Thank god.
“What is it you want, Dr. Michaels?” Quinn asked, and he braced himself for the answer.
Don’t let him say Ginnie. If he says he wants her back, I’ll – What? Risk her life just to keep her? No. Hand her over like a commodity? She’s not even mine to –
His thoughts cut off as the other man spoke. “Relax, Mr. Mcdavid. All I need from you is a favor.”
Quinn tapped his lip ring and narrowed his eyes. Favors came with a price. Always.
“What kind of favor?” he replied cautiously.
“You have to come with me to Las Vegas.”
“What the hell for?”
“I want you to help me broker a business deal.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Dr. Michaels, but the very last thing I am is a businessman.”
Lawrence smiled. “Quinn Mcdavid, former member of the Black Daggers. Small-time drug dealer for a mid-level gang. Up close and personal with that gang’s number one man. You’re the exact kind of businessman I’m looking for.”
“What kind of – ” Quinn cut himself off mid-sentence as his mind – one-part experienced criminal, one-part trained cop – made the only logical jump. “You’re selling drugs.”
“I prefer to think of it as repaying a debt. Creatively.” The other man paused, then added. “PJ James.”
Quinn saw no point in denying his association with his former boss. Dr. Douchebag obviously had that part of his past locked down already. For all Quinn knew, PJ himself had shared the information.
“What about him?” he asked.
“A while back, I ran into some trouble. Gambling debt. An associate of PJ’s, as it happens. And PJ, well, he’s the one with the creativity.”
Debts and collections. Yeah, those made the man creative all right.
“What are you asking me to do?”
The asshole doctor shrugged. “Simple. Intervene on my behalf. Explain to your former boss that I didn’t intentionally lose his prescription pads. Then ask him to forgive the debt.”
Quinn resisted an urge to roll his eyes. PJ was a lot of things. Being forgiving sure as hell wasn’t one of them.
“You seem to have missed the significance of the word former,” he said. “I severed my ties to PJ and the Black Daggers a long time ago.”
“Un-sever them.”
“It doesn’t work like that. Jumped out is jumped out.”
“My understanding is that you took a bullet to get out. Is it going to take another to convince you to get back in?”
Something in Quinn’s gut twisted. How the hell did the man know the specifics of his circumstances? He opened his mouth to ask, but another guest ambled past with an ice bucket and a friendly wave, forcing a temporary silence. Lawrence shoved the gun into his coat pocket, but Quinn could still see the outline, see that it was still trained on him. Would the other man fire with an innocent stranger in the hall?
Probably.
Quinn wasn’t going to chance it, either way. He waited until the sleepy-eyed man had filled the bucket and strolled away before he brought his attention back to Lawrence, who drew the weapon out and started talking again.
“I did the math,” the other man said. “Conservatively speaking, those prescriptions Ginnie lost were worth a half a million dollars.”
Quinn worked to keep his face impassive. Inside, he was cursing the doctor’s sheer stupidity. Repeatedly and loudly. A half a million dollars wasn’t something PJ James would walk away from.
He barely managed to keep the growl from his voice as he replied. “You’re still a licensed physician, right? Make some more money, or get some more prescriptions.”
“Not a chance of the latter. I reported those prescription pads stolen. Five of them. That’s five hundred fucking sheets. Nothing puts a doctor on police radar faster. If I reported more missing…” He shrugged. “And as far as the former is concerned, the bastard will just keep extorting me, won’t he?”
Quinn couldn’t deny it. “Pick option C then. Jail time sounds a hell of a lot safer than whatever creative punishment PJ’s gonna hand out for not paying him or for refusing to go along with his plan.”
“You think he couldn’t get to me in there anyway?” Lawrence shook his head. “I’m not going to jail and I’m not paying him back, either. Because you are going to help me.”
“And if I don’t agree, you’ll do what? Go to jail for murder instead?”
“No. If you don’t help me, I’m going to turn you in.”
Quinn gave the other man an incredulous stare. “For what?”
