Why was her name on a fax?
From a company called Falcon Investigations?
She hung up the phone and withdrew what turned out to be ten pages of material from the machine’s tray.
She saw all sorts of information about herself on the document, financial information first and foremost including a credit report. The money she had in her two savings accounts, her personal checking account and her business account followed to the penny. The worth of her home was listed, an estimated worth of her business, of her winery, even of her Acura. Pages of documentation added to the weight of the report.
The paragraph concerning her childhood flashed in front of her eyes like a glaring Las Vegas marquee. Orphaned and on her own since eighteen. Father an alcoholic, died of a heart attack. Mother a smoker, died of lung cancer two years prior to her father’s death. No siblings. Worked her way through NAU driving Jeeps for the Sedona Pink Jeep Tour Company. Blah, blah, blah.
Quint had had her investigated.
The shower still ran.
That man, that stranger, liked long showers.
She picked up the fax and carried it into the bedroom. She settled it on his pillow. She slid into her shoes and grabbed her socks. She returned to his desk, picked up her purse then left.
A few minutes later, when she walked into her own bedroom, she stripped once more and threw her clothes into the hamper. This time she got into the shower and scrubbed her whole body over and over. She washed her hair three times.
She didn’t know what to think or what to do. She was mad and hurt, then hurt and mad. Her mind whirled in circles about Quint, about what kind of person he was that he would have hired a PI to look into her life. She felt like a fool. She thought about Jeff, his self-absorption and drive. Right now he and Quint were a matched set of heavyweight pricks. Yeah, she really knew how to pick ‘em.
She thought she would go crazy with distress and frustration. She really needed help sorting this out. Well, Tina had encouraged her to get back in the game. Now her friend was going to have to listen to just how lousy the game had become.
Quint stood by the side of the bed and read the PI report over several times. He had to because his mind wouldn’t focus long enough to make sense of what he was looking at.
So, Carly had seen the report. She’d understood what he’d done and she’d run away.
He sighed.
He should have been glad she was gone. Hadn’t he spent twenty minutes in the shower avoiding her, not knowing what the hell to do with an entire host of desires that had to do with keeping her close…forever?
He had thought this would be simple: Get Carly back in bed, find her weakness, get her winery.
He rubbed his chest and dropped the report on the bed.
He bet she was mad, word-blistering furious.
He turned and planted his ass on the rumpled sheets. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. Her scent rose up around him like a cloud. If she was still here, he’d be on top of her right now.
What the hell was wrong with him? He had to get a grip. He had to put these bizarre sensations in perspective.
Profanities slipped past his lips.
He felt out-of-control and that pissed him off.
Again he forced himself to read the report, the report Carly had read, all about herself, the one he had ordered to have run on her. Her finances were in superb condition. She was more than solvent and zeroed her credit card balance every month. Her credit limit was at forty thousand and her credit score was in the high seven hundreds. Her net worth made him nod in approval. Unfortunately, if she’d had some serious debt, he could have used that against her in his bid for her winery.
Overall, he was pleased. Except for the discovery of the fax, and that he still didn’t have the information he needed to help him get Carly’s winery, the seduction couldn’t be going better.
* * * * * * * * *
“Oh, come on, Carly,” Tina cried. “Of course he had you investigated. Why are you so shocked? This is Quint Barron, multi-multi-millionaire, working his way to a billion. He probably had the cleaning lady who wipes out his toilets investigated.”
Tina lounged in one of the brown leather club chairs in front of Carly’s desk, a leg slung over the arm of the chair. She slid a spoon into a Yoplait banana-and-strawberry yogurt.
Carly leaned her backside against her desk, her legs stretched out in front of her and her arms folded across her chest. “The thing that irks me the most right now is that this doesn’t seem to bother you at all. Why is that?”
Tina licked the spoon clean. “Because I’m not sleeping with him. If my husband, before we were married, had ever pulled a stunt like that I would have strung him up by his left nut.”
Carly winced at the visual but still she laughed. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
Tina shifted her attention away from her yogurt and met Carly’s gaze. “The thing is, you’re in bed with this man, in more ways than one and it’s clear from everything you’ve said that once the Napa weekend is over, he’s out of here. Why get your panties in a wad? Besides, I think payback might be a lot more fun than all this angst. Why don’t you have him investigated? Serve him with his own sauce?”
Carly’s gaze drifted as it so often did toward the plate glass window and the tall Mogollon Rim beyond.
She could do that. She could hire a PI and have a report worked up on Quint. That would be a tremendous amount of power to have over him, too, to know all about his finances, his businesses, his homes, even about his childhood.
But how would that serve her?
Maybe give her some release from all this anger, but not much else.
The bottom line? She just couldn’t do it. Hiring a PI to dig up personal information about Quint felt too much like a violation. Maybe he used such reports as SOP in his world, but in her world she would much rather keep things simpler and more real. Either he shared all that data with her, of his own free will, or it just wasn’t worth knowing on any level.
