by Fredrick, MJ
“You’re actually smiling in some of these pictures,” she teased.
He grunted. “I’ve been known to.”
“Look at you in a cap and gown.” A real smile split his face in that photo.
“I knew the end was near and I could get out of here.”
“You’ll have to tell me more later.”
“You don’t want to hear it.”
“Come on, let’s eat,” his mother said, her voice tight with frustration and exhaustion.
“Sit down, Mrs. Alden,” Lily said, breaking away from Quinn’s side. “You don’t need to be going to all this trouble. Everyone can help themselves, then Quinn and I’ll take care of the kitchen.”
His mother gave her a suspicious sidelong look, but nodded and sat at the long table. The rest of the family filled in around her, and Quinn dragged another chair in from the back yard for Lily. She sat beside him and the family joined hands to say a prayer.
***
After dinner, Lily rose to clear the table, and Quinn stood to help her, grateful to get away from his family for the few minutes it would take to wrap up leftovers and dispose of paper plates. Lily washed her hands, then tied her hair back in one of those knots she made when she didn’t have a ponytail holder, and stood over the sink to wash the silverware. He should have known she’d take charge. She was good at it. And something about seeing her in the kitchen of his childhood home twisted—or untwisted—something inside him.
He captured her hand under the soapy water—the hand he’d been holding all day just to anchor him in the life he loved, not this life he’d had—and lifted it to his chest as he hooked his other hand around her waist. Her eyes widened as she looked from her hand wetting his white shirt to his face, but he didn’t give her time to open her mouth, to say anything, before he covered her lips with his.
The sound she made in the back of her throat was the sweetest, sexiest thing he’d ever heard, and then she tightened her hand in his shirt. He pulled her closer, slanting his mouth over hers, taking the kiss deeper, just for a moment, before he raised his head. He could only look into her eyes—puzzled, hopeful—for a few seconds before he turned away, opening the cabinet under the sink to pull out the full garbage bag.
“I got your shirt wet,” she said in a voice pitched low, like it was aimed straight for his groin.
“It’ll dry,” he said roughly, and stepped out the kitchen door to toss the garbage into the big bin.
What the hell had he done that for? He’d wanted to do it all day, but that didn’t mean he should have. It was just going to put romantic ideas in her head, and he didn’t want her confused about his intentions. He was confused enough.
He sucked in a deep breath—a bad idea this close to the trash can—then headed back inside. He could feel her looking at him as he replaced the trash bag, but he didn’t look up, only nudged her aside so he could wash his hands. She didn’t say anything, just finished washing the dishes. He took the silverware from the drainer and dried them with a towel, then put them away. They finished cleaning the kitchen in silence, and all he could think of was how she tasted. He wondered what she was thinking and wished to hell she’d say something, at the same time glad she didn’t.
“There, that should do,” she said, stepping back to inspect the kitchen. Then she glanced at his chest. “Your shirt’s almost dry.”
Now that was a stupid thing to make his blood heat, but it did. He took her hand, not meeting her gaze, and led her from the kitchen to the family room.
Liam and Tammy were on the couch, Liam rubbing Tammy’s belly, his mom in a chair by herself, staring at the TV that couldn’t possibly be heard over the herd of grandkids playing a board game on the floor. Jared was playing with his phone and Rose was leaning over the board game, telling everyone what move they should make. Typical.
“We’re heading out,” he told them.
His mother turned narrowed eyes to him, then looked at their joined hands. “This should be family time.”
He refused to be guilted into staying in this crowded little house that held so many bad memories. “We’ll meet you at the church in the morning.”
“We were all going to meet here for breakfast before the service,” Rose said, straightening.
We were all? So why had no one mentioned it to him? “We’ll meet you at the church in the morning,” he repeated.
His mother made a disgusted sound and turned back to the television. Lily squeezed his hand gently, a message he didn’t want to understand, but did nonetheless. He blew out a breath.
“Okay, what time are we meeting for breakfast?”
“And can we bring anything?” Lily added.
“I don’t like my conscience walking around outside of me,” he muttered as he opened the car door for her a few minutes later.
“You just have one more day with them. That one day will be better if you make an effort.”
He wanted to say something, wanted to say they hadn’t made an effort for him, but he knew what her response would be. He waited to make sure she was completely in the car before he slammed the door.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked when he opened his own door.
“No.” He wasn’t sure how he felt. Confused, aroused, needy, irritable.
“You sound mad.”
“I’m not. You want to stop and get some beer?”
“Okay, if you want.”
He pulled into a convenience store, put the car in park and stared into the lighted building. “Want to come in?”
A few minutes later they walked out with a six-pack and a bottle. He gripped the neck of the bottle as he got back into the car, this time not opening the door for her. He sat behind the wheel a minute before starting the car and backing out.
They were at the motel in a matter of minutes. “Your room or mine?” he asked.
“Yours. I’ll change and be over in a minute.”
Until that moment he hadn’t realized how badly he wanted to unwrap that dress from her. Maybe it was better if she changed into the clothes he was used to seeing her in. He wouldn’t be so hungry to touch her.
