“Now, Quinn—”
“You used my sister to lure me here knowing I’d never come willingly. Real classy.” Quinn came out of her seat, disgusted and angry. She growled at the sharp jabs of pain shooting through the soles of her feet.
Richard must’ve taken the growl as meant for him. “Quinn, calm down, please. Yes, I’m attracted to you. Yes, I thought this was the only way I’d ever get a date with you.”
“This is not a date!” Despite her pain, she stamped her foot. The small click of her heel failed to make the desired impact.
Richard placed a hand on her arm. “Obviously.”
Her fingernails dug into her palms as her hands formed angry little fists at her sides.
Richard didn’t notice. His primary concern seemed to have shifted from her to their audience. “You’re causing a scene. You asked for an explanation, now allow me to give one before you get us kicked out.”
Quinn seethed but didn’t interrupt this time. A lift of her brow invited him to continue.
He cleared his throat and straightened his black silk bowtie. Since they’d come from the prestigious city fund-raiser, he was in a tuxedo jacket and slacks.
They’d been a striking pair. Quinn wore a black strapless gown and styled her long blond hair into an elegant chignon that displayed the diamond drops in her lobes. They matched the cluster pinned to the front of her gown.
In this casual setting, they looked like a bad joke. Overdressed and ill behaved. “You have to understand, Quinn. We work together closely. We talk every day. It’s not strange I’m attracted to you. Asking you out seemed unprofessional.”
Quinn nearly choked on her unspoken reply. This wasn’t unprofessional? Her jaw practically unhinged at Richard’s startling lack of self-awareness.
“I figured if we went out casually and had a few drinks, things might take their natural course.”
A shrug accompanied the statement to show how big of a deal it wasn’t, but Quinn saw red. She jabbed at his shoulder with an accusing finger. “I’m not stupid, Richard. You celebrate with a glass of champagne. There are completely different motives at play when you order an entire bottle. You weren’t hoping for slightly tipsy. You were going for totally sloshed. Then what? You’d take me back to your place and pretend it got out of hand?”
“No, I’d never—”
Quinn turned away. She braced her hands against the bar in an effort to stay on her bruised feet and tried to breathe. “You sure as hell would. After what Blake did, there’s nothing I’d put past a man.”
He had the audacity to scoff. “Blake is an idiot.”
The comment acted like flame to tinder—instant ignition.
She whirled on him. He was no better. He was probably no worse, but at the least, he and Blake were exactly the same. “Oh, and you’re some genius? Do you even realize what you’ve done? I should fire you.” She shook her head to dislodge some of her anger, but it wasn’t going anywhere. She trembled. “Get away from me. Leave, now.”
“Leave?” He repeated the word slowly. “I’m not going anywhere. I brought you here. I’m responsible for you.”
Quinn pinned him with every ounce of fire in her green eyes. They flashed when she was angry. They must be crackling like hot coals now. “Do you really expect me to get back in your car? I’ll take a cab home. I don’t need your protection. What I need is for someone to protect me from you.”
He looked like he might refuse again.
She hit him with the final blow. “Our contract is riding on how fast you can get away from me. I mean it, Richard.”
Their surroundings seemed to come back to them simultaneously. Everyone stared at Richard as they waited in dead silence for his reaction. Even the bartender watched their exchange with rapt attention. Richard’s face flushed a dull red. He stood in a deliberate fashion as if it were his idea to leave. “This is foolish.”
His clenched jaw and piercing glare labeled him furious, but Quinn had her own store of ire to draw from. She slipped into the most condescending tone she possessed. “You need to go home and think about what you’ve done.”
He recoiled like she’d slapped him, but she’d wager his reaction was nothing more than embarrassment at getting dressed down in a room full of strangers. Maybe now he’d understand how she felt—mortified and belittled. He’d tricked her into coming here and attempted to ply her with drink for the sake of getting her in bed. She couldn’t have done anything more insulting than that.
