Claiming Kara [Fate Harbor 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Caitlyn O'Leary

  “Uh-oh.” Kara didn’t like the way her friend said that.

  “Let me guess, they’re headed this way,” Kara guessed.

  “Yep. Do you want me to get Jace and Dale to throw them out?”

  “No. If they’ve moved here, I might as well get this over with.” Kara lifted her head off the table and turned around.

  * * * *

  “Please, just listen to Quinn, Kara,” Ben said as Kara rubbed her temples. She didn’t know how she had ended up in their apartment in the first place. She just didn’t want to have her personal business served up as fodder for the whole town, so she’d agreed to leave Hart’s. “Are you okay? Does your head hurt? Do you need an aspirin?”

  “What I need are answers!” Damn, she shouldn’t yell, it made her head hurt. “What I need are answers,” she said in a quiet voice. “I thought you left three weeks ago, and instead I find you eating breakfast at Hart’s. What the hell is going on?” She shifted her gaze to Quinn, knowing he was the ringleader.

  “We bought the charter business.” She must have fallen down and hit her head. That’s why it hurt. She was having some kind of hallucination. She shook her head, trying to clear it. She continued to stare at Quinn.

  When he didn’t say anything more, she finally asked him, “Did you just say you bought a charter business? Where? Up in Alaska?”

  “Nope, we bought Kuba Charters. We’re in the process of getting the boats refurbished, then we’re going to start taking customers. We already have reservations booked for the first month of business.” She would have expected Quinn to grin, like he had pulled one over on her, but instead he said it in a very steady and matter-of-fact manner.

  “Kuba, wasn’t that Mr. Burke’s business?”

  “Yeah, we’ve been talking to him for the last five months. He wanted to retire, but it was important to him that he could trust the people who took over his business. He wanted the name to continue, and we wanted to buy a business that already had a solid reputation. So it was a good deal for both of us.”

  Kara just sat in the chair feeling like she had been hit with a two-by-four. She didn’t know what was more amazing, the fact that they had been considering this for five months, or that they went through with it even after she had rejected them. She just sat there, looking at him. Finally, she looked over at Ben, and he just gave her a solemn nod. She continued to sit until she realized she had probably been in the chair for over five minutes without saying a word. She stood up, and they both did, as well.

  “Well, thank you. That explains that. I’ll see you around.” She started for the door.

  “Wait!” It was Quinn. She couldn’t wait, she had to leave. She had to leave now. Her hand desperately reached for the doorknob. She turned and pulled, but it didn’t work. She tried again. She had to leave. Desperate, she turned the latch above the knob, but it made no difference, and that was when she saw the hand above her head, holding the door shut. Kara leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door in defeat.

  “Need to go, Quinn,” she whispered into the wood.

  “Wrong brother,” Ben whispered into her ear. She turned her head and laid her cheek against the door so she could see Ben. She found herself surrounded by the curtain of his hair, so that they were cut off from the world, staring into one another’s eyes.

  “Need to go, Ben.”

  “You might want to go, Kara. You don’t need to go. Why do you want to go? Why can’t three people who were friends once just talk? We’re going to live in the same town, from now on.” She could smell the shampoo he used and the hint of spice that was Ben. Why did she have the urge to plunge her nose into his neck and just take a deep breath?

  “We’re way past the point of friendship.”

  “So, for the next twenty years, we’re just going to ignore each other?” Twenty years?

  She looked back up into Ben’s eyes. They were so warm and caring. “Why did you move here?”

  “Because of you. Because we had a plan.” His eyes stayed steady on hers.

  “Ben, you knew I was serious, right?” Kara asked in an even lower voice. She realized this was the brother who would understand her and wouldn’t try to roll over her thoughts and feelings without any regard.

  “I know to the bottom of my heart that you meant every word you said. You were done with us.”

  “Are done,” she corrected. Ben took a step back, and Kara could now see that both brothers were standing side by side, blocking out all other things from her view.

