by Caro Carson
Quinn carried her over his threshold and, without pausing, straight into his bedroom. They didn’t need to discuss anything. Shoes were kicked off, protection was grabbed from a drawer and Diana pushed him down on his own bed to finish undressing him. He lay on his back, drowning in a sensual feast of spice and flowers, held captive under the fall of her hair. She didn’t make him wait before she straddled him, and he, with a lift of his hips, was desperately, insanely grateful to bury himself in the welcoming warmth of this woman.
And later, much later, as he drifted off to sleep with Diana in his arms, Quinn knew Diana had worked her magic.
For this moment in time, he was truly, unreservedly happy.
* * *
“You’re running away again, aren’t you?”
Diana froze in the middle of pulling on her sandal, achieving a moment of perfect balance on one foot, something that would have made any yoga instructor proud. Then she finished tugging her ankle strap into place with a precarious hop. Darn it, she’d been so quiet, gathering up her clothes and tiptoeing into the living room to get dressed, buying time while she tried to figure out what the proper morning-after etiquette ought to be.
Her time to decide was up. She straightened and faced Quinn. He was standing in the archway that separated the hall from the living room, leaning with one arm high against the wall, as if he’d been there, watching her get dressed, for some time. He was very nearly naked. Stunningly, wonderfully nude, except for skintight black boxer-briefs that did almost nothing to hide his athletic body. His half-aroused, athletic body.
She couldn’t help but gaze for a moment at thick calves, hard abs and sculpted biceps, amazed that she’d had a man like that at her mercy, even for one night. When she finally looked at his face, his knowing expression made her blush.
She turned her back to him, although her dress was unzipped in the back, so her move revealed more of her body, not less. In the cold light of day, it was hard to feel like a woman who could make demands of a man. She was just Diana Connor, small-potatoes real estate agent, matchmaker at the dog pound, everybody’s favorite pal.
Last night had been a breathtaking experience, one of those beautiful moments in time, and she was glad she’d had the courage to enjoy it while she could. She started to fumble with her zipper, trying not to cringe at her own thoughts. Her mother had undoubtedly never intended her it takes courage to be happy philosophy to apply to sex with a stranger.
He is a MacDowell, though, Lana’s brother-in-law. He isn’t really some stranger from a bar.
She yanked at her zipper, feeling defensive against her own accusations.
“Let me help you with that.” Quinn walked up behind her and stilled her awkward hands with his own. He began zipping her dress, but stopped in the middle of her back to scoop her long hair out of his way with sure hands, the hands of a doctor, hands that had twisted a napkin around a champagne bottle before teaching her how good something could taste.
He took his time smoothing her uncombed hair over her shoulder. Diana held very still, melting under that soothing touch. The touch of a cowboy? She felt like a skittish horse.
“Where were you going?” he asked.
“Remember, I told you at the Driskill that I had to leave because I had work today?”
He took her by the shoulders, gently, and dropped a kiss on the nape of her neck. “You were going to leave without saying goodbye.”
She shivered, and she knew he felt it. “Isn’t that how it’s done? No expectations, no strings attached, no embarrassing morning-after moments?”
For the teeniest, tiniest piece of a second, she thought she felt his fingers tighten on her shoulders, but he sounded perfectly calm and certain when he spoke. “Not after a night like ours. You told me there were moments of beauty that could make you cry. Believe me, Diana, you had me as close to tears as I’ve ever been.” He turned her to face him. “You don’t sneak out after a night like that.”
He was so ridiculously handsome, so confident in everything he said. How could he expect so much from her?
“I didn’t know that rule. I don’t do one-night stands.” She gestured to her dress apologetically. “I know you might find that hard to believe.”
He narrowed his gaze, causing lines to form at the corners of his eyes. They weren’t laugh lines. “What do you mean, I’d find that hard to believe?”