Richard stormed toward the exit. She hoped the staring eyes of the audience, hers included, burned holes in his back as he went.
Her shoulders fell the moment he disappeared from sight. Her rage fled. She wasn’t built for dramatics. She frowned at the two untouched glass flutes on the bar. One sat empty while the other comically full. She’d never much cared for champagne hangovers.
Quinn wiggled her fingers in a girlish wave at the bartender still watching her with round eyes. “Can I get a beer?”
Quinn waited until she almost finished her first drink to call Angie, her best friend, the same demon responsible for her miserable, dejected feet. She plucked her cell phone from the hidden pocket inside the bodice of her gown. She wasn’t totally stupid. She’d have never let Richard leave without a backup plan up her sleeve.
Or down her dress, as it were.
Angie answered on the first ring. She sounded unfazed, like she’d expected Quinn’s late-night call. “How did the fund-raiser go?”
Oh, that’s right. She’d done something fun tonight. “I had a great time. In fact, I wish we were still there.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll have others.” Angie sounded slightly distracted. Quinn imagined her painting her toenails or watching television. “What time did you get home?”
Quinn cleared her throat. It wasn’t her fault. She shouldn’t feel stupid, but for whatever reason she did. Must be some kind of male superpower. “Would it be weird if Richard wanted to sleep with me?”
“Of course not. It’d be weird if he didn’t.” Angie didn’t seem distracted anymore. “Did something happen? Oh my God, did you go home with him?” Her voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “Did you guys do it? Are you calling in secret from the bathroom? Was he good?”
Richard had inspired an intense lack of charitable feelings, but leave it to Angie to smooth Quinn’s angry wrinkles mere seconds into the conversation. “No, nothing like that, but he did bring me to a Hollywood nightclub. Shows a little spark, doesn’t it?”
“Hollywood? Does he know you?” The disdain in her best friend’s voice was welcome commiseration. “Where are you?”
“A place called Sabini’s.” Quinn appraised the room once more. Large round bulbs suspended from the ceiling hung low and cast their warm glow over the bar, thus creating quite the snug little atmosphere. “I’m pained to admit it, but the private bar is sort of nice. It’s the mosh pit of sweaty, spastic idiots in the dance room next door who frighten me. I can’t believe that passes for dancing these days. I thought the first guy I saw was having a seizure. He’s lucky I didn’t shove my brooch in his mouth to stop him from swallowing his tongue.”
Angie snorted. “A creative way to divest yourself of a fortune. I’ve been to Sabini’s before. Your Richard’s a classy one. Are you two having a good time?”
“Not exactly.” Quinn explained in painful detail how her night had gone so topsy-turvy.
She waited in silence for Angie’s reply. She imagined her friend working through the scenario in her mind.
Finally, a response. “Well, okay. I guess my question is why you’re still there.”
Quinn loved easy questions. She sucked the last drop of beer from the long-neck bottle and smacked her lips for emphasis. “To get drunk. Why does anyone sit at a bar and order booze?”
“Nice. Tomorrow you’ll wake up not only divorced and homeless but with a hangover cherry on top. Way to take your power back, honey.”
/> “I’m not homeless. I’m staying at a hotel.”
“Homeless isn’t synonymous with cardboard box. You don’t have a home. You’re homeless.”
Quinn waved to the bartender. Time for another drink. “Shut up and tell me what I’m supposed to do. Am I overreacting?”
Angie clucked her tongue. “Had he taken you out for kung pao chicken, I’d say yes, but this is kind of a big deal. He dragged you to some shady Hollywood club wearing a thousand-dollar ball gown and million-dollar diamonds. Not just ignorant, mind you. Potentially dangerous. This is L.A., not Friendly, Texas. Letting him leave you there was even dumber, by the way.”
“Probably.” Quinn tried for a deep breath. It escaped as a depressed groan. “What do I do? Fire him?”
