by Stacy Gail
“I’m not here for Quinn.” Bundled up in a black parka with the Kingfisher logo on the left chest and a matching black ball cap, gave her an odd, tight-lipped smile. “I’m here because of you. You ready?”
She stared at him. “For what?”
“To go to the airport. Olivia’s car might be fine for zipping around town, but it’s crap for winding mountain roads. You’re much safer in my ride.” He nodded at the carry-on beside her. “Is that all there is?”
“Yes.” She stepped back when he abruptly swung her case up and wheeled back toward the truck, clearly not waiting to see if she’d follow.
The Kingfisher men. When it came to charm, their damn cup runneth over.
The slam of Jase’s door made her wince as he settled in behind the wheel, and she remained quiet as she reached back to drag her seatbelt into place. Something told her that to speak now was an iffy proposition, and with one shouting match already under her belt this morning, she wasn’t looking for another.
“Before I pull outta here, you sure there isn’t anything you left behind that you’re going to start bawling about when we’re halfway down the mountain?”
Ugh. Men. “No.”
“You sure? You sure you’re not forgetting anything?”
“I’m not the bawling type, and if I’ve forgotten something, I’m sure I can replace it later on.”
“Some things are harder to replace than others.”
For a moment Mia closed her eyes and fought the sudden, scary tightness in her throat. So that was what he was going on about. “I know what you’re saying, so let me just head this off at the pass. I’m coming back.”
Jase shifted back in his seat in clear surprise. “What?”
“I was on my way to Seattle to do something very important to me. Once I get that task done, my path is clear and I’m free to do whatever I want. Even if Quinn told me to get the hell out, I have every intention of coming back.” Though it remained to be seen how long she’d stay. Quinn was wrong about her when it came to not having a spine. She had one hell of a spine when it came to dealing with him. That was why she was going to come back, even in the face of his contempt. She would be back because she believed they had something to fight for. But, if he truly didn’t want her around anymore…
A tight fist squeezed around her heart. If he didn’t want her around anymore, then she’d have no real home left in the world. She’d have Chicago, yes. But that had ceased to be home for her. Home was wherever Quinn was, as crazy as that concept was, but she couldn’t fight it. She’d tried, but she’d failed in a big way.
Again, Jase shifted. “I thought you were on your way to Seattle to see you ex.”
“I was. I am.”
He shook his head. “Girl, what the fuck are you doing, going back to a man who’s a piece of shit, when you’ve got a perfectly good one right the hell here, ready to hand you the world on a platter?”
Mia cursed under her breath. Apparently hoping she could get out of there without entering into shouting matches with every Kingfisher who crossed her path was too much to ask for.
Outstanding.
She tried to keep her cool while she explained the situation with Jackson, the money she’d loaned him and the contract that bound them together. She was especially proud that she didn’t tell Quinn’s father to mind his own business before calling for a taxi to get her to the airport. She still wasn’t Jase Kingfisher’s biggest fan, so sharing her very personal life with him wasn’t the most comfortable thing she’d ever done in her life.
When she’d finished, she glanced over to find he had his arms crossed over his chest and was looking like he had no intention of driving her anywhere any time soon. “Is there something in that contract you wrote up that says you’ve got to deliver it to him in person?”
Geez, like father, like son. “No.”
“Then why are you going all that way? Give those papers to me, I’ve got half a dozen lawyers who can do this for you.”
“Why would I ask someone else to do this when it’s my mess to clean up? I can take care of this problem all by myself.”
“Because you’re not all by yourself,” came the answer that was so hard it was a wonder it didn’t break something vital inside her. “There are other people involved, and if your actions do something that hurts them, you should think twice about what the fuck you’re doing.”
She was thinking twice about it, so much so she was ready to head back inside and forget the whole thing. Only…
Get the hell out of here.
That didn’t sound like a man who had any lasting emotion for her. Unlike her, Quinn had obviously been smart. He hadn’t fallen in love during their fling. She was the only idiot in that particular boat. He could tell her to get the hell out without batting an eye.
“Look at it another way,” Jase went on when she didn’t answer, and his sudden persuasive tone made her slide him a glance that sizzled with suspicion. “How would you feel if your roles were reversed?”
“Reversed?”
“You’ve met Lorette.” The name made Mia’s attention snap fully to him, only to find he was watching her as if she were an interesting specimen he had in a cage that he couldn’t wait to poke. “You know she had her hooks into Quinn good and deep for a long time. Longer than you and that leech were together, anyway. Would it be okay with you if, after this hullabaloo today, you inspired Quinn to go and see Lorette?”
“Why the hell would he want to see…” That cow, ho, bitch from hell, whatever. “That woman?”
“No one thought you’d want to see that jerkoff, but here you are, ready to hit the skies. So reverse your roles and try to imagine how you’d feel if Quinn told you he needed to see Lorette. Not wanted to, but needed to, when you and I both know there’s no goddamn reason in the world he needs to see that drop of poison ever again. No reason, except that something inside him still wanted to see her. Realizing that, how would that make you feel?”
