Start Me Up

by Victoria Dahl

  “They kept you overnight at the hospital?”

  “Just for observation,” Lori muttered.

  Circling the couch, he finally got a look at her. Eyes swollen and skin pale, she cradled her hand, encased in a bright white cast, against her chest. Some of his anger wanted to crumble like sand. Quinn tried to shore it up.

  “What the hell is going on, Lori?” When she shrugged, his anger stopped crumbling and solidified to concrete. “I missed you today,” he growled. “I missed you and you wouldn’t answer my calls, and I wanted to feel some connection, so I called Ben just to fish for news about you. I wasn’t expecting to hear that you were in the hospital.”

  She stared at her lap.

  “I wanted to feel a connection. How fucking stupid was that?”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but it’s not your business.”

  Despite her brutal words, he was overwhelmed with the sudden urge to touch her. Still furious, he laid a gentle hand against the side of her face to assure himself that she was fine. “Lori. I can’t believe someone hurt you.”

  “It was my fault. An accident.”

  “But somebody did this. More than once, according to Ben. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He gritted his teeth. “You don’t know? Or you don’t care to tell me?”

  Her face finally tilted up and her dull eyes met his. She very pointedly said nothing.

  Quinn latched on to what he’d overheard. “Does this have something to do with your property?”

  The skin around her eyes tightened almost imperceptibly. “Why don’t you ask some of your developer friends about that?”

  That seemed such an inexplicable shift of topic, Quinn felt momentarily dizzy. “Why would my developer friends be interested in Love’s Garage? Not that it’s not…special.”

  “Never mind. There’s no way to tell who’s done this. It’s just vandalism, just kids, probably. I was stupid enough to get myself injured. Nobody hurt me.”

  “This isn’t just vandalism—”

  “It is. Ask Ben. Hell, it could be some kid I turned in for drunk driving after an accident. Who knows?”

  Muscles burning, Quinn began to pace the short length of her living room. The sight of the ugly moss rock hearth made him madder still. “You’re in danger. Regardless of how you feel about me and my inconvenient interest in your life, I’m staying here.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m not going to leave you alone.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Quinn spun around and glared at Lori. “What the hell is wrong with you? We’ve been friends for years. You need help. Let me help you. Don’t tell me a damn thing if that’s the way you want it, but let me stay.”

  She reached out slowly for the chenille throw and wrapped it around her body, the cast making the movements awkward. Nearly a full minute passed while she tucked it beneath her legs and fiddled with the edges. She didn’t look at him when she spoke.

  “My garage is ruined. It’s going to cost thousands of dollars to get it back in working order. My septic tank is full of oil. Some of the oil leaked out into the gravel, so I have to pay the EPA to monitor my soil and test my well for the next couple of years.

  “The insurance company finds the whole thing ‘suspicious,’ so God only knows how long they’ll take to pay whatever they’re willing to pay. And I’ve got to find some way to get everything up and running, or I can’t pay my workers. I’ll lose the trucks. I’ll…”

  He took a step toward her, but she shook her head.

  “I just want to be alone, okay? I can’t do this right now, Quinn. I can’t do anything right now, so please go away and leave me alone.”

  His anger tumbled into alarm. She was serious. She’d rather be alone and in danger than with him. “Please let me stay. Or at least go sleep at Molly’s. Just don’t stay here by yourself, damn it. Please.”

  Her good hand emerged from the cocoon of the blanket and rubbed at her eyes. She seemed to consider his perfectly reasonable request for a long while.

  “Fine,” she muttered, and the beast clawing through his chest paused to listen. “You can sleep on the couch.” Without a glance in his direction, Lori lurched to her feet and swiped a prescription bottle off the coffee table. “I’m going to bed. My hand hurts.”

  She shuffled away.

  “Hey,” he called, “have you eaten anything today?”

  Her only answer was the slamming of the bedroom door. Pitifully, this did nothing to ruin his relief. He could stay. He could watch over a woman who didn’t want him around and find out what the hell was going on.