“You should be more concerned with to whom.”
Quinn’s eyes flicked to the hotel room door. “She already knows who I was.”
“I don’t mean to her,” Lawrence said. “I mean to PJ.”
Quinn’s blood went cold, but he maintained his steely mask. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about your real job, Mr. Mcdavid.”
“I still don’t know what – ”
“Cut the bullshit.”
The doctor reached into his pocket, and what he pulled out was far worse than the gun.
My retirement badge. Oh, Christ.
The leather wallet dropped open mockingly, its gold sending an accusing, invisible shot straight to Quinn’s stomach.
“Where the hell did you get that?” he demanded.
Lawrence gave another of his irritatingly nonchalant shrugs. “Your coat pocket. Saw it sticking out while I was with Ginnie in the elevator yesterday, so I grabbed it.”
The goddamned elevator. The kiss. Motherfucker.
Quinn drew back a fist and launched it halfway at Lawrence before he stopped himself, shouting internally that the man in front of him held his life in the balance. His. And Ginnie’s.
Dr. Douchebag smiled like he knew it too. “Took me a bit to figure all this out, so bear with me here. A couple of weeks back, my benefactor – PJ James – casually mentions a man who saved his life – Quinn Mcdavid – and it strikes me as familiar, but I can’t place why. I don’t even bother to try, if I’m being honest. I’ve got a lot of shit on my plate. A recent split from my wife. An insatiable girlfriend. And the doctor stuff.” He chuckled. “Believe it or not, that takes up some time, too. So, I let it go. Fast forward to Friday when you say your name on the plane and again, it rings a bell, but I’m with my girl and your face isn’t familiar. Then I found the badge and it hits me. I was at the hospital that day they brought you in, Mcdavid. Hell of a situation. Cops made a big show of locking you to the bed even though you were unconscious and lucky to be alive. I remember it well because I was sweating bullets with all that blue around. I’d just done a few not-entirely-legal things in the name of online poker and well, that doesn’t matter. Because it was you. No doubt about it.”
“It’s a stretch,” Quinn lied, his voice strained.
Lawrence shook his head. “Tell yourself what you have to. But I guarantee you this. PJ’s not going think it’s a stretch. Not enough of one that he doesn’t look into it anyway. And when he finds out it’s true, he’s going to get creative again. Probably with Ginnie.”
Quinn’s nails dug so hard into his palms that he was sure he was drawing blood. No part of him wanted to admit the other man was right.
Except he is.
Quinn took a steadying breath and forced his fist to uncurl. PJ was a ruthless bastard. He’d want to make Quinn suffer for the betrayal. But he owed him his life, too, and wouldn’t straight up kill him. That kind of twisted logic was what made PJ tick. But hurting Ginnie – the one person Quinn cared about – was the gangster-logical thing to do, and he knew it.
So just kill Lawrence.
Quinn shoved down the dark suggestion. He might have a lot of gray parts in his soul, and more than his share of black ones too, but he wasn’t a coldblooded killer.
“Vegas,” he agreed gruffly. “On two conditions.”
“Are you really in a place to
ask for conditions?”
Quinn ignored the other man’s smug reply.
“One, I want my badge back,” he said. “And two, after this is done, you walk away and you stay the hell away from Ginnie. No calling in later favors, no showing up at the door looking for help, no telling her I helped you out of your fuck-up. Or I promise you, I’ll show you how creative I can be.”
“You get your badge when it’s done,” the asshole replied, sticking the wallet back in his pocket. “And you don’t get to tell her anything either.”
“I hadn’t planned on it,” Quinn said – not because the joke-of-a-doctor told him he couldn’t, and not because Ginnie very likely wouldn’t let him in, even if he begged her, but because he couldn’t bear the idea of trying to explain.
And even worse…he couldn’t stand the thought of saying goodbye all over again.
Lawrence blinked at him, and for a second, Quinn thought he might not agree to his terms. Then he stuck out his unarmed hand, and with bile in his throat, Quinn shook on the deal, quick to pull away his fingers as soon as he could.
