by Abby Gaines
Sheila and Daisy exchanged a puzzled look. Sheila lifted her shoulders in a shrug and did as Mellie asked. “With what’s leftover here you’ll have plenty to eat for the next few days. We’ll take turns popping out to look in on you two over the weekend.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Daisy protested, waving her hand palm out, like a traffic cop. “I’ll be fine here with Quinn…and Brianna,” she added hastily. Goodness, why had she phrased it that way, putting Quinn ahead of her daughter?
Sheila gave her a considering look. “Oh, I assumed Quinn would be going to Atlanta for the race. He’s probably got sponsor obligations. Atlanta’s a big market for sports drinks.”
“I…we…he hasn’t said anything about leaving.” Daisy knew her face was turning red. It hadn’t occurred to her that Quinn was neglecting his business by staying out here for so long. It seemed he was always on the computer, or talking on his cell phone during the day. She had just assumed he could conduct all his business that way. How silly and naive of her. “But even if he does go to Atlanta, Brianna and I will be just fine on our own. We’ve got everything we need and y’all are just a phone call away.”
“I want to go home,” Lily complained.
Mellie glanced at the cheap watch on her wrist. “Oh, dear, it is almost two. I can’t believe we’ve been here so long. You must be worn-out.”
Daisy laughed, reluctant to see her friends go. “I’m fine. I had a quick nap before you got here. You learn to take them when you can get them when there’s a baby in the house.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mellie said. Her friend seemed to have regained her good humor. Daisy put the talk about the Branch scandal out of her mind and began piling up dirty dishes for Sheila to take into the kitchen.
She held Lily on her lap and listened to the three-year-old’s nonstop prattle, thinking that someday Brianna would be this bright and chatty and that it would probably happen much sooner than she planned. Brianna woke up fussing just as Sheila and Mellie came back into the living room.
“She’s hungry,” Lily announced, wiggling off Daisy’s lap to run to Mellie. “Daisy says next time we come I can hold her.”
Brianna’s cries grew louder.
“Stay sitting,” Sheila ordered. “I’ll have a bottle ready in a jiffy.” She disappeared back into the kitchen.
“She’s impatient when it’s time to eat,” Daisy said, smiling down at her wide-awake daughter. “Every three hours like clockwork. I wish I could stretch it out to four but she just won’t hear of it.”
“Maybe just a tiny bit of rice cereal mixed with her formula on the tip of a spoon,” Mellie suggested, lifting Brianna out of the carrier, giving her a hug and a kiss on top of her head before handing her to Daisy. “I know a lot of doctors don’t believe in solid foods this early but it worked wonders for Lily. She was such a fussy baby.”
“Maybe I will try it,” Daisy said. She’d call her mother after her friends left and get her recommendation, after all Lelah Brookshire had raised four children of her own and had watched over Daisy’s niece and nephew, her divorced oldest brother’s children, since they were babies, too.
“Babies are tougher than you think. If she doesn’t like it she’ll let you know soon enough,” Mellie said with a laugh. “C’mon, Lily, time to get you home and ready to go to Louise’s.” Lily’s babysitter, a wonderful woman who just happened to be the wife of the cook at Maudie’s, had also agreed to watch over Brianna when Daisy went back to work at Cut ’N’ Chat.
“Here we go,” Sheila said, returning with the bottle. She handed it to Daisy and moments later Brianna’s cries were replaced with loud sucking noises.
“That’s better.” Lily took her hands away from her ears. Everyone laughed.
“Let’s go,” Mellie said, swinging Lily into her arms. Daisy remained seated. She would love to walk her friends to the car but she still didn’t trust her footing in the rutted driveway and overgrown yard.
“Call us if there’s anything at all you need—or want,” Sheila said in her usual forceful, I-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer tone. “Anything at all.”
“I will,” Daisy promised, secretly pleased that she had friends who cared so much about her. “But, really, I’ll be fine.”
