True to Me - Kay Bratt Page 0,30

graced a tree just behind her. She loved the cozy porch. It was quickly becoming her favorite morning spot.

When her Lineage page popped up, she almost dropped her coffee. There were nine results in the “New Ancestor” section. Her heart thumped, and she reminded herself to stay calm, that it didn’t necessarily mean anything. She needed matches from the same geographical area where she was looking—in her case, Maui. The thing about online genealogy searches was that it was like a team sport. It needed participants to strengthen and increase results. What if no one closely related to Quinn had ever dreamed of finding out more about their DNA? That could lead to a lot of dead ends.

She’d also read that some of the matches would turn out to be genealogists with extensive family trees, and not necessarily anyone close enough to have the information she sought.

Still, she quickly sent off a few inquiries through the Lineage database, asking those indicated as new ancestors if they knew or were related to any Sennas from Maui. When she finished, she leaned back, her hands shaking.

Liam chose that moment to burst out of the main house, some sort of power tool in his hands. He waved, and much to her chagrin, he crossed the area between them, arriving on her porch before she could get up and make a quick retreat.

Quinn closed her laptop.

“Do you wake up looking like that?” he asked, leaning over the railing and examining her from head to toe.

“What is that supposed to mean?” She kept her tone neutral. He wasn’t going to goad her into bickering back and forth.

He shrugged, and his muscles rippled, distracting her from her train of thought.

“I just mean it’s early. You look nice and all that, but are you going somewhere fancy already this morning? Don’t you ever just let your hair down and leave your face clean?”

Now she was getting mad.

“My face is clean,” she said, sending the words through gritted teeth.

“I just meant without makeup. I’ll bet you look really good all natural, your skin free and your hair loose.”

He was wrong about that, but he’d never see it.

“Well, anyway”—he stood and looked at the pile of shutters—“I thought you might want to help get those shutters ready while I work on pulling the cabinet doors off.”

She didn’t respond right away because, truthfully, the thought of doing the shutters herself really appealed to her, but not if he was going to be supervising her.

“Or . . . ,” he said, stretching the word out, “I could just wait until Pali gets out of school and pay him to do all of them. But that’ll add to the overall project costs, and I thought I’d save you a buck or two.”

She thought of her goals and knew that Liam was probably going to be her best bet to get started in her search for Maria’s husband. That meant that at some point, they were going to have to talk anyway.

“Fine,” she said. “I can scrub and sand, if you show me how. But I don’t know how to use power tools.”

He smiled. “Anything will help my to-do list. But remember, we’ll need to clean them good before we can even start to sand. Maria can show you where to get the bucket and a scrub brush.”

“We? I thought you were going to work on the cabinet doors?”

“I am, but I’ll need to come by every now and then and make sure you aren’t taking any shortcuts,” he said, winking at her. “Are you at least going to change clothes?” he asked, his eyes trailing down the legs of her white pants.

“Of course I am,” she snapped. “But can I drink my coffee in peace first?”

He laughed. “Sassy. Good. I can handle sassy, as long as that means you’ll have a lot of energy to get the job done.”

Quinn stood, arched her back, and put her arms in the air to stretch. The shutters were clean, but it had taken just about as much elbow grease as she could muster. Maria had come out and offered to help, but when she mentioned that she was in the process of applying for jobs online, Quinn sent her back in. She needed a job more than Quinn needed help with the shutters.

Her body hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt. She felt useful.

Liam did make frequent stops to see how she was doing, but he was already coming out there to set