  “You’re right, Kara. Our relationship is in the past, and there will never be a day that I won’t mourn that.” It was easy to see the truth etched across the plane of Quinn’s face. “But our lives aren’t over. Ben and I realized that just because part of our dream isn’t going to come true doesn’t mean we have to abandon all of it.”

  “But why here?” she cried, then grimaced at the sound of her own voice. Where they decided to start a business shouldn’t matter to her. She was relieved to see that neither of them smiled at her show of emotion. Maybe, just maybe, they were done, as well.

  “Kara, we’re here because we love it here. We planned to make Fate Harbor our home years ago. You know we want a triad relationship, and it’s even more accepted here than in Sitka.” Kara willed her stomach not to clench at the idea of them finding another woman, but she couldn’t stop the acid from churning.

  “Ben’s right. We desperately wanted that woman to be you. To be honest, we still do, Kara. But I’ve come to realize just how badly I fucked up with you. Right now it’s still a raw wound, because for me, this breakup only happened three weeks ago. But now, I understand that loving you means I have to listen to and respect your wishes. You want us to leave you alone, so that’s what we’ll do…for now. But we have to at least be cordial, don’t we? After all, we will be neighbors.”

  Kara’s head was spinning. She didn’t know what was freaking her out the most. The fact that Quinn Shotbrook was talking about listening and respecting her feelings, or that they were going to be neighbors and needed to be cordial. She threw a desperate look toward Ben, who just grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Kara had absolutely nothing to say to that, so she just turned and left.

  * * * *

  It had been a week since they had seen Kara at Hart’s, and Ben still couldn’t help but grin at Kara’s shock when she realized Quinn was actually listening to her. Unfortunately, Quinn didn’t realize just how much progress that showed. He was sitting morosely, nursing his beer at McCann’s. It had been their sixth straight day of hard labor. They’d paid for a lot of the refurbishment of the two boats, but when it came to the details, they both agreed they wanted to take care of them.

  “She’s never going to come around.”

  “Kara came over to our apartment and listened to us. That was a huge step, Quinn.” Ben took another bite of the sliders. They were going to have to get another order, maybe two, if Quinn ever decided to eat some.

  “She still doesn’t want to have anything to do with us.” The onion rings were great, too. Ben nodded for the waiter to come over and placed another order of food.

  “Would you like another round of beers?” the man asked.

  “Nope, the drinking portion of our evening is at an end,” Ben said with a grin. Quinn gave him a hard look but didn’t say anything.

  “What the hell was that about?” Quinn demanded after the waiter left.

  “I’m sick of your surly bullshit. You’ve had a month to deal, now we need a plan.”

  “Ben, you’ve been on my case forever to listen. Well, I listened last week. She said she is done.” Ben couldn’t help the groan that escaped.

  “Fuck, Quinn, talk about zigging when you should be zagging. You’re making me fucking crazy.” For just a moment, he considered hitting his head against the table, but it was too small and it was covered with plates of food. “You’ve got to also watch what she’s doing. She came to our apartment. She stayed and talked to us. These
are both forms of non-verbal communication that say she is open to keeping a dialogue open. It’s up to us to find ways to continue to keep those lines of communication up and running.”

  “Now, you’re just making shit up to make me feel better.”

  “Think about it. You were always so good at knowing how to read us boys. You knew when to offer us a hug or a kick in the ass. You knew when we needed you. Why is your radar so off with Kara?”

  “You think I’m good at this? Look how badly I failed Tim! Hell, Kara was an outsider, and she told me that Tim had a drug problem, but I didn’t listen. He almost got Levi killed, and he ended up in juvie. Then I read her so wrong that I not only ruined things for me, I ruined them for you. So I don’t know what you mean about my having good radar. My radar sucks!”

  “Fine, you fucked up on two things. But, Quinn, for years you knew exactly what we needed, when we needed it. I have always known that I could count on you.”