  After grabbing Lori’s keys off the table, Quinn headed for the front door. He’d take a quick look around the grounds, grab his overnight bag from the car, and then he’d call Ben and threaten a law enforcement officer with physical injury in an attempt to get more information.

  But instead of hunting down the creep who’d been harassing Lori, Quinn stepped onto the sidewalk and ran straight into his turncoat sister.

  Molly grabbed his arm. “How is she doing?”

  “She’s fine. She doesn’t want to see anyone.”

  “You’re not leaving her alone, are you?”

  “No, I’m not leaving her alone! And you’d damn well better start apologizing or there’s a good possibility I’ll never speak to you again.”

  Molly crossed her arms. “She asked me not to call you. What was I supposed to do?”

  His throat burned with remembered panic. “Call me.”

  “I wanted to, Quinn. I swear I wanted to. But she said you were on your way out of town and…Well, you’re not really her boyfriend, are you?”

  “Yeah, thanks. I’ve heard that a little too often in the past few days. I’m just an emotionless sex worker. I get the message.”

  “I’m sorry!” She reached for his arm again, but Quinn shook her off.

  “If you want to make it up to me, send your boyfriend over here. I want to know what the hell is really going on.”

  Molly, regret seemingly forgotten, rolled her eyes. “He’s not going to reveal any ‘official police business,’ not even to you.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Ooo, tough guy,” she muttered, then quick-stepped backward when she caught his glare. “Fine, I’ll send Ben over. Tell Lori I’ll come by later.”

  Quinn nodded, but he was already heading toward the back. The police couldn’t be here all the time, and Lori Love needed his protection, whether she wanted it or not.

  A FULL TEN HOURS after she’d fallen asleep, Lori woke up, still groggy. Her heart had traveled to her broken hand while she was unconscious, and it beat there, larger and stronger than it had been when it lived in her chest.

  Reaching blindly for the bottle of pills she’d set on her bedside table, Lori fumbled until her fingers closed around it. “Thank God,” she breathed, gripping it so tightly that it bent inward. She was still chasing the pill down with water when the phone rang. Not her cell phone. That had been ruined in the oil. She grabbed the cordless phone from its base with an infuriated growl.

  “Yeah?”

  “Lori Love?” a woman’s voice asked in a very professional tone. A lawyer who’d heard rumors of a work-place accident, perhaps?

  “Yeah.”

  “Lori, are you all right? Mr. Jennings said you’d been injured in an accident.”

  “Oh, hey, Jane. I’m okay. I broke my hand, but I’m fine.” She lay back down on the bed to wait for the painkiller to kick in. She’d timed it at seventeen minutes the night before. Amazing that only two bones had fractured; it felt more like twenty.

  Jane was saying something, but Lori had zoned out. “I’m sorry, Jane, what did you say?”

  “I said maybe I should call you back tomorrow.”

  “No, I’m good. I haven’t had any coffee, but I should be okay.”

  “All right, well, I wanted to tell you that I remembered what I’d overheard. About highw
ay nineteen?”

  Lori’s eyes blinked open. “Seriously?”

  “It’s not much, but…Have you ever met Harry Bliss?”

  “He actually goes by Harry Bliss?”

  Jane snorted. “Yeah. Anyway, maybe because of his name, he’s a bit of a blowhard. He talks too loud and likes to look important. He’s always on his cell phone. A couple of months ago, he was in the office waiting for Mr. Jennings to show up for a meeting and he got a phone call. If Mr. Bliss doesn’t want people to eavesdrop, he shouldn’t leave the volume turned up to walkie-talkie levels.”

  Lori nodded, as if that would encourage Jane.

  It seemed to work. Jane took a deep breath and her voice lowered considerably. “The man on the other end said ‘the committee is open to the reclassification of highway nineteen.’ Do you know what that means?”

  “Reclassification?” Lori frowned. “No.”

  “Well, Mr. Bliss said if it happened, it would probably happen in December, and they’d have to move before then or too many people would know. He specifically said, ‘Every Tom, Dick and Harry will have their finger in the pie.’”

