by Helen Brooks
'I wouldn't be happy to share your room,' she shot back indignantly, 'of course I wouldn't. We aren't even seeing each other, not really.'
'Quite.' He smiled at her, a shark-like smile. 'So what's the problem?'
The problem was that she had suddenly found herself sharing a home with Quinn! And as problems went that was a mighty big one.
She stared at him, totally at a loss for words. He must realise? she asked herself silently. Even if he didn't want any involvement of even the most casual kind, he must understand that this wasn't fair on either of them? Either of them? The thought mocked her. You, you mean, her mind jibed nastily. Quinn is quite able to take you or leave you; he's proved that more than once. Whereas you…
Her chin rose a notch and her face straightened into cool, proud remoteness. 'The problem is exactly what I said before,' she said evenly. 'I don't want people thinking we are sleeping together when we are not.'
'Candy, the whole reason my parents have taken the room at the pub is because you are going to be in the guest bedroom,' Quinn said with insulting patience. 'That's what people will think. If anyone has to worry about their reputation it's me, not you. My renown as a love 'em and leave 'em type is going to take a bit of hammering, don't you think? People will be expecting to hear wedding bells next,' he said with deprecating self-mockery.
She stared at him a moment more and then sighed irritably before she said, 'You've got an answer for everything, you know that, don't you?'
'Not everything.'
She was startled by the bitterness evident in his voice and for a moment she forgot the matter in hand and said urgently, 'Quinn, what's the matter?'
'You. You're the matter.'
It was the last answer, the very last answer she had expected, and her heavily lashed eyes opened wide with shock. 'Me?' she whispered faintly. 'What have I done?'
'What have you done?' He brushed an angry hand over his face in the same manner he used to rake back his hair, and the gesture told her he was truly thrown off balance. And angry. He was definitely angry.
And then she watched him gain control, and in that instant she knew, she just knew, as surely as black was black and white was white, that he had been playing a part ever since she had met him. She didn't exactly know which part, she admitted silently, but a part nevertheless. She had caught glimpses of the real man—brief, tantalising glimpses that had come and gone so quickly she hadn't been able to pin them down—but that was all. And a second or two ago had been one of them.
'You haven't done anything, Candy.' He was calm now, and very much Quinn Ellington, cool and self-assured man of the world, again. 'Come and say hallo to the dogs now you're here, and then we'd better get back upstairs; the parents'll be wanting to leave.'
He was just like Harper. One thing on the outside and quite another within. And then in the next moment she fiercely repudiated the thought No, he wasn't like Harper—he wasn't remotely like Harper. Harper had been a vain, handsome, egotistical fraud, intent on taking the easy path through life whatever the cost to anyone else. And Quinn wasn't like that.
She didn't have time to think anything else. Quinn had opened the door to the surgery kitchen, where the dogs slept at night, and an avalanche of small furry bodies had poured out into the corridor in a frenzy of delight and wagging tails.
They spent some minutes with the dogs before Quinn shooed the pack into the long walled garden that was now several inches deep in snow. The lot of them went madly leaping into the new exciting white stuff that had transformed their playground, and immediately began a wild game of tag that had them jumping like gazelles and careering around as though they had springs on their paws.
'Crazy kids.' Quinn stood watching them for a moment, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans and his mouth twisted in an indulgent smile. 'We'll leave them to tire themselves out for a while.'
'Quinn, I'd really prefer your parents to stay here and me to go to the Saddler's Arms, or even the rooms above the garage,' Candy said quickly before she lost the opportunity as he shut the back door.
'I wouldn't.' His voice was faintly husky as he looked down into her earnest face, the dim light from the sixty-watt bulb in the corridor giving her eyes the look of deep midnight-blue pools and picking out shafts of gleaming copper in her luxuriant hair.
