One in a Million

by Abby Gaines

  “I believe you,” Daisy replied with a laugh. Her smile faded away, however, when she looked up and saw Quinn Parrish standing in the doorway of her room. He wasn’t wearing the leather bomber jacket today, but even in rolled up shirtsleeves and a subdued gray power tie he looked more handsome and sexy than any mortal man had a right to be. Sexy? Where had that come from? She wasn’t used to thinking of men in those terms anymore. Must be the upheaval in her hormone levels, she decided, and did her best to put the unsettling image out of her mind.

  She had the feeling it might be easier said than done.

  SHE WAS SITTING IN A HIGH-back chair near the window, dressed in dark gray slacks and a lightweight cotton top the color of a ripe strawberry. Her hair was pulled back from her face with two sparkly clips and a pair of gold hoops dangled from her ears. She had nice ears, Quinn noticed for the first time, small and close to her head. She had a nice nose, too, just a little snub with a smattering of freckles across the bridge. There was color in her cheeks and a smile on her face. She looked closer to sixteen than twenty-five.

  “Hello, Daisy. Ms. Larrabee,” he said.

  Daisy looked across the room at him and her smile faltered for a moment, then returned in a more subdued way. “Hello, Quinn.”

  “Might as well call me Rue,” her friend said, nodding in his direction, “seeing as how Daisy’s going home with you.”

  “Thanks, Rue. I’ll take good care of her, I promise.”

  “You’d better,” the older woman instructed, “or you’ll have me to answer to.”

  She picked up a huge shoulder bag that looked as if it could hold a month’s supply of groceries and stooped to give Daisy a hug. “Call me when you’re settled in.”

  “I will.”

  She gave Quinn one more look that told him she still wasn’t sure she trusted him so he’d better watch his step and left the room.

  “She means well,” Daisy said. He turned his head and found her watching him. Had he let his thoughts show that clearly? He didn’t ordinarily do that. In fact he never did that.

  “You’ve got loyal friends,” he said.

  “They’ve been great to me.” Her eyes filled with tears. She dashed them away with an impatient hand. “Hormones,” she said. “They warned me this would happen.”

  He didn’t like to see her cry. It made him want to take her in his arms and hold her close, soothe her, protect her. Whoa! Wait a minute. He steered clear of needy women. They reminded him too forcefully of his mother when he was a little boy, scared and alone, a single mother working two jobs to keep him in sneakers and feed him frozen pizzas. So desperate to latch on to the security that August Carlyle offered that she lived under his thumb to this very day. “No problem,” he said. “I saw the nurse at the desk. She’s getting a wheelchair for you. Do you have everything ready to go?”

  She motioned to the small suitcase and a soft-sided cooler on the bed. He wondered what was in the cooler. He spotted an empty formula bottle on the bedside table and came up with an educated guess. She wasn’t breast-feeding the baby, it seemed.

  Was it a personal choice, or because she was going to have to go back to work as soon as she could? He had no right to ask about such a personal decision and he didn’t intend to. He hadn’t considered the physical intimacy having Daisy living with him would entail but it was too late to worry about that now.

  And then there was the baby.

  From time to time he’d speculated on what it would be like living with a woman but putting a baby into the scenario had never entered his thoughts before today.

  Quinn glanced at the sleeping infant in the plastic bassinet. Babies were small, fragile and easily breakable. He’d never handled one in his life. Daisy was still on crutches. Why hadn’t he taken that into consideration sooner than this very moment? He’d thought far enough ahead to buy a top-of-the-line car seat and a small crib and changing table to put in the bedroom of his century-old cabin but that was all. He hadn’t made arrangements for a nurse or a nanny even though he had a reputation for long-range planning that usually met any contingency. Too late he saw his mistake. It was inevitable he would have to pick Brianna up sooner or later. Maybe even change her diaper. The image boggled his mind.

  What the heck had he gotten himself into?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “HERE WE ARE.”