Now that she was much calmer, she faced Tina again. Her office manager worked at scraping every last bit of yogurt from the container, going at an angle all around the inside as she twirled the base in her hand. Carly smiled. She liked having Tina as a friend.
“So, you gonna hire a PI?”
Carly shook her head. “No. Just not my style. I realize he’s given me reason to and in that sense it would be fair, but what would I gain?”
“I didn’t think you’d go for it.”
Carly laughed.
Tina looked at her once more and smiled. “So what happens next?”
“I suppose if Quint wants me back in his bed, he’s going to have to work damn hard to get me there again. I’m thinking he can’t do it.”
Tina snorted her disbelief. “That man could move a mountain with his bare toe.”
“Tina Clark, you are no help at all.”
Tina just laughed and licked her spoon one last time.
Now that Carly had calmed down and reorganized her thoughts, she was grateful she’d seen the report. She’d received a harsh dose of reality about Quint’s essential character, something she badly needed to keep at the forefront of her mind. However amazing her time with him in bed had been, she needed to remember that with Quint, this was just sex. She would be a fool to believe it was anything more than that.
Chapter Seven
“I just think it would be best if we had a more platonic relationship.”
Carly didn’t meet Quint’s gaze. Three days had passed since she’d discovered the fax and she’d worked hard at fending him off. He’d sent her flowers every day, which she had taken to the widows’ board-and-care home without two seconds’ thought.
Right now, she pretended to be engrossed by the itinerary spread out on the shelf below the plate glass window in her office.
He came up behind her and separated the hair on her nape. He kissed her neck and though Carly’s knees buckled, she shied away from him
then turned to face him. “That’s not exactly platonic, Mr. Barron.”
He backed up to half-sit on the corner of her desk, his arms crossed over his chest. He smiled, his expression almost teasing as he shrugged. “It wasn’t personal. I have everyone investigated.”
“But you don’t sleep with everyone. I think that’s the difference. And if I hadn’t been sleeping with you I don’t think it would have mattered much.”
“Either way, it matters to me. You think I haven’t found instances of fraud by having someone investigated?”
At that, she flipped the edge of the remaining page she held gripped in her hand. “I don’t think you expected to find fraud. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I know why you set a PI on my trail.”
“Oh. Why’s that?” He narrowed his gaze. He did that a lot. He also swung his foot. She had the feeling he was enjoying himself a little too much at her expense.
“You had me investigated because you were looking for something to use against me. Do you deny it?”
He shook his head. “Not a bit. This is business. You have something I want. Simple.”
She felt a small geyser go off in her head, streaking straight up and pummeling the inside of her skull. How could he sit there with that stupid half-smile on his lips? Oh, that’s right, he owned the world. He could do whatever he wanted.
She turned back to the itinerary pages and picked them up in succession, last ones first. “You didn’t find anything you could use, did you?”
“Nope.” She heard him sigh. “I can see you’re upset but I still think you’re taking this way too personally. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You’re just about perfect on paper.”
At that, Carly tensed. So, she was almost perfect on paper. For some reason that bugged her. “Whatever,” she said. Maybe a little juvenile, but yeah…whatever.
Strong arms enveloped her from behind. She gasped and felt her cheeks grow warm, a sensation that had nothing to do with embarrassment. “Let me back in, Carly. We’re good together. You know we are. And we’re running out of time. We have only have two weeks now until my guests arrive.”
The door was closed. Tina had gone home an hour ago and night had fallen on the canyon country. She shouldn’t be here alone with Quint.
“You’ll have to forgive me some time,” he murmured, his lips against her neck right next to her ear.
Carly closed her eyes and shivered. She was vulnerable to him but this had to stop. On impulse, she made up a story. “You know, after I found that fax, I decided to hire a PI of my own. I’m waiting for the report. Should come any day now.”
His hands stilled on her arms. His body grew stiff. “You did what?”
She whirled on him. “Hey,” she said, faking a smile. “It’s just business. Nothing personal.”
“But you had no reason to.” He backed away.
“Well, how do I know you can pay for all this furniture you’ve ordered or even the leasing fee?”
“I can pay.” His blue eyes hardened to ice chips.
She stood facing him. She tapped her foot. “Doesn’t feel so good, does it?”
He glared at her. “Your reasons were punitive. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“You play by an interesting but quite self-serving set of rules, Mr. Barron. You put me in the wrong because of motivation but the results would still be the same, a real sense of violation at having someone root around in your life behind your back. But you don’t need to worry. I lied. I didn’t hire anyone. I thought about it though, I was that mad. However, on the basis of simple decency I decided against doing it. You’d been inside my body. Somehow it just didn’t seem right.”
* * * * * * * * *
Quint flinched. He turned away from Carly and moved to stare up at the buttes now a mere black skyline against a starlit sky. His legs twitched and flexed. A run would be good right now, a good long hard run to dissipate some of these grating sensations that worked over his skin.
She had him confused. She had somehow turned all this on him, as though he was in the wrong. Hiring a PI had been a business decision, nothing more. And yet when she said she’d hired a PI, he’d felt like she’d knifed him in the gut. He still writhed.
