by Caro Carson
As she raised her hand for that wave, Quinn cupped her elbow. He stepped close to her, very close, and she was overwhelmed at the height and the heat of him, at his masculine body clad in a civilized tuxedo crowding into her personal space.
“You can’t leave yet.”
She looked up at him in surprise.
He smiled, a subtle lifting of one corner of his mouth. “I haven’t had the privilege of dancing with you tonight.”
Oh, this was delicious, this shiver his voice sent through her body. He sounded almost like he was giving her an order, but his words were so courteous. The privilege of dancing with you... She could get lost in a romantic fantasy if she weren’t careful.
“That’s okay. I’ve been forcing you to dance enough as is.” She lightly socked him in the arm with her purse, as much to remind herself that she was his pal as for any other reason.
“I think my stamina is up to the task. Let’s dance. This song fits you too well for us to stand here, talking.”
Diana listened for a moment. Quinn thought “The Way You Look Tonight” fit her? This handsome man, the brother of people she liked and respected, liked the way she looked.
Life might never be this perfect again, her conscience reminded her. You can’t miss what you’ve never had.
It takes courage to be happy. Diana remembered her mother’s words. When in doubt, she always tried to follow her mother’s advice. She placed her hand in Quinn’s, and let him lead her onto the dance floor.
Quinn was a wonderful dancer, holding her properly with one strong arm across her back, just under her shoulder blades, making it easy for her to rest her entire arm along his. He held her other hand out to the side, keeping their arms extended like real ballroom dancers. Her hand rested easily in his. He held her with just the right amount of squeeze to make her feel secure.
Secure. Special. In sync. Right. Dancing with Quinn felt right. She looked up a bit, wanting to see his expression. Did he think they were a match?
“You were trying to escape again, weren’t you?” he said, as they moved forward in time to the music.
With every step, her bare legs brushed the black wool covering his. Each and every step. She was aware of her relative nakedness in a way that made talking difficult. Or perhaps, it made talking imperative.
“You didn’t need me any longer. Patricia was obviously your next dance partner.”
“She is not the one I asked. You are.”
Diana enjoyed that delicious shiver once more, before the implications set in. “So poor Becky is stuck with Patricia again? Oh—I don’t mean your friend is someone to be stuck with.”
“You meant exactly that, and you are exactly right.” Quinn gave her a little extra spin at the edge of the dance floor, before they merged into the dance floor traffic once more. “Patricia can make a plant wither with one look, if she wishes. Never fear. I left Becky with some of West Central’s med school students. They are much closer to her age, and they were fighting over the chance to dance with someone who isn’t a professor’s wife.”
“That’s wonderful. What a good idea.”
She felt his fingers sift through the fringe that fell from her shoulder.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m not the magician you are, though. I’d like to know your secret. How did you change Becky’s outlook so completely?”
Diana jumped at the chance to talk about something so silly. Remaining quiet as he toyed with the fringe of her dress was too much to ask of herself. Talking would distract her from this awareness of how they moved, how they meshed, how they made magic—at least in her mind. Oh, but did he feel it, too?
Talk. He asked about Becky.
She tapped his shoulder with her purse. “To my boss’s dismay, this purse is too small for me to waste room on things like business cards, but I always find space for critical items like safety pins. Becky’s dress was just a size too big. She couldn’t relax, because her top was loose. A few safety pins along the seams—”
“Strategically placed while you chatted behind a palm tree?”
“Bingo. You can really dance once you know your dress won’t come off.”
Quinn laughed, but this time the laugh had a slightly different undertone. A little more bass to it.
“Since you’re dancing with me, you must feel very certain that your dress is not going to come off.”
She leaned back just enough to smile with him, but he wasn’t smiling.
He turned them once more. “Your dress will stay on no matter what I try?”
The possibility that he was talking about more than dancing was hard to ignore.
Quinn spoke intimately into her ear. “I find myself tempted to test that theory.”
He smiled at her, but it was something of a pirate’s smile. “Just how certain are you that your dress won’t be coming off tonight?”
* * *
Diana hoped her smile didn’t slip. Apparently, she’d gone and done it again. A man had mistaken friendliness for something else. Something looser. Easier.
Sleazier.
She never saw herself that way. It always disappointed her when other people did. It just about killed her that Quinn did.
Darn it, she’d wanted him to be different.
She was curvy. She smiled a lot. Tonight, she was pretty much flashing all the leg she owned in a dress that was just a teensy bit too small. Could she blame Quinn for thinking she was less of a matchmaker and more of an easy bed partner?
She’d been thinking about finding magic, about making perfect matches. He was thinking about getting her naked. Tonight. His hand slid lower, leaving her upper back cold as he curved his arm around her waist.
The disappointment was crushing.
She started to let go. At the same moment she loosened her hold, he tightened his, and then she found herself bent backward in a dip, breathless and disoriented, despite being held securely by his strong arms.
The last notes of the song faded away. She focused on his green eyes, the crystal and the flames and the music all a blur beyond him.