  “Well, then you’re stupid. I’ve lost you the woman you love, and Levi and Tim almost died.” Ben hadn’t realized the depth of guilt Quinn had been shouldering regarding Tim’s battle with drugs, but he should have. No wonder this thing with Kara was hitting him so hard. He was seeing it as another example of his failings. In actuality, Quinn wasn’t to blame for Tim’s spiral into drug addiction, and as soon as it came to light, he had moved heaven and Earth to help both Timothy and Levi. As for Kara, everything Quinn had done, he’d done with Kara’s best interests in mind, at least from Quinn’s misguided point of view. Thank God his brother was built like a sumo wrestler, because he needed wide shoulders to carry the burdens he chose to take on!

  “Quinn, I’m sick of arguing the past with you, so I’m not going to. What I am going to tell you, again, is that Kara has shown signs of being open to listening to us. It’s now up to us to continue to keep the door open.”

  “Do you really think so?” Ben was relieved when he saw his brother start to dig into the food. Quinn’s not eating always meant that he was brooding. Quinn’s eating meant that he was thinking and receptive. “So, little brother, what do you have in mind?”

  “I think this deserves a two-pronged approach. Have you ever noticed that Kara never has more than one beer or glass of wine?”

  “Except at the gallery opening. She had at least two glasses of champagne that I saw that night.” Quinn handed the empty appetizer plate to the waiter as he took the new plate and set it down on the table. “So, you want to get her drunk, to what purpose?”

  “I want to find out what happened with the doctor, Jim. I want to find out how she really feels about us. I know she’s angry and hurt, but what’s behind and beneath all of that?” Ben grabbed two sliders and put them on his plate, knowing it was the only way he was going to get any at the rate Quinn was now wolfing down the food.

  “Okay, we get her drunk. What’s the second part of your plan?”

  “Getting your sorry ass out of the doghouse. We know I’m sensitive and appreciative, now you need to be.”

  “Fuck you. If I wasn’t so sensitive to her, I wouldn’t have cared enough to tell her she needed to lea—” Quinn stopped himself. “Okay, yeah, I need help getting out of the doghouse. What did you have in mind?”

  “I know you appreciate her. Deep down, she knows it, too. Otherwise, she would never have fallen in love with you. But you need to remind her of it. So I think you need to commission her to do some painting on the boats. We need some Pacific Northwest Native American tribal art painted along the perimeter of the captain’s bridge, on both boats.”

  “Were you always this sneaky?”

  “Mom and Dad just automatically assumed that Randy acted alone on some of those stunts, and he never told, God bless him.” Ben was gratified to see that Quinn was beginning to look hopeful.

  Chapter 12

  Kara still didn’t know what surprised her more, the fact that Quinn had called to ask her to design and paint something on his boats, or that she had agreed to do it. Then, after she had come up with the two designs and e-mailed them to him, he wanted to meet with her to discuss some slight changes. She had been amazed. It had seemed like something Ben would do, not Quinn. But when they had sat down, she realized that he was very aware of the symbolism and how it related to his ancestry. He also knew exactly what type of symbolic message he wanted to convey on his boats. They sat for a couple of hours while she sketched.

  She had always felt that Ben had understood her artistic nature and appreciated her work, but after the hours with Quinn, she walked away floating on air. He loved everything she created. Even if he just wanted to see a different totem, like a salmon or an eagle, he loved them, and he noticed all the intricate curves that went into forming them. They might look simple to create, but to do them correctly took care and time. Ultimately, he chose whale and eagle totems. One boat was going to be named Whale, the other was going to be named Eagle.

  Currently, Kara was just finishing up the first layer of the design on the captain’s bridge. Ben and Quinn had been off working on the smaller boat all day, so she hadn’t seen them. She’d been surprised. Her guess had been that they would use this as another chance to push their case to get back together. When she arrived and they got her settled and then left, she told herself she felt relieved. But if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she felt a little disappointed. How messed up was that?

