by Caro Carson
He was glad he had. It was good to hear nothing but an engine, one that was loud enough to drown out his thoughts. Most of them.
What happens if I miss you on a Wednesday?
That had been a baffling question. No other woman had ever asked such a thing.
I could have suggested she send a text. I might have been able to call her back between patients.
Even he knew how weak that sounded.
Diana didn’t understand his world. She had no idea what the demands were. She sold real estate. She walked dogs at an animal shelter. If she wanted to see someone, she could drop what she was doing and go.
Quinn could not do that, and no matter what Diana thought, it wasn’t because he was a jerk. If he played hooky from his job to see his girlfriend, he’d leave a staff of twenty and at least as many patients all sitting in a building he owned, wondering where the hell he’d gone. Some of those patients wouldn’t get their ECGs performed and their arrhythmias caught in time. Surgeries in the hospital wouldn’t take place, because anesthesiologists expected Quinn to decide if the patient’s heart could withstand the procedure.
It was a lot of responsibility, but he’d asked for it. He carried that weight just fine, but damn it, when he had a Saturday free, it would have been freakin’ de-stressing to hold Diana Connor.
That’s a booty call.
Not quite. He didn’t want just anyone. It had to be Diana. He’d ruined her for champagne; she’d ruined him for any other woman. Not a fair trade.
Quinn took the next entrance ramp to the Mopac. On the expressway, he drove hard and fast, concentrating on the road, listening to the engine roar good and loud at the maximum speed allowed.
Dig a little deeper.
When he thought of Diana, his first image wasn’t of her between the sheets. He saw her in green fringe, saying how beautiful the ballroom was, when he could only see her. He saw her in the kitchen with his mom, watching her make potato salad like she was Michelangelo painting a ceiling.
Quinn exited the highway, stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, then headed back to Austin. It was time to stop denying the truth. With Diana, he wanted the out-of-bed part, too. He wanted the pizza by the fire and the walk on the ranch. He wanted a woman who’d make him chase a shelter dog and laugh with him while he did it.
She found the beauty in everyday simplicities from sweet tea to sparkling wine, but from him, she’d expected more. He hadn’t given it. No amount of rationalization was going to make the loss of Diana Connor sit easy, not when he couldn’t honestly say he’d done his best.
Quinn pulled into her driveway and silenced his motorcycle.
Chapter Twelve
The sound of laughter drifted from the run-down house next door to the brightly painted blue of Diana’s 1940s bungalow. From inside Diana’s house, Quinn heard nothing, although he’d progressed from civilized knocking to using the side of his fist on her front door.
Her car was in the driveway. She had to be here. Either she was avoiding him, or she was unable to respond. The likelihood that she was seriously injured was infinitesimal, but he’d seen strange cases come through his brother’s E.R.
He pounded again, three rapid thuds, and waited. For all he knew, she’d decided to drink away the pain of their parting. It would be easy to have one too many, to pass out, to be in danger. He could walk around the house and look in the windows. If she didn’t want to speak to him, that made him something of a trespasser, but if she were alone and incapacitated, he could be a lifesaver.
He raised his fist to knock again—last time, and then he was going to look in her windows—when the door opened and Stewy, sullen Stewy from the shelter, stood there, looking as surprised as Quinn felt.
“Dude, you need to chill. We moved the TV next door.”
The kid closed the door in Quinn’s face, since Quinn had no response whatsoever.
Okay, he had to give the kid that one. Point to Stewy.
Quinn rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the full scratch of the day’s beard, as he readjusted his mental image of what Diana might be doing. He heard a screen door slam in the back of the house and watched Stewy saunter from Diana’s backyard to the rear of the shabbier house.
Well, hell. Quinn walked from her neat yard through a stretch of weeds to stand on the edge of what had once been a gravel horseshoe-tossing pit. In the twilight, he watched the group gathered on the large screened-in porch.
His eye went immediately to Diana. This morning’s cherry-spangled shirt had given way to a white T-shirt that had stars and hearts sprinkled across her chest, eye-catching shapes made of pink and blue sequins. She was clicking little switches on battery-operated fake candles, setting them into paper lanterns and placing them around the porch. A cluster of six or seven people sat on plastic chairs around a flat-screen television, its picture outshining the lanterns, almost painfully bright to his eyes.
Everyone laughed at something on the screen, and Diana turned to look. Her beautiful, brilliant smile lit everything inside of Quinn. He’d wanted to see her smile; he was annoyed at her smile. Not since a kiss over scrambled eggs had he felt like doing anything close to smiling. How foolish of him to think she’d been missing him the way he’d been missing her.
She seemed to be the hostess of this little party. Done decorating for the coming dark, she traded out some empty bottles for two people, even taking the foam wrap off the empty bottle and putting it on the fresh beer for one guy. Her laughter carried lightly over the others’.
Quinn’s mood darkened further. He’d drag the entire party down by walking up. He wouldn’t interrupt, then. He’d only come here because Diana had been so upset this morning. His mistake.