Okay, that was a wrong presumption. She knocked on his door a few minutes later wearing a Bluestone Bulldogs baseball shirt and faded jeans, her hair in a ponytail, and she still took his damn breath away. He stepped back to let her in, motioning to the table where he’d set the beer, the bottle and two plastic cups.
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” she murmured. “You could have…”
He curved his hand around her waist and drew her close, against the length of his body. She drew her head back as if she was trying to get a better look at him, but he followed, slanting his mouth over hers, craving the taste of her, needing to feel…oh, yes, needing to feel her arms around him, just like that. She wound them around his neck and angled her head so it was almost resting on his shoulder, her lips mobile beneath his, her tongue sliding along his. God, she was warm and sweet and every fantasy he had come to life. And this was the wrong time to be acting on any of that. Slowly he loosened his fingers on her hips and eased away. This time he did look into her eyes for a long moment, watched the dreamy arousal turn to question. When she realized her questions wouldn’t be answered, she stepped away and turned to open a bottle of beer with her fingers. She offered it to him, but he reached past her and selected another, not taking his gaze from her.
This time she looked away, and a flush heated her skin. But she didn’t ask questions, just sat in the low-backed chair at the table, her legs stretched in front of her, resting the bottle on her belly.
“Rose seems nice.”
He didn’t want to talk about his family, not with her in his motel room, but once Lily got something in her head, there was no getting around it.
“She’s okay. She’s the one who keeps in contact the most. I think she has spies or something, the things she knows about me.”
Lily lifted her hands palm out in surrender. “Don’t look at me.”
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He shook his head. “She was like her kids growing up, loud and always into something. You’d think she had enough attention as the only girl, but she wanted to be like Liam and me.”
“Trouble.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“Tammy’s sweet, too.”
“She sure has done a number on Liam. He’s made a one-eighty.”
“I’ve heard that can happen to the prickliest man when he falls in love.”
“Don’t look at me.”
“Have you ever been in love? I mean, the way some of those women were looking at you tonight, I thought at least one of them was going to tell you that you were the father of her baby.”
He snorted. “I played around, but I was always careful. And no.” He leveled a look at her to gauge her reaction.
“No?” She lowered her bottle without taking a drink. “Never?”
“Don’t have it in me, I guess. I didn’t exactly have a great example.”
“Neither did Liam, and he came out okay. I can’t really tell about Rose and her husband. They didn’t seem to talk to each other. In fact, he didn’t talk much at all, and she mostly talked to her kids.”
“Yeah, I don’t know him at all, except he’s a farmer.”
She gave him a look.
“What?”
“Just picturing you in overalls, is all. Wondering what would have been different if you hadn’t gone into the Army.”
He took a long swallow. “I think of that every damned day. I don’t think I really had a choice, though, not if I wanted to get away, and I did. I wasn’t cut out for college, and even if I had been, they probably wouldn’t have sent me. It wasn’t discussed, anyway. I didn’t have enough money to just take off, you know, so the Army was it.”
“You wouldn’t have met me if you didn’t join.”
He met her gaze and saw something hopeful there. “That is true.”
God, he wanted to kiss her again, lose himself in the feel of her pressed against him, the scent of her wrapped around him. He wanted to tell her that he wanted to stay in Bluestone, that he realized now that was home, the place he wanted to be with her. But those words would be a commitment, and he just couldn’t make himself say them.
He sat back and dug into his pocket. “We should’ve got some chips or something. I think I have enough change to hit the vending machine.”
“We can walk over to the convenience store,” she said, setting her bottle on the table and hopping to her feet. She reached a hand to him. “Come on.”
He looked at her hand for a moment, then took it, smoothing his thumb over her palm, before he rose. She didn’t back away, and he thought about kissing her again. Instead, he led her toward the door and across the street.
When they returned with more chips than they could eat in the next twenty-four hours, he clicked on the TV and found a play-off baseball game. He sat on the bed, his back against the headboard, and motioned for Lily to sit beside him. Probably wisely, she hesitated.
“It’s more comfortable than those damned chairs,” he pointed out, sitting one pillow on its end to pad her back. He’d have the added bonus of smelling her on his sheets all night.
“I’m fine,” she said, sitting in a chair and putting her bare feet on the bed.
He couldn’t stop staring at her bare feet, with her painted toenails. Jesus, had he developed some kind of foot fetish? He shifted, just enough that he could run his fingers up and down the top of her foot, and she caught her breath, but didn’t pull away. She finished one beer and started another. The only sounds in the room were the game, the chips and their breathing, growing heavier with each moment.
When he sat forward to grab another beer, she sucked in a breath, and her gaze snapped to his.
“Jesus, Lil.” He gripped the arms of the chair with both hands and dragged it closer to the bed so he could kiss her. She made a sweet little mewling sound when he captured her mouth with his, He looped his fingers through her belt loops and dragged her forward, off the chair and onto his lap. She anchored herself with one arm around his neck, her other hand stroking his cheek, her lips soft, nipping, then parting beneath his before taking control of the kiss for a bit.
