Relapse in Paradise
Page 24
Quinn rested one elbow on the bar and said what she always said. “You’re taking it too personally, Ang. You’ve got to quit falling in love with my subjects.”
“What in the hell is a barista doing with a chainsaw in the first place, huh? Does she moonlight as a lumberjack?”
Quinn wanted to roll her eyes at Angie’s protest but couldn’t. She was too pleased with herself. Her life’s work revolved around inspiring heartfelt emotion in others. More’s the better if the emotions were dark ones like grief and loss.
They were sort of her calling card. “Look, if I wrote Richard into a story to give him a grisly death, I’m afraid he’d notice. He is my agent. And you’d understand why the barista had a chainsaw if you’d bother to finish the book.”
“I can’t, Quinn, I just can’t.” Her best friend sniffed. “You kill everyone I love.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll write you a happy ending one day. Promise.”
Angie went from sniveling to haughty in the space of a single sentence. “The only happy endings these days are in massage parlors.”
Quinn was still laughing when she ended the call and returned the slim black cell phone to the hidden confines of her ball gown.
Her silk strapless Carolina Herrera ball gown.
Every bit of good humor conjured disappeared. Quinn remembered where she sat and how she got there.
Richard, Richard, Richard. He’d really screwed up tonight. Angie’s solution, while amusing, wasn’t pragmatic and wouldn’t solve anything. Quinn nervously rolled the beer bottle between her hands.
The idea of confronting Richard in his office made her queasy. He’d downplay the entire scene and make her out to be a dramatic prude. The smoothness she counted on for publishing negotiations would come back to bite her when she found herself looking down the barrel of it rather than grinning smugly from behind it, but what were her choices?
She had to make a stand. She needed to put him in his place, be the iron fist of the feminine movement.
Then again, there wasn’t much determined avoidance couldn’t patch up. Key West was fabulous this time of year. Cabanas, boat drinks, palm trees, and pool boys.
When had she last gone on vacation? Disneyland three years ago. With Blake. Quinn didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to daydream about pool boys. For research, of course. She was far too old for a pool boy.
She’d need a pool man.
“You don’t match.”
For an instant, the deep voice coming from behind stunned her. Since she sat virtually alone on her side of the L-shaped bar, she had no choice but to accept the man—a pool man if her luck had improved any—intended the words for her. Some drunken fool trying to succeed where Richard failed. What had she been thinking staying here? She should’ve picked up a bottle of tequila and moved this pity party to the privacy of her hotel room.
He had an accent, although she couldn’t place the dialect. Definitely European. Rather than turn around right away to face her new visitor, she took a long, hard look at the beer bottle in her hand. Too soon to order her third? She wanted fuzzy, not pickled.
She’d put it off long enough. Quinn swung around on the tail end of an eye roll to greet Bachelor Number Two. The smart reply she had ready died on her lips.