Quinn took a step back, gravel crunching under his boot. It looked like partying with the likes of Stewy was all Diana needed to enjoy life.
That’s how it looks, but...
Except for the more heavily sequined shirt, Diana looked just as she had yesterday at his mother’s picnic, cheerful and attentive to everyone, showing no sign that she’d been unhappy at the graves. Only Quinn had known she was hiding any sadness.
This morning, she’d been unhappy. A woman who left in wet clothes was distressed. None of these people on the porch knew she’d been that upset. None of them ever would, because Diana made it impossible to see anything but her smile.
Quinn stepped forward. He opened the screen door and walked onto the porch just as Stewy came through the house.
“That’s a sweet bike out there, Di. Can I use it instead of your car to get the chips?”
“No.” Quinn’s answer was immediate.
Everyone turned to look at him except Diana. Two people turned back to the television immediately, uninterested in the latest arrival to the party. One guy lifted his chin in a cool greeting, as if they knew each other. They did not.
“Sorry, Stewy,” Diana said, “but the bike isn’t mine to give. The keys are in my car.”
Without thanking her or acknowledging Quinn, Stewy went back into the house, slamming the front door seconds later.
Quinn saw the slight lift of Diana’s chest as she inhaled deeply before she turned to smile at him as if it cost her no effort at all.
“Hello, Quinn. Did you come here on a motorcycle?”
* * *
What a silly question.
Diana could not ask all the others that crowded in her head. In her heart.
Why did you come?
Did you miss me?
Are you angry at me?
Why did you come, why did you come, oh, why did you come?
She smiled brightly. “Come and meet my friends.” Her introductions were brief, although when she introduced Stewy’s single mom and her new boyfriend, who was the only man who stood and shook hands with Quin
n, she couldn’t help but boast a little. She fussed with the beer bottles in their tub of ice and whispered to Quinn, “I introduced them a few months ago. They’re a good match.”
Quinn’s grin lifted only one corner of his mouth, but it softened the intensity in his expression, and Diana found it easier to breathe.
“Of course,” he said.
Why did you come?
They were being so polite. This was nothing like their last, testy talk in his condo. Nothing like their easy walk on the ranch. Nothing like their whispers in the dark.
“So, um, we’re all fans of this reality show, so I thought it would be fun to get together to watch it. If you don’t know it, I can catch you up on who’s who in a jiffy.”
Quinn barely glanced at the TV they’d hauled from her house to this one. “No, thanks. I didn’t intend to crash a party. Whose house am I barging in on?”
“It’s mine.” At his raised eyebrow, she explained, “I rent them both, at least for a month or two. I’m going to buy one of them.”
“Which one?”
So polite. So interested, hands behind his back, navy T-shirt stretched across his chest.
Diana resolutely kept her eyes on his face, but the gorgeous green of his eyes was hardly less distracting.
“This one, I guess. I painted the other one, but then it looked so cute, the owner decided to raise the price. This one came up for rent, so I grabbed it. These bungalows are in demand. You have to move as soon as they do.”
The little crowd around the TV made a united noise of outrage at the antics of one of the show’s contestants.
“Do you want to show me the house?” Quinn asked.
Diana knew what he really meant. Let’s go somewhere private to talk. He had something to say to her, and she had a feeling she wasn’t ready to hear it. Then again, another ten minutes of small talk would hardly make her feel prepared, either.
“The kitchen still has a pink stove from the 1950s, and it works. Come and see.”
Quinn took his time once they were inside. He actually looked at her house. She’d knocked down most of the cobwebs, thankfully. Still, her industrial broom was propped in a corner, standing guard over all the debris she’d swept out of the way so she could use the back porch tonight.
“You’re renting this? I hope it wasn’t priced as move-in ready.”
“There wasn’t a lot of room to negotiate. It is a little discouraging, especially after getting the other one up to speed, but I’m looking at the bright side. The back porch is a definite bonus in a house this size, and the kitchen could really turn out great.”
The two of them stopped in the center of the tiny kitchen space. She watched Quinn’s fingertips slide over the vintage pink stove. He shook his head at the rounded bubble of the chrome-and-white fridge that was from the same era. Diana thought it was darling, retro and cool, all in one.
With her back against the sink, she had nothing to do but watch Quinn and hold her breath. Her friends had glanced into the kitchen and seen a lot of work. It was crazy, how much she wanted Quinn to see through the surface to the potential underneath.
Quinn put his hands on his hips, filling the girly space with his masculine presence. “It’s so you,” he said, and then he was smiling and shaking his head and chuckling all at once. “It will be a huge project, but it’s so you.”
“I think so, too,” she said, and she couldn’t help but smile back. Suddenly, it was Saturday night all over again, pizza by the fireplace and the right to enjoy his words, his approval, his body. Without further thought, Diana was in his arms and they were kissing, his mouth both exciting and familiar.