  Daisy woke from a half doze and looked out the window of the big SUV. Blinked and then blinked again. She had assumed that Quinn Parrish lived the same lifestyle as his mother and stepfather, a palatial home in a secluded, gated community where all the women were thin and tanned and toned and all the men were successful and powerful beyond her wildest dreams. Brendan had taken her to his parents’ home once—all stone and brick and huge arched windows—when the older couple was in Europe. She had seen how the other half lived.

  Quinn’s home was a weathered log cabin with a steeply pitched roof and a river-rock fireplace, nestled in a small clearing surrounded by pine trees at the end of a gravel lane. They had left Concord behind them and climbed into the low rolling hills above Lake Norman, but even though the lake wasn’t visible through the trees, Daisy suspected they weren’t all that far from golf courses and marinas and the homes of NASCAR’s most successful drivers and owners.

  Quinn’s cabin looked as if it had come from another time, another place. A covered porch stretched across the front and along one side. Big old hickory rocking chairs sat on either side of a small wicker table. To the left of the house a dilapidated barn, with weathered siding and missing shingles on its roof, listed slightly to one side, as though leaning into the wind that danced through the top of the pine trees. The yard was overgrown with wildflowers, an ancient rosebush had climbed up one of the porch railings and halfway across the roof a few blood-red blooms, protected from the late summer heat, peeked out here and there among the leaves.

  “It’s not what you expected, is it?” Quinn asked, his hands resting on the steering wheel.

  “No,” she said before she could stop herself. “It’s not.” The grass needed cutting, the trim on the porch and windows needed a coat of paint and the rosebush was in desperate need of pruning, but the cabin itself looked strong and sturdy and…welcoming. She hadn’t expected that, either.

  “This land has been in my family for a hundred years. My great-grandfather built this cabin after he came home from World War I. My father grew up here.”

  “Is your father still living?” She knew so little about this man.

  “He died when I was three. A motorcycle accident. He was going too fast down a dirt road by the lake, lost control and slammed into a tree. He died instantly. Except for a couple of cousins out in California I’m the last of my family.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Family was important to her, even though hers was far away. Sophia had e-mailed photos of her holding Brianna to her parents. After much reassurance that Daisy was okay, they decided they wouldn’t be able to make the trip to see their new grandbaby for at least a month. She felt like crying again but didn’t give in to the urge.

  “So am I,” Quinn replied as he unfastened his seat belt. “Everyone should have a family to rely on.”

  Daisy missed his last remark; her attention was focused elsewhere. Another problem had revealed itself. She wasn’t looking forward to maneuvering across the rutted driveway and up the steps into the cabin on crutches. Quinn appeared beside her open door. “You first and then the baby,” he said in his calm, authoritative way.

  “I’m planning my route,” she said.

  “I have a better idea.” He reached down, unsnapped her seat belt. “I’ll carry you.”

  “There’s no need for that. I can walk,” she insisted, mortified.

  “I don’t want you to do any more damage to your ankle putting your foot in a rabbit hole. This yard’s a minefield.”

  He was right—the yard was a minefield of trailing weeds and rabbit holes; she couldn’t deny that so she stopped protesting. He
slid his arm beneath her knees and lifted her effortlessly into his arms. Instinctively she looped her arm around his neck. She could feel the strength in his back and shoulders as he turned with her held high against his chest. He might spend most of his time seated behind a desk but he was in no way soft. He was all man, from the stubble of afternoon beard that darkened his chin to the subtle expensive scent of his aftershave and soap, and the ripple of solid muscle beneath the soft Egyptian cotton of his shirt. They crossed the small yard and climbed the steps to the porch. He set her down in one of the old rocking chairs that creaked obligingly as she settled into it. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him and watched as he strode back to the SUV to unfasten Brianna from the car seat he’d arrived at the hospital with.

  Daisy had no idea how she was going to pay him for the top-of-the-line baby carrier. She didn’t like to be beholden to anyone but there was no way the hospital would let her take Brianna away without one, and she hadn’t had a chance to buy one at the consignment shop where’d she’d been picking up twice-but-nice baby clothes for the last couple of months.

  In the best tradition of Scarlett O’Hara she would worry about her mounting debt to Quinn Parrish another day. For now all she wanted was a chance to hold her baby again. Brianna had started fussing a little a couple of miles from the cabin, sucking her tiny fist, making faint mewing sounds just like a kitten. She was hungry. It seemed she was always hungry, already taking three ounces of formula every three hours.

