Quinn wasn’t sure if Bailey had registered a word he’d said. He wished she’d say something, but when she didn’t, he continued. “You wouldn’t believe the number of follow-up letters I’ve had, people telling me how much my advice helped. I’ve never had a problem answering a letter until yours turned up. I’ve got to admit, that one threw me. I guessed almost immediately it was about us and—”
“And you decided to deceive me!” Bailey narrowed her eyes at him. “The right thing to do when you got that letter would have been to come talk to me about it. Instead, you lied. You made up some ridiculous party excuse to spend time with me and then pretended you actually cared, that you actually wanted us to be together.”
He tried to keep his voice calm as he replied. “What options did you give me, Bailey? In your letter you made it clear you didn’t think me up to the task of parenting. You weren’t even sure you wanted to tell me. If I confronted you, you’d have just pushed me away. I couldn’t risk that. Instead, I chose to prove to you that I wasn’t who you thought I was. That I—”
“Yet you’re exactly who I thought you were,” she interrupted. “A liar, someone who plays games and can’t take anything or anyone seriously.”
“That’s not true,” he said, trying again to reach out to her. “This wasn’t a game. You’re not a game to me.” This was the most serious thing he’d done in his life.
She flapped her hands at him, as if he were a bothersome insect. “I knew this was too good to be true. If it weren’t for the babies, you’d never have come to me. My mom was right. Everyone was right about you, about us. You’ve made me a fool. I’m going to be the laughingstock of Jewell Rock. The stupid woman who thought Quinn might actually like her. Maybe even love her.”
Discomfort at the word love washed over him, but he refused to let it show. “It doesn’t have to be like that,” he said. “We don’t have to tell anyone anything. You and I have chemistry in spades, we’re friends and we’re having twins together—what better foundation is there for marriage? We both made errors of judgment, but at least everything’s out in the open now. We can start afresh properly. Marry me!”
Bailey was silent a few moments, her mouth gaping open so wide he could see her tonsils in the moonlight. “Are you insane?” she shouted. “I’ve just narrowly escaped one loveless marriage, I’d be a bigger fool than I already am to walk straight into another.”
The temper he’d been barely restraining since she’d accused him of being a liar broke loose. “You’re too idealistic and romantic for your own good. Maybe you should watch less Princess Bride and more daytime talk shows. Real life isn’t a fairy tale.”
A tear trickled down her cheek as she shook her head slowly at him. “How can you be such a cynic when you were brought up in such a warm, loving family?”
“Warm, loving family? What a joke! My family is exactly why I’m the way I am. You know that marriage between my parents you think is the bee’s knees? It was a farce. My father was a cheating scumbag who knew nothing about love.”
She gasped. And at the same moment he inwardly cursed himself for letting loose this nugget of information.
“Look, I understand you’re upset,” he said, wanting to distract her from what he’d just said. He dug his handkerchief out of his pocket—something he rarely used but carried out of habit thanks to his mom, who’d insisted it was something all men should have. “But we should be getting back to the party before somebody notices we’re missing.”
“I’m not going back!” Despite the tears now pouring down her cheeks, Bailey rejected his offer of the handkerchief and heaved herself up off the ground. He followed suit, snapping to his feet as she shouted at him. “I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to talk to anyone! This party was your idea—you go and finish it off. If anyone asks where I am, tell them I was tired and went home to bed.”
With that, she shoved past him and started running toward the parking lot. He didn’t hurry after her as he instinctively wanted to do because he feared that might only make her run faster and he didn’t want to increase her chances of falling. Just the thought of her tripping and causing harm to the babies made Quinn’s pulse race so fast he could hear it thrashing in his ears. He stood there, frozen in front of the distillery, wondering how his life had gone to hell in a handbasket so damn quickly.
If only he’d burned that stupid letter. If only he hadn’t taken off his jacket. If only he’d come clean in the beginning.
If only...he hadn’t slept with Bailey in the first place.
Cursing every foolish decision he’d made in the last few months, he kicked his foot against the side of the wooden pillar. The last thing he wanted to do right now was head back to the party and pretend everything was okay, but he didn’t see he had any option. He didn’t want to spoil his mom’s night and he had to make excuses for Bailey before suspicions were raised.
With a heavy heart and a tight gut, he strode back across the grass. Inside, the party still raged, everyone dancing and smiling as if the world was exactly how it should be, but his world had never felt more off-kilter. He wound through the revelers straight over to the bar and demanded a double shot of whiskey. He’d barely lifted the glass to his lips when a hand came crashing down on his shoulder and he jolted, splashing alcohol all over his fingers.
He turned his head ready to rage at whoever had made him spill his drink, only to find Callum standing beside him, smiling at him in a way he hadn’t for a long while. Still able to feel the pain in his nose from its introduction to Callum’s fist a few weeks ago, Quinn found himself suspicious. Did Callum know what had just happened between him and Bailey? Was he here to gloat?
“What do you want?” Quinn grunted. “I really don’t need your crap right now. It’s Mom’s birthday and if you—”
“Little brother, chill,” Callum said, still grinning. Quinn couldn’t recall a time his older brother had ever used the word chill in that context before. “I’m here to offer an olive branch.” He turned to the chick behind the bar. “Can I have one of those as well, please?”
