by Abby Gaines
Any man who could take a small, barely-breaking-even regional soft-drink bottler and in five years parlay it into a brand of energy drinks known round the world was a force to be reckoned with. For a fleeting moment she wished that some of this man’s drive and ambition had transferred itself onto her baby’s father. Maybe then everything would be different. Brendan wouldn’t be dead and she wouldn’t be afraid for herself—and her baby’s future.
“Was my brother going to do the right thing and marry you?” he asked.
The unexpectedness of the question surprised her into answering just as bluntly as he had spoken. “No.”
“Damned fool,” he said, but his voice was gruff with suppressed emotion. “Did he make any financial provisions for you and the baby?”
“No.”
“What about my stepfather and my mother? Are they helping you?”
“No.” He might not know about the Carlyles wanting custody of her baby. He had been out of the country for over a year. The age-old fight or flight instinct urged her to flee for her baby’s sake. “I don’t want anything from Brendan’s family. Nothing. I’ll do fine on my own. Look…I have to go. I have to get back to work.” Foolish. She had let herself be lulled by this man’s sorrow for his lost brother. He was still a Carlyle, if not by blood then by marriage. He was as big a threat to her as August Carlyle himself.
The baby moved again, increasing her anxiety. The rain had begun to come down in earnest now. She started backing away. “My condolences on your loss.”
“WAIT.” Quinn held out his hand. He had to know more about her. Daisy Brookshire had been nothing more than a name attached to a photograph his brother had e-mailed him. He had recognized her honey-blond hair, her heart-shaped face and stubborn chin the moment he spotted her, but he hadn’t realized how small she was in real life, how fragile-looking. She was young, too, about Brendan’s age, seven or eight years his junior.
Brendan hadn’t told him she was pregnant. Maybe he hadn’t known himself when he sent the picture, Quinn thought, casting back through his memories to pinpoint the date the photo had shown up in his e-mail. He hadn’t learned she was carrying his dead stepbrother’s child until a week ago when his mother had told him. In the days since then he’d been debating whether to try to contact her or not. Now the decision had been made for him when fate had chosen to bring them both together over Brendan’s grave.
She was a stranger but she was carrying Brendan’s child and that made her important to him. He hadn’t been able to save his little stepbrother when he fell out of the sky a second time but he wasn’t about to let the mother of his child disappear out of his life as suddenly as she had appeared. “Daisy, wait. We need to talk.”
She stopped backing away and stood stiff and still. “I have to get back to work,” she said.
“Did you love my brother?”
She turned pale beneath the soft golden tan of her skin, but looked him straight in the eye when she replied. “I thought I did.” He admired her honesty.
“He would have come around, Daisy. He was a good kid. He was just spoiled and immature.” He spoke the truth as well, but he wondered how long it would have taken for Brendan to become his own man. Far longer than this young but determined woman would have waited, he suspected.
“I’d like to think you’re right for his daughter’s sake, but we’ll never know, will we?”
“The baby’s a girl?”
“Yes.”
“Brendan would have been happy about that. I have a picture of the two of you—” His voice faltered for a moment. “My brother e-mailed it to me a couple of weeks before his death. You were sitting in front of a fireplace. His arms were around you. You looked happy.”
“We were happy,” she said. “We went skiing in Colorado. I had never been out west, never seen the mountains. I told him about the baby just after that picture was taken.” Her lips tightened and a flicker of anger and hurt flashed behind her eyes. “We…we were never that happy together again.”
And six weeks later his brother had died, leaving Daisy and their unborn child to fend for themselves.
“Daisy, we can’t keep standing here in the rain. Let me take you somewhere we can—”
She shook her head. “No. I already told you I don’t want anything to do with Brendan’s family.” She tipped her head back, lifted her chin, her voice was steady, her tone implacable. “That includes you.” She turned on her heel and started down the gentle incline toward the graveled lane that wound among the older headstones.