She would be, too, except she would miss Quinn a whole lot more than she was comfortable admitting.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I THINK WE SHOULD LOOK into franchising your friend Sheila’s meat loaf,” Quinn said, leaning back in his chair as he surveyed his empty plate. “We could all become very, very rich making people all over the country deliriously happy at mealtime.”
Daisy laughed. “You’re already rich,” she said teasingly, before she could stop herself.
“Only on paper,” Quinn replied.
Daisy felt her cheeks turn hot and it wasn’t because she had her hands in soapy dishwater. “I’m sorry, that was rude. Please forgive me.” She had spoken to him as if they were old friends who knew everything about each other and could poke fun at each other, instead of near strangers who had been thrown together by circumstance and necessity.
“It’s okay, Daisy. I do have a lot of material assets but I’m not in the same league as my stepfather.”
“And my criteria for considering someone filthy rich are extremely low,” she quipped, trying to make light of her gaffe. “Right now I’d call three months rent in the bank and a paid-for car being on Easy Street. Still, your financial situation is none of my business. It was a little joke…a very little joke.”
“I can take a joke,” he said, setting his plate and silverware on the drain board. “You don’t have to hang your head for bringing up the fact I have money.”
“Okay, I forgive myself.” She attempted a smile but she thought it might have come off a little ragged around the edges. Now everything felt awkward again because she still felt guilty about keeping him chained to the cabin when he had more important things to do than fetch and carry for her and her daughter.
She turned back to washing Brianna’s bottles with fierce concentration. She had allowed herself to be lulled into a false feeling of intimacy, of sharing, almost of family, these past days of near total isolation with Quinn. Sheila must have passed the word to her friends and the Tuesday Tarts because their vigilance had dwindled off into phone calls and text messages instead of daily visits.
It had been just the two of them and the baby for the past three days.
Quinn had declared he was taking the Labor Day weekend off to do just that—labor—at the farm. He had spent all of Friday and Saturday working to bring the junglelike yard under control. He’d rented a big, heavy-duty riding mower and scrounged around in the barn until he came up with rakes and hoes and a wheelbarrow that was in surprisingly good shape once the tire was pumped up. He’d trimmed and pruned and rooted out dead wood until he had a big pile of brush. After Brianna had fallen asleep in her lacy bassinette Daisy came outside on the porch to sit and watch the flames.
Quinn had joined her after fetching a beer from the kitchen, rocking in the chair beside hers as the embers glowed with shades of orange and red and overhead stars blinked into life. It was quiet in the clearing where they sat, but far away, out on the lake, the sound of fishing boats starting their engines to head back into shore for the night came very faintly to their ears. It had been like a little slice of heaven for Daisy, those quiet hours; the kind of life she had privately envisioned for herself when she was with Brendan, although she had always known that a simple cabin in the woods was not his style.
If only she had met someone like Quinn first. She had been foolish to fall in love with Brendan. He was charming and outgoing, but she had learned to her sorrow there was little depth of character and maturity in the man behind the smiling facade. She would never give her heart that easily again. Daisy sighed and ran the bottle under a stream of hot water to rinse it before setting it upside down in the rack.
“Now what’s wrong?” Quinn asked, leaning o
ne hip against the counter, folding his arms across his chest while he studied her profile. She would never in a million years admit to her thoughts because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings by speaking ill of his dead stepbrother, or admit that she also felt a sense of relief that she wouldn’t have to share her daughter with a man she couldn’t respect, and no longer loved.
“I wish you’d gone to Atlanta,” she said, bringing up another point that had been bothering her. “Brianna and I would have been fine here alone.”
“Is that why you’ve been so touchy the last day or two? Because I decided to let my partner wine and dine the Atlanta employees at the race track instead of going myself?”
“That’s your job,” she said. “You told me he was the brains and you were the marketing. The people you’d be entertaining are your regional sales force, right? You should be there.”
“Look, that’s true, but Zach’s not some kind of pencil-necked geek who never leaves the lab. He’s been running the family business since he got out of college. He can handle schmoozing with the salesmen as well as I can. Besides, he’s a huge NASCAR fan so it’s not exactly hardship duty for him.”