'But—'
'No buts.' He touched her half-open lips with a light finger. 'And you're not going back to the cottage either, before you suggest it. It's a sight too remote at the best of times, but with the prediction of the worst weather we've had for years…'
'It's not remote, not really.' He was too close, much too close, and she was finding it difficult to be the impersonal friend he demanded in the very limited space within the corridor. 'Essie lived there by herself,' she added a little breathlessly.
'You're not Essie.'
It could have been insulting or demeaning or unflattering, but it was none of those things. The air was fairly crackling between them and his voice had been soft and deep with a warmth that made her feel deliriously cared for and hopelessly confused.
Quinn was breathing hard, his big muscled chest rising and falling beneath its covering of charcoal silk and his long lean legs slightly apart as he reached out and drew her into him. 'I want you to stay, all right?' he said thickly as he stroked her hair in an absent-minded caress, letting the smooth, silken strands run through his fingers as he looked down into her uplifted face.
His thighs were hard against hers, and with a little shock of pleasure she realised his body was betraying his desire. He moved, pressing her back against the wall of the corridor, holding her there with his body as he bent his mouth to hers.
And she welcomed his kiss, wanted it, her lips immediately opening beneath his and allowing him the intimacy he demanded with his probing tongue.
It couldn't be real, this heady sense of ecstasy that overcame her every time he touched her like this, she told herself helplessly. But it was. Every nerve, every sinew, the very blood pounding through her veins was reacting to Quinn's touch, and it was exhilarating and so, so sweet.
His hands left the rich silky tangle of her hair and moved down her body, roaming over the soft swell of her breasts, her waist, her hips. She could feel herself beginning to tremble but she couldn't control the quivering, and then his tongue rippled along her small white teeth, causing her to arch shudderingly against him as her hands on his shoulders pulled him closer.
Her breasts felt lush and full and there was a heat in the core of her she couldn't deny; suddenly all her intimate parts were on fire under his passionate touch and she wanted more, much more.
'Hell, Candy, what are you doing to me…?' It was a ragged whisper, but thrilling, and his rigid body was trembling almost as much as hers.
And then they both heard it; the careful call of his name from the hall beyond the corridor.
'Quinn, your parents…'
For a moment she thought he wasn't going to stop, and in spite of the fact the door might open any moment she wasn't at all sure that she wanted him to.
And then he drew in a long, shuddering breath, his chest rising and falling under the charcoal silk as he fought for control. He drew away slowly, his body leaving hers first as his hands left her soft voluptuousness and moved either side of her shoulders to the wall, where he levered himself off her with his mouth still stroking her lips.
'You want me as much as I want you.' It was a statement, not a question, and Candy could only stare at him as her mind raced madly. Yes, she wanted him, but just wanting him wasn't enough, not for her.
In the year or so since Harper had died she felt she had lived a lifetime, and not just because of the physical recovery that had been so slow at first It was the mental scars that had been the hardest to overcome. Perhaps if she had been someone else, with no emotional baggage from her childhood and teens, Harper's betrayal wouldn't have hit her quite so hard. Perhaps. She would never know one way or the other about that.
/> But she was herself, warts and all, and she couldn't alter that. She was attracted to Quinn, more physically attracted than she had ever been to Harper, or any other man for that matter, but more than that she liked him too. She liked him very much. He had got under her skin somehow with his enigmatic personality—one moment so caring and gentle with his patients and anything small and helpless, and the next so remote and cool and controlled. He fascinated her, he annoyed and irritated her, he delighted her, and he made her feel more alive than she would have dreamt it was possible to feel.
And it was because of all that that she knew it would be sheer emotional suicide to start an affair with him. She simply wouldn't survive it when he decided to walk away. As he had already told her he would.
She expelled a quiet breath and then said the hardest sentence of her life. 'We can't always have what we want, Quinn.' And they both knew she was saying far more than the actual words.
He nodded slowly, his eyes on her flushed face. 'How did I know you were going to say something like that?' he drawled lazily.