“How much have you had to drink?” Quinn asked and then took a sip of his own.
Callum chuckled, nodded his thanks to the barwoman as she handed him a glass and then looked back to Quinn. “I wanted to say I’m happy for you.”
Quinn blinked in surprise.
“Watching you and Bailey together today and tonight, I can tell what you’ve got going between you is the real deal,” he said. “I can see you really love her and that I overreacted when I found out about the two of you.”
Love? Quinn didn’t know what to say to that, so he took another sip of his drink.
“I never really understood what the big deal was about love until I met Chelsea,” Callum said, “and then in a matter of days she turned my world upside down. That happened at a time when I didn’t even think I wanted or had time for a relationship, but you don’t choose love, it chooses you. It just happens and you can’t control it, even if you try.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow, thinking his brother must have been watching the same movies as Bailey. “That’s really deep, man.”
Callum elbowed him in the side. “Will you stop mocking me while I’m trying to have a serious conversation?”
“Right. Sorry.” Quinn happily let his forced smile fall from his face.
“I know you and Bailey don’t need my blessing, but I wanted you to know you’ve got it anyway. I’m so happy with Chelsea, how could I begrudge the same happiness for my old friend and my little brother? Besides, I want my kid to grow up with his cousins, since they’ll only be a couple of months apart in age.”
It took a few moments for Quinn to catch on. Were Callum and Chelsea...? He shook his head slightly, distracted momentarily from his current sticky predicament. “Are you guys having a baby?”
“Shh. Keep your
voice down. It’s very early days. Chelsea only just found out this week and she doesn’t want to say anything yet, but I’ve been bursting to tell someone. I figured you might understand.”
“Jeez.” No wonder Callum had mellowed. “Wow. Yeah. I do.” Quinn thought of the ultrasound images now permanently imprinted on his brain. “There’s nothing like it, is there? Congratulations.” He tried to sound happy for his brother, when inside something squeezed at the fact that once again Callum had the whole damn package, whereas he’d screwed everything up.
“Thanks.” Callum grinned, thankfully oblivious to Quinn’s discomfiture. “There must be something in the water around here, hey?”
Quinn nodded and forced a laugh in reply.
“Are you and Bailey going to find out the sex?” Callum asked. “It’s something Chelsea and I can’t agree on. She wants a surprise, but I kinda like the idea of knowing so we can make better plans.”
“Of course you do.” Callum had always been Mr. Organized and Controlled; he’d known he was going to be a dad five minutes and already he was thinking ahead. “Actually,” Quinn said, “we’ve talked about it a lot and have decided we’d rather not know. Everything about our relationship has been a surprise so far. Why not this?”
“I see your point, but I don’t have the patience for surprises,” Callum said as Chelsea came up beside them. He turned to his future wife, the mother of his unborn child, and drew her into his side. Quinn had to admit, they did look perfect together.
Was that what Callum saw when he looked at Quinn and Bailey together? Without a doubt his attraction to Bailey was off the charts. And he enjoyed her company, enjoyed spending time with her more than he did any other person on the planet. She made him laugh, she made him feel, she made him want to be a better man.
Did all that equate to love?
Chapter Eleven
Grass and then the gravel crunching under her feet, Bailey didn’t stop running until she reached Quinn’s SUV parked in the lot. Dragging his keys out of his jacket pocket, she beeped it open, climbed up into the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut and locked it behind her, all the while gasping for air as her lungs recovered from her mad dash away from him.
It was bad enough that she’d succumbed to tears in his presence, but she didn’t want his pity. Didn’t want to hear whatever pathetic excuse he’d try to use to justify what he’d done. If he even cared a little, wouldn’t he have chased after her? She glanced out the window, both relieved and utterly gutted to see that he hadn’t. With a fleeting thought to her purse and cell phone still in the marquee, she put the key in the ignition and started the vehicle. With the seat far back to accommodate Quinn’s height, she could barely reach the pedals, but the moment she adjusted it to suit her, she couldn’t get out of the parking lot fast enough.
And the best thing about taking his transport was that he wouldn’t easily be able to follow, not that it looked like he planned to.
She swallowed the hurt that caused and then tore over the bridge that crossed the beautiful lake in front of the distillery. Swerving onto the main road, she narrowly missed a raccoon as it skidded in front of her. Damn Quinn—not only was he messing with her life and her heart, now he was almost aiding and abetting the murder of cute, innocent forest animals. She slowed the vehicle and tried to do the same with her breathing, glad there weren’t many others on the road as she took the backstreets to her house. But it was hard to calm herself with her head so full of rage and anguish.
Quinn was Aunt Bossy? His dad had cheated on his mom? None of it made any sense whatsoever.
If the latter were true, why had Callum never mentioned it? They may have drifted apart in the last few months, but they’d been close once; he’d confided in her about other stuff. And why hadn’t her own mom ever said anything? Had Nora ever even told her friend? On the one hand, Bailey couldn’t wrap her head around this news—it simply didn’t compute—but on the other hand, it did. Quinn’s knowledge that his parents’ marriage wasn’t what they made it out to be, wasn’t the perfection everyone thought it was, could account for why he’d so ardently avoided the institution. Hadn’t he all but said that when she’d called him on his cynicism?
