“Brae. How are you today?”
“Good, good. Heading down to have coffee with some readers; I wanted to see if Kellie wanted to come with me. Someone canceled, so there’s a slot for another reader.”
How very…condescending of you, Quinn thought.
Kellie came out of the bathroom in a nice, prim-looking skirt and a top that didn’t show enough cleavage. Which made her look that much hotter.
“Oh. Hi, Brae.” She shot a questioning glance at Quinn.
He understood what she was asking, but shrugged. Did she really expect him to have figured out what happened to Toby and the long-term implications to her friend’s love life in the past thirty seconds?
With an exasperated shake of her head—which sported a finished, dry hairdo that would impress even his mother—she greeted Brae.
“Want to come to my coffee with an author event?”
Quinn couldn’t shove the insensitive skank out into the hallway, so he dived in to verbally protect Kellie from having to come up with a polite response. “Oh, sorry. We’re heading out to brunch right now.”
“But you’ll both be back for the Banging Books Readers’ Party later, won’t you?”
“Unless there’s an earthquake, or something,” Kellie said. It was a good thing that Kellie wasn’t in Vegas to gamble, because she was a lousy liar. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“I knew I could count on you. Of all of my fans, you’re the best.”
Realization that her friend didn’t think of her as a writer crossed Kellie’s face right before resignation. But she said, “Well, that makes me pretty darned important then, doesn’t it? I’m the best fan of the best writer here.”
Once the door shut behind Brae, Kellie’s frustration was evident.
“You’re a writer, too,” he pointed out.
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Shall we?” She picked up her key card and shoved it in her microscopic purse.
“Yeah.” But he wanted to make her stay, make her sit down and finish her book, and to love it while he fed her coffee and chocolate, or whatever it was she lived on while she worked.
If Quinn sent only one impression home with Kellie, he hoped it would be that she should keep following her dreams—she should stay on the path she wanted to be on, and ride it however she wanted.
…
Kellie didn’t open her eyes until the engine on the motorcycle cut out. She’d tried at one point, about five minutes into the ride, but everything was going by so fast that she’d gotten seasick, so she just shut ’em, held on, and prayed.
And tried to look forward to a peaceful lunch with Quinn’s family. They must be salt of the earth people to have raised such a laid-back, easygoing son, right? His mother was probably very overprotective, which was why she’d reacted so strongly to seeing the photo of Kellie and Quinn dancing.
A hand patted her fingers.
“Unclutch me,” Quinn said. “You have to get off first.”
“I don’t think I can,” she said, finally looking up and finding herself in the middle of a big driveway.
A big, curving around a naked baby fountain driveway. Like the McMansion version of a hotel.
“I thought we were going to your parents’ house?”
“We are.”
“But this is—” Sort of Southfork. Slightly Stately Wayne Manor. Mini Mount Vernon.
“My parents’ house.”
What the heck? Quinn was a motorcycle mechanic. His parents were regular old people, who lived in a tidy ranch—or even a double-wide trailer. Not fancy people who lived on the edge of a golf course. This wasn’t who Quinn projected he was. He said he was a motorcycle mechanic, not the spoiled son of upper-middle-class country clubbers, not someone who played at his motorcycle hobby when he felt like it.
Quinn was supposed to be the opposite of all those guys from Smyrna Springs—opposite, as in…honest. And struggling bike mechanics didn’t come from wealthy families.
Kellie ran through her options. She could get mad and insist Quinn take her back to the hotel. She could get mad and call a cab. She could get mad and…suck it up like she always did, and make the best of things.
She got off the bike and tugged her conservative floral skirt into place, and prepared to make nice with Quinn’s family.
It was only for a couple of hours—then he’d take her back to the hotel and she could tell him to kiss off. Or she could make some big excuse about coming down with Ebola so she couldn’t see him anymore.
Quinn swung his leg over the seat and tugged at his khakis, straightening the crease. He did look nice. Different—like he went with the house—but nice.