“Wait.” He started after her. He had no idea where she lived or how to contact her. He couldn’t just let her walk away. His mother had told him she would have nothing to do with her or her husband. He didn’t blame Daisy for that: August was a hard, old bastard, but she was carrying his brother’s child and she wasn’t going to be rid of him so easily. “Daisy, wait,” he called again.
She flung up her free hand, shook her head and began to run, an awkward little jog. He sucked in his breath. Should she be doing that when she was so far along? What if she tripped and fell? He wanted to holler at her to slow down, to stop and wait for him to give her a hand where the roots of the old oaks had heaved up through the ground, but she just kept going, fighting to close the incongruous rainbow-striped umbrella as she ran. He followed her down the hill, staying far enough back so that she didn’t catch sight of him out of the corner of her eye.
She headed for a beat-up sedan parked at the base of the slope. He’d left his SUV another hundred yards closer to the entrance; she’d have to pass him to get out of the gate. He slowed his pace, knowing that by the time she followed the narrow, winding driveway to the nearest cul-de-sac so that she could turn her car around, he would be able to intercept her, and hopefully get her to agree to talk with him about the baby’s future, and her own, somewhere warm and dry. But he miscalculated her determination, and her driving ability.
While Quinn watched in consternation she got into the ancient car and began backing toward the entrance gate. He hadn’t expected her to do something like that. He broke into a trot keeping one eye on the treacherous footing and one eye on Daisy. “I’ll be damned,” he said under his breath as she maneuvered expertly along the narrow driveway. “Where’d she learn to drive like that?” Then again this was the heart of NASCAR country and home base for a lot of NASCAR Sprint Cup teams. Why wouldn’t she know how to drive better than most?
He didn’t have any more time for speculation. She arrowed past his big black SUV and wheeled the sedan onto the concrete apron that paralleled the stone wall inside the main gate. Quinn sprinted for his car. He pushed the button on his key ring and the SUV’s engine roared to life. He was close enough now to see Daisy’s face through the windshield. Her eyes met his for a second and panic flared in their golden-brown depths.
“Damn.” This time the curse was for himself. He’d scared her and that was the last thing he’d wanted to do. Old August and his lawyerly threats must have really done a number on the kid. He slowed his pace. He was going to have to let her go for the time being. He glanced at the rear bumper of her rusty car and committed the license number to memory. He’d track down her address through the car registration and talk to her later when she’d had time to calm down.
While he watched Daisy gunned the engine, rocketing through the tall, ornate wrought-iron gates. Quinn froze with his hand on the door handle. She was going too fast to make the stop sign at the end of the short turnoff from the busy four-lane highway beyond the gate. It was rush hour; cars and trucks and delivery vans zoomed past heedless of the small car about to enter their midst.
“Stop!” He yelled as loud as he could. Daisy must have realized the danger at almost the same moment he did and braked. The driver of a big panel van swerved to avoid her but it was too late. The right front bumper caught the sedan on the left fender and sent it spinning back across the grass, broadside, into the stone wall.
Brakes squealed and horns blared as c
ars swerved into the other lane to avoid the accident. Quinn started running even before the panel van had braked to a halt. The driver’s side of the sedan was crumpled in on itself. There was no sign of movement from inside the car.
No sign of life.
DAISY’S HEAD WAS SPINNING from where she’d contacted the window glass. She lifted her hand to her forehead but didn’t feel any blood. She groaned. The pain in her elbow and ankle almost, but not quite, overwhelmed the fear in her heart. She’d been in an accident, she knew that much, sideswiped by a big white truck that she’d never seen coming until it was too late. What had she done letting herself be panicked by her unexpected meeting with Quinn Parrish? She clasped her shaking hands around her distended middle. Was her baby all right? She fumbled for the release on her seat belt, wanting nothing more desperately than to be out of her mangled car. The air bag hadn’t deployed she realized belatedly. The impact couldn’t have been all that bad, right? It was just that the truck had pushed her sideways into the wall and her left side had taken the brunt of the impact.
