by Lily Everett
I don’t want to, she thought nonsensically, even as her feet finally shifted and her mother turned the car off.
“This can’t be good,” Marcus murmured in an undertone as Ingrid and her passenger climbed from the car.
“Darling,” Ingrid said breathlessly, rounding the front of the car to grab her guest by the elbow. “This is Ron Burkey. He’s a miracle worker, well versed in intuitive healing, relationship coaching, aura work, breath work—you name it, he’s an expert in it.”
Oh, Lord. Quinn mustered up a smile but she was afraid she couldn’t do much about the hard stare she directed at the great Ron Burkey as she held out her hand. “So, you’re a psychiatrist? Should I call you Dr. Burkey?”
“That’s not necessary,” he said with a wide smile. “And spiritual psychologist is the more accurate term.”
He slipped his smooth, plump hand into hers and Quinn had to hold back a shudder of revulsion at the touch. Disentangling herself half a second before it was truly polite, she said, “Nice to meet you. I didn’t realize you made house calls.”
“Well, when your mother told me the happy news last night, I hopped the first flight out of New Mexico! And here I am. So interested to meet you both.” The somewhat portly man ran surprisingly shrewd eyes over Quinn before moving on to Marcus, who crossed his arms over his broad chest in a way that made Quinn notice the sinewy strength of his forearms.
Oh, good, she thought a little hysterically. He was in the Secret Service. He has ways of intimidating bad guys.
Part of her felt guilty for immediately and automatically assuming Ron Burkey was evil. She might not buy into any of the New Age stuff her mother liked. And she might even be pretty sure that most of the people who claimed they could see auras or do astral projection or whatever were total imposters—but there were probably plenty who had convinced themselves as thoroughly as they’d ever convinced anyone else. Quinn knew she should give Ron Burkey the benefit of the doubt.
She just didn’t want to. And from the steely glint in Marcus’s gaze as he stared down the shorter man, he didn’t want to, either. Which only made it harder for Quinn to be generous.
Especially when she glanced at her mother and saw the starry look in her eyes. That look used to be reserved for Quinn’s father. To see it now when her mother gazed at this man who was supposed to be fixing her marriage—but who was actively trying to wreck it, if Daddy was right—made Quinn’s blood overheat with a restless, incoherent anger.
“Well, now you’ve met us,” she said abruptly. “So you can head on back to New Mexico, Mr. Burkey.”
“Quinn Rosalie Harper!” her mother gasped, but Ron held up a pale hand peaceably.
“Now, now, Ing. Your daughter is entitled to her opinions, and besides, I see by her aura that she’s in some genuine pain and confusion about the situation with you and Paul. Let me handle this. Quinn, I prefer Dr. Ron,” he countered. His smile was like a shark’s, wide and pointed below a flat stare. “And I’m not going anywhere. In fact, I’m delighted by your engagement and your parents’ decision to keep their house, and I think I have a way to use the flames of new love to help rekindle the dying embers of your parents’ marriage.”
Dying embers? Quinn saw red. “Listen here, you—”
“We should all commit to staying there,” Ron interrupted with an expansive wave of his arms that made the shiny gray fabric of his sport coat shimmer. “At the house where you grew up. We will all live there together, nonstop, for the next two weeks. Myself, your parents, you, and your charming fiancé. What do you say?”
Chapter 7
“Hell, no. That’s what I say.” Marcus slammed the door of the Buttercup Inn behind him, startling Quinn into whirling around to face him.
They’d left Ingrid and her bronzed, Botoxed guru on the street with some vague promises of thinking it over, while Ingrid clasped her hands and looked nervous for the first time in Marcus’s memory. He couldn’t imagine how Paul Harper was going to react to this new development, and he was willing to bet Ingrid was having a hard time imagining it, too.
Not that it mattered, because Marcus wasn’t moving in with Quinn’s parents. End of story.