  Quinn returned to the porch, Brianna’s carrier in one hand, Daisy’s crutches in the other. Evidently he hadn’t been any more comfortable carrying her in his arms than she had been being carried. He handed her the crutches. “I’ll hold the door,” he said, suiting action to words. Brianna was fussing louder now, the tiny kitten cries growing into full-fledged howls of impatience and hunger. Quinn glanced down at the infant with a frown that seemed more puzzled than annoyed. “Wow,” he said, holding the old-fashioned wooden screen door open for Daisy to precede him into the cabin. “She’s not a happy camper.”

  “She’s hungry,” Daisy apologized. “She’ll be quiet again as soon as I feed her.” What if she was misreading his quizzical expression? What if he was truly annoyed? What if he didn’t like having a baby around? What would he do if Brianna got a tummy ache and wouldn’t stop crying? Daisy felt a little frisson of fear slither up and down her nerve endings. After all, she really didn’t know anything about this man. He could be a monster in disguise, even if the Grosso women and even Rue had all given their okay for her to spend the next two weeks in his hilltop hideaway. Her thoughts kept spinning around in her brain and her head was beginning to ache as badly as her ankle.

  Quinn opened the door and stepped back, waiting for her to enter first. “Oh!” Daisy stepped across the threshold and caught her breath in surprise, immediately ashamed of her earlier wild-eyed imaginings. This wasn’t some playboy hideaway. In fact it was almost the opposite of what you would expect of a man of Quinn Parrish’s wealth and importance: mismatched tables and lamps, threadbare carpet, limp and faded chintz drapes at the windows, the entire space dominated by a smoke-darkened fireplace that took up most of the wall on her right-hand side. Nothing here was new, or shiny or terribly expensive.

  Except for the items she spotted in the middle of the room. There was a white wicker bassinette with pink lace lining, a matching changing table, stacks of cloth diapers, packages of disposable ones, boxes filled with bottles, cases of formula, a bottle warmer, baby wipes, what appeared to be an entire layette in shades of pink and apple-green and sunny yellow, tiny fleece blankets and a big, fluffy white stuffed puppy sitting on the couch, keeping watch over it all.

  Daisy sucked in her breath. All the things she needed for the baby, all the things she wanted and couldn’t afford. Quinn, a man she barely knew, had bought them for her. The enormity of the debt she owed Brendan’s brother threatened to overwhelm her.

  The screen door slapped shut behind her. She swiveled awkwardly on the crutches to find Quinn with the quilted diaper bag her friends Mellie Donovan and Sheila Trueblood, from Maudie’s Down Home Diner, had brought to the hospital the day before, slung over his shoulder and her now-squalling daughter in her carrier in the other hand. She was so tired and sore and at the same time she felt, absurdly, that she’d come home. “You shouldn’t have,” she whispered. “You just shouldn’t have.” She limped to the worn leather chair set at a right angle to an equally worn sofa, dropped onto the seat, buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

  CHAPTER SIX

  QUINN LOOKED UP from his computer screen and laced his hands behind his head as he swiveled his desk chair to look out the window. He’d just gotten off the phone with Gil Sizemore. The topic of their discussion, as usual, was Gil’s driver Eli Ward. A few days before the night race at Bristol Quinn had laid down the law to the charismatic, but erratic, NASCAR Sprint Cup driver threatening to withdraw his sponsorship if Eli didn’t rein in his high-flying lifestyle and begin driving up to his potential.

  The shock of losing a twelve million dollar sponsorship seemed to have done the trick and Eli finished sixth at the famed Tennessee short track. Not that Quinn wanted to withdraw his sponsorship of the No. 502 car, but he would if he had to. He wasn’t paying that kind of money to sponsor the playboy of the Western world. He wanted to see the Rev Energy Drinks car in Victory Lane as badly as Gil Sizemore and his team did. Quinn crossed his legs on the scarred windowsill and looked past his shoes to the neglected yard. Eli was a natural, a born race-car driver, a born showman. His rivalry with Double S Racing’s top dog, Rafael O’Bryan, had been worth its weight in gold as far as publicity and product placement went. But having an out of control driver associated with Rev Energy Drinks wasn’t the image Quinn wanted to project. He sighed. Time would tell.

