Excerpt:
Chapter One
A visitor was rare enough to summon Niall Quinn to his front porch. “Don’t worry about the squeak,” he called to the huddled figure inspecting the hinge on his lop-sided gate. He was close enough to recognise his landlady’s elegant calves and ankles. “It lets me know I’ve got a visitor.” Noticing she had shapely legs might be excused as artistic interest, but it was a distraction he wasn’t ready for.
She spun toward his voice, her coat floating on the breeze, before settling around her too-thin figure. Niall stepped out of the shadows.
“I’m Lucy McTavish.” She crossed the yard and stretched out her hand.
“I know.” Instead of the formal handshake she offered, Niall gripped her hand to draw her up the two wide wooden steps to his porch. Without makeup, Lucy’s pallor was hauntingly evident and matched the sadness in her almond-shaped hazel eyes. She smelled of roses, with a hint of vanilla, transporting him back to carefree afternoons in his mother’s cottage garden at lilac time.
“How do you know?” She withdrew her hand, pointedly reclaiming her own space.
“I saw you at your granda’s funeral.”
Niall had stood at the back of the church. Not a close friend, his time with Cam had been too short to claim that honour, but he’d miss the old man’s advice and encouragement. Mutual respect and a passion for fine craftsmanship had forged a special bond.
Lucy’s courage at the funeral had earned his respect, while her vulnerability roused protective instincts he’d tucked away for the sake of his sanity after his bust-up with his ex-fiancée, Sinead.
“I’m glad you’ve dropped by.” Niall gentled her as he would a lost child. “Please. Come in.” He gestured for her to precede him through the front door.
He’d been considering how to introduce himself since the funeral. Texting was out because he didn’t have her number. Using social media seemed wrong for the words he had to say. Her arrival on a Sunday, in unrelieved black, less than ten days after the funeral, gave the encounter an ominous urgency.
“I didn’t see you.”
“You were too caught in your grief to see me.”
She’d been too caught in her grief to see anyone. Her eyes had shimmered with tears, her fragility brittle enough to shatter with a blow. She’d held herself ramrod straight. Her self-discipline awed him, and her anguish had compounded his own, re-opening the hole left by his da’s death.
Already partway down the hall, she pivoted, met his gaze, then focused on a spot over his shoulder. “I’m sorry for my rudeness.”
“Whisht, lassie. There’s no need for an apology. I lost my da a few years ago, didn’t care who saw me cry like a baby.”
The colour drained from her cheeks, leaving them chalk-white, and drawing Niall’s attention to her dark auburn hair. The tight bundle at her nape punished, rather than tamed her thick tresses.
“I learned ‘whisht’ from Grandpa.” She sounded bereft, and he’d been raised to tend any animal in pain.
“I picked it up working in Ireland. Cam used it when he was about to impart some piece of wisdom to my eejit self.” Niall smiled encouragement and waved toward the doorway at the end of the short hall. “I was in the kitchen.
“The loss is a constant, learning to live with it is the challenge,” he murmured before cursing his cack-handedness.
For feck’s sake. Cam had said he was Lucy’s only immediate family. She probably knew more about loss than Niall hoped he ever would. He couldn’t recall who’d used the expression, but the words fitted her—“She knew her way around in the dark.” Grief could be endlessly dark.
Neat, black, serviceable pumps continued up the narrow hall and into his neat, serviceable kitchen, their rat-tat-tat shutting a door on his words of condolence. She pressed a—praise the saints—dark-charcoal bag to her side. The woman should wear green, any shade, not this unrelenting black that made her look forbidding, when in truth she was stripped naked by mourning.
“You call him Cam.” She stood stiffly beside the three-by-two-metre, bark-to-bark Huon pine table he’d finished in the early hours this morning, then muscled into the kitchen so he could live with it a few days.
“He asked me to. Said Cameron McTavish made him feel ancient.” Niall stepped around her, his arm brushing against hers in the space made smaller by his table. She shivered. Not fear. Maybe cold? Grief could also make you cold from the inside out.