Diana couldn’t bear the scrutiny of that green gaze. She stepped away. “I don’t usually show this much skin. I was trying to look glamorous, like I belonged at the gala, maybe like I was rich.” She gestured at the modern space of his living room, with its sky-high ceilings and industrial beams.
She’d seen condos in this building hit the real estate listings. They started just under a million. She’d never shown one to any of her clients. This wasn’t her world. She hadn’t even known what she was pretending to be.
“But I didn’t look glamorous, did I? Not like your friends in their gowns. I just made myself look like a girl who...will. And I did.”
Diana studied Quinn’s million-dollar modern industrial designer fireplace until she couldn’t take the silence and looked at him. He’d crossed his arms over his chest, but was otherwise scrutinizing her the same way as before, green eyes, serious expression. She let her own gaze drop to his chest, with its defined muscles, and to his flexed arms. Already, it seemed incredible to her that she’d ever made love to a man that looked like that. That she’d made a man like him gasp and shudder at her touch. She couldn’t have missed what she’d never had, but now that she’d been with Quinn, how would she fantasize about anyone else, ever again?
Quinn abruptly uncrossed his arms and closed the space between them. “Okay, let’s get two things sorted out. First, you do not look like the kind of girl that guys think will. You look like the kind of girl that guys wish would, but they know won’t. There is an innocence about you that’s as obvious as your beauty.”
He turned her around, she assumed in order to finish tugging up her zipper. Instead, she felt him run one finger over her bra strap. “Do you know what I was thinking right now, watching you put on this pink underwear? It looks like one of those old-fashioned bathing suits from the World War Two era. That fits you perfectly. You’re the kind of girl men painted on their bombers, the kind of girl that would give a man a reason to fight to get home. Sexy, but smiling. You’re a bombshell, Diana, but with that girl-next-door friendliness. I am very, very lucky to be with you. Do we have that straight?”
She nodded, speechless around the lump in her throat. She loved the image of herself he’d just painted. Loved it.
“Good, then are you ready to address the second thing?” He zipped up her dress in one efficient move.
She faced him, waiting. He didn’t look so stern now.
“You don’t do one-night stands. I don’t, either.” He imitated her earlier gesture, the one she’d made to indicate her short dress, brushing his hand over his own bare thighs. “I really don’t, although I know you may find that hard to believe, considering how I’m dressed.”
He smiled at her then, and surprised a laugh out of Diana. Really, he was so charming when he wasn’t brooding.
“This isn’t a one-night stand yet,” he said. “It will be if you leave and never see me again. For the sake of not ruining our track records, we should stay together for a while longer, don’t you agree?”
He pulled her into his arms, and she hugged him, fitting against his body easily. He kissed her, a leisurely taste as different from their aggressive passion as day from night. Different, but wonderful all the same. Last night, he’d been in a civilized tuxedo, but he’d been more demanding. Today, he was all bared body, but a gentleman.
His mouth left hers to trail along her jawline, to nuzzle aside her hair, until he whispered in her ear. “If we make love today, then last night w
asn’t a one-time thing. And if we promise to make love tomorrow, then we can say we’ve been dating, and no one will think we’re shallow.”
“Or sleazy,” she said, whispering in his ear.
“No, we don’t want to be sleazy. Anything but that.”
He lowered her zipper, gave her dress a tug so that it fell to the floor. She stood there, feeling glamorous and glorious in her bombshell bathing suit underwear.
With an almost unbearably light touch, Quinn traced one finger over the contours of her pink bra, from her shoulder to the tip of her breast. As he slid his palm slowly over the satin covering her backside, she whispered her next words over his lips.
“We better get started. I want to be sure I’m a respectable woman by the time I get to work at the shelter.”
Chapter Seven
The animal shelter was Quinn’s idea of hell. Sheer, unadulterated, headache-inducing, noisy hell. And it smelled bad, too.