  “The pie?” This didn’t give her any more info at all. “Did they say anything more about this reclassification?”

  “No, that was it. I’m sorry. I was hoping it would mean something to you.”

  Lori threw her good arm over her eyes. “I don’t think it does. But it’s a good starting point. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome. I hope it helps with…whatever it is you’re doing.”

  Despite her pain, Lori managed a smile. “I promise to fill you in as soon as I figure it all out. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  She hung up and took a deep breath against the pain.

  Okay. Things were urgent now. She couldn’t screw around any longer.

  Lori had never thought of her debt as a mountain, the way they showed it in those debt-relief commercials. Mountains were majestic and gorgeous. Deadly, yes, but chilling in their beauty. No, her debt was a mine shaft sinking her deeper and deeper beneath the rocky spine of the world. Every day that passed, the interest dripped, wearing away the stone like water. Every week brought new explosions that dropped her another hundred feet. And the gravity was so heavy down here, pressing her into something small and hard. She just couldn’t handle it anymore.

  Despite that the pain meds hadn’t quite kicked in, Lori forced herself from bed. She ran a bath because she couldn’t get her cast wet, but she didn’t spend any time soaking. Instead she simply washed up, pulled on her capripants and a tank top and headed out.

  The sight of Quinn asleep on her couch stopped her dead in her tracks. Somehow she’d lost track of that confrontation during the night, and she’d lost her will to fight him, as well. Perhaps because he looked vulnerable and sweet with his feet hanging off the end of the sofa and his arm stretched wide toward the coffee table. He just looked like Quinn, and not some threat to her heart.

  He must have been up half the night if he was still sleeping so hard, so Lori tiptoed past to grab her keys and get out. She might not know anything about a reclassification of the highway, but she now had just enough information to find out. And not a moment too soon. Whether or not Ben solved the mystery of what had happened to her dad, she had to sell that land. There was no longer any choice. Any sentimentality she’d had left had drowned in that pool of oil in her garage.

  The drive to Aspen struck her as particularly beautiful today. Maybe because the painkillers had kicked in, maybe because she’d spent too many hours in bed. Regardless, she felt strangely peaceful as she pulled up to the three-story office building and let herself in. There was no security guard or receptionist, just a board listing the names of the occupants. Lori found the one she wanted and headed for the second floor.

  When she opened the door to Chris Tipton’s office, her peace burned away in the furnace blast of shock. Un-fucking-believable.

  “Yes?” the skinny blonde asked in a dismissive tone.

  Tessa, Lori thought. Tessa Smith, otherwise known as Dream-Whore Barbie. The woman raised perfectly waxed eyebrows as Lori continued to stare.

  “Uh, sorry,” Lori stammered, then shook it off. Tessa Smith and her very round breasts had nothing to do with her today. “I need to see Chris Tipton, please.”

  “Christopher Tipton isn’t available at the moment, but I’d be happy to deliver a message.”

  Christopher, she scoffed inside her head, but only offered a polite smile. “Is Christopher in? I’m certain he’d be interested in talking with me if he is.”

  Her eyebrows rose even higher, her shiny mouth turned down. “Mr. Tipton is in a meeting.”

  “Just pull him out and tell him Lori Love wants to talk, all right? It’s important.” If she’d been hoping to see a flash of jealous horror on the woman’s face, she’d hoped in vain. Of course Tessa Smith had never heard of Lori. Mechanics didn’t often make it to the society page, and Tessa didn’t look like the type to read the Tumble Creek Tribune.

  Tessa didn’t even seem particularly put out by the request. “Well, give me a minute then. I’ll see what he says.” When she stood, she towered over Lori. The heels she was wearing pushed her nearly to six feet. Were they all that tall?

  Whatever jealousy Lori might have been feeling turned into something more like pain. This was Aspen, where even receptionists looked like models. Where women still wore mink coats and men owned private jets. Quinn fit in here. He was an artist commissioned by royalty. But this was no place for her, even if she could get up the courage to fall for Quinn.

