Headlong (Quinn Brothers Book 2)

by Samantha Black

  Armed with her fresh stack of samples and a clean notebook Abby spent the next morning in the lab, testing and writing notes. She was alone in the room. On Fridays most of the other researchers would leave early. Some of them were only in there three days a week, something she found almost offensive. Did they not take their work seriously? She supposed she shouldn’t complain too much, she preferred it this way. She had the room to herself and she got a lot more done in the quiet. At ten a.m., after working since seven, she checked Facebook to see if Jed was online. It was about seven p.m. in Colorado by her estimate

  Hey you. Hope your day has been going well. It’s a beautiful day here again. Was just thinking about you while I was working.

  She saw her message marked as “read” immediately and waited for a reply. A few minutes went past before she realized she had been staring at the computer without moving. She stood up and tried to distract herself with work. She shuffled a few papers around and re-read her notes. Then she checked her computer again. No reply.

  She’d call him, she decided. Now that she’d decided she was going to tell him how she felt she couldn’t bear the thought of having to wait again. She checked her reflection in the screen on her phone and pulled her hair off her face into a ponytail. She unbuttoned the top button of her light blouse and decided that would do. He’d always teased her about her buttoned-up shirts. Back home in Colorado she would wear very conservative clothing, with her shirts always buttoned to the collar. Hopefully he’d like seeing her in something more relaxed.

  She pressed the call button and waited, holding her breath in anticipation. Her heart was hammering. But she knew it was the right thing to do, to tell him this now. Either he would feel the same or he wouldn’t. But deep down she was certain he did feel the same. He’d always made time for her. He’d always go out of his way to see her and give her extra advice. He’d touch her arm and smile in that way that made her heart melt. And he’d told her he was going to miss her when she left.

  The call rang and rang but Jed didn’t answer. Her Facebook Messenger still said he was online.

  Then she saw the dots appear as he started typing.

  Abby! Lovely to hear from you.

  More dots.

  I’m a bit tied up with work right now, so I can’t talk.

  Abby’s heart sunk again, but she understood. He was dedicated to his job, something she knew firsthand from their many nights working late together, and she respected him immensely for it.

  That’s okay she replied, adding in a smiley face. Was just hoping to chat... I wanted to hear your voice.

  Was it too much? She hesitated before sending the message.

  His dots appeared straight away.

  I miss hearing your voice too. I’ll call you sometime soon, I promise.

  When was sometime? They hadn’t had a proper call in days. But he had just said he missed her voice, too. Her disappointment was kept in check with the surge of happiness she felt at those words. She replied

  Okay! Look forward to it!

  She added another happy face.

  Jed must have picked up that she was disappointed. His reply came quickly.

  I am sorry I can’t talk tonight Abby. Work is just hectic. I miss seeing your smiley face around here. Australia is lucky to have you. Can’t wait to have you back to myself in a few weeks.

  He sent the emoticon of a face winking and blowing a kiss. Abby’s heart skipped a beat. He had never sent anything that openly flirty before over their many Facebook messages.

  She scrolled through the emoticons on Facebook that were available to send back. She was too shy to send the winky face blowing a kiss back. The smiley face she had already sent twice. The love heart she wanted to send but she needed to tell him her feelings first. The face winking and poking its tongue out was far too forward. The face with love hearts for eyes was also too much. She scrolled through every single emoticon before deciding she was too shy to send anything other than a happy face back. When she went to select it with her finger, she somehow managed to miss, and instead clicked the face winking and poking its tongue out. Too late she realized her mistake, and the emoticon was sent to Jed.

  Crap, crap. She stared with dread at the emoticon. It was something that a girl much more confident than she would send to their crush. It wasn’t something that sensible, focused Abby would send to her senior tutor, albeit the tutor she was in love with.

  Jed didn’t see it though. Facebook told her he had gone off-line in the time it took her to reply.