Along with feeling vaguely sick, a soul-freezing wave of horror flooded through Mia so fast it took her breath away. “Quinn… he doesn’t think that. I was very clear that all I wanted to do was deliver these papers and lower the boom on Jackson. Quinn couldn’t possibly have thought that I still want anything to do with my ex.”
“Why wouldn’t he think that? It’s what I thought when I heard you were flying off to Seattle.”
“I’m trying to finish what I started when I left Chicago. That’s all.”
“The only thing you’re finishing is what you started with Quinn. Congratulations, you got what you wanted.”
A distressed sound escaped her a scant instant before the roar of an engine snapped her attention up and out beyond the windshield. Her jaw dropped when she saw Quinn’s truck careening right toward them.
“Oh, shit,” she heard Jase mutter seconds before Quinn’s truck veered off the drive at the last moment and came to a stop in the blanket of snow sloping away from the drive. There was an ominous clunk as the undercarriage hit something hidden in the snow, but Mia barely even noticed as she hauled herself out of Jase’s truck, her heart jackhammering in her throat as she ran into the snow where Quinn’s vehicle had skidded to a stop.
“Quinn! My God, Quinn, are you okay?” Adrenaline pounded hot and heavy through her veins, making it tough to come to a graceful stop when Quinn surged out of his truck. If murder had an expression, he was wearing it as he slammed the truck door behind him, his breath steaming out of his mouth. If he’d suddenly breathed fire, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
“What the hell,” he gritted out very quietly, and the sound of it was the most ominous thing she’d ever heard, “do you think you’re doing?”
She froze, in part because whatever animal instincts she possessed told her that to move might make him pounce. But also, she had no clue what he was talking about. “Uh…”
“I just talked to Olivia. Did you really call for a ride to the airport?”
Oh, that. �
�Yes.”
His bare hands snaked out and caught her by the arms while he kept moving, and she had no choice but to move with him, backing up as he steered her so that she went up against the side of his truck. “You’re so eager to meet your worthless loser of a man, are you? Can’t wait to see him again, can you?”
Dear God, his dad was right. Quinn really had thought she wanted to see Jackson. “You told me to get the hell out, so I was getting the hell out.”
He ground his teeth so hard she could hear it. “You know you can’t talk to me when I first wake up. I don’t make fucking sense when I first wake up.”
The faintest glimmer of hope began to feebly glow way down deep. “So… you’re saying you don’t want to kick me out?”
“Do you want to leave?”
“No.” She took a shaking breath, and let go of everything that held her back from what she truly wanted. “Nine days ago, I only had one thought in my head—get to Seattle. It’s been a driving force long before I got on that plane that brought me here, until it became almost like an obsession. It’s hard to get over that kind of mental conditioning, Quinn. But I can do it,” she added hurriedly when he began to turn away with a look of profound impatience. That meager flare of hope grew when he turned back to her, eyes narrowed. “I kept thinking that getting to Seattle and Jackson was how I’d get control of my life back. Then eight days ago I met you, and every day the thought of Seattle became less important. Mainly because you were becoming more important, even though I know that’s crazy.”
“Why is that crazy? Makes perfect sense to me.”
“Of course it makes sense to you. You’re the crazy-like-a-fox risk-taker. I’m not.”
“Life’s too short to play it safe, Red. When you see an opportunity rolling your way, you have two choices—reach out and grab it for all its worth, or live the rest of your life regretting that you didn’t have the balls to try.”
She couldn’t help but smile. That was so like him. “Like what you did when Whiteout Mountain came up for sale.”
“Yeah, and like what I did when I first saw you in that gym. Separating you from the herd and taking you home with me was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, so I took it.”
That wiped her smile out. “What?”
“Mayor McBride wanted to hang around and wait for you, but I convinced him to leave without you,” came the careless response. “He’d already mentioned Highway Patrol was going to close the road, so I used that piece of information to hurry his ass out of there. Then I dawdled in warming up my truck and drove about two miles an hour to make sure I gave them plenty of time to close the highway. Once they did that, I had you all to myself.” His grin was as sudden as the sun bursting from storm clouds. “Go on. Tell me that what I did was kidnapping and how much time I’ll spend in the slammer. I’ll cop to it.”
“You…I…” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and she shook her head as if that would somehow make the information he’d just dropped on her fall into place. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“You tried to take care of everyone you met, from an exhausted little pregnant girl to an old woman who couldn’t stand any longer. You tore that Gulag flight attendant to pieces with nothing but the power of that sexy brain of yours. You have all this great fucking hair I can’t keep my hands off of and these unbelievably hot legs that go all the way up to your neck. Knowing all that, you really have to ask why I did it?” He leaned into her, practically lying on her as she leaned back against his truck, and suddenly she forgot how to breathe. “You were the first woman in two years that completely snagged my attention, Red. All of it, not just the horny side of me. Yeah, I wanted to fuck you the moment I saw you—most guys do, because you’re hot and men are dogs. But when you facepalmed so loud I heard it, you made me laugh.”
“So?”