Diana seemed oblivious to her horrible surroundings. She’d just left the building with a family of four whose youngest son was cradling a dog that weighed as much as he did. It was quite possibly the ugliest dog that Quinn had ever seen, but the boy was pampering it like it might win a blue ribbon at the Westminster, and Diana was beaming like—well, like the successful matchmaker she was.
She didn’t even get paid for this. She just liked it.
How could anyone like this? The cinder block reception building had a red door that led to the parking lot and a blue door that led to a long walkway lined with kennels for the larger dogs. Quinn loathed that blue door. The moment it opened, every dog erupted into a barking frenzy. He’d given up trying to speak after the first two rounds. It took at least eight long minutes for the dogs to calm down, every time. He’d timed it.
There was one dog that never calmed down. For two hours, he’d listened to either that one dog barking, or fifteen. Quinn had missed hearing his own phone ring, something that was more than an irritation. He was a cardiologist. He was on staff at a hospital. He served with Texas Rescue. His calls were no joke.
Granted, Brian was on call this weekend to handle his private practice patients, but that didn’t mean Quinn could go off the grid and be completely unreachable. Whether he wore a tuxedo or scrubs or today’s jeans and cowboy boots, he was a doctor, and he had responsibilities. Always. He’d tried to return a missed call from Brian three times, but each time he hit the call button, someone would touch that damned blue door, and the frenzy would begin.
He’d tried standing outside to place calls in the nearly one-hundred-degree heat, but the dog kennels were open-aired. Shaded, but open to the air, and noisy as hell. At least the lobby was air-conditioned and noisy as hell.
He leaned back in the plastic patio chair that served as lobby furniture, tempted to bang his head on the cinder block wall behind him, until he realized silence reigned. The dogs had finally calmed down, now that Diana had taken the family and their large creature out to the baking-hot parking lot. The solo barker had even gone silent. Quinn quickly got out his cell phone.
No sooner had he tapped Brian’s name to initiate the call than a volunteer, a teenager who didn’t appear to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, meandered to the blue door and reached for the knob.
“Don’t touch that damned door.”
The teen barely flinched, but he did glare at Quinn as he shoved his hand into the front pocket of his shredded jeans. “Dude, you need to chill.”
Quinn came out of his chair, and the teen showed some normal sense of self-preservation, backing away from six feet of grown man in his prime. Angry grown man.
“Dr. MacDowell here,” he barked into the phone when his practice’s answering service picked up. He considered standing in front of the door in case the surly teen wanted to make a second, defiant attempt at the knob, but the kid retreated to the side room that held a wall of stacked kennels for little dogs.
Good. Let him sit in there and listen to the Chihuahuas yip.
Just as the answering service relayed Brian’s message to him, Diana came in from the parking lot. The opening of the red door meant the blue door rattled at the incoming rush of hot summer air, and the dogs went berserk again.
“Another happy family,” Diana announced.
Quinn cursed under his breath and tossed his phone on the counter.
Diana looked only slightly less wary of him than the teenager had. “Where’s Stewy?” she asked.
“He’s in with the little dogs.”
“Shoot. I asked him to start leashing the dogs that were due for their walk.”
Quinn had undoubtedly stopped him from doing just that.
The dogs were only one minute into their eight-minute frenzy. He scrubbed his jaw with one hand. Ol’ Stewy had been right. He needed to chill, because he was stuck. He’d offered to drive Diana here, so he couldn’t leave until her shift was over.
He shouldn’t have driven her here. After this morning’s lovemaking, another round of sex so perfect it was humbling, he’d been right to drive her to her car, of course. Then he’d followed her to her house, one of the funky 1940s bungalows that made up various Austin streets. Diana’s street had been a mix of decrepit buildings and absurdly cute restorations. Her unique house had been in transition from one to the other.
While she dressed for the day, he’d waited in a living room the size of a postage stamp. He’d begun handling the day’s requirements by calling his mother to break the news of Irene Caulsky’s passing. His mother had assumed he was calling to find out if she needed anything for the afternoon’s family get-together.