  Abby went back to work, slightly disappointed that she had once again missed her chance to profess her feelings to him, but with a warm fuzzy feeling in her stomach at the messages he had sent her. He cared for her, and he missed her smile. She was grinning ear to ear for the rest of the day.

  That evening, buoyed with the confidence that Jed’s flirty messages had given her, Abby joined the others for dinner and instead of skulking off to her room or back to the lab after the meal, she stayed out to chat.

  Once again Noah had joined the group for dinner. The others seemed to accept his presence as no big deal.

  Myra greeted her and motioned her to sit down. “Your sunburn is much better today,” she said approvingly. “I hope you’ve been drinking a lot of water. You are probably still catching up from getting so dehydrated in your ordeal.”

  The mention of being dehydrated made Abby’s cheeks burn as she recalled Noah’s comments after arriving to rescue her while she was mid-pee in the scrub. She could see Noah out of the corner of her eye trying not to laugh.

  “Luckily I had a lot of water with me,” she replied, avoiding Noah’s smirking. “I always overpack when I go out on trips.”

  “Never seen someone so well prepared for an emergency,” Noah interrupted. “She had enough granola bars in the truck to feed an army.”

  “How many people have you even rescued?” Abby asked. “You don’t seem to go to work very often.”

  “What do you mean?” he replied, feigning an innocent look. “I don’t know where you got this idea from that I’m not a hard worker.” He chuckled along with the others.

  Myra clapped her hands. “Oh that’s right, Noah. I heard you brought in the older man earlier today, the one with the broken leg who was hiking.”

  Abby closed her mouth. Evidently, he did work. Sometimes. That would explain why he was hanging around here, if he’d been in town dropping people at the clinic.

  “Yeah, it was pretty straightforward. He broke his ankle. Lucky for him he had reception up in the hills. Would have been a long hobble back on a broken ankle.”

  “I heard he had fallen down a cliff?” She was looking at him with wide-eyed admiration. “It must have been hard to land. You’re very brave.”

  Abby wanted to roll her eyes. Typical that Myra would swoon all over a younger man. A younger, muscled and arrogant man. She could almost see Noah’s chest swelling under the praise.

  “That’s a bit exaggerated. Clumsy guy just tripped over a rock. Was an easy pickup, I just landed right on the track. He managed to fall over and break his ankle on a nice, flat, clear area.”

  Myra nodded. “Ah well, we hear these things from the clinic but it’s always a bit embellished by the time we hear it.”

  “Usually it’s the search and rescue team that embellish the stories. Got to talk ourselves up to impress women.” The guys laughed again. To Abby’s ears, they sounded like lovesick puppies. Was there no one who could see that Noah was just a thrill seeker with no real substance?

  “I’m sure you have no problems with that,” Myra replied. “Young man like you. You could have your pick of the women in this town.”

  Noah laughed back as Aaron and Adam protested. “What about us, Myra?”

  Myra shook her head. “Oh you are both nerdy scientists just like the rest of us that live here. Sorry, boys, but you’re not as impressive as a helicopter pilot.”

  Noah smiled ruefully. “You’d be surprised. Impressin
g women is harder than you’d think.” His eyes flicked over to Abby, but she looked away.

  Myra smiled and patted his arm. “Oh honey, if there is a girl you have your eye on you’ll just have to wait until she gets into a spot of trouble and swoop down in your helicopter to save the day, and she’ll be throwing herself into your arms.”

  Noah shook his head. “If only it was that easy.”

  The rest of the night’s conversation turned to Myra and her ex-husband who she enjoyed cussing about, and John’s problems with his two kids, who had come along for a vacation with his wife, and then promptly gotten sick. Abby took part in the chatter but kept quiet about her own relationships. Or lack of them.

  A little while later John opened a bottle of wine that was quickly finished. Abby sipped her wine slowly, and politely declined when John opened the second bottle and offered her a top-up as he refilled the empty glasses of the others.