They could only take things so far. Laughter erupted on the porch, reminding them they weren’t alone.
Quinn took a step with her in his arms, turning her so the fridge was humming at her back when he let her go. He didn’t go far, though, and kept his arms braced on either side of her. She looked up at him, and the expression on his face was so much better. Relaxed. Open. Happy.
I’m good for him.
That couldn’t be right. They had chemistry, but they weren’t a match, not for the long run.
She shouldn’t have kissed him again. She shouldn’t have let herself have another moment of pretending she belonged to him, of believing they had all the time in the world, when really, their time was up. She’d stolen a weekend with a man who wasn’t meant for her, and now she had to pay for that theft.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple.
“For what?” She didn’t want Quinn to be mad at himself.
“For this morning. I offended you so badly, you ran away in wet clothes. That’s for what.”
“It’s okay. You were trying to be nice.” For both their sakes, she had to let him go. He needed to find his woman in the white gown or the red or blue, the woman who would slide seamlessly into his life, not drive him crazy the way she would.
“It’s not okay. I know you like to look on the bright side of everything, but there was nothing positive about the way we ended things this morning.”
He bent to kiss the other side of her face, but she ducked under his arm and retreated back to the sink. He watched her with narrowed eyes.
She cleared her throat. “You’re so right. There was nothing positive about it. I’m the one who messed up the ending. It was nice of you to come here, so we could end things on better terms. Now we’ll have no hard feelings.”
Two hundred pounds of physically fit man was a little scary when it went as still, as deathly still, as Quinn did. Diana didn’t mess with large animals that went on alert like that. Not police canines, and not this MacDowell man.
The tension lasted forever, until Diana tried to walk out of the kitchen. Quinn stopped her with a hand on her upper arm. “I didn’t come here for a second good-bye. You know that, Diana. You know that.”
“I didn’t explain it very well this morning, but this is how it should be. We really aren’t a good match, Quinn. You aren’t the kind of man who can give me what I need.”
Quinn turned away from her in the small space. He drove his hand through his hair, making all the muscles across his shoulders move and flex under the tight shirt. “Don’t tempt me like that.”
“L-Like what?” Diana’s heart was pounding, differently than it had been during the kiss, and it seemed like a matter of self-preservation to keep her eyes on this angry, cornered male, to track his every move.
He turned back almost violently. “Don’t tempt me to show you what a lot of bull that is. I’m the man who knows exactly what you need.”
“I don’t mean in bed,” she cut him off, feeling something close to anger herself. He wanted her now, but soon enough, he’d be wishing for a woman more like him, and Diana would become the unwanted pet, the one that was the wrong temperament, the one that was so awkward and painful to place elsewhere. “You’re talking about sex. I’m talking about more.”
She pushed his chest with both hands and escaped into the living room. It seemed huge, with room to breathe after the confines of that pink-and-white kitchen.
She needed that room to breathe. She never said things in anger like this. When she couldn’t keep things positive, she left. Walking away took courage. It was the right way to live. She was proud of going through life avoiding ugly, angry words.
“Tell me.” Quinn was right behind her.
She whirled to face him. She took a few steps back, but she couldn’t really walk away.
“You were talking about more,” he said. “I’m listening.”
Diana had no words. Nothing, for a man she shouldn’t have met, shouldn’t have stayed with, shouldn’t be so desperate to be with still.
Oh, God. If he didn’t let her go, she’d end up like those dogs in the animal shelter, the ones who sto
od so loyally by their owners’ sides while the humans they loved signed the papers to get rid of them. It was heartbreaking. It was what drove her to make good matches, every weekend, for every dog. Yet here she was, so tempted by the wrong man as he walked toward her.
“Tell me, Diana. What’s wrong with me?”
“You say you love dogs, but you don’t own one.”
Quinn stopped short and threw his hands up, a bittersweet reminder of how his mother had reacted when she’d thought her sons were being immature. “What does that have to do with—”
She held her hand up to stop him. She was on the right track; she knew it.
“You don’t have a dog, Quinn. Isn’t that strange, when you’ve had them your whole life? You say you love dogs, but you don’t. Dogs are demanding, and always present. You don’t want a dog, because you wouldn’t be able to keep him out of certain areas of your life. The real reason you don’t own a dog is because you don’t love them enough to tolerate the inconvenience. When you have a hard day, you can’t tell a dog you’ll let him put his head in your lap and comfort you next Wednesday.
“I’m not saying you are a bad person. I give you credit for knowing your limits. You appreciate dogs. And you would appreciate me as a girlfriend. But I don’t want to be appreciated. I want to be loved when I’m underfoot. I want to be loved when it’s inconvenient. I do. I want to be loved.”
Chapter Thirteen
I want to be loved.
Silence followed her words.
Oh, there was the sound of the ice rattling on the porch as someone helped himself to a fresh beer, the sound of a too-loud commercial break on TV. But between Quinn and Diana, the silence was profound.