She struggled to open the door but couldn’t manage. The pain in her elbow and ankle was spreading, moving across her body, centering itself in the middle of her back, radiating into her pelvis. “Oh, no,” she moaned. “No. Not yet. Not yet, little one. You’re not ready to be born yet.” She laid her head against the steering wheel and fought back tears.
“Daisy, are you all right?”
She lifted her head, responding to the tone of command in the voice, still a little dizzy with shock and the tightening pain in her abdomen. She found herself staring directly into Quinn Parrish’s stark, white face, “Yes,” she said, “no.” The pain was worse, unrelenting now. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. This isn’t how they’d described how her labor would progress in the birthing classes she’d taken at the hospital.
“I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for the emergency crew?” It was another voice, a stranger’s. She looked past Quinn and noticed a tall man with skin the color of coffee staring in at her with worried eyes. He was wearing a khaki shirt with his name and an auto parts company logo embroidered on the pocket. He must be the truck driver.
“Look at the way traffic’s backed up,” Quinn growled, wrestling the door open with both hands. “They might not be here for fifteen or twenty minutes.” He hunkered down so that his line of sight was level with hers. She fixed her gaze on his face, all hard lines and angles. His expression was hard, too, but comforting all the same. He didn’t look anything like Brendan, she thought distractedly, but of course he wouldn’t. They weren’t blood relation, just stepbrothers. He reached in the car and laid his hand on her arm. His touch was gentle. She shivered at the warmth of his touch, suddenly shaking with cold and reaction. “Daisy, are you okay? Did you hurt your back, your neck?”
“No. My elbow, and my ankle, that’s all.” His hand left her arm and she felt his fingers probe gently along her lower leg.
“Where does it hurt? Here?”
She winced. “Yes. That’s it.”
“Looks like a pretty bad sprain but I don’t think it’s broken. Your elbow’s banged up, too. Hold tight and the ambulance will be here soon.”
“I can’t wait,” she said, grasping his hand between her own. “I…I’m in labor. The baby’s coming and it hurts so bad, way more than they said it would. I’m scared something’s wrong, terribly wrong. Please, tell them to hurry.” She began to cry. She couldn’t seem to control herself. She had never felt so alone and helpless in her life. Pain arced through her again taking her breath away. “Please, Quinn,” she said. “I need your help.”
CHAPTER TWO
QUINN GLANCED AT THE waiting-room clock. Eight and a half hours since he’d looked up from his brother’s gravestone and locked his gaze with Daisy Brookshire’s warm, brown eyes. It seemed like a lifetime. What was taking so long? They had moved Daisy from the emergency room to the birthing center hours ago. She had been in a lot of pain even then, the bumps and bruises and sprained ankle from the accident adding to the misery of childbirth. He knew it wasn’t politically correct to call labor contractions misery but it had sure looked that way to him.
He glanced across the small, cheerfully decorated room. The three women sitting side by side across from him stared back. Their expressions were friendly and polite but their body language was reserved and not one of them held his gaze for more than a moment or two. He wished he could ask them if eight hours was normal for a first baby but he had decided it was best not to show male ignorance in front of this crew. They would pounce on his weakness like lionesses at the kill.
Patsy and Juliana Grosso, and Sophia Grosso-Murphy. He had had no idea that Daisy had such powerful friends. He was looking at three generations of NASCAR royalty. Juliana Grosso’s husband, Milo, old as dirt, almost the last of his breed, was still a force to be reckoned with in stock-car racing, as was his wife. Juliana was a legend in her own right. The middle-aged woman beside her was Patsy Grosso, wife of former NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, Dean Grosso, Juliana’s grandson. The couple were co-owners of Cargill-Grosso Racing. Although he was more than satisfied with his association with Double S Racing he’d have given almost any amount of money to have sponsored one of Dean and Patsy’s cars. Any businessman worth his corner office and expense account would. The youngest of the trio was Sophia, Patsy’s daughter, and wife of NASCAR driver Justin Murphy.