  She was just folding up the tarp and closing the paint cans when the men climbed aboard.

  “Let us give you a hand with that, Kara,” Ben said as he reached for the box of supplies she had been about to pick up. “I’ll take this out to your car.”

  “Sweetheart, I hope you were going to wait for us before hauling this out to your Bronco,” Quinn gently admonished as he worked with her to finish folding the tarp.

  “Quinn, you know how heavy the glass is that I work with.” She grinned at his foolishness. “I bet I could surprise you and be pretty handy hauling up a net.” She watched as his smile died.

  “I would hate to have to see you hauling nets, Kara.”

  “It’s not my dream either, Quinn. I was just teasing. You had women on your crew before. Why does it bother you so much?”

  “It doesn’t have anything with you being a woman. It’s just a matter of having people I love out there. Ever since Dad died, I worry. It eats at me…a lot.” He took the tarp from her, and put it in the smaller box. “I worry about everyone, about everything. Sometimes it drives me in circles,” he admitted, so quietly she had to strain to hear him.

  “That must be a really hard way to live.” Kara tried to catch his eye, but Quinn was busy looking at the design on the wall. She knew he was just avoiding looking at her. She shouldn’t be surprised. Even when they had been in a relationship, he avoided talking about things that were emotional.

  “Kara, this looks so much better than I imagined.” She could hear the sincerity in his voice and she blushed. “I mean the sketches were wonderful, but seeing it so large just makes it that much more beautiful. I always knew you had a gift when you worked in glass, but you are really gifted in this medium, as well.” He reached out and pulled her close, and she could do nothing other than melt against his side. She loved the feel of this connection with him regarding her art, and the raw physical connection that always happened when they touched. It was getting harder and harder to stay away from him, to hold onto her anger.

  Kara jumped when Ben’s arm came around her, as well. She hadn’t heard him, she was so wrapped up in her own thoughts and Quinn. “Kara, this looks amazing. I vote for taking you out to dinner to celebrate.”

  “I shouldn’t.” But even as she said that, Kara made no move to pull away from either one of them. They all stood staring at the painting. She really loved it. All the while she had been painting it, she had been thinking of them. In her mind, she had always affiliated Quinn with the whale totem, and Ben with the eagle totem, so she had infused a bit of their characters into the art.


  “Kara, can we talk you into a celebratory drink?” Quinn asked her in that raspy voice that she loved. She twisted her head so that she could look up at him.

  “I really don’t have time to go out tonight.”

  “Not out, just downstairs. Just one drink,” he coaxed, smiling down at her.

  “Okay, just one drink,” she agreed.

  * * * *

  “I really wanted to want to sleep with him, you know?” She looked Quinn dead in the eye, willing him to understand, but he just looked confused. “How about you? Do you understand, Ben?” she asked, shifting her gaze to Ben.

  “Can you try explaining that to us one more time, Kachaw—” He stopped when she held up a finger. “Kara,” he finished. “Neither of us understands.”

  “He was perfect. He had a great job, he really liked me, hell, and he was in love with me. He was really nice, he was good looking, and he even kissed nicely.” She looked around the interior of the boat again, admiring how well they had upgraded the cabin. They were really going to do well with their overnight guests. “What?” Kara realized she had missed a question Quinn had asked.

  “Your brothers said that you had gone out on a lot of dates since you came back from Alaska. Was Jim the best kisser?”

  “Oh, no, Adam was the best kisser, he was great. He caught me totally off guard and kissed the hell out of me at the end of the date. I was just planning on giving him a hug good night.”

  “How long did you go out with him?” Ben asked.

  “I didn’t go out with anyone but Jim past the first date.”

  “Why not Adam, if he was such a good kisser?”

  “Oh, well, he wasn’t very bright. I was kind of enjoying his southern accent. He was asking me questions, and I was telling him about my business, at which point he asked me if I was one of them there feminists. Then I didn’t like his accent anymore.”