  Tessa Smith reappeared from the hallway she’d stepped into, a welcoming smile pasted on her face. “Mr. Tipton will be out in just a moment. Please have a seat.”

  But before Lori even had a chance to look around for a chair, Chris came striding around the corner. “Lori Love!” he called.

  “Chris,” she answered, just to let him know that he might be wearing an expensive suit and calling himself “Christopher,” but she remembered that he used to French-kiss his own fist in sixth grade. When he pulled her into a hug, she remembered the time he’d kissed her in seventh grade. He hadn’t worn such nice cologne back then.

  “Come on into my office. Tessa, would you bring in some mineral water for Ms. Love?”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” she protested.

  He was handsome in a used-car-salesman kind of way. Too smooth for her taste, but when he put his hand on her lower back and walked her toward his office, she didn’t protest. If he wanted her charmed, she’d act charmed.

  “What happened to your arm, Lori?”

  “It’s my hand, actually.” She watched him from the corner of her eye. “There was an accident at my shop.”

  “Yikes. That sounds ominous.”

  “This is the worst of it.”

  He looked guileless as he led her into his office, but used-car salesmen usually did. “So,” he said as he took a seat behind his shiny desk. “I’m hoping you’re here to talk about your land. Not that I wouldn’t welcome a visit otherwise.”

  “Right. Well, lucky for you, I am here to talk about the land.”

  “Wow. I can’t thank you enough for coming to me with this.”

  “No problem, but you might not be thanking me in a minute.”

  His smile didn’t budge. “Why not?”

  “Because I know about the talk of reclassifying highway nineteen.”

  This time, the smile definitely dropped a notch. “The what?”

  Lori crossed her legs and wished she’d thought to wear a dress and heels so she could play the part of high-powered landowner more convincingly. “Come on, Chris. If you want to play games with me, I’ll go to Anton/Bliss. They seem pretty serious about getting that lot. Maybe they’ll be willing to treat me with respect.”

  The smile headed down two more notches and became a straight line. “I take this seriously. What do you want?”

  “I want a legitimate offer, no
t the crap I’ve been handed before.” She brushed a piece of imaginary lint off her pant leg. “We both know this reclassification could change everything.”

  “Jesus. How did you find out about it?”

  “How did I find out that you’ve been trying to cheat me?”

  Chris leaned back in his chair, looking a bit deflated as he reached into a desk drawer for a bottle of water. “Look, I wasn’t trying to cheat you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Give me a break, Lori. There’s no guarantee the state will agree to improvements. Winter maintenance alone could approach a million a year. Buying your land is still a huge gamble at this point. It could all fall through.”

  Winter maintenance? Whoa! “They’re going to keep the pass open all year,” she breathed, not quite believing it. If they opened the pass, that would change everything, and not just for her.

  He stared at her for a long moment, a bit of the color leaving his face. “Goddamn it. I can’t believe I just did that. You didn’t know, did you? You totally played me.”

  “I knew something, just not everything. And it’s my damn land anyway, so pardon me for screwing you over.”

  He had the decency to smile at her, even if it did border on a smirk. “Hell, I wasn’t going to get the land anyway. Anton/Bliss has a heck of a lot more capital and clout than my firm does. My best hope was that you’d sell to me because I’ve known you for years.”

  “Huh. Well, I don’t really play by the hearts and unicorns rules of business, so you wouldn’t have had much luck there.”

  His wide smile was back. “It was bound to get out anyway. Too many people know about the rumors already. Offers are being made to other landowners. You got hit first because yours was the best undeveloped lot. Riverfront, totally level, right-of-way access that runs through public land, large enough to be broken up into two dozen lots, if need be.”

  She nodded, trying to absorb it all.

  “Fly-fishing cottages are the new thing for the wealthy. Skiing in the winter. Fishing in the summer. All of it within commuting distance of an airport and five-star restaurants. Of course, these rich guys always overestimate the amount of free time they have. The caretakers spend more time in the house than they do.”