But he didn't fool her this time. He was acting again, hiding the real Quinn under the easy, cool mask he liked to adopt when it suited him. She felt a sudden stirring of anger, and it propelled her down the corridor towards the far door with a regality that wasn't lost on the man looking after her. 'Your parents are obviously ready to go,' she said coldly over her shoulder, 'and it's rude to keep them waiting.'
The mental oath was never voiced, but Quinn's eyes were flint-hard as he followed her. Stop this now, a grim inner voice was warning him implacably. You know what you want for the future; you've got it all mapped out and you've made your decisions. There are a hundred women out there who can satisfy the physical side of things and none of them with any strings attached. Keep it distant, stay in control, watch yourself.
After the ruthless masculine beauty of the rest of the apartment, the guest bedroom was a surprise.
Once Candy and Quinn had said goodbye to his parents and gone upstairs, Quinn led her straight to her room, opening the door next to the master bedroom as he said, 'The bathroom's next door I'm afraid, but it's basically yours; I've got my own en suite.'
'What a lovely room.' She had barely spoken since they had left the back of the house, but now there was a note of real delight in her voice.
The ceiling followed the roofline over the big double bed with an exquisite antique brass bedstead, and the room was simply furnished with a small wardrobe and a striking Queen Anne chest which the stained floorboards exactly matched. The dark wood and brass was the only contrast in the all-cream room, but there was decoration in the form of the beautifully embroidered bedlinen trimmed with lace and the enormous vase of pale, rose-touched lilies in the far corner of the room.
'Thank you.' He didn't tell her this was the one room which had been naked and bare when he had moved in, apart from the same silver-grey carpet which covered the rest of the flat He had had that ripped up and had furnished this room in his own taste which, if he was being truthful, was more inclined to the rustic and antique than Essie's husband's had been.
'I feel guilty about those.' Candy was trying to bring a light note into the atmosphere, which had been strained, to say the least, since the incident in the corridor, as she pointed to the vase of flowers. 'You'd bought them for your patents and now they won't see them.'
Quinn shrugged easily. 'There'll be other times.'
'Yes, of course.' She tried to make her voice as relaxed as his but it was difficult. His dark masculinity seemed even more pronounced in the pale cream room, and since his hair had grown a little it was getting its tousled look back, which was so much more Quinn, somehow, than the cropped severity of the last few weeks.
'I'll leave you to unpack. Come through when you've finished and say goodnight to the cats,' he said coolly as the sound of Christmas carols from the TV drifted into the room.
She nodded, wondering why she wanted to cry. 'I'll do that.'
When she opened her case it took only moments to put her things away, and once that was done she stared down at the presents which had been under her clothes. Tabitha and the kittens each had a new toy, which she had wrapped in bright Mickey Mouse Christmas paper and was looking forward to seeing them rip open, and she had bought Quinn a small gift too. Of course that had been before she'd known she would be staying in his apartment, she reflected silently, as she thought about the heavy brass keyring in the shape of a bull—after the story about his battle with the bullock she had bought it a week or so ago—along with an expensive black leather wallet.
She hadn't anything for his parents. She sat down on the bed with a little plop. And she had seen a little pile of presents next to the Christmas-card tree. But there wouldn't be anything for her from his parents, she reassured herself in the next moment. They had been taken by surprise as much as she had. Or had they? She frowned. How long ago had Quinn told them he had a new 'girlfriend'?
She gathered up the parcels and hurried out of the room as doubt assailed her, walking into the sitting room to see Quinn setting a small table in front of the fire with two glasses of hot mulled wine and a small plate of mince pies.
'It is Christmas Eve,' he said almost apologetically, 'so I thought we should finish the evening on something of a festive air.'
'Right.' A small prickly sensation ran up and down her spine as she glanced at the two-seater settee in front of which he had placed the occasional table, but she put her unease to one side for a moment as she said, 'Quinn, I didn't know your parents would be here so I haven't bought them anything.' She nodded at the parcels in her hands. 'They haven't…?'