  At nine thirty she said her goodnights and left for her room, feeling slightly tipsy. She didn’t drink often at all so even one glass of wine affected her, especially here where it was still hot well into the night. She climbed into bed and pulled her laptop over to her, opening Facebook to check if Jed had come back to her. He hadn’t.

  Disappointed, she scrolled through her newsfeed, thinking that she should message her parents about money to fix John’s truck. When she saw the photo, and the name tagged in it, it took her a few seconds to comprehend.

  A photo of a slender, manicured hand held out close to the camera. A smiling couple, his arms wrapped around her shoulders, her right arm around his waist. She was dressed in a black dress that showed her cleavage. Much more cleavage than Abby had. Curly auburn hair hung about her shoulders. A tall, lanky man wearing a suit was turned in profile and smiling at her. Her ring finger, held close to the camera, was decked in a shiny diamond ring. And Jed’s name. Surrounded by love hearts and emoticons of faces with love heart eyes.

  Abby blinked and took a deep breath. She read the caption on the photo, thinking that maybe she had misunderstood the picture, maybe it was his sister, his friend, some relative.

  So pleased to announce the news that Jed and I are engaged! Jed, you are my soulmate and I’m so excited for the future with you.

  Following this was exactly five love heart pictures and four emoticons of the faces with love hearts. Jed’s name was tagged in the caption. His photo was tagged, too.

  Jed never posted photos on Facebook. He hated it. Never used it as a platform to update others on his life.

  He also never tagged photos of himself on Facebook. He only ever used Messenger.

  Abby felt her breathing quicken and fought to slow it down. There must be some mistake. Jed didn’t have a girlfriend. He had never mentioned a girlfriend. He couldn’t be engaged.

  Abby clicked on the girl’s profile. Her Facebook profile picture was a picture of her and Jed sitting in the sun, on what looked like the edge of a pool in a resort, him holding a beer and her a cocktail. Jed had gone on a holiday last year. To Cabo. He had stayed in a resort. Abby knew this because he had told her. She hadn’t asked him about it, but he’d told her, unprompted, that he’d gone on a boys’ trip.

  Abby felt nauseous, but she couldn’t stop looking now that she’d started. She clicked on the girl’s photos. Her name was Julia. Abby recognized her as a grad student a couple years older than she was. She had met her in the lab before, a year or so ago. She had given Julia a pen because Julia had forgotten hers. She had been friendly. She was extremely pretty. And she was pregnant. The next photo was a shot of an ultrasound. There were over a hundred comments and likes on the photo. Including a rare comment from Jed, saying

  I love you, babe

  Abby closed her laptop. She was breathing in and out far too fast. Her heart was hammering in her chest and she felt like she needed to be sick. She got up quickly and ran to the sink in her bathroom, turned on the cold tap and gulped at the water. Then she crawled back into bed, placed her laptop carefully on the small bedside table, buried her face in her pillow and cried like she had never cried before.

  Chapter Three

  A knock on the door of the lab interrupted Abby from her fantasy of running over a kangaroo that looked a lot like Julia in John’s broken truck.

  Noah let himself in to the room. His long hair was tied up and the sleeves of his t-shirt were rolled up, showing off his tattoos. He gave her a hopeful smile.

  “What are you doing here?” She didn’t want a bar of his smiles or his chatter right now. She wanted to wallow in her misery and imagine ways of making Julia disappear off the face of the planet. Preferably long drawn out and painful ways. She wanted to make Julia suffer just like she was suffering now. Even though it wasn’t Julia’s fault that Jed loved her better than he loved Abby. She still hated Julia for taking what could have been hers. What should have been hers.

  “I was hoping I’d catch you here.”

  “Where else would I be?” Her voice was bitter. She looked down at her notebook. Where else indeed? She had few close friends, and the one who she’d thought was her best friend had just broken her heart. She had nothing but her work left now.