He smiled that disarming, charming half smile. “You were quite right. Your dress is secure. It’s safe to dance the next song with me.” He stood her up and gave her hand a friendly squeeze.
She was such an idiot. She was the one who’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions. They’d been talking about safety pins. Quinn hadn’t been thinking of her in a sexual way; he’d been joking with her. Of course he had been—she was the buddy.
Quinn held her lightly, waiting for her to say she’d dance with him.
Diana called up her smile. She forced herself to laugh. She placed her hand on his shoulder and smacked her other hand in his, in a move that resembled a high five. “Let’s dance. We can scope out your perfect partner over each other’s shoulders.”
* * *
Quinn knew he’d screwed up.
Thirty seconds, that was all it had taken. He’d been dancing with Diana, having a genuinely interesting and lighthearted conversation on a topic unfamiliar to him—how to fix a girl’s dress and thereby a girl’s evening—and then he’d lost Diana’s spark. She was still dancing with him, moving in time to the music, but she was no longer with him.
He needed that spark. Without any conscious effort on her part, without knowing he was hurting from the passing of Irene Caulsky, she’d made him feel better. Balanced, like there was enough light in the world to offset the dark.
But somehow, he’d blown it. Hell, she was even looking for another woman again, someone else for him to dance with.
Quinn was familiar with situations that went sour in a moment. As a cardiologist, he’d had patients chatting groggily with him as they waited for their sedation to take effect suddenly go into full cardiac arrest. As a rancher, he’d seen li
vestock ambling across a dry creek bed, kicking up dust, suddenly be swept away in a roaring torrent of water, a deadly flash flood from some faraway rainstorm.
When situations turned, Quinn turned them back. He threaded wires into hearts and opened blocked arteries. He gave chase on horseback and lassoed swimming cattle.
What did he do with Diana?
Situations with women didn’t turn so rapidly. Women liked being with him, and he with them. If a woman was upset, it was generally because he hadn’t been able to keep a date—which usually meant a patient had taken one of those sudden turns for the worse. Although the circumstances that kept him from showing up were beyond his control, women liked an apology. They liked their apologies best when he showed up bearing a gift, generally wine and roses, or a tasteful piece of gold jewelry. No gemstones. He liked his relationships exclusive, but without expectations of permanence.
He wasn’t in a relationship with Diana, and he hadn’t failed to show up for this dance, but since women loved apologies...
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Diana frowned slightly, making a little wrinkle appear between her brows. She really had a fascinating face, open and expressive. He wanted that genuine spark of hers to come back.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, more emphatically.
“For what?” she asked.
That nearly made him pause in the middle of the dance floor. Women didn’t ask that. They accepted his apology, took the wine and roses, and stayed with him.
Diana was different.
“For what?” he repeated, aware that he had no answer.
She met his gaze, and he noticed that although her eyes were brown, they had a touch of gold to them, or perhaps it was closer to copper, a bit of rose color to match her hair.
“All you did was dip me,” Diana said. “Very nicely. You didn’t even come close to dropping me.”
They danced in silence while the band’s singer crooned a few lines. Quinn thought back, trying to pinpoint where the tone of the evening had changed. “Perhaps I didn’t give you enough warning? No one likes to be startled.”
Her laugh sounded forced to him. “Seriously, Quinn, you’ve got nothing to apologize for. Look, there’s that woman in the red dress again. No, don’t look—that’s too obvious. I’m looking for you. I don’t think she’s with any man in particular. You could dance us closer to her side of the floor, and then when the song ends—”
“I warned you, right before the dip, that I was going to test whether or not your dress was secure enough for dancing.”
Diana abruptly fell silent. She studied the orchestra, keeping her face turned away from him.
Details. Quinn needed to remember the details. “I said... Aw, hell. I said I was going to try to get you out of your dress. That’s it, isn’t it? I didn’t mean it that way, Diana. I’m sorry—truly sorry.”
She looked at him for a second, but she seemed embarrassed, and she looked back at the band.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said, as lame an excuse as he’d ever given in his life.
“I know you didn’t.” She shrugged and spoke to his lapel. “I’m an idiot.”
“Why are you the idiot? I’m the one who said something stupid.” Quinn didn’t like the way Diana seemed to assume she’d done something wrong. They’d stopped moving across the dance floor and were marking time, swaying to the music in one place. He tried to lighten the moment. “My mother would tan my hide if she heard me say such a thing.”
“I took it the wrong way.” She ventured a glance at him, embarrassment written all over her hide-nothing face.
Something in Quinn’s gut twisted. “It was perfectly reasonable for you to have taken it that way. I imagine you’ve heard plenty of lines from plenty of men.”
She blushed in the glow of the orchestra’s stage lighting. “I know. My dress is too short, and I tend to touch people too much.” She touched his shoulder with her purse, just one weak thump, a pale imitation of her earlier playfulness. “I give guys the wrong impression.”