The black eyes flickered briefly.
'They have, haven't they?' she pronounced, horror-stricken. 'Oh, Quinn!'
'Don't panic,' he said soothingly. 'As you said earlier, I think of everything.'
She thought she had said he had an answer for everything, and she had not meant it to be laudatory, but now was not the time to split hairs.
'All you have to do is sign your name with your own flourish on their gifts,' he said smoothly, 'Okay? Everything is ready for you to write the little cards. Here—' he walked across and picked up two parcels and brought them over to her, '—I'll just get a pen.'
'What are they?' she asked suspiciously as she glanced down at the beautifully wrapped perfume-sized packages in her hands.
'Chanel No. 5, my mother has worn nothing else since she was a young girl, and Ralph Lauren for my father. He'll like it, I assure you.'
'Thank you.' It was grudging. Somehow here she was, giving his parents Christmas presents and spending the next couple of days in Quinn's guest room, none of which had been on the cards first thing that morning. What she had first thought of as a simple one-night piece of pretence to get Quinn off the hook with the local femme fatale some weeks ago had turned into a tangle with more threads than the average spider's web.
After something of a fight she persuaded Quinn to accept payment for the perfumes, and after she had written the little cards attached to the presents— 'The shop wrapped them, not me,' Quinn admitted cheerfully—she placed them next to the other parcels.
'Here.' As she turned from the cardboard tree Quinn patted the space beside him on the settee. 'Come and relax a while and put your feet up; Christmas starts right now.'
His handsome and slightly cynical face was trying to look innocent but she would as soon have trusted a cobra.
She stared at him before kneeling down on the rug in front of the gas fire next to the kittens, who were playing with rapt enjoyment with a woollen pom-pom she had made for them some days earlier, and holding out her hands to the heat. 'I'll have mine here, please.'
She turned as she spoke, holding out her hand for the glass of wine, but Quinn was already in the process of joining her on the rug. 'Good idea.' His voice was lazy and amused, and it stroked over her taut nerves with unbearable sensuality.
Candy took a big gulp of the wine before she realized
the effect of its hot potency. There followed a brief but intense battle not to gasp and choke in front of him, but her eyes were watering as she fought for control. It was some moments before she felt sufficiently composed to turn her head and look Quinn's way, and then she wished she hadn't.
He was smiling, the hard lines of his handsome face mellowed in the attractive rosy glow from the fire and the lamp at the other side of the room. 'Got quite a kick, hasn't it?' he said in a tone of deep satisfaction. 'Have a mince pie.'
She didn't want a mince pie. She glanced at his big lean body stretched out in comfortable indolence—and in stark contrast to her tense frame—as she acknowledged what she wanted definitely couldn't be voiced.
'No, thanks,' she said tightly. Why did he have to prop himself on one elbow like that? It seemed to emphasise his aura of raw masculinity a million-fold, and he was far too close again.
He shrugged, reaching for one of the pies on the plate next to him and biting into it with strong white teeth. 'Delicious,' he pronounced appreciatively, 'which is just as well. With the amount of these Marion has made added to my mother's stock I'll be eating mince pies at Easter. Philippa insisted on baking me a couple of dozen too. Do I look that hungry?'
Candy bit back the hot retort which had sprung to her lips on the lines of doubting whether it was feelings of benevolence which had prompted the beautiful blonde's generosity, and smiled sweetly instead. 'Not to me,' she said coolly. She hoped he choked on the rotten pie! And then she couldn't resist adding stuffily, 'Not that I've particularly noticed one way or the other.'
The black eyes were dancing. 'No, of course not,' he agreed soothingly.
There were a few moments' silence, which only the faint hiss of the gas fire and the kittens' mad scramble after the pom-pom broke, and then Quinn said softly, 'I didn't know girls still had freckles till I met you.'