“I laughed, baby. Really laughed, for the first time in two years and it felt great. So great that I was going to do anything to keep that feeling with me for as long as I could.”
She stared up at him, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. “Okay, I’m confused. When we first met, you didn’t exactly make it a secret that you didn’t want me all the way out here at Whiteout.”
“If I’d jumped all over you like I’d wanted to, think how freaked out you would have been. You were trapped in a place you’d never expected to be, completely at my mercy, so I had to show you that you were safe with me by keeping my distance. But as soon as you started to relax, I did everything I could think of to seduce every part of you and make sure you got as hot for me as I was for you.”
“You…” She stared up at him, locking her muscles in place. It was the only way to keep from strangling him on the spot. “You’re saying… you made me feel this way deliberately?”
“What way?”
“What way?” Oh God, she would strangle him.
His brows came down. “What are you getting so pissed about?”
“Are you serious? You have to know that you’ve been making me fall in love with you, you ass, not just making me hot for you,” she yelled, flabbergasted that he could be so thick when it came dealing with the emotions of another human being. “Do you have any idea how I’ve been freaking out about this? No one can fall in love in eight days, for God’s sake, but come to find out I haven’t been falling. Oh, no. It’s more like you fucking tripped me because you were horny.”
“Mia—”
“I can’t believe this. You played me so that I’d be an easy lay for you. But now there’s this consequence of my falling in love with you that you never even gave a thought to, did you? You selfish sonofabitch, what gives you the right to play with a person’s emotions like that just because you’ve got an itch that you want scr—”
His mouth cut off her tirade, and while that intimate connection melted both her spine and her higher brain function like it always did, it didn’t fully deflate the need to throw him off a cliff. This was because men sucked. Peace of mind was hard enough to come by even without them blundering through a woman’s life, thinking with their damn penises and not giving a thought to the emotional chaos they created simply because they were trying to get laid. God, was it any wonder she wanted to murder him? It was a good thing he knew what to do with his tongue and his fingers. Otherwise she’d have nothing to do with him.
A sudden honking of a horn brought Quinn’s head up and her attention around to Jase, who was busy climbing back into his truck after leaving her carry-on stranded in the snow.
“So, you’re good?” Quinn’s father rolled down the truck’s window before slamming the door shut behind him, all the while grinning at them as if he was enjoying some kind of joke. “She’s cussing you out and you’re kissing her quiet, so we’re back to normal, yeah?”
“Better than normal.” Quinn returned his father’s grin while refusing to let her go. “She’s pissed off because—wait for it—she’s in love with me. How fucking cute is that?”
Dear God, she really would murder him, chop him up and feed him to a roving pack of Great Danes.
Jase didn’t help matters by busting out laughing. “Without a doubt, son, she’s the cutest damn thing to hit Western Montana since your mama moved up from Billings. Just make sure you keep telling her she’s cute so she doesn’t get the itch to run off again, you hear? You gotta do right by her in every way. It’s up to us men to keep our women so happy that they’re here, they never think about going anywhere else.”
“You’re not thinking about going anywhere else, are you?” Quinn looked back to her when Jase’s truck disappeared from view. “You’re done with that whole Seattle bullshit once and for all, right? You said you love me, so that means you’re done with it. Right?”
She couldn’t seem to get her jaw to unlock or hands to uncurl. “I don’t know. If it upsets you that much—”
“It upsets the shit out of me.”
“Okay, then. I’m done with it.”
“Prove it.”
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“Prove it? What, you want me to prove that I’ve got a spine?” When the unyielding hardness of his expression didn’t waver, she shook her head over how a man could be so stubborn and sexy all at the same time, and began trudging toward the chalet, grabbing the carry-on’s handle as she passed it to haul it through the snow. “Fine, whatever. I’ll prove it to you.”
Once inside, jackets were tossed onto a nearby chair. While Quinn took her carry-on into his room, Mia got the fire going in the living room and sat on the raised hearth. As he returned, she pulled out the papers she’d crammed into her back pocket and held them up.
“Contract. Notice of contract default.” She started to turn to the fire but he stopped her, his hand coming to cover hers.
“I didn’t say he deserves to be let off the hook. That asshole doesn’t get away with using you and draining you dry. I just don’t want you going after him to get back everything he took from you.”
She shook her head. “My old law professor’s already been in touch with the offer to get these papers to Jackson. I’ll go ahead and send word to him that he has my permission to do so. My aunt will be thrilled to tell him. I just hope she isn’t wearing a nightie when she does it.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” She moved her hand from under his to hold a corner of the papers to the flame. The moment they caught, he took them from her and threw them in, then pulled her to her feet to guide her to the sofa in front of it. He sat down first, then tugged her down so that she straddled his lap, her knees sinking into the cushions on either side of his hips, her hands on his shoulders and her eyes looking right into his.
“So it’s done now,” he said while his hands came to rest on her thighs, his touch possessive. Claiming. The heat of his hands branded her through the layers of her clothing. “You’ll never give your ex another thought.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I’m telling you. There’s only room for me now.”
She still wasn’t done with her snit. “Are you sure you want to be with a woman who has no spine?”