Lantern Point, where Quinn’s parents’ house was situated, was a tiny spit of land sticking out of the southwest corner of Sanctuary Island. To get to it from the main town square, you had to drive all the way out to the farthest edge of the island, around Lantern Lake, through the wildest and most undeveloped land Sanctuary had to offer. The only other house within a mile of Quinn’s parents’ place was the house where Marcus grew up.
The house he’d vowed never to return to.
As if she could read his mind, Quinn turned big, pleading eyes on him. “What if I promised you’d never have to see your dad? I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’s come into town in the last few years. My parents haven’t laid eyes on him once since they’ve been home.”
Marcus stiffened, feeling uncomfortably exposed. He hadn’t talked to Quinn about his father, although he had vague memories of seeing her right after that final fight, before he took off for good. Or what he thought was for good, at the time.
It probably wasn’t that hard for her to guess the source of his reluctance to go back to Lantern Point, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“That’s beside the point,” he said stubbornly. “The real issue is that this isn’t what we agreed on. This whole idea was brainless from the start, but at least it had a shot at working when it was just a couple of dinners out with your parents per week. You honestly think we can keep up this charade twenty-four-seven, with your folks and ‘Dr. Ron’ watching our every move?”
“It’s not ideal, I admit. They think we’re engaged, and that you have PTSD—and now there’s a guru involved. My God, what a mess.”
“You’re not exactly selling me on this, Turbo.”
Quinn sucked in a breath. “Turbo. You haven’t called me that in years.”
“The prospect of moving back to Lantern Point makes me think of you zooming down the street on your ten-speed, with those glittery streamers blowing in the breeze.”
Cringing and laughing, Quinn brought a hand up to partially cover her face. “Oh my gosh … don’t remind me. I was such a little pest. You must have hated the way I tagged after you and your friends all the time.”
He hadn’t, actually, but he’d been a different person back then. Just a kid, as young and soft as Quinn was now. Marcus remembered mostly feeling flattered and pleased at the attention.
Which would be the exact wrong thing to tell Quinn now.
“You were okay,” he said instead, gruff enough to cover the tidal rush of memory that swept over him as he ducked behind the bar and started clearing out the taps.
“Golly, you’d better quit gushing. I’m all aflutter.” But she was grinning a little as she went around to the two-top and four-top tables to pull the chairs down and arrange them across from each other. “So, about moving in with my parents. Look, I know it’s a lot to ask, but they’re my parents and I want to help them any way I can—and this way, we can keep an eye on Dr. Ron. As my fake fiancé, can I count you in?”
He groaned aloud. “Give it a rest, Quinn. I said I’d think about it, and I will.”
He didn’t imagine for a second that she’d be able to let it go, but to his surprise, they fell into a comfortable silence as they worked together to get the bar ready to open. And when the clock ticked down to four o’clock, they were set almost before Marcus knew what was happening.
“Ready for the rush,” he said sardonically, bracing himself for disappointment as he went to flip the switch on the OPEN sign.
“Tonight should be better,” Quinn said with a cryptic smile. “At least, I hope so. Fingers and toes crossed!”
Marcus narrowed his eyes in suspicion but before he could ask her what she’d done, the bell over the bar door tinkled and Miss Patty Cuthbert swanned in, trailing a trio of tittering older l
adies like ducklings all in a row. All four ladies were dressed in their Sunday best, hats and all, and Marcus put on his best smile for them.
“Ladies! Welcome to the Buttercup Inn. Would you like to sit at the bar, or there’s a nice table by the window.”
Miss Patty, the obvious de facto leader of the group, nodded decisively in the direction of the four-top in the corner. “You know I like to sit at the bar and flirt with you, young man, but we have serious business to handle. We’ll take the table.”
“That sounds ominous,” he said with a grin as he led the way to the table. “Can I get you ladies started with anything to drink?”
“We’ll take a pitcher of martinis.” Patty seated herself with a flourish. “Not too dry, plenty of olives, stirred and not shaken. Unlike that James Bond wimp, we like our martinis strong enough to dissolve paint.”