“I have some questions for you, Mr. Quinn.” She straightened her shoulders, tilting her chin to signal her return to business.
“Please sit down, Ms. McTavish,” he replied with equal formality. Then, without waiting to see what she did, he continued to the kitchen bench. “I was making tea. Share a cup?” He spoke over his shoulder. Tea was his mother’s cure for every ill.
“I won’t be here long.” Politeness jostled with annoyance in her answer.
“Tea doesn’t take long.” Niall kept his back turned.
“Thank you,” she said. He heard a chair being placed on the floor and learned Lucy McTavish didn’t pull chairs across stone tiles. Instead, she lifted them before setting them in the correct position.
After filling the kettle, Niall opened the fridge and eyed ingredients before making his choice. A seeded sourdough loaf, a mature cheddar, tomatoes and lettuce. He added pickles. “Milk?”
“Milk, no sugar, please.”
He assembled sandwiches, poured the boiling water into a large teapot, and let it sit. The overlong silence told Niall she was struggling to find the words she wanted. He slowed his movements to give her time to marshal her arguments. While he brought the kettle back to the boil, he drained the water from the pot into two waiting cups. Covering the full teapot with a cosy, he emptied the now warm cups and carried everything to the table, including two plates and the jar of pickles. “I’ll let you fix your own.”
“I didn’t ask for that.” She made a face at the oversized sandwich he’d set in front of her.
“It’s lunchtime.” Niall took the chair opposite her.
Her guilty glance at her smartwatch told him she’d lost track of time, while her unfashionably baggy clothes told him eating was a faint memory. Loss of appetite was another by-product of heartache.
He’d been there too. “I hate to eat alone.”
“I thought you lived alone.” She cut one half of her sandwich in half and added pickles. Eating his food was another nod to politeness. Referring to his living arrangements was her opening salvo in hostilities.
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Author Biography
Australian Jennifer Raines writes contemporary romances set mainly, but not exclusively, in Australia – think Malta, Finland, New Zealand or ? A dreamer and an optimist, her stories are a delicious cocktail of passion, mutual respect and loyalty because she still believes in happily-ever-afters.
Jennifer fell in love with romance as a teenager. Starting with historical romance. Everything in the school library and then a treasured collection of Georgette Heyer, hard copies, paperbacks and ebooks. Comfort food, she calls them, like Vegemite toast, for those times when she feels low. Her library of comfort food has grown over the years but Georgette Heyer was an early star, under the blankets after lights out using a torch.
Jennifer is a member of Romance Writers of Australia. Three times a finalist in the Emerald competition, including in 2017 (Common Cause, renamed Lela’s Choice), 2018 (Taylor’s Law) and 2022 (Quinn, by Design – Choosing Family Book 2). She’s a member of Romance Writers of New Zealand, winning the Pacific Hearts competition twice, including in 2019 with Grace Under Fire, the sequel to Taylor’s Law. She’s also a member of Romance Writers of America and has been a finalist in chapter competitions in 2019, 2020 and 2021 (Taylor’s Law). Jennifer won the contemporary romance section in the 2020 Orange Rose Contest for Planting Hope and was second overall. Jennifer values competitions for the constructive, honest, not always comfortable feedback they provide.
In 2023 Taylor’s Law placed second in the Romance Writers of New Zealand Koru Best First Book Award.
Jennifer loves those days when words flow and the joy of writing makes the hard slog worthwhile. She’s always made-up stories about strangers in the street, in a café or strolling through an airport terminal; finding inspiration in snippets of conversations, news items and the sheer puzzle of human interactions.
Jennifer lives in inner-city Sydney, Australia, with the requisite number of partners (1) and animals (2). Her desk overlooks a park which nourishes her soul when she raises her head from her keyboard. She gets some of her best ideas walking—including around the block. While Jennifer adores historical romance, she chose to write contemporary because she thought (wrongly) it needed less research while she was holding down a full-time job.
Social Media Links
Website: https://jenniferrainesauthor.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/romanceauthorjen/