The mere suggestion made her stomach pitch. She mustered up a weak smile for Busty the Barkeep, who promptly deposited Quinn’s second beer in front of her.
“There’s only one thing you can do.” Angie sounded apologetic but remained firm. “You have to kill him.”
Quinn pressed the phone closer to her ear. The spectacle had ceased, and people were back to their regularly scheduled partying. “Like it’s ever that easy.”
Angie scoffed. “You have no problem scalping a sweet, vulnerable, and ruggedly handsome pediatrician with a chainsaw, but you can’t kill Richard? You even murdered the poor doctor on the very same night he finally worked up the courage to ask that cute barista out on a date. It took a lot of courage for him to step out of his comfort zone. The guy had issues.”
Quinn rested one elbow on the bar and said what she always said. “You’re taking it too personally, Ang. You’ve got to quit falling in love with my subjects.”
“What in the hell is a barista doing with a chainsaw in the first place, huh? Does she moonlight as a lumberjack?”
Quinn wanted to roll her eyes at Angie’s protest but couldn’t. She was too pleased with herself. Her life’s work revolved around inspiring heartfelt emotion in others. More’s the better if the emotions were dark ones like grief and loss.
They were sort of her calling card. “Look, if I wrote Richard into a story to give him a grisly death, I’m afraid he’d notice. He is my agent. And you’d understand why the barista had a chainsaw if you’d bother to finish the book.”
“I can’t, Quinn, I just can’t.” Her best friend sniffed. “You kill everyone I love.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll write you a happy ending one day. Promise.”
Angie went from sniveling to haughty in the space of a single sentence. “The only happy endings these days are in massage parlors.”
Quinn was still laughing when she ended the call and returned the slim black cell phone to the hidden confines of her ball gown.
Her silk strapless Carolina Herrera ball gown.
Every bit of good humor conjured disappeared. Quinn remembered where she sat and how she got there.
Richard, Richard, Richard. He’d really screwed up tonight. Angie’s solution, while amusing, wasn’t pragmatic and wouldn’t solve anything. Quinn nervously rolled the beer bottle between her hands.
The idea of confronting Richard in his office made her queasy. He’d downplay the entire scene and make her out to be a dramatic prude. The smoothness she counted on for publishing negotiations would come back to bite her when she found herself looking down the barrel of it rather than grinning smugly from behind it, but what were her choices?
She had to make a stand. She needed to put him in his place, be the iron fist of the feminine movement.
Then again, there wasn’t much determined avoidance couldn’t patch up. Key West was fabulous this time of year. Cabanas, boat drinks, palm trees, and pool boys.
When had she last gone on vacation? Disneyland three years ago. With Blake. Quinn didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to daydream about pool boys. For research, of course. She was far too old for a pool boy.
She’d need a pool man.
“You don’t match.”
For an instant, the deep voice coming from behind stunned her. Since she sat virtually alone on her side of the L-shaped bar, she had no choice but to accept the man—a pool man if her luck had improved any—intended the words for her. Some drunken fool trying to succeed where Richard failed. What had she been thinking staying here? She should’ve picked up a bottle of tequila and moved this pity party to the privacy of her hotel room.
He had an accent, although she couldn’t place the dialect. Definitely European. Rather than turn around right away to face her new visitor, she took a long, hard look at the beer bottle in her hand. Too soon to order her third? She wanted fuzzy, not pickled.
She’d put it off long enough. Quinn swung around on the tail end of an eye roll to greet Bachelor Number Two. The smart reply she had ready died on her lips.
Meet the Author
A Florida native, Roxanne Smith has called everywhere from Houston to Cheyenne home. Currently residing in Asheville, North Carolina, she’s an avid reader of every genre, a cat lover, pit bull advocate, and semi-geek. She loves video games, Doctor Who, and her dashing husband. Her two kids are the light of her life. Visit her website at roxannesmith.net, and her blog at smithrox.blogspot.com.
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