“Still—”
“How about ice cream?” he asked abruptly, routing the conversation in a new direction. He grabbed the dish towel from her hand and spun her around, slowly, so she didn’t stumble on her still weak ankle and untied the old-fashioned cotton apron she’d found in a kitchen drawer. It was the first time he’d touched her, actually laid hands on her, since he’d carried her into the cabin ten days ago. She shivered a little when she felt his grip on her waist. His hands were as warm and strong as she remembered and just as arousing.
Now where had that extraordinary thought come from? Arousing? She wasn’t beginning to think of Quinn that way, in a sexual, man-woman way, was she? She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
He tapped the tip of her nose with his finger. “Hey, are you okay? You went a little blank on me there for a moment.”
“What? No. I’m fine, just a little dizzy. I’m sorry, what did you say?” she stuttered, shocked to her core to realize that, yes, she was beginning to think of him as more than just a friend, a benefactor. She was beginning to think of him as a man, and a sexy desirable one at that.
“Ice cream. I asked you if you’d like to go for ice cream.”
“Ice cream sounds good.” It took a lot of willpower to get the words to come out just right but she managed.
“Soft serve in a waffle cone, or maybe a milkshake?” He grinned like a little boy. “Nope, I want a hot fudge sundae. I haven’t had one of those in years.”
“I love hot fudge sundaes, but we just finished supper.”
His grin turned crafty. “It’s dessert. If we hurry we can get down to Bubba’s Bait & Ice Cream Shop and back before the race starts.”
Daisy laughed, her heartbeat settling back into something resembling a normal rhythm. “You’re kidding. It’s not Bubba’s Bait Shop & Ice Cream Parlor for real?”
“Wanna’ bet?” Quinn asked, raising one dark eyebrow as if daring her to question his honesty.
“Really?”
“I swear.” He held up one hand. “Get Brianna into her carrier and I’ll show you.”
“Okay,” Daisy said, trying her best not to let him see how breathless she’d suddenly become just because he’d smiled at her. He didn’t smile often but every time he did it set her heart to hammering in her chest or took her breath away, or sometimes both. “But I’m buying,” she said firmly.
“Deal,” he replied. “Let’s get going. The race starts in less than an hour.” He didn’t argue and she found it no longer surprised her that he wasn’t intimidated by a woman taking the initiative now and then. The day Brianna was born and the days that followed he had been so forceful, so intimidating she had assumed, wrongly, it seemed, that despite his assertions to the contrary, August Carlyle must have been a bigger influence on him growing up than he would admit.
She was very glad she had been wrong about that.
“I’ll be ready in a jiff,” she said. The Labor Day race was under the lights. If Eli Ward, Quinn’s driver, finished in the top ten he would most likely move up enough in the points standings to make the Chase. Her favorite driver was Rafael O’Bryan, who was already locked into one of the top twelve spots for the final run to the championship, but today she was going to root for the No. 502 car with all her heart.
CHAPTER NINE
QUINN AWOKE FROM A LIGHT doze. Was it the far-off rumble of thunder across the lake that had roused him? He looked around the darkened living room. Rain pattered on the roof and tapped against the windows as lightning flickered above the trees. He remembered nights like this when he had lived here with his grandparents. He had always enjoyed the sound of rain on the roof, but that wasn’t what had wakened him.
He stretched, running his hands through his hair and listened to the silence. There it was again, the rustling of sound and the faint mewling cry of a newborn.
Brianna was awake.
He glanced over at the couch where Daisy was curled up under one of his grandmother’s crocheted afghans sound asleep. He checked the luminous dial of his watch to find it was a few minutes shy of three o’clock. The race had ended just before midnight due to a lengthy red flag delay for a single-car crash that had taken out four other cars as collateral damage. Thankfully none of them had been the Rev Energy Drinks car. In fact Eli had taken the lead soon after the restart and cruised to an easy win. His first in a NASCAR Sprint Cup car. Quinn caught himself grinning again as he remembered the jolt of pride seeing the Rev car in Victory Lane had produced deep in his gut.