  He continued to stare out into the backyard. It was even more neglected than the front of the house—if that was possible. The lingering summer twilight had smudged the stark outline of the old barn and softened the ragged edges of the overgrown vegetable garden he remembered his grandmother tending when he was a little boy. The soft light hid a lot of the blemishes, making it all appear a little more as he remembered it from his childhood, before his mother married August Carlyle and took him away from the one place he’d ever felt like calling home.

  He picked up his glass of whiskey and took a swallow letting the smooth liquor slide down the back of his throat. He hadn’t been able to spend much time out here in the decade since his grandparents had died within three months of each other, his grandfather from a heart attack, his grandmother from a broken heart, he suspected. But since he’d returned to the States it had become his base of operations. He settled lower in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck to relieve the ache of sitting too long hunched over a computer screen. He wondered if his grandparents had had any inkling how much their hardscrabble farm would be worth one day. Probably a pretty good one or they wouldn’t have held on to it through good times and bad, watching the march of progress along the shore of Lake Norman grow closer with each passing year.

  He’d mortgaged the farm to the hilt to enter into partnership with an old college friend whose equally hardworking ancestors had left him a small, marginally profitable soft drink bottling company. Together they developed Rev Energy Drinks. His partner had been the brains; he’d been the marketing talent. Rev had taken off just as they hoped it would—a genuine overnight success—if you counted five years of eighty-hour workweeks an overnight success. Rev Energy Drinks had found its niche market in the newest generation of NASCAR nation and since then they hadn’t looked back.

  And best of all he’d done it without taking one red cent from August Carlyle.

  A sound caught Quinn’s attention and overrode his memories with more immediate concerns. Daisy was up and moving around in his bedroom—he’d been sleeping on a futon in his office since she’d been staying at the cabin. He’d had the plumbing and electrical
circuits upgraded, put in central air and a new furnace and bought a flat screen TV for the living room but beyond that the place was pretty much the same as it had been when his grandparents lived here, including slippery pine floors and what seemed like dozens and dozens of throw rugs—dangerous for a woman on crutches, especially one who had given birth to a baby only a few days ago.

  He surged out of his chair and headed down the short, dark hallway toward the main room. Sure enough Daisy was up and headed down the hallway. She was still wearing the clothes she’d left the hospital in but she’d pulled her hair up into a kind of swirly knot on top of her head. The effect of the hairstyle made her look closer to her true age than she had that afternoon, but she still seemed very young to be a mother. There were dark circles of fatigue shadowing her huge, brown eyes and he was reminded yet again of all she’d gone through in the last seventy-two hours. He wondered if she should even be out of bed.

  “What do you need? What can I get for you?”

  She gestured toward the bathroom doorway, her face turning pink. “Oh,” he said, hastily. “I…I guess I can’t—”

  “Right,” she said. “I’ll have to manage the bathroom on my own.”

  “Um, sure.” He ran his hand through his hair. He had lived alone for so long it threw him off stride to have someone sharing his space, especially a woman.

  And a baby.

  As though the thought was her cue, Brianna began to fuss and then cry. Quinn glanced at his watch. Exactly three hours since Daisy had fed her after he’d settled them and all their paraphernalia in his bedroom. That had been a disaster, too. He hadn’t known what to do when she started crying—Daisy, not the baby.

  He’d never considered the fact that she would feel she had to reimburse him for all those things; he’d only wanted Brendan’s baby to have whatever she needed so he’d had his middle-aged, motherly personal assistant buy them for him and have them delivered to the cabin. He’d had to do some fast thinking and fast talking to persuade Daisy she didn’t have to pay him a cent. If she really wanted to buy her own things for Brianna after she left his care, he’d told her, then he would donate all these things to a women’s shelter. She had agreed to go along with that plan, but reluctantly. She was adamant she didn’t want to be any more in his debt—in his family’s debt—than she already was.