  “You could have been in bed still, drinking coffee and reading a book. Or in the common room playing pool with a bunch of your friends. Off swimming at the beach and looking for turtles. Painting your toenails. Or even out hiking, getting in some practice to go out with me tomorrow.”

  She looked up quickly, surprised. “I, uh, I don’t hike.”

  “It's the same as walking,” he said back, sounding like he was laughing at her again. “It just sounds more fun and adventurous when you call it hiking.”

  “I don’t do fun and adventurous,” she said ungraciously. Maybe that was what was wrong with her. Maybe Julia did fun and adventurous, and that was why Jed had fallen in love with her.

  She fought back the urge to burst into tears again.

  He flung one arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze. “Everyone can do fun and adventurous if they choose. So, how about it? You could clearly use a break. You look like your cat just got run over.”

  It sounded so ridiculous when he put it like that. “I don’t have a cat.”

  “In that case you have nothing to be miserable about.”

  “I’m not miserable,” she lied, and then ruined it immediately by wiping away an errant tear. She was sure he hadn’t noticed. She certainly hoped he hadn’t noticed. It was so unprofessional to cry at work. What on earth would he think of her if he had seen?

  “Great. Neither am I. See what a well-matched pair we are?”

  “What are you doing here anyway?” she repeated, deliberately changing the subject. She wasn’t part of a pair, and she never would be now, and it hurt too much to think about it.

  “I had to go rescue a couple elderly tourists off a boat that was a fair way offshore. One of them had a heart attack and needed to get to hospital ASAP. His wife came with him in the chopper, too, as she was having an anxiety attack from the stress and worry about her husband. I kept them calm on the journey and have just now delivered them both to the tender care of the doctors here, and then I came in search of you.”

  “That sounds stressful.” She would much rather deal with rocks. Small talk was not her forte. Neither was dealing with other people’s emotions. Rocks didn’t have many expectations in that regard. If you looked at them in the right way, they simply told you what they knew.

  “I like it. I like knowing that that nice old fella I picked up today got medical care quicker because I was around and is much more likely to survive because of it. Money can’t buy you that kind of job satisfaction.”

  “I guess so,” she replied, not at all certain about that. She could see the appeal of having a job that helped people, even though it wasn’t really her thing. Her parents would scoff at him as a bleeding-heart do-gooder though, and look down on him for having a job with little chance of winning him fame or fortune. They firmly belie
ved that that sort of service job was for people who couldn’t hack it in the real world of scientific discovery.

  Of course, that meant they looked down on most people. Very few people measured up to their high expectations. Even she, try as she might, didn’t always measure up to them.

  They didn’t look down on Jed, though. He was smart, successful, and getting a name for himself in his field of expertise. Yes, they positively loved Jed. They would be delighted at the thought of having him as their son-in-law.

  Too bad that Julia got there first.

  She clenched her hands into fists, driving her fingernails painfully into the palms of her hands. She wasn't going to obsess about Jed and Julia any more. She absolutely wasn’t.

  “So, are you going to come hiking with me tomorrow or do you have other plans for the weekend?”

  She just wanted to be left alone to be miserable on her own. She didn’t want to be teased and cajoled and flirted with and made to laugh. “I don’t have time. I’ve got lots of work to do.”

  “Weekends are for fun and adventure, not for work. Even super smart scientists like yourself have to take a day off once in a while.”

  Just because he was a slacker didn’t mean that he had to make everyone else into one as well. “I’m busy. Go find someone else who wants to go hiking with you. I’m sure one of your fan club will be more than happy to help you out,” she added snarkily.

  “I told you it was my mission to show you how to let your hair down and have some fun. Well, going hiking is the first step into restyling you from a serious workaholic into a fun and adventurous woman.”

  Maybe he had a point. Julia had never worked desperately hard, as far as she could tell from her limited interactions with her. Not that she was a slacker, but Abby didn’t remember her being in the lab every weekend. She’d obviously taken time off to go on holidays and sit around in the sun drinking cocktails. With Jed. “Well…”