Start Me Up

by Victoria Dahl

  She didn’t disagree. She couldn’t. So she just got out, calmly closed the door, and walked into her father’s house alone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “You can’t love me,” she groaned, bowed under the pain of the idea. When he’d found her she’d been broken and used. A trollop thrown out like rubbish in the alley. And now she might be cleaned up and beautiful, but no amount of soap could make her pure.

  Sebastian might want her, but he couldn’t possibly love her. She wouldn’t let him.

  “I do love you,” he whispered. “And you will be my wife.”

  Anna shook her head and pulled him back down into the tousled sheets. She kissed him to hide her sorrow, opened her body to his. He let her have her way for now, and that was all she needed. In the morning she’d be gone, and Sebastian would give up these foolish notions of love.

  LORI CLOSED THE BOOK with a sigh. Reading just wasn’t the same anymore. None of the heroes were as interesting as Quinn, and the sex wasn’t nearly as hot as what she’d had this summer.

  The third week of October and snow was already falling. The pass was closed. The idea stirred up a dull ache in her chest.

  She’d been doing well though. Really well. She’d come to terms with what Quinn had said to her, probably because most of it had been true.

  Lori was scared. She’d been scared for years, ever since her father’s injury. Little bits of her courage were scattered across the country. Some of it in Boston where she’d received the phone call. Some of it floating high in the sky in the trail of the plane that had flown her home. But most of it had fallen away in Grand Valley in the hospital where she’d spent weeks by her dad’s side.

  When she’d left Tumble Creek, left her father, something bad had happened. That logic had been seared into her head, along with the mantra If only I’d stayed. So even after his death, the idea that she might just trot away and try again had given her a cold chill. But with no money to make her way in the world, she hadn’t had to face that terror. Lori didn’t have that luxury any longer.

  Joe had created a living trust in her name. Her first instinct had been to turn her back on the money and pretend it wasn’t there. But when she’d realized the amount in the trust was almost the exact amount of her father’s outstanding medical bills…Well, it had only been right that Joe’s money go toward those expenses. She hoped it would bring his ghost some peace.

  Lori had found some peace for herself, surprisingly enough. Just knowing what had happened to her dad had relieved a hollow burning she hadn’t even known was there. Even a painful truth was better than no truth at all.

  She’d been able to pack the trophies away and take down those horrid paintings her dad had loved. She’d thrown out the burnt orange curtains and raised the blinds. And then she hadn’t been able to stop. Pale yellow paint, a midnight-blue cover for the couch, a pretty crystal lamp she’d found at the outlet mall.

  Her bedroom was even brighter with its stark white comforter and brown-and-pink pillows. The bathroom had been a problem. Retiling had seemed a bigger project than she could handle, but she had dared to pry out the countertop and replace it with faux granite and a brushed nickel faucet. To offset the pink tile, she’d papered the wall in pinstripes of pink and brown.

  Thoughts of Quinn had kept her company in that bathroom, of course. There’d been no avoiding him. How many times had she thought of calling him to laugh at the sparkly gold countertop or the even more horrid wallpaper she’d found beneath the flocking? How many times had she picked up the phone?

  She missed him. She missed him every day. As brief as their affair had been, it had been imprinted on her soul. He hadn’t just been a fling. There was a small possibility she’d actually believed that at the time, but now there was no escaping the truth. She was in love with Quinn Jennings, or damn near close to it.

  But one truth did not cancel out another. Her life was still a sticky mess, and falling in love wouldn’t make it any better. She had to figure her life out for herself.

  And she was. The land was up for sale, overseen by the savviest real estate lawyer she could find. An equity line had given her enough cash to give a small severance package to her last full-time employees when she closed the garage for good. The oil cleanup was slow, but nearly completed. The last thing on her plate was a plowing contract to fulfill for the town this winter, but after that…Well, after that her life would change somehow, whether she was ready or not.