Quinn stopped cold, right there on the dance floor. “No. I meant nothing like that.”
The song finished and couples all around them stepped apart. Their polite applause faded away as the band leader spoke. Diana dropped Quinn’s hand and stepped back.
Damn it, he’d just told her she was wrong. He’d probably scared her with his intensity. This wasn’t a hospital operating room. He didn’t need to bark out corrections.
Diana was facing the band leader, looking interested in his words. Quinn stepped closer to her, so he could keep their conversation private. “The only impression you’ve given anyone tonight is that you are open and friendly.”
Quinn had underestimated Diana, that much was certain. He’d thought she was an open book, unguarded almost to a fault, but she obviously had her past hurts and secrets. He tried, once more, to restore their lighter mood. “If I were making a pass at you, I would deserve a good, swift kick for a stupid line like ‘bet I can get your dress off tonight.’”
“But you weren’t making a pass at me, because we’re just friends.”
You weren’t making a pass at me. She said it as though it were impossible for him to be interested. That she could miss his attraction to her was astounding.
Or perhaps, she did not want to see it, because she did not feel attracted to him. We’re just friends. She’d made a point of saying that.
If a woman was not interested, then Quinn was not interested. After all, if the woman in white was not available, then the woman in blue or red would be. It had been so for as long as he could remember—since one cheerleader had broken his teenaged heart and two others had vied for the chance to make it whole. It made no sense for a man to hang all his hopes on one particular woman.
Unless that woman was one of a kind. Effervescent. Irresistible.
Diana tipped her chin toward a cluster of people grouped around a table. “I think you’ll regret it for the rest of the weekend if you don’t ask the woman in the red dress to dance at least once. The band leader just announced this was their last song.”
She wanted him to find a new partner. Quinn felt that punch again. Loss. Diana Connor had no desire to get to know him better.
She was smiling at him, chatting away in that pleasant way of hers as she backed away. “I’m so glad I got to meet you tonight. I can honestly say I’ve never met a MacDowell I didn’t like. Good luck with the lady in red. Now hurry, go.”
He watched her as she began threading her way through the crowd around the edge of the dance floor. He remained stoic, waiting for cool logic to counter that hot stab of regret. The rationalizations began automatically: nothing lasted indefinitely. Endings were part of life. This loss hadn’t occurred because he’d failed to do his best.
Quinn stopped the loop right there. Did he even know what his best was when it came to a woman? An apology. A piece of gold jewelry. A relationship with finite expectations. A civilized parting of ways after six months or twelve. That was the endless loop of his relationships, and it all required so little effort.
How could he let Diana walk away, when he didn’t know what his best was?
Chapter Five
She wasn’t going to cry. At least, not in public, she wasn’t. Diana batted her eyelashes rapidly, heading for the mezzanine and the ladies’ room, and nearly ran into the man in front of her.
He steadied her with a hand at her elbow.
Quinn. She knew it the instant before he spoke. “I meant it when I said you were the only woman I cared to dance with this evening, Diana. May I have the last dance?”
Quinn started guiding her onto the dance floor without waiting for her answer. Diana didn’t try to resist. She’d never be the same after this ball, anyway. She’d never forget Quinn MacDowell, so she migh
t as well enjoy the feeling of moving in time with him for a few minutes more.
She blinked her wet eyelashes some more, and gestured vaguely toward the spot where she’d left him. “How did you get in front of me?”
“You were going around the edges of the square, so I took the hypotenuse.”
He was holding her with just the right amount of squeeze, moving the two of them easily to the music, and Diana felt like she could breathe without any danger of a sob coming out. Her smile was real. “Did you just use the word hypotenuse at a party?”
Quinn smiled, a full smile, the kind that lifted both sides of his mouth. Dear Lord, he has a dimple on one side.
“It’s the shortest distance between two points,” he said.
Diana rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe your brain really works that way.”
“Blame my father. I grew up on a ranch, and he taught me to ride at a forty-five degree angle to whatever path a runaway steer was taking.”
She could be offended that he was comparing her to a steer, but it was too fascinating to imagine him as a boy on horseback.
“To cut off the steer’s trajectory,” he said, as if her silence meant he hadn’t explained very well. “You can’t chase behind them, you need to get in front of them, so they’ll change direction and go back to the herd.”
“You don’t use a lasso?” Heck, if she was going to imagine Quinn as a cowboy, she might as well go all the way.
“That takes practice. I wasn’t very good at it yet when my dad first took me on a round-up.” Quinn shifted his arm, pulling her closer. “I doubt I’m good at it anymore, either. I spend all my time at the hospital.”
“Your dad is a cowboy who taught you to think about a hypotenuse? He sounds very unique.”
“He was. He’s passed away.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” She squeezed his hand, the one he was holding in their ballroom dancing pose.
“Thank you. It’s been years, I’m sad to say.” He brought their joined hands closer to their chests, brushing his knuckles briefly over the curve of her cheek. “May I ask you why you were crying?”