He stood up and walked to the closed doors leading to the birthing suites. He hadn’t been allowed in the room since Daisy’s labor coach, her boss, Rue Larrabee, had shown up at the Concord hospital where Daisy had been admitted. Quinn had underestimated the efficiency of the first responders and the Concord police department. Despite the snarled traffic in both directions they had arrived in less than ten minutes and extracted Daisy from the car with quick, practiced efficiency.
He had followed the ambulance to the hospital and managed to talk the admissions people into letting him deal with the paperwork by allowing them to think he was Daisy’s brother-in-law. By the time the emergency room staff was ready to transfer her to the birthing suites she’d been in too much pain to object when he followed along. He’d even stayed by her side for the first hour until Rue Larrabee arrived.
The hospital staff hadn’t been a match for him but Daisy’s employer was. Five feet eight inches of fiery, redheaded single-mindedness, she gave him one minute to explain who he was and what he was doing there, and then pointed a red-tipped finger at the door and told him to vamoose. She would talk to him later. Completely out of his element in the hospital setting, thrown off balance by the inner turmoil Daisy’s pain had caused him, Quinn had uncharacteristically obeyed. He’d been exiled to waiting room limbo ever since.
He glanced at the clock, his mind circling back to his original unanswered questions. Was this taking too long? Was Daisy all right? Was the baby okay?
“How long have you known Daisy?” Juliana Grosso asked suddenly.
“We met for the first time today. At the cemetery,” he said, roused from his musings by her demanding voice.
“You’re August Carlyle’s stepson, correct?” Her tone was accusatory.
“My mother is married to August Carlyle, yes,” he replied carefully. His relationship with his mother’s husband was practically nonexistent these days. He’d suffered August’s bullying during his teenage years because he’d had no other choice but once he was out on his own he’d never set foot under the old man’s roof unless his mother begged him to.
“You’re Fiona Carlyle’s son.” Patsy’s voice was softer than Juliana’s but no less forceful.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ve served on several committees together. She has been a very generous donor to our family’s foundation for missing and exploited children.” The revelation a year before that celebrity chef Grace Clark was the long-lost daughter of Dean and Patsy Grosso had rocked NASCAR nation. He’d already made
the decision that Rev Energy Drinks should sponsor a NASCAR Sprint Cup car so he had followed the drama carefully through Internet postings, even though he’d been out of the country at the time.
“My mother has many charitable interests,” he said noncommittally. August Carlyle would allow nothing less from his wife.
Juliana grew impatient with their small talk. “Did you frighten poor Daisy into pulling out into traffic like that?”
“Nana,” Sophia cautioned, tilting her blond head as she gave him a long, hard look that was only slightly less accusatory than her great-grandmother’s.
“In some respects I am responsible,” he said.
“At least you admit it.”
“Why do you feel you’re responsible, Mr. Parrish?” Patsy asked.
These women were Daisy’s friends. It figured they would know what Brendan’s father was up to and come down firmly on Daisy’s side. “Finding me at Brendan’s grave upset her,” he said candidly. “She jumped to the conclusion that I was in agreement with my mother and August that she should give them custody of her baby after it…she…is born.”
“August Carlyle is a jackass,” Juliana snorted. “It’s medieval what he’s attempting to do to that poor girl.”
Patsy laid her hand on her grandmother-in-law’s arm. “Daisy is in a very difficult position financially,” she reminded the older woman.
“That gives him no right to terrorize her.”
“Daisy’s had a rough time of it these last six months. You can understand why she doesn’t want to have anything to do with your mother and stepfather,” Sophia said, rising from her chair and coming toward him, her eyes searching his face as though trying to determine if he was cut from the same bolt as his stepfather and his mother. “Are you on her side or theirs?” she asked bluntly.
She held his gaze, her stance and expression nearly an exact copy of her formidable great-grandmother’s. Quinn didn’t make the mistake of smiling at the comparison but he wanted to. “I seldom agree with my stepfather on any matter,” he replied. “I don’t intend to start doing so now.”