  As for today…she had absolutely nothing to do unless the ground suddenly froze and let snow pile up on the road. Lori stared out the window, hating the fat white flakes. Somehow it had been easy not to reach out to him when she knew she had the option. But now the idea scratched from the inside of her skull.

  Lori stretched out on her fake-suede couch cover and stared hard at the ceiling. She was busy getting her life together. If she was still around next May, then maybe she’d drive over the pass and knock on Quinn’s door. Maybe she’d ask him to dinner. Maybe she’d be ready.

  But what if a buxom blonde answered the door?

  “Jeez Louise.” May was seven months away, and what were the chances that Quinn wouldn’t stumble into some other woman’s bed in that time, even accidentally? Just the thought made her stomach hurt.

  She had to press a hand to her belly to keep it from turning, but she wouldn’t call him. There was no point. Her life was in flux and would be for a while. And though he’d been an arrogant ass, she hadn’t exactly been Mary Sunshine. Hell, he’d probably said good riddance and moved on already.

  He could be giving some girl a cyber-tour of his house at this very moment.

  “Oh, God,” Lori groaned, and grabbed one of her soft yellow pillows to press it to her face.

  Even if he’s dating, she told herself, he doesn’t mean it. She’d gotten flowers on her birthday two weeks before. No card, no signature. Just a huge bouquet of dozens of Gerbera daisies. They could only have come from Quinn. She’d cried, but she hadn’t called him. And she wouldn’t call him now.

  She wouldn’t.

  Desperate for distraction, she inched the pillow off her face and grabbed the latest Tribune. The gossip headline only made her feel worse. Local Realtor confirms she’s dating former football star Juan Jimenez. “We have a lot in common,” Helen Stowe claims. Helen had finally done it. She’d risked everything for Juan. She was holding her head high and marching bravely into love.

  Lori dropped the paper and pressed the pillow back to her face. The cotton muffled the world pretty effectively, but she was sure she could hear those damned snowflakes sliding down the glass of her front window, mocking her.

  “HEY, IDIOT,” his sister said cheerfully over the phone.

  Quinn scowled at the sketch on his desk. “What do you want?”

  “I just thought I’d call to see how you’re doing. I worry about you.”

  He snorted. “Since when?”

  Molly didn’t answer.

  “Look.” He sighed. “I’m fine. Never better.”

  “Quinn, the last time I saw you, you looked like an umbrella.”

  “O-kay…You’re not making any sense at all. Is Ben keeping your prescriptions filled?”

  “An um-ber-el-la,” she said slowly, emphasizing more syllables than were actually in the word, as if that would give it more meaning.

  Quinn grunted.

  “You’re skinny as a rail but your shoulders are freak-ishly wide. An umbrella.”

  “Jeez. Thanks.” He glanced over at his left shoulder. Okay, he’d had to have a few suits taken in at the waist. But surely he didn’t look freakish. He was just having more trouble than normal sleeping. “Anyway, thanks for calling.”

  “Quinn!” she yelled before he could set the phone down. He raised it warily back to his ear. “She’s doing really well. Why don’t you call her?”

  “No,” he answered, and hung up before she could say more. Molly had been outraged at his stupidity. You actually told her she didn�
�t have a life? She’d called him a clod and an idiot and worse than that.

  At some point it had begun to sink in that he’d acted like a dick. He’d lived through so many failed relationships that when he felt as if he’d found the right one, it had been so clear to him. So obvious. And somehow he’d failed to see that it might not be so clear to Lori.

  Pure stupidity.

  The girl had been through hell and back in the past year. The loss of her father, the destruction of her business, the ultimate betrayal of a man who’d been like an uncle. Quinn had had no business pressuring her like that. He’d been an idiot and ruined everything, and there was no way he was going to crawl back and pressure her again.

  Well, not right now anyway. Maybe in a few months. Maybe next year. Definitely when he read about her dating somebody in the online edition of the Tumble Creek Tribune. Luckily that hadn’t happened yet.

  Time. He owed her that at least. But he would try again.