He’d forgotten all about it. It wasn’t like him to forget a commitment, but his body was conveniently ruling his brain, he supposed. He started mentally adjusting his plans. It took an hour to drive to the ranch, plus he’d need to stay for two hours. Add in the hour return, and he’d lose four hours out of the weekend he’d planned to spend not having a one-night stand with Diana Connor.
Taking her to the ranch with him was out of the question. Introduce a girlfriend to his mother? He might as well buy a diamond ring if he was going to raise everyone’s expectations that way. He had to be particularly careful with Diana. She wasn’t from his usual crowd. She might not understand that a professional with a career like his had no time—and no desire—to be anything other than a bachelor.
No, if he couldn’t spend the whole day in bed with her, then a straightforward dinner date and a return to his place would be the right thing to do. Keep it clear. Keep it simple.
Then Diana had emerged from her bedroom. She’d been telling the truth when she’d said that she didn’t usually show as much skin as she had at the gala, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t as sexy as hell in her casual Saturday clothes.
Her red denim shorts were nearly knee-length, but they were skintight. Her short-sleeved button-down shirt, white with cherries printed all over it, was tucked firmly into her waistband and buttoned up high enough so it didn’t show a hint of what he knew from firsthand experience was first-class cleavage. Despite the casual white canvas sneakers on her feet, her shirt sparkled with red sequins, one in the middle of each cherry. The red rhinestone sunglasses perched on her head were overkill, but even so, Diana looked like one of those 1940s pinup-girl posters. A poster that some kid had glued sequins all over, but still a picture to fuel a man’s fantasies.
Quinn had taken one look and known he wasn’t willing to say goodbye for four hours. Not yet.
They’d eaten a quick lunch at a food truck on the way to her beloved animal shelter. He’d planned on stealing touches and kisses and enjoying more of the way Diana had teased him at the gala. Instead, he’d gotten a headache from the dogs and the chaos, and he’d resented each and every person who’d taken Diana’s time and attention away from him.
The dogs launched into t
heir second minute of noise. Six more to go.
He hadn’t expected to be unable to work. He hadn’t expected that Diana would do nothing but work.
“I stopped Stewy as he was going to leash them up,” he said, using a voice that would carry over the barking. “My fault. I needed him to hold off so that I could get one phone call in. One.”
Just one godforsaken phone call in this madhouse.
Diana walked straight to him and gave him a hug.
Damn. It was a little alarming, the way she did that, but he had to admit it was an effective way to break the tension that had been stretching between them for the past two hours.
Quinn hugged her back, and the feel of her body against his lightened his mood considerably. Hadn’t she taught him to look on the bright side? He’d make love to this woman tonight—and tomorrow, too. They had a commitment to that much, and despite this canine chaos being her idea of fun, he wanted to uphold his end of that bargain. Badly.
She let go of him and picked up the first leash. With that uncanny prescience she had, she correctly interpreted his pain from the cacophony of dogs. “You hate the noise, I can tell, but don’t worry. They’ll be quieter after their walk.”
As she gathered up the rest of the leashes, he enjoyed looking at her fully clothed, knowing what she looked like naked. It was an incredible turn-on to know that those white sneakers hid pretty toes, painted red. Anyone could see that she had a nicely curved backside in her red denim, but he’d actually felt the smooth skin, felt the muscle flex beneath his hand.
The red door opened again, the blue door rattled and the dogs went crazy, a welcome distraction for once, since Quinn’s thoughts had been about to cause a physical reaction that would be distinctly uncomfortable right now.
Another man entered the shelter. With her back to him, Diana didn’t see the older man checking her out, but Quinn caught it. He retrieved his phone, slid it into his pocket, and then stood with his arms crossed over his chest, staring the man down. It took less than two seconds to make his point silently. Quinn had inherited his dad’s build, as had his brothers. It was useful.