Marcus felt his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. “Martinis. This is serious. Okay, coming right up.”
He ducked behind the bar and grabbed the gin, bypassing the well bottles and going straight for top shelf. Nothing too good for Miss Patty, who’d finally managed to bring some friends along with her to the Buttercup.
“She got them to come!” Quinn perched on the corner bar stool and rubbed her hands in undisguised glee. “I thought maybe she’d be able to, now.”
Marcus scooped four martini glasses full of ice to chill them down while he mixed the drinks. “Who are they?”
“Let’s see. Mrs. Crump was my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Ellery runs the local flower shop, and Miss Ruth makes the best homemade ice cream in the state. I worked at her ice-cream stand one summer during high school, selling peach ice-cream cones to kids.”
“Every one of those women loves you like a granddaughter.” Marcus wasn’t asking—he knew it was true.
“They’ve all known me since I was a baby.” Quinn shrugged, cheerfully unconcerned with her popularity.
Marcus didn’t point out that most of them had known him, too, or at least had known his family. He actually recognized all three of Patty’s friends, although he wouldn’t have been able to call up their names. But that wasn’t exactly what he’d been asking, anyway.
“Do you have any idea what this serious business is that they’re here to discuss?” He made it a point not to get involved in his customers’ private lives, but if Miss Patty was in some kind of trouble, Marcus wanted to know about it.
But Quinn laughed. “Oh, it’s deadly serious, all right. This is Miss Patty’s bridge club. There’s a big tournament coming up next Sunday night in the Methodist church basement, and I think she’s got them practicing their bidding conventions around the clock.”
And indeed, when Marcus carried the tray over to the table and set down the four martini glasses, fogged with chill and each bearing a toothpick laden with four green olives, Miss Patty’s gnarled hands were shuffling cards with the dexterity and grace of a riverboat gambler.
“Here you are, ladies.” Marcus poured them each a martini from the glass pitcher, then set it down to one side of the table to leave the center open for their card playing. “Good luck in the tournament.”
“Bridge isn’t a game of luck,” Miss Patty said, a dangerous gleam in her faded blue eyes. “It’s about skill and nerve. And the ability to count cards.”
“Oooh,” said a wizened lady even older than Miss Patty. She was the one Marcus remembered the most clearly, and in his memory she was associated with summertime and milk shakes. Miss Ruth, he decided. “This martini ought to help our nerves, at least. Liquid courage never tasted so good.”
“Too bad we can’t take flasks of this stuff into the tournament,” lamented the woman across from Miss Ruth, the purple turban wrapped around her henna-red hair nodding as she took another sip. “You Methodists. You don’t want anyone to have any fun.”
“Get over it, Alice Ellery,” the oldest woman said bluntly. “You’re not bringing spirits into my church and that’s final.”
“Jesus made wine out of water, you know,” Mrs. Ellery grumbled.
“Well, gin is a little different from wine. And anyhow, it’s the church’s policy, not Miss Ruth’s,” the last woman pointed out gently before turning her soft smile up at Marcus. Unused to having such sweetness and light beamed in his direction, Marcus nearly took a step back, but he forced himself to hold his ground.
“Thank you for the drinks, young man,” she said, with the kind of soothing voice he expected a kindergarten teacher to have. The way she’d shut down the bickering between Miss Ruth and Mrs. Ellery was another telltale clue. “This seems to be a very nice place you’ve built here.”
A warm glow of pride suffused Marcus’s chest. “Thank you for giving it a try.”
She exchanged glances with Miss Ruth across the table, before twinkling back up at Marcus. “We’re only sorry it took us so long. But we just weren’t sure, you see.”
“I grew up on the island,” Marcus said diplomatically. “I know how long it can take folks here to make up their minds about something new. Sanctuary Island has never had a bar before.”
“Oh, it wasn’t the bar we weren’t sure about,” said Miss Ruth, her dark eyes glinting shrewd as a fox’s.