“Is something wrong?” He took her hand.
“Nope. No. It’s a lovely house. Big.”
A trio of late-model sedans were lined up at the edge of the drive, and Quinn cursed when he looked them over.
She pushed her own discomfort aside. “What?”
He sighed. “Nothing. My brother’s here. Which means—”
“Quinn!”
Camilla Parker Bowles had opened the door and come on to the front porch.
Kellie tripped over her own feet and sprawled on the driveway.
Quinn turned to help her up, taking her hand.
“Quinn? Does your little friend need medical attention?”
Camilla’s voice was a little more slurred than Kellie expected from Prince Charles’s consort. Swaying down the porch, a tumbler to her lips, the woman wasn’t quite as polished as she supposed Camilla to be. For one thing, her blouse was misbuttoned and her lipstick was smeared.
“Shit,” Quinn muttered low enough that she heard, but not his mother. “She’s already hammered.”
He released her hand and turned to hug his mom, diverting the glass of amber liquid before it spilled on Kellie’s head.
“Mom, this is Kellie Dalton,” Quinn said, gesturing. “Kellie, this is my mom, Angela.”
“You have lovely lingerie, dear,” Angela said, giving her fingertips a limp touch.
She was grateful that she had on good underwear—and that she’d worn it today—because her skirt had flipped up over her thighs. As she pulled the fabric down and took Quinn’s hand to get to her feet, another five people had come outside to see the display of her nether regions.
His mouth quirked and he whispered in her ear, “It’s a good thing you neglected my commando request. My dad has a heart condition.”
Feeling her face flush six shades of embarrassed, she straightened her clothes and put on her best children’s lit lady face to meet his family.
If she’d learned nothing else from years of dealing with parents and kids at her store, it was to act like she knew what she was doing—99 percent of the time, no one would be the wiser.
“Look who’s here, honey.” Angela waved at Quinn. “And his little friend Kelsie.”
“Kellie,” he corrected stiffly. “Hullo, Dad.”
A man in his late fifties stepped off of the porch/verandah/thing on the front of the house and shook Quinn’s hand. He was, impossibly, an inch or so taller than his son, with nearly silver hair. He was very distinguished and handsome, but wearing one too many large gold rings around his elegant fingers to be quite honest-looking.
“I’m Andrew. Andy Anderson.” He gave a practiced self-deprecating chuckle at his own name.
She smiled and shook his hand, which was firmer and drier than his wife’s. Somehow, she’d expected it to be slimier.
Behind him were two other men and two women.
“This is my sister, Kimberly, her husband, Christopher, my brother, Carson, and his wife, Rachel.”
All the names, except the last, flew out of her head.
Rachel. Why did she know that name? Quinn was watching her closely.
Oh. Oooohhhh. Rachel was the ex-wife. Who had left him because he didn’t live up to her standards of employment and financial security. And was now married to his brother?
She suppressed
a shudder.
Rachel stuck out her perfectly blunt manicured fingers, attached to her perfectly aerobicized and tanned arm, underneath beautifully highlighted blonde hair. Hard, cobalt-blue contact lenses demonstrated that whatever Quinn had sacrificed for his chosen career, this woman wasn’t that big of a loss.
And he had said she’d left him because he wasn’t living up to her expectations. But still, as Quinn put his hand on Kellie’s back while they waited for the whole gang to precede them into the house, she couldn’t help but wonder just who she’d come home with.
“Where did you meet Rachel, anyway?” Kellie whispered to Quinn when his ex was out of earshot.
“Law school.”
“Law school? You went to law school?” She stopped and stared at him.
He shrugged and pointed at the row of graduation photos displayed along the hallway—his father, brother, sister, and Quinn himself, each framed with the Harvard Law School logo as part of the matting. “It’s kind of a family tradition.”