“Let’s move then,” the other man said. “The gun’ll be in my pocket. If you break your word…”
“I won’t.” Not until I’m sure she’s out of harm’s way anyway.
“Stairs,” Lawrence ordered. “You stay in front of me. And just in case you are thinking about changing your mind…Liv – my girlfriend – is going to come looking. She knows just as much about you as I do, and I left PJ as speed dial number one in her phone.”
Fuck.
He didn’t know if the doctor was bluffing or not, but once again, he couldn’t take a chance. Quinn had no choice but to let the other man usher him down the near-silent corridor of doors.
As he pushed open the door to the stairwell, he wished he’d taken more time to linger. To stare at the gentle rise and fall of Ginnie’s chest as she slept. To kiss her breathless one last time. To linger. And to beg.
His throat constricted; he was dangerously, humiliatingly close to tears.
But her former fucking husband had his gun bumping against his shoulder blades. So he kept moving.
Sacrifice and resolution and strength.
So this is what love feels like, Quinn thought. Kinda hurts.
Thirty-Three
He’s not coming back.
Ginnie tried to tell herself that didn’t dig. Didn’t hurt. That it was what she wanted.
But she was alone, and that made it harder to maintain the lie.
She did another slow circle of the room. She wasn’t sure how many times she’d walked around it already. Touching the furniture, imagining Quinn’s big body taking up space in the bed, wishing she was stronger.
Instead, all she ached to do was to crawl back into the bed. To wrap the blankets around her, to inhale the residual scent of him. Or better yet…To close her eyes and pretend that his arms were around her.
If you want him so badly, asked a small voice, then why did you chase him away?
She shoved aside the question and wondered why she couldn’t just walk away. Like, literally. Not just turn her back on the last two days and pretend they hadn’t happened, but actually step out of the room. After all, nothing in it was hers.
Some of it was Quinn’s. His suitcase and his toothbrush were still in the bathroom. A pair of his jeans were draped across the chair in the corner.
And there were a lot of things that didn’t belong to either of them, too. Like the pile of underwear and skimpy clothes.
But nothing is mine.
Woodenly, Ginnie bent to pick up a few the discarded items. She folded them and tucked them into the suitcase that was hers (but not actually hers) and when she stood up and looked around again, she felt no better. In fact, she spotted a pair of silky undies snagged under the dresser.
“It’s like the damned things are multiplying,” she muttered.
She wanted to laugh. But she couldn’t. Because laughter would turn into tears. She was sure of it.
Get rid of the evidence completely. That will help.
She bent again. And again and again. Her clean up became frenzied. The little bits of fabric flew from the floor to her hands to the bag, landing in a frustratingly silent pile. Ginnie thought they should sound like shattering glass. Like a breaking heart.
She spun around in search of something solid. Something that would make the noise she so desperately needed to hear.
She snapped up her dead cell phone and hurled it at a wall. It thudded in a satisfying way. But the bejewelled case split, sending rhinestones bouncing through the room, minimizing Ginnie’s momentary sense of fulfillment.
“Dammit!”
She grabbed Quinn’s jeans and threw them as hard as she could at the suitcase. They sounded like an exhale. Less than an exhale. And they sent the panties flying all over again.
Ginnie bent to grab them, and this time, with each one she dropped into the bag, another tear fell. By the time she was on panty number twelve – and dear God…who needed twelve pairs for one weekend? – she had lost all semblance of control. Her face was soaked, her chest was burning, and she was scraping up as much carpet fiber as she did satin and lace and leather garments. And pretty quickly, it was all fiber.
Ginnie blinked back another round of tears as she looked around and realized she’d picked up everything and packed it back into the suitcase.
“Back in its tidy box,” she murmured.
Just like she’d promised Quinn.
But she was still empty.
With lead fingers, she flipped the bag shut. And when she did, she spotted the one item that hadn’t made it into the bag.