But whether it was true or not didn’t change the fact that Quinn hadn’t come chasing her out of any desperate need inside him. He hadn’t pursued her because he couldn’t get enough of her, couldn’t get her out of his head, because he was falling in love with her. The real Quinn had turned her away when she’d come looking for more the day after Thanksgiving; the real Quinn was with Bailey only out of a sense of duty.
Well, screw the real Quinn. It was the twenty-first century. She had a roof over her head and a good job. She could do motherhood perfectly well on her own.
Yet, no matter the bravado Bailey tried to fool herself with, she couldn’t deny the ache that the truth about Quinn had brought upon her. It wasn’t just an empty gaping hole in her heart but physical pain all over her body, as if she’d suddenly come down with a killer flu. She wanted to climb into bed, wrap the blankets around her, bury herself there and fall into some kind of oblivious slumber.
With this thought, she parked the SUV in front of her apartment block and dragged herself out and up the path toward the front door. But the relief she expected when she stepped inside and locked the door behind her didn’t come. The place no longer felt like home. Perhaps because for the last couple of weeks she’d barely been there—having spent almost every night and weekend at Quinn’s place, which was bigger and nicer than her poky apartment. Although they hadn’t officially made plans about her moving in, he’d alluded to it many times and they’d been in discussions about turning his spare room—currently cluttered with bike parts and old sporting trophies—into a nursery.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, deceitful discussions.
She swiped at the tears still barreling down her face, angry at herself that she couldn’t just switch them off. She didn’t want to feel anything for Quinn Jerkface McKinnel. Realizing she was still wearing his jacket and that being able to smell him on it probably wasn’t helping, Bailey tore it off and hurled it across the living room. Exhausted, she flopped down onto the couch and sat there, frozen, for a few moments, until her gaze caught on the pile of old newspapers on the coffee table. For a while, she’d bought the Bulletin religiously, scouring Aunt Bossy’s column for a reply to her letter. Tonight the reason she’d never found one had become perfectly clear.
Knowing it probably wouldn’t help her anger or heartbreak, Bailey leaned over and snatched the first newspaper off the top. She quickly found the Aunt Bossy page and, without even reading the letter, snapped straight to Quinn’s reply.
Dear Second Fiddle:
Do not be a Princess Diana with three people in your marriage. You need to take charge and do something about this situation before your resentment builds up to a bursting point.
Yes, your husband needs to man up and put you before his mother, but you need to take some responsibility in this situation, as well. Does he see what is happening? Have you spoken to him about the situation? If not, it’s time to tell him how you feel—men are not mind readers—tell him that you need him to cut the apron strings from Mommy Dear.
Ultimatums may not be nice, but in this situation, I think it’s fair you make one...
As she read the column, Bailey wondered how she had never guessed it was Quinn? It now seemed so blatantly obvious. She could hear his voice in every word and wondered what all Aunt Bossy’s devoted fans would think if they knew she was really a twenty-seven-year-old male who had no experience whatsoever with any of the issues he wrote about. He’d have been better suited to write a column advising other guys on how to pick up chicks!
But even as she thought this, she had to admit Quinn’s advice in the column had always been spot-on. Well thought out, succinct replies with a dash of humor and
just enough heart to make the reader feel as if the writer really cared. It was why she’d written her letter in the first place.
Hah! What a joke!
She needed to rid her personal space of all things Quinn—the newspapers, his leather jacket, they all had to go. After heaving herself off the couch, she picked up his jacket and the pile of papers. The plan had been to dump everything in the trash—the thought of Quinn’s beloved jacket bespeckled with moldy food marginally elevated her mood—but outside in the fresh evening air, something snapped inside of her. She walked straight past the bin and out onto the communal lawn at the side of the apartment, where she dumped the newspapers and jacket in a pile. Then, smiling for the first time since she’d found the letter, she rushed back inside to fetch some matches.
It would be much more cathartic to watch all things Quinn going up in smoke. More terminal.
For someone normally tidy and organized, it took Bailey over ten minutes to find the matches. As she stormed around opening cupboards and drawers, she blamed pregnancy brain, for which she could also lay the blame on Quinn. The moment she located the matches, she hurried back outside and, without a moment’s hesitation, struck the match against the box and tossed it on top of the pile.
She stood back a little and watched as the flame took hold.
“What on earth are you doing?” came a voice from the open window of one of the apartments above.
Without glancing upward, she waved her hand in dismissal and called out, “I’ve got it under control. Go back to bed.”
And she did. The hose was only a few feet away. It wasn’t the middle of summer. The fire at her feet was about the only thing she did have control of in her life and she wasn’t going to let anyone interrupt it. Waiting for a feeling of satisfaction to overcome her, she watched the flames and listened to the crackling of the burning newspaper and leather—the only sounds in an otherwise peaceful Jewell Rock night.
Pregnant by Mr. Wrong Page 13