“But I was at the Firefly yesterday,” said the lady with the turban, who had to be Mrs. Ellery. “So I saw the whole thing. Congratulations on getting Quinn to forgive you, by the way. And then when Quinn came to us and told us how much she hoped this place would be a success, well, we realized that supporting the bar was really a way of supporting our dear Quinn’s future. So here we are!”
Of course Quinn talked to them. Marcus fought the urge to glare over his shoulder. When they eventually “broke up,” all this was probably going to explode in his face like a cartoon birthday cake. But in the meantime, he had the chance to make a good impression on these women.
And if Marcus remembered how this small town worked, it was women like these four who truly ruled the roost. The rest of the community would follow their lead.
“Well, whatever the reason, I’m glad you decided to allow me a chance to give you a fun night out. To show my appreciation, the next round is on me.”
The ladies fluttered gratefully, thanking him and picking up their cards. While they were busy arranging their hands, Patty sent Marcus a wink and an approving nod to send him back over to Quinn.
Who was watching with open delight, and more than a hint of satisfaction. “Nicely done,” she said, leaning up on both elbows and craning forward to speak quietly across the zinc-topped bar separating them. “Miss Ruth is on the town council, the vestry at the church, and she heads up the festival committee. If you can get her on your side, no one in town will dare to say a word against you.”
“This would have been good information to have a few weeks ago,” Marcus grumbled. “You could have talked her into stopping by anytime.”
“Maybe I could have, although Miss Ruth has a mind of her own. I’m persuasive, but even I can’t convince a woman of principle to go against those principles.”
“Believe me, I know how persuasive you can be,” Marcus said without thinking, and just like that, the air between them went heavy and humid with desire. His gaze dropped to her light pink lips, parted softly and damp where the tip of her tongue had darted out to wet them.
She was so close. She’d shifted at some point to kneel on the bar stool so that her whole torso was propped on the bar, putting her face mere inches from his. Marcus fought the gravitational pull, but it was hard to fight when most of him wanted nothing more than to grab the back of her neck and haul her over the bar, to take her mouth and get her under him and wreck them both with pleasure.
“I persuaded you a few times right here on this bar, as I recall,” she said, her voice no more than a husky wisp of breath that reminded Marcus viscerally of the rasp of her sighs in his ear when he’d pushed her up against the wall and wrapped her legs around his hips to get their bodies as close as two people could possibly be.
She breathed in and he felt like she’d hooked him by the collar and reeled him in. Marcus’s head dipped and Quinn stretched up, and their lips met.
Marcus had an instant, a heartbeat, to register the honey-salt taste of her mouth, the coy stroke of her pointed tongue teasing at his lower lip, before a round of sighs and applause jolted them apart. Over her shoulder, the bridge-club ladies were shamelessly catcalling and clinking their glasses together merrily.
Pulling back with a flush across her cheekbones, Quinn swallowed hard and ducked her head. When she peeked up at him from beneath her lashes, the clear question in her gaze nailed Marcus to the wall.
What the hell was he doing? This couldn’t happen. He couldn’t be this big of an asshole. It wasn’t possible that he could let Quinn Harper think even for a second that they might get back together.
From the deepest part of whatever remained of his soul, Marcus dug up a slow, conspiratorial grin. With calculated precision, he lowered his head to whisper in Quinn’s ear, in a move he knew would look like loving teasing to the old ladies who were avidly watching.
And he said, “Nice moves, Turbo. I think they bought it.”
Chapter 8
Quinn held very still, as if the pain of Marcus’s words were a stalking animal that would pounce the instant she moved. But there was no escaping this hurt, because she’d brought it on herself. It was her fault, and no one else’s.
You came to him. You practically begged for his help, she reminded herself brutally. You thought you were safe after the way he hurt you before. You thought it would be easy to keep your distance.
Well, now she knew. It wasn’t easy. Even now, even knowing that Marcus had kissed her as nothing more than a show for his first few customers, her body wanted to sway back toward him and melt against the hard plane of his chest.
