“Why does everyone always assume if a woman’s crying, it’s over a man?” she grumbled.
He smiled at her. “Because it often is, especially at your age. Am I wrong? Is this not about Luke?”
“Oh, it’s about Luke,” she admitted. “We’ve broken up.”
Her grandfather looked stunned. “But why?”
“Because it was in the cards already,” she said. “I just decided to take matters into my own hands and do it on my timetable.”
“You broke it off?” he asked, his astonishment plain.
She nodded, not even trying to hide her misery. “It was for the best.”
“Then you’re not in love with him?”
“Of course I’m in love with him,” she said impatiently. “I even think he’s in love with me.”
Dillon took her hand and drew her across the yard to the Adirondack chairs in Nell’s summer garden, where she’d spent so many wonderful moments snuggled in Luke’s arms during this visit.
“Okay, now, you’ll need to be explaining to me what’s really happened, because you’re not making a lot of sense,” her grandfather urged quietly.
Though she hadn’t intended to pour out her heart, that’s exactly what she did. Her grandfather, to his credit, listened without comment, nodding occasionally, even smiling a time or two. Her gaze narrowed at that.
“There’s nothing to smile about in this,” she told him.
“There is if you’re familiar with the tendency of two mules to butt heads,” he commented.
“You’re saying I’m stubborn?” she asked indignantly.
He didn’t even try to hide a smile at the question. “Would you even dare to deny it?”
That finally drew her own smile. “No, I suppose not.”
“And Luke certainly comes by it naturally as well,” he said.
She frowned. “You are not suggesting I was in the wrong to walk away, are you?”
“Not wrong exactly,” he said. “I’m just thinking that your timing could have been better. It seems to me the decision was a wee bit premature and based on the emotion of the moment. Luke’s head is caught up in his new business venture. He needs time to sort things out.”
“Time? Should we wait till we’re both old and too feeble to crawl out of these chairs?” she retorted.
“There’s the sense of drama that got you into this fix,” he chided. “No one is suggesting you wait that long, but Luke barely has the taste of the pub’s success on his lips. He’s had no time at all to bask in it or to feel certain it will continue, and now you’ve gone and issued your ultimatum.”
“There was no ultimatum,” she said.
“Really? That’s not how I heard it. Maybe you didn’t give him an either/or choice, but it was definitely implied that you’d lost patience. The proof of that is that he didn’t offer exactly what you wanted, when you wanted it, and you walked away.”
“I hadn’t lost patience,” she corrected. “It’s hope I lost, and there’s a difference. If there was an ultimatum, it came from him. It was wait and wait, indefinitely as near as I could tell, or call it quits now.”
“So your pride won out and you called it quits,” he concluded. “That won’t keep you warm tonight.”
She understood the truth of that. “Then what was I supposed to do?”
“It’s a little late to figure out how you could have handled it any differently. And if it helps at all, I imagine Luke is wondering the same thing now. It’s a waste of time, looking back. Now you have to put your mind to what you intend to do next.”
She bristled at the implication of that. “Apologize? Hell will freeze over first.”
He chuckled. “I imagined you’d say something like that. Perhaps, though, rather than an apology, you could simply go to him and talk things through.”
“To what end? It’s not as if he’ll have had an epiphany and declare his undying love. No,” she said adamantly. “If there’s talking to be done, he’ll have to come to me.”
“And if he’s just as stubborn and refuses?”
“Then it wasn’t meant to be, was it?”
Dillon shook his head. “An ending based on assumptions is never a test of what was meant to be,” he said. “Fate’s no competition for stubbornness.”
Moira let his words sink in, then sighed. She feared he was exactly right about that, but she wasn’t quite ready to act on his wisdom just yet.
“Were we ever that young and foolish?” Dillon asked Nell after describing what had happened between Moira and Luke earlier in the day.
Moira was locked in her room, and Nell and Dillon had gone outside to wait for the sun to set. Nell savored these moments she had alone with him, time to talk over their day, to share bits and pieces of memories. There’d been too few moments like this since Dillon’s arrival, quiet times for reflection and simply being together. She’d spent too much of the time she’d hoped to devote to him helping out at Luke’s pub instead.
“For whatever comfort it might be, Luke was in no better frame of mind when I popped into the pub this afternoon,” she told Dillon. “I had no idea exactly what had happened, but Moira was missing and his mood was foul. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.”
“Do you think we should intervene?” Dillon asked. “In a way, I feel responsible for her misery, since I encouraged her to come here with me.”
Nell thought about the question. She’d seen Mick’s interference go awry often enough to know better than to try it herself. Sometimes matters needed time to settle on their own.
“You