  In the past, the longer any one relationship went on, the more and more time he devoted to work. That hadn’t been happenstance. He was the one ending things, escaping from a connection once it got too deep. Fading away until the other person gave up.

  But with Lori…He didn’t want to lose himself in architecture. It wasn’t that he couldn’t work. It wasn’t that he was slumped over his desk, fading away. He could work just fine, thank you. But the moment he set down his pencil, he thought of her. When he finished a project, she was the one he wanted to show it to.

  When he’d dated in the past, he would look up from hours of concentration and think, “Oh, shit, I’m late and she’s going to be pissed.” But now he expected to look up and see Lori standing there smiling and tapping her foot.

  She understood him.

  Too bad he hadn’t taken the time to understand her.

  “Time,” he murmured. That was all she needed.

  After a glance out at the lazy snowflakes, Quinn began to pack up. Time for a swim and then more work.

  “Good night, Mr. Jennings,” Jane said as he passed her desk.

  “Any meetings tomorrow?”

  “Nothing tomorrow,” she replied.

  Hand on the door, Quinn stopped and looked back at Jane. “Do you think I look like an umbrella?”

  Her eyes went wide and she shook her head, but Quinn saw the way her gaze darted to his shoulders. Sighing, he slumped against the closed door. “I screwed things up, Jane. Badly. I just want to give her some time.”

  Jane’s face softened, losing all its stiff professionalism. Lori had been right. Jane was pretty. “Okay, but don’t take too long. I like her. And she’s the only woman who chases the thoughts from your eyes.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and walked out into the snowy day. But just as he reached his car, the snow stopped. While he stood there, one hand on the roof, the sun came out. Quinn looked toward the mountain pass that led to Tumble Creek. It sparkled.

  Lori had closed the garage permanently. He’d seen that in the Tribune a couple of weeks before. And Molly said she was doing really, really well.

  It had been five weeks. Maybe she’d had enough time.

  Quinn thought back to those books she liked. There weren’t any damsels in distress in those stories, but there weren’t any wussy heroes, either. Lori didn’t need saving anymore, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ride up on a stallion and ask if she wanted a ride.

  “A stallion,” he muttered in disgust. He’d clearly read one too many of those books in the name of research.

  But then Quinn thought of something. Something big. And yellow. Something powerful enough to get over a snowy mountain pass and nimble enough to maneuver around the snow gates. And most importantly, something Lori wanted to ride.

  He’d promised her a bonus for her work and then never delivered. He couldn’t live with that all winter, could he? She was counting on him.

  Confident that he had the perfect excuse to see Lori Love, Quinn opened the door of his car, threw in his portfolio, and rode off into the sunset.

  LORI PACKED another VHS tape into the big box and tried not to wince. It hurt to get rid of her travel tapes, but it was the next thing on her list, and she was sticking to it. If there was one sure sign someone was stuck in the past, it was a collection of VHS tapes. Lori wiped her dusty hand on her sweatpants and grabbed another tape.

  Greece. Cringing, she tossed it in the box.

  The posters were long gone, rolled up in tubes and stuffed in the closet. She’d have pictures of her own soon. She didn’t need posters. She’d go through the books next and get rid of any that were more than five years old.

  The last VHS tape fit neatly in the box. Lori stood up and looked around. “Damn, I’m kind of awesome.”

  Dust motes danced crazily under the force of her words, so she moved her awesome ass to the window and heaved it open. The snow had stopped and it was close to fifty degrees. Beautiful. As she looked out at the wet, happy dandelions that were already encroaching on the unused lot, something rumbled in the distance.

  Lori frowned and leaned closer to the glass. A deep sputtering sound echoed down the street, then faded away. Shrugging, she was just starting to turn back to her work when something yellow flashed between the hardware store and the gas station. She paused and watched the top of her fence line out of curiosity. From this side of the house, she couldn’t see the front of her lot, just the very corner of the wooden fence that surrounded it.

  Something tall and metal and yellow slid past. Gravel crunched as if it were turning in. Then the awful sputtering stopped.