Chapter Eleven
Quinn wanted to pull Kellie aside to apologize—he hadn’t expected his brother and Rachel to be here today. They never came to Sunday dinner. Otherwise he wouldn’t have invited her. Or at least might have warned her.
But his sister, ex-wife, and drunken mother dragged her away to tour the hallowed halls of Casa del Anderson, and he’d put off talking to his father for as long as he could.
Taking a breath, he followed his dad into his “workshop” next to his home office.
The workshop was where Andy kept his collection of antique electric trains and other railroad memorabilia. Putting on his conductor hat, his father looked, for half a second, like the dad he remembered from his childhood. The dad who took them all over the country to see trains—big ones.
Sometimes, he wondered if his dad would have been happier as an engineer, driving a locomotive, than as legal counsel to the rich and shady in Vegas.
“I got the MQ out this week,” his dad said.
Sure enough, the track that he and his dad had assembled the year before he’d left for college had the big engine on it, the one that Quinn had painstakingly painted in metallic blues and purples—just like his favorite bike. The cars were similar, all highlighted with chrome, and labeled to look as though they carried motorcycle parts.
“What’s going on, Quinn?”
He thought about pretending that he’d just wanted to see the trains before easing into what he needed to say, but decided against it. Neither of them appreciated the subterfuge.
“I need to ask for an extension on the next two month’s tuition repayments.”
“Why?”
“I have some expenses—” He wasn’t going to lie. He wasn’t doing anything wrong—it was just his family that seemed to think so. “I have an opportunity to enter a bike into the Vegas Bike Fest, and I need the cash to finish the build.”
Andrew sighed, turning the power switch on and off for the track where the Mighty Quinn sat, lights blinking on and off. “Do whatever you think is right. But remember, you always have a place with the firm.”
“I know.” It had been Quinn’s idea to repay his parents for his tuition. There had been such a shit storm when he’d announced that he didn’t want to practice law—he thought paying back the money would ease the pain caused by his failure to follow the path laid out for him.
Instead, it had gotten him into some sort of strange place with his father—he couldn’t tell if they were allies on some parallel universe road not taken, or if his dad was doing everything he could to avoid committing infanticide and leaving his biggest disappointment in the desert for the coyotes.
“Hey, Quinn—” His brother burst into the room. “You’d better come rescue your woman. Mom’s trying to recruit her for the Junior League Twitter campaign against bad hair.”
“What?” He followed his brother down the hall, where Mom’s voice trickled from the solarium.
“What’s that god-awful hair color called again, Rachel?”
“Ombré.”
“Well, it should be called Trailer Trash Number Twelve,” Mom answered. “Don’t you agree, Carrie?”
Kellie’s laughter floated above the group and reached Quinn like a fresh breeze. She thought his mother was funny? Probably not a good idea to encourage the woman when she was already half baked, but at least Kellie seemed to be holding her own. “That one can be difficult if it’s not done right,” she said, diplomatically.
“Callie, would you like a mimosa?” his mother asked.
“Kellie,” Quinn corrected, coming into the room. “Her name’s Kellie.”
Mom waved him off. “Have a drink, dear,” she purred, reaching for the pitcher to fill a glass.
“No, thank you.” Kellie covered her glass, but his mother was already in motion, and poured half of the pitcher over her hand before his sister grabbed it away.
Quinn pulled a towel from the bottom shelf of the liquor cart and blotted at her hand, while Rachel snorted from the other side of the room and sucked down her own drink.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Kellie smiled placidly and licked her fingers. “It’s pretty tasty. Just a little early for me.”
He stifled a groan as she slid her middle finger into her mouth and sucked the stickiness off with a pop.
“Is it time to eat yet? Let’s go eat,” his brother suggested.
“Is that your solution for everything? Eating?” Rachel griped, staring pointedly at Carson’s softening waistline.
“There’s an idea,” Quinn said, wiggling his eyebrows at Kellie.
