His eyes were deep, fathomless really, and full of easy affection, but also a good amount of trouble.
Run or stay? she asked herself, desperately unsure.
Stay, said her brain . . .
Run, said her feet.
Stay, said Beth.
Run, said Quinn’s own good sense.
Mick lifted his beer and touched it to her glass. “To a better week this time around then, yeah?”
She looked into his mesmerizing eyes and nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered, and just like that, her brain and Beth won the round.
Chapter 9
I wish everything was as easy as getting fat.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
Quinn looked down at her drink—which would be her third—and gently pushed it aside. It had been a long time since she’d indulged in more than a glass of wine. Long enough to forget how alcohol tended to make her tongue run away with her good sense. “I should go. I’m hoping to sleep through the ghost of Christmas Past tonight.”
Mick looked amused. “You read the brochure, didn’t you. It’s just hype.”
“Well, I was pretty sure,” she said. “Until my sister showed up.”
“Your sister came to Wildstone too?” he asked. “Where is she now?”
“Well, she’s dead, so I’m thinking she’s back in the haunted wardrobe.”
Mick looked at her for a beat and then slid a big, warm hand over hers. “I’m sorry, Quinn.”
A lot of people had said those two words to her. The words had never meant much but there was something about Mick’s husky, low voice that reached her. Which in itself was so unsettling that she closed her eyes. “About my room being haunted?” she asked, trying to joke it away. “Or that I’ve clearly gone over the edge?”
She felt him shift closer and give her hand a gentle squeeze. Reluctantly she opened her eyes.
“About your sister being gone,” he said quietly. “How long?”
“Two years.” She looked away. “She was sort of my everything, so it’s been a little rough.”
“I can only imagine. And you’ve been seeing her?”
She blew out a breath and faced him again. “Yesterday afternoon she sat on top of the TV in a sweater she stole from me four years ago and told me it was time to get back to the land of the living, that I needed to stop not feeling.” She snorted. “And that was when I was one hundred percent alcohol free.”
“What did she mean, stop not feeling?”
He was holding eye contact so she did her best to do the same, but it was difficult. “I go through the motions but I haven’t felt anything since losing her. Just . . . numbness. It makes the people in my life uncomfortable and unhappy, but I don’t seem to care about that either. My parents try to understand, but most of my friends don’t, except for Skye.” She shook her head. “And Brock.”
“Your . . . boyfriend?” Mick asked.
“Not since I made him give up on me. Am I rambling? It feels like I’m rambling.”
“No,” he said. “So about this Brock guy.”
“We’ve been friends since kindergarten, but the truth is that I’m . . . broken,” she admitted.
“You sure?”
When she slid him a dark look, he squeezed her hand again. “I ask because the woman I’m looking at, the one who drove two hundred miles to learn more about herself, doesn’t seem broken to me. The woman I’m looking at seems like someone who feels so deeply maybe she’s just a little scarred. And scared. But not broken.”
She inhaled a shuddery breath and held it. “You don’t understand.”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’ve never experienced anything as unfair and soul destroying as losing a sibling. But, Quinn, you could’ve taken Tilly’s rejection today and left. You didn’t. That suggests you’re feeling more than a little.”
“She lost her mom.”
He nodded. “And you understand that loss.”
“Okay,” she said, admitting he might be right. “So I can feel empathy. Sympathy. I’m talking about other feelings and emotions, things required to maintain any sort of a . . .” She paused and waved her hand to help her find the word. “Connection.”
“For the record,” he said, “are we talking about a sexual connection?”
She squirmed but couldn’t look away. “Among other things.”
“So you’re saying you don’t feel excited or aroused. Ever.”
Well, she hadn’t. Until yesterday when she’d reacted to his leanly muscled build like she’d never seen a man before. And at the thought, she squirmed again.
“Quinn.” He ran a work-roughened finger along the palm of her hand and she got a full-body shiver. “Do you feel that?”
“Um,” she said eloquently.
His eyes held her prisoner while her pulse raced and butterflies danced in her belly and at that realization, her palms went sweaty. She thought about lying but knew she couldn’t sell it, not with how closely he was watching her, seeing her. “Okay, so I feel something,” she managed. “I think maybe you just switched me back on.”