“You’re worked up,” he said. He left the window and headed to the door. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Hey, Quint.”
He turned back to her.
She met his stare, her brown eyes gutsy and hard. “Do I look all that worked up to you?”
He shook his head. “No, I guess not, but I can see that you’re mad.”
“You bet I’m mad.” She flipped the pages in her hands. “I’ll fax you this draft of the itinerary. You can send me your notes.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
He turned on his heel and left but when he got into his car, he didn’t head back to the hotel. Instead, he passed Tlaquepaque and headed out to I-17. In three days, she hadn’t softened toward him, not even a little. He’d screwed up but good on this one and some road time would help clear his head.
He drove and drove. The car just wanted to keep moving south all the way to Phoenix.
In the end, he decided to stay at his home in Scottsdale that night.
Before bed, he went for a swim then sat on the patio working a tumbler of Makers Mark. He contemplated the mess that had become his pursuit of a winery.
The real problem was that he’d gotten way too close to a woman. He’d never allowed this before and though he was able to keep his emotions out of the mix, Carly wasn’t. If he had any sense, he’d back off, stop trying to seduce her and hire another PI, someone with a few specialized people-skills to infiltrate her life and find out what he hadn’t been able to yet, that one piece of leverage he could use to get her winery.
He knew half a dozen PI’s he could call but he didn’t want anyone like that so close to Carly.
He stood up and paced. His Makers sloshed in the glass as he moved. His swim trunks had already dried in the hot air of the July night. He took a deep swig of his whisky, paced a little more and shoved his hand through his hair.
Goddam this so wasn’t going the way he had thought it would. And what the hell was this protective shield he’d placed around Carly that he wouldn’t allow a more invasive PI into her life? Where had that come from?
He paused in his steps, put his fingers to his forehead and forced himself to focus on Red Canyon Vineyards, on his clear-cut goal to have the winery in his portfolio. He even liked the name since it evoked images of all those incredible buttes and rock formations scattered throughout the Sedona area. He pictured the spas, resorts, golf courses and art galleries that always drew the wealthy. He pictured entertaining in that house, a cozy kind of warmth that would allow for conversations involving finance, investments and empire building.
He needed Carly’s winery in his domain.
And he would get her winery.
He just needed to focus, to figure this out, to plan his next strategy, to not let himself get confused by a pair of brown eyes.
If he couldn’t hire someone to do the dirty work, then he needed to keep at it himself. He needed to bring Carly close again, but how the hell to get her there when she’d turned into a glacier?
He started to pace once more. He swigged his whisky again. He set the tumbler down on the cement at the pool’s edge. He rose up, lifted his arms then dove in. The cool water soothed his irritation as he swam the distance to the far end.
When he surfaced, he extended his arms to either side of the pool edge and supported his body as he floated in the water. He looked up at the stars.
Carly would like this view. She had once given him a whole list of her favorite things and looking at the stars had topped her list.
He’d love to have her here, balanced on his body—naked of course—so that she could look up and let her gaze drift over the dark night sky.
But how to get her here. He couldn’t take back the PI report now. Tha
t pit had already been dug. So the real question became how to make it up to her. He scoffed at himself. Sending flowers had been the work of an amateur.
He pushed away from the side of the pool and swam the distance back to the opposite edge. He lifted out to sit with his feet dangling in the water. He finished his Makers.
A brilliant white light pierced his thoughts. Inspiration struck and he smiled. He knew exactly what he needed to do to make this right and his body relaxed. Yes, he knew what to do now.
The next day, he had Sheila put together a new file for Carly.
Then he called Tina. She still called him Harry, for obscure never-to-be-known reasons, but she worked with him. Why she had allied herself with him, he didn’t know, but she laughed a lot, just like Brad.
When he had everything set up, he locked up his Scottsdale house and start the trek back up to Sedona. By tomorrow, he’d have Carly beside him, in his car, heading back to Phoenix, to be with him for one whole day and if all went as planned, one whole sexy-as-hell night.
* * * * * * * * *
“But you’re supposed to be my friend?” Carly complained.
She stood in the doorway of her bedroom, at eight-thirty in the morning, watching Tina move in her brisk way from closet, to bathroom vanity, to dresser as she shoved things into a small rolling suitcase. Tina had arrived a half hour earlier, having turned traitor, hell-bent on making her go to Phoenix with Quint.
“I am your friend and I’m telling you that you have to go with him. He’ll be here in no time and my job is to have you packed. By the way, and this is just a heads-up, you need to buy some new underwear. I could only find three pair.”
“Laundry,” Carly said, but her cheeks grew warm. She tried not to think about the two thongs Quint had ruined, or the circumstances in which he had done so in the first place. “I’m not going with him anywhere and why would you pack four bras or even three underwear? Isn’t this just supposed to be an overnighter?”
“Then you figure it out.” Tina whipped back to her closet. “What about this little black dress? You think this should go? Maybe he’ll take you to dinner.”
“I’m not going.”