He just wished Daisy had been awake to share it with.
She had fallen asleep during the delay and he hadn’t had the heart to wake her. It wasn’t often that Brianna slept more than three hours at a time, but she had tonight. Maybe it was the cereal Daisy had started feeding her after a lengthy phone conversation with her mother in Florida?
He hadn’t realized that changing a newborn’s diet was the equivalent to a major corporate marketing decision but he wouldn’t make that mistake again. There had been calls to Daisy’s mother in Florida, to friends and customers at the salon soliciting advice, a consultation with a nurse manning the New Mother hotline at the hospital, a conference call with Juliana and Patsy Grosso and Patsy’s daughter, celebrity chef Grace Winters who had three children of her own, and he had no idea how many others that took place when he wasn’t within earshot. The consensus had been to give the feedings a try and so yesterday they had made the trip to Mooresville to the grocery to buy a single box of rice cereal.
It had been quite a production what with diaper bags and an insulated carrier for bottles of formula, and a tote with changes of clothes for both Daisy and her daughter. She’d laughed, shaking her head. “I know, I know it looks as if we’re preparing to go around the world and not just to the grocery.” Daisy giggled. “But I honestly don’t know what I will and won’t need yet. Bear with me. By next month I will have the hang of this motherhood thing.”
She would, too, Quinn thought indulgently, levering himself up from the chair. He had underestimated Daisy those first couple of days. He had thought she was weak and easily managed, but he had been wrong. She had agreed to his high-handed ordering of her life, was still agreeing to his insistence that she stay at the cabin instead of attempting to return to her third-floor walk-up for Brianna’s sake if not her own, but it wasn’t because she was weak or malleable.
It was because she was using her head and her common sense to make decisions concerning her baby’s welfare and her own. When she was strong enough her innate self-confidence would reassert itself; she would veto any further arguments he might put forward to keep her and Brianna here with him and return to her life and her job and her friends.
And he would be alone again, solitary, as he had always been and, if he was completely honest with himself, even lonelier than he’d been before.
He walked to the bassinette and leaned over to see if Brianna was awake or merely fussing in her sleep. Bright, dark eyes stared back at him from the shadowy interior. She was very definitely wide-awake. So much for hoping he could give her a few pats on the back and she would drop off again.
“Hello, little one,” he said very softly. “Are you hungry?” Her hands waved in the air in reply. After a couple of false starts she found her mouth and started sucking her thumb. She was getting good at that. Daisy was already taking suggestions on how to break her of the habit.
“Okay, I’ll have to wake your mom, though.” He hadn’t yet attempted to feed her. He glanced over at Daisy still sound asleep, her hand under her cheek. She looked comfortable and relaxed curled up in the corner of the couch and he hated to wake her. She still had faint shadows beneath her eyes and she needed a long stretch of unbroken rest. Maybe it was time for him to take another step as a surrogate father and feed Brianna himself.
He straightened up and prepared to head for the kitchen. Brianna was having none of that. Her thumb popped out of her mouth and she began to sniffle. He saw her take a big breath and knew she was getting ready to let loose with a real howl. Automatically he bent forward again and picked her up. She squirmed a little against his shoulder, rooting around until she was comfortable, then settled with her tiny face tucked against his neck, her fingers curled around the collar of his shirt.
Quinn stood quietly savoring the moment, dumbstruck by the depth of emotion the tiny, helpless infant stirred to life inside him. He wanted to protect her, to make everything perfect for her for the rest of her life, and not just because she was Brendan’s daughter, but because he was falling in love with her himself.
And if he was falling in love with Brianna, what were his feelings for her mother? Was he falling in love with Daisy, too?
He had no idea. In all his thirty-three years he had never been in love, never felt so deeply for any of the women he’d been involved with that he couldn’t imagine his life without them. It wasn’t that way with Daisy. He had no problem at all imagining how bleak a future without her in it would be. No problem at all.