  “Huh,” she breathed. Maybe someone wanted to slip her a hundred dollars to tune up a bulldozer or something. She was watching the side lot closely when Quinn walked into her vision.

  Lori jumped back and frowned at the windowsill. For a couple of weeks there, she’d thought she’d seen him everywhere. At the grocery store, at the diner, even passing by in a car full of teenagers. But those had been brief glimpses of men with light brown hair and wide shoulders. She’d never hallucinated him entirely before.

  Holding her breath, Lori leaned forward to look again, and the doorbell suddenly chimed. Her forehead hit the window with a sharp crack. “Oh, my God!”

  It couldn’t be him, could it? She was wearing red sweatpants, for God’s sake. And he couldn’t be here anyway. The pass was closed.

  She’d finally lost it. The stress of the past year had been too much.

  The stoop wasn’t visible from here, but she pressed her face hard to the glass, regardless, straining to see. It was just the bulldozer driver. Or it was just the UPS guy, and the sun had hit him in some weird way that added five inches of height and a few more of shoulder. Or…

  Lori gasped.

  Maybe it was the driver of an old, beat-up backhoe.

  A man stepped backward, head tilted up. “Lori, is that you?”

  “Ah!” She stumbled back from Quinn’s voice. Not only was she wearing red sweatpants, but she’d had her cheek squished against the window like a two-year-old making faces. How was she supposed to present a vision of burgeoning success now?

  No, no, no. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. She’d planned to casually drop by his place next summer. She would just happen to be wearing tight jeans and expensive heels. She’d mention her trip to Europe as if it were nothing. She’d be wearing the right day-of-the-week underwear for once.

  Oh, God, it was Friday and she was wearing Thursday. A perfect storm.

  “Lori?” he called.

  She dropped the pants. And the underwear. “Just a second!” Naked from the waist down, she raced out the door and down the steps. The window was open, so she ran faster, hoping he’d keep staring at the second story. She nearly fell when she got to the bottom step, but held back a scream by sheer force of will. She would not be found sprawled at the bottom of the stairs wearing only tube socks and a tank top.

  She spotted her jeans on the floor as soon as she hit her bedroom and tugged them on
in record time. “One second!” she screamed as she sprinted for the bathroom to pat her hair into something bearable. She swiped the sweat off her forehead, took a deep breath and went to answer the door.

  Quinn looked very troubled when she tugged the door open so hard it slammed into the far wall. His smile looked a little sick. “Um, hi.”

  “Hi!” she said too brightly.

  He glanced past her. “Is this a bad time?”

  “No, not at all!”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure, I’m great!”

  His eyes traveled down to her chest and back up. “You’re, um, kind of breathing hard. Do you…Am I interrupting something?” He looked behind her again, his jaw tightening.

  “No, I just ran down the stairs and…” Wait a minute, did he think she’d been having sex? Lori smiled. “Whoever he is, he’ll wait. What can I do for you?”

  Quinn’s eyes snapped back to her face. “What?”

  She laughed, wheezing a little since she was already panting. “I’m just cleaning, you dork.”

  “Oh,” he said. Then “Oh!” again as a wide smile spread over his face. “Okay, good. I just wanted to…Uh, I hope you don’t mind me stopping by.”

  “Not at all,” she chirped. “What’s up?”

  “I told you I’d bring you the backhoe, so…”

  “Really?”

  He swept his hand out and Lori darted out onto the sidewalk so that she could see past the corner of the house. “Oh, my God! You’re going to let me use it?”

  “I am. It’s your bonus, remember? I’m done working for the season, so I thought I’d…” He paused to clear his throat. “You know. Just drop it by.”

  “But how did you get over the pass?”

  “It’s got a lot of traction. It wasn’t that bad.”

  She shook her head, eyeing the snow stuck deep in the backhoe’s tracks. “But isn’t the pass closed?”

  “Um…yeah.” He pushed the hair off his forehead and Lori’s heart flipped at the gesture. “I kind of drove around the gate. The snow isn’t that deep yet. And, all right, it was terrifying.”