He should have known. Eager to accept the battle, he cupped her head in his hand and angled it just right. Her fingers slipped up to curl through his hair, and the next thing he knew, she was leaning forward and he was laying back on the bed, Lily on top of him, her thighs across one of his, her hips angled to the side. He wanted to flip her, feel her beneath him, but this was good too, her full breasts against his chest, her hands in his hair, her mouth moving eagerly over his.
He loosened her hair from her ponytail and it fell in a curtain around them, like every fantasy he’d ever had about her. She glided her hand up and down his bicep, slipping her fingers under the knit of his t-shirt sleeve, and he couldn’t resist any longer. He flipped her onto her back, pinning her wrists to the bed at either side of her head. He looked down at her a moment, her pink cheeks, bright eyes focused on his mouth, lips swollen from his kiss.
And he found his senses.
He released her wrists, sitting up reluctantly. “I’m sorry, Lily. I can’t—my dad. It wouldn’t feel right.”
“Sure, I understand,” she said in a tone that made him think she really did. She sat up beside him and rubbed his back through the thin T-shirt. “You want me to go?”
He turned to look into her pretty brown eyes. “No, I don’t want you to go.”
“Do you want me to stay?” Her low voice curled right around his arousal and tugged.
He swallowed hard. “Will you?”
“Sure.” But she shifted back to the chair and picked up her beer.
***
She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep in Quinn’s bed, but after she stretched out beside him, he fell into a deep sleep, his hand curved over her hip. She couldn’t sleep in jeans, she couldn’t sleep in a strange bed, and she couldn’t sleep with the man she loved right beside her. Maybe someday that would change, but for now, she’d have to resign herself to going to the funeral with bags under her eyes.
She wondered if he’d ever have been able to open up to her back home in Bluestone, or if he had to be away from that place, back in this place that made him sad and restless. Would he have come home and told her how hard it had been for him, or did she only learn it because she’d come to him?
She shifted away and he stirred when she climbed off the bed. When she returned from the bathroom, he was sitting up, rubbing his eyes.
“What time is it?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep skidding right over her proximity-heightened nerves.
“Just after seven. Did I wake you?” Duh. Of course she had. He’d been asleep when she left the bed. “I’m sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter. I haven’t slept like that in—a long time.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed away from her and waited a minute, hands braced on the mattress. “We didn’t drink too much, huh?”
They hadn’t even opened the bottle. “No.”
“So why do I feel hungover?”
She shifted her weight, wishing she’d brought a toothbrush. “Too much emotion? I don’t know. I’m going to go to my room and shower so we can get over to your mom’s for breakfast.” And she made her escape without looking at him.
***
His mother’s house was much quieter when they arrived, dressed for the funeral, and bearing muffins. Rose was at the stove scrambling eggs, Tammy was operating the waffle iron and his mother was cooking bacon in the microwave. The children slumped in their Sunday best in the living room, eyes glued to some movie Rose must have put on.
Lily stepped forward. “What can I do?”
She was set to making orange juice from concentrate as Quinn set the table. He didn’t ask where his brothers or Rose’s husband were. He didn’t care to know.
“You’ll be a pallbearer, won’t you?” his mother said as she transfe
rred the curled bacon to a platter.
One of the plates slipped from his fingers and clattered on the table, rolling on its rim for a few moments before coming to a stop. The room was silent as the women looked at him, his mother and sister expectant, Lily and Tammy sympathetic.
“He would want it,” his mother said, her voice sharp when he hesitated.
He hadn’t thought about that, hadn’t expected. He’d been a pallbearer for Gerry, but he’d wanted to do that. He’d needed to do that, to be as much a part of Gerry’s end as he’d been in his life. His father…
“It would look bad for his sons not to be his pallbearers,” his mother continued. “Liam and Jared and Tom, as well as some of our younger friends from church. You need to do this, the last thing you can do for your father.”
His father wouldn’t be aware, he wanted to say, but it wasn’t about him. He met Lily’s eyes and nodded, then finished setting the table. When she passed behind him to carry the juice to the table, she let her fingers trail down his arm and gave him a small hug.
Rose leaned past them to call the kids in, while Tammy went to the back door and called to the men. They came in, more red-faced than the temperatures warranted. They’d been drinking, it seemed. Great. And his mother worried he’d embarrass the family.
Everyone sat and joined hands, but all Quinn could think about with Lily’s hand in his was that in a matter of minutes, he’d be carrying his father’s casket.
“Lily, I wondered if you wouldn’t mind staying here during the funeral,” his mother said as she passed the syrup.
“What?” Quinn snapped, glaring down the table.
“We need someone to get everything laid out for the wake,” she continued in a reasonable voice. “We thought since Lily didn’t know your father, she could stay behind and do it.”
“Doesn’t matter. She came here to be with me. Don’t you have neighbors or people from the church who can do it? I mean, you had a plan in place before Lily came, right?”