The big, purple dildo.
As she reached for it, Ginnie decided it was oddly symbolic. She could stuff everything she wanted into a suitcase, zip it closed, and push it out of sight. But some sexy part of her was going to be free forever.
The mark she’d expected to see that last time Quinn touched her – the one that had burned so harshly – wasn’t on her skin, she realized. It was somewhere deep in her soul. And if she never spoke to him again, never saw his face anywhere but her dreams, she would still never be the same.
The irrefutable truth hit her so hard that she almost missed the insistent thump on the hotel room door.
Quinn.
He was probably just there to get his things.
But maybe not.
She battled against the elation in her heart and lost. There was no denying the thump-thump of hope drumming against her chest.
So why are you just sitting here, then? Let him in.
She didn’t bother to compose herself. She knew it was useless. But when she flung open the door, it wasn’t Quinn at all. Instead, a short, curvy brunette with a downturned mouth stood just outside. It only took Ginnie a second to place her – Lawrence’s too-young, too-busty, arm-candy girlfriend. She was dressed in one of Ginnie’s frill-necked blouses and a flouncy skirt, and the ensemble made her look like a kindergartener dressed up for school pictures.
Did I seriously pack that outfit? she wondered with cringe.
But of course she had. Pre-Quinn.
“Can I help you?” Ginnie asked, keeping her voice cool and collected.
“Yes. You can. I just have one question and it’s – ” she started, then stopped, mouth agape.
“Yes?” Ginnie prodded.
The girl blinked several times, then asked, “Is that my – is that what I – what are you doing?”
Ginnie’s followed the girl’s gaze to her hand, where her fingers had squeezed tightly around the purple monstrosity. For a brief moment, she debated throwing it behind her and pretending she had no idea what the girl was talking about. But what was the point?
“It’s exactly what you think it is,” Ginnie replied, still calm, though she knew her face must be flaming. “And as far as what I’m doing, I’m packing it up. Along with your underwear.” She paused and raised a deliberately sarcastic eyebrow. “But I’m guessing
that neither of those were actually your one question?”
The girl’s shoulders dropped again. “No.”
And suddenly, Ginnie couldn’t even muster up enough resentment to send her away. She stepped back, and pretended that it was totally normal to use the giant dildo to gesture that the pretty brunette should come in. She couldn’t even be annoyed when Lawrence’s girlfriend accepted, then sank down onto the bed like it was her room.
Ginnie stared at her for a second, then cleared her throat. “Are you going to tell me what your one question is?”
“Do you still love him?”
“What?”
“Lawrence. Do you still love him?”
“I – why are you even asking?”
The girl met her eyes. “He’s been acting crazy. And I kept just thinking something was wrong. Actually, I thought something was right. Even after he apologized to me because he kissed you, I still assumed…But now he’s just gone and I’m not sure why. This is so much more than cold feet. Something is wrong.”
As she attempted to process the rambling statement, it was Ginnie’s turn to blink. “Cold feet? And wait. Lawrence told you he kissed me?”
She couldn’t imagine he’d disclosed the exact details of the assault in the elevator, but the girl was nodding her head.
“Of course,” she said. “He tells me everything. Or mostly he does. When it matters. I assumed it was nerves and the alcohol that made him kiss you, but then I started thinking about it, and I realized something was really wrong. I mean, he’s spontaneous and fun and he makes lots of mistakes, but this?”
“Spontaneous?”
“He was supposed to propose!”
“Propose?”
The brunette bit her lip. “You must hate me.”
“Hate you?” Ginnie was really starting to feel like a parrot.
“I know he was your husband first.”
“Actually…he wasn’t.”
“Um?”
“Never mind.” Ginnie let out a breath. “What’s your name?”
“Liv.”
“Okay. Listen, Liv. No, I don’t love Lawrence.” Damn, does it ever feel good to say that. “So if that’s all…?”
Mile High Weekend (Opposites Attract Book 1) Page 23