He smiled and good lord, she nearly slid off her chair into a puddle of goo. She closed her eyes. “I’m really not much of a drinker.”
She heard his soft chuckle and opened her eyes. He was looking at her mouth, so she felt it only fair game to look at his too. It was a good mouth, as far as they went. Nice lips. Sexy stubble. She imagined what it would feel like beneath her fingers and she realized her body was tensed, like anticipation tensed, and she shook her head with a little laugh and sat back, eyeing the last piece of pizza.
“It’s got your name on it,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Especially if you’re going to moan again as you eat it.”
“I didn’t moan!”
“Like it was the last piece of pizza on earth,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and took a bite and . . . crap. It took everything she had not to moan. “Show-off,” she said around a full bite.
He just smiled.
Damn. Damn, she was feeling all sorts of things right now. She’d always assumed when that happened again, it would be with Brock. But Brock was out sowing his wild oats, something she’d never done.
Ever.
Not that it mattered. This wasn’t about guilt or revenge, or anything like that. This was about her. About something she’d been missing without even realizing it.
MICK WATCHED QUINN eat that piece of pizza like it was the best thing she’d ever tasted. Everything he’d seen of her, from watching her have a panic attack on the beach, to dropping to her knees to love up on his dog, to freaking out about a bug in the tub, to watching the grief in her gaze when she talked about her sister . . . it all suggested that she was a woman who lived life to its fullest and felt to her very core.
And she had no idea.
She’d been through hell and still wasn’t fully back from the trip. He got that. But she was wrong about herself.
Her wild brunette waves were uncontained and her haunting blue eyes fully on the prize—that being the last of the pizza—and he couldn’t tear his gaze away. It was crazy how much he was drawn to her, in a way he couldn’t explain even to himself. Normally that alone would have him running for the door. But he didn’t move.
When she caught him watching her, her smile warmed and she shifted in her seat, like maybe it was hard to hold the eye contact, but she still did.
And that’s when he knew just how much trouble he was in. When it came to women, he typically didn’t have a type. What tended to draw him in was an easy confidence and a sense of independence that said she wouldn’t be looking for any sort of permanence from him.
With his life as insane as it had become, his business exploding in San Francisco, his dad passing, his mom needing him as much as she did, he had zero interest in another thing that tied him down.
Less than zero interest.
E
specially one in Wildstone. He’d worked his ass off to get out, needing to be away from his dad’s heavy rule and a town that had felt claustrophobic. He’d gotten good grades, which had led to a scholarship, and on top of that he’d taken every odd job available to pay the rest of his way through college a hell of a long way away from here.
Did he have some regrets along the way? Sure. Had the end justified the means? Pretty much, though he would’ve been a lot more sure of that answer four months ago, before his dad had died. Spending time with his mom and cleaning out the old house had been screwing with his head.
And now there was Quinn, whose confidence seemed to have taken a hit. But she absolutely had a sense of independence, not to mention sweet curves, a sexy smile, and deep blue eyes that revealed a haunting vulnerability and a not-so-hidden pain.
Even so, she smiled at him, clearly boosted by the strength of Boomer’s damn special, and he felt something warm deep down inside him. Her smile was warm and contagious, and it should’ve had him taking a big step back.
A big one.
Instead, watching her loosen up, listening to her talk, taking in the good humor and intelligence in her gaze, he felt himself wanting to go all in.
Good thing he was smarter than that.
Boomer came up to their table and handed Quinn another Bartender’s Special.
“I didn’t order this,” she said.
He winked at her. “On the house.”
“Oh boy. I’m not sure I need it.”
“It’s a thank-you for making this guy smile,” Boomer said, jerking a thumb in Mick’s direction. “Been a while since anyone in these parts saw that.”
Mick squelched a grimace as Quinn looked at him.
He shook his head. “Don’t listen to him.”
Boomer grinned—the bastard—and sauntered off, mission accomplished. Meaning: trouble was brewing—Boomer’s favorite pastime, as Mick knew all too well. So it was an especially good thing he wasn’t going to let himself get drawn in.
No matter what.
“How long are you staying in Wildstone?” he asked.
“Until tomorrow. Tilly and I didn’t exactly have a smooth introduction.” She shook her head. “I’ve had enough regrets in my life. Leaving without seeing her again won’t be one of them.”
