an ale. Everyone we knew was there at one point or another over the course of the week.”
Memories tugged at him, and he was quite surprised to realize that not all of them made him flinch and want to look away. It had been a very long time since he’d pulled them out and looked them over. Up until a year ago, he’d avoided thinking about the past. He’d gone home then, leaving Dublin for Cork for a brief spell, when he’d found out about Lionel Hamilton. About being a Haversham by blood.
And not a Gallagher.
“That sounds kind of nice, actually,” she said.
“What did your parents do?” he asked, partly because he was curious, and partly because he needed to think a bit more about his past before he shared it with her.
“My father worked for Hamilton Industries as an account manager. My mother ran a daycare in our home. My grandmother—on my mom’s side—helped out with that. My folks both died when I was three, so I don’t have any real memories of them, other than the pictures and the endless stories my grandmother told me. She raised me after they were gone.”
He set the last carton on the rolling tray, then walked over to her. “You’ve experienced a lot of loss in your life, Melody Duncastle.” He laid his palm on her shoulder, turning her toward him. She didn’t pull away. “I’m sorry for that.”
“It was a very long time ago,” she said, “but thank you.”
“Your grandmother, she’s gone as well now?”
She nodded. “Also a long time ago. Right before I started law—uh, college.” She looked from his hand to his face. “You’re very affected by that. By loss. You were before, when I spoke about Bernadette passing away.”
She was right about that, he supposed, though he’d never thought about it. He’d had far too few people to care about in his life, and even fewer to care about him. He was sensitive to the bond of love, cherished it for the special and unique gift it was, and knew how critical the loss of it truly could be.
He had no earthly idea how he’d come to that moment, that conversation, that topic. But there he was. It was just as surprising as the fact that he was doing absolutely nothing to forward his personal agenda with her—getting her on his side of the Hamilton project.
He supposed exposing himself, talking about things he’d rather leave unspoken, might have been seen as a tactical maneuver to gain her sympathy and her trust.
But even he wasn’t cold enough, calculating enough, to mine his own past for gain. He’d go to many other lengths before trying that one. Hell, he might even accept defeat first.
“I know what it’s like to have, and to have lost,” he told her. “I’ve seen my share of it. Experienced it. It’s never a good thing.” It was the first lie he’d told her. Not all loss was for the worse. “Not for those left behind, anyway.” That was a half truth, at best.
She stopped rolling out what looked like a slab of rosecolored modeling clay and turned to face him fully. Her gaze was direct, probing, and highly disconcerting. No one ever looked at him like that. “Is that why you do what you do? To help people gain rather than lose?”
It was a valid question. Stunning, because she very well might have a point. But he’d never put it together like that. Mostly because he didn’t spend much time analyzing his past, or himself. “I have a knack for figuring out ways to make things, places, more attractive. When things are eye-catching, they attract attention. It’s a simple law of nature. And it’s . . . I don’t know. I guess it always seemed quite obvious to me. How to improve things, how to make them more successful. But no one else seemed to see it. I could never figure out why.”
“So it’s like a puzzle to be solved for you.”
“I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”
“Did you do that for your family? Help make the restaurant a success? Is that what launched you in that direction?”
He snorted before he could stop himself. “Hardly. Although it was certainly where I’d first noticed what could be done.”
“So . . . why not help them?”
“For the very same reason you don’t want my help,” he said, with a dry smile. “They like things just as they are.”
To her credit, she looked at least a