She smiled, but it was a polite stranger smile, not a lover smile.
Ah, hell. His family had poisoned her against him—he’d only left them alone with her for ten minutes. Or had he managed to do that himself—let her see what he could have been, if he’d become a lawyer?
But it didn’t matter. This was a temporary relationship. Time was ticking away on their little affair.
And he had the urge to unplug all the clocks he could find.
His mother sipped from her glass in his direction. “I almost forgot. Today’s loan day, isn’t it? Do you have a check you want me to deposit, or are you overdue again? You know I don’t appreciate having to cover your debt…”
Perfect.
“Angela—” his dad started to say, then stopped when Quinn shook his head. Better to just let it go before she got too fired up.
His siblings and their spouses all turned to look at him. He didn’t check to see if Kellie was staring at him, too. At least he knew why she’d cooled off so quickly. Disappointment soaked him like a liquid nitrogen tsunami.
“No, not today.”
Dad took her arm and tried to turn her toward the dining room.
“Why not, sweetheart?” Her voice dripped acid. “Is your little project not working out the way you expected?”
“Is the dining room this way?” Kellie stood, forcing him to look away from his siblings’ faces—by turns pitying, scornful, or disgusted—and to look at her. “I’m not sure how hungry I am, but I bet lunch is going to be interesting.”
…
Happy hour, or whatever that had been, was awful. Between Quinn’s mother, who didn’t have anything nice to say about anyone, his sister, who didn’t say anything, and his ex, who didn’t have to say anything—her smirk said it all—Kellie was ready to pretend to care about golf so that she could talk with the brother and brother-in-law.
Lunch was worse. They were all gathered around a stylish glass-topped table set with clear glass dishes, to nibble at eggs that appeared to be floating on nothing. An ancient cocker spaniel waddled through the room and settled below the table, staring hopefully, waiting for the floating food to land.
As upset as she’d been with Quinn for not telling her who he really was, she was relieved when he’d come to rescue her from the sunroom. And quickly developed a little understanding for his failure to share everything about hi
s background. After the look on his face when his mother had tried to shame him in front of everyone, Kellie had glimpsed the little boy he must have been—determined, angry, and desperate for approval from a cold, distant mother.
He obviously hadn’t expected the whole crew to show up. Hopefully they weren’t here on her account. Although if it was so rare that Quinn brought a woman to dinner, maybe that was kind of cool, no matter how much of a duplicitous butthead he was.
All she wanted now was to leave this place. She felt like she’d been hornswoggled into coming under false pretenses. But was she? She’d made assumptions about what his family would be like based on what he did for a living. And even though he had a law degree, he was clearly living on what he made fixing motorcycles. Which he’d told her about.
Quinn wasn’t rich. He’d told her that. But was he really a deadbeat? Skipping out on his debts?
The tension had waned on the way into the dining room, and there was plenty of meaningless small talk about golf, a wedding shower for a family friend, and the rumored divorce scandal of a local preacher who was apparently having an affair with his wife’s sister.
“I’m representing Brother Reginald,” Quinn’s brother announced, proudly.
Kellie smiled weakly, as he seemed to be addressing her. “That’s…interesting.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Especially since the sister is also the lead dancer at the Coconut Club and the ex-wife of a local mobster.”
“No one ever proved that,” Carson corrected.
Quinn’s mother said, in a burst of sobriety, “You’ll all have to mind your p’s and q’s. Carson can’t afford for anyone in the family to look like they aren’t the most upstanding citizen in the city until they’ve reached a settlement.”
She directed her stare directly at Quinn, then at Kellie.
Kellie smiled pleasantly. Her best shop owner who has dealt with the most high-maintenance landlord and snobby neighbors in the world smile.
Angela turned back to Quinn. “I don’t know why you feel like you have to support two other people in your shop when you can barely support yourself—or repay your debt.”
Accidentally in Love With the Biker (What Happens in Vegas) Page 9