Mick caught sight of a familiar figure entering the bar—Lena, his old high school girlfriend—and acknowledged with an inward grimace that only in a town Wildstone’s size would he run into everyone he knew while at the bar.
She was probably seeking out Boomer, her latest conquest. But then Lena’s gaze locked on Mick and she headed right for him, a familiar gleam in her predatorial gaze.
“Excuse me a minute,” he said to Quinn and stood up to ward Lena off, meeting her in between the bar and their table.
“Mick.” She smiled. “Just the man I was looking for.”
“Why?”
She laughed softly. “Well, it’s a warm, gorgeous summer night and in case you’ve forgotten, you really know how to show a girl a good time on a night like this. How about we take a ride to Mercury Point?”
He had a lot of memories tied up in Mercury Point. The first time he’d gotten drunk. Or four-wheeling over the dunes. And then there’d been losing his virginity—to the tall, beautiful brunette standing in front of him.
Of course they’d also broken up there as well.
And gotten back together.
And broken up . . .
“You’re with someone else now,” he reminded her. “One of my oldest friends.”
“Boomer and I aren’t together,” she said. “He said we couldn’t be until I got my head on straight.” She glanced over at the bar.
Mick did too and found Boomer watching them with an unreadable expression on his face before he turned away to serve a customer.
“I’m not going to let anyone tell me what to do,” Lena said. “Even him. And anyway, my head is on straight.”
Mick gave her a wry look and she rolled her eyes.
“It’s on straight now, I mean,” she said and sighed. “Look, I know I didn’t do right by you, Mick. I’d like the chance to fix that.”
He was assuming that “not doing right by him” was an acknowledgment of how she’d screwed around on him. And he was also assuming that since they hadn’t talked in a while, plus the fact that she’d never tried to apologize to him before, she was only doing so now because people were already talking about him and Quinn. “It was a long time ago,” he said.
“Doesn’t have to be.” Her gaze shifted to take in Quinn. “Your date needs a leave-in conditioner,” she said. “And a good stylist.”
“Good night, Lena.” He turned to move back to Quinn but she’d gotten up and was moving to the door.
Lena smirked. “Must be losing your touch. I could give you a tutorial.”
Ignoring her, he wound his way through the crowd, but Quinn was gone. Wanting to catch her before she drove off, he tried to toss some money to Boomer, who shook his head.
“She already got it, man.”
To Mick’s relief, he caught Quinn in the parking lot, leaning against her car, her thumbs moving furiously over the screen of her phone. When she saw him, she grimaced.
He lifted his hands and stayed out of her personal space. “Thought you could use a ride back to the B and B,” he said.
“I’m not driving.” She lifted her phone. “I’m trying to get an Uber.”
He smiled. “How’s that going?”
She sighed and slipped her phone into her pocket. “So Wildstone doesn’t have drive-throughs, Thai takeout, or Uber? Seriously?”
“We have other things.”
“Yes,” she said. “Ghosts. Big bugs. Cute dogs. And girlfriends, apparently.”
“Lena’s not my girlfriend,” he said. “She’s Boomer’s. Sort of.” He shook his head. “It’s complicated.”
She didn’t take her eyes off him. “But you’ve slept together.”
He arched a brow.
“I’m sorry,” she said, closing her eyes. “That was rude. There’s a chemistry there, and a familiarity, that’s all. You know what? Don’t listen to me. My tongue’s running the show and I think I’m just jealous at how everyone else seems to take life’s shit in stride and keep going. I haven’t learned that trick and I need to. And how to keep going, that is. Like the Energizer Bunny. Or my electric toothbrush. God.” She pressed her hands to her face. “I really need to stop talking. Make me stop talking!”
He took her hand and tugged her to his truck.
“Wait,” she said, putting a hand to his chest and fisting it in his shirt to hold him to her. “You’re not a murderer or a rapist or anything like that, right?”
He lifted a hand. “Scout’s honor.”
“Were you a Boy Scout?”
Laughing a little at that because he’d been just about the furthest thing from a Boy Scout, he gently pushed her into the passenger seat and leaned in to buckle her seat belt, and suddenly their faces were an inch from each other. He heard her suck in a breath and he did the same.
Talk about chemistry.
“Mick?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”