Those dark almond eyes of Quinn’s grew wider. “Then I expect you to use any angle. Do you need a retainer or something?”
He cracked up with laughter. “Define ‘or something.’”
Those chocolate eyes flashed with temper. She tossed the paper coaster at his head. “Bite me.”
“Absolutely.” He picked up her hand and nibbled a couple of fingers. “I’ll start here and work myself down. How would that be?”
It suddenly got very hot on the patio. “You like to use that mouth of yours—a lot.”
He chuckled. “Relax, Quinn. I’ll press our advantage until the other side shouts uncle. That’s what I do. And I’m good at it.”
She made a derisive sound and looked out into the blackness of ocean meeting night sky. “I’ve had enough of lawyers to last a lifetime.”
When she finally looked over at him again, she propped her chin in her hand and groaned, “The thing is I was just getting started, finally getting over that lump of nerves every time I walked into the ER, just at that point where I’d stopped being intimidated by Mendenhall every time he asked me a question.
“I was just getting comfortable leading rounds, too. And now, I’m out on my ass thanks to a rich boy who brought his temper tantrum to my public workplace. Ah, well, what am I so mad about anyway? A vacation is what it is. Maybe I’ll use the time to go to a spa and get one of those fancy masks put all over my face, a facial, or a pedicure, or maybe I’ll schedule me one of those indulgent mud baths.”
Reese didn’t buy her attitude for a minute. In the short time he’d known Quinn Tyler, she had no more chance of relaxing, let alone spending time inside a spa, than she did playing wide receiver for the Raiders. “And do you like mud baths?”
“I don’t know. That’s the thing, I might. I could get use to all the pampering they do there. I could certainly use a massage. Kit and Baylee and I keep promising ourselves to take a run at one. Maybe we’ll see how the other half lives.”
“My sister certainly loves going to one.”
“There you go.”
As much as he hated to put an end to the first banter they’d shared without ripping into each other, he bluntly asked, “Quinn, aren’t you worried about what Cade said in the ER?”
“Of course I am. I’d be crazy as a loon not to be. But at this point, what options do I have? Another restraining order?” She snorted. “Come on, Reese. Is that the best you can do? It’s a waste of paper.”
Reese ignored the dig and asked, “What happened between you two?”
She took several calming breaths to keep herself from getting worked up about it. She picked up her wine, took not a sip but rather a gulp as if she found courage in the liquid enough to talk about it.
“He beat the crap out of me. There, is that what you wanted to know? Kit and Baylee had warned me, multiple times. But he had this way about him back then. At the time he made me feel so…special.” She’d been nineteen and looking for that certain someone who made her feel as if the universe revolved around her for the very first time in her life. She’d been incredibly inexperienced and naïve about men and relationships.
That much she could admit now.
She shook her head. “He was generous to a fault, always bringing me little cards and gifts, even sending me flowers. He gave me the full court press. He was the first guy to show me any real attention, like maybe I was his world. And I fell for it. It was an act, of course. But after two months of saying no, one day, I suddenly said yes. When Kit found out, I thought she was never going to speak to me again, even thought she might pack up and move out of our apartment; she was that upset. But at the time I honestly thought Cade might be the one, you know.” She sighed audibly. It sounded so insane now.
“That lasted six weeks, lasted until one night we were at his place, inside The Enclave. We’d had a lovely dinner prepared by his personal chef. One minute we were discussing which movie to go see. The next, out of the blue, he thought I’d laughed at him about something. The next thing I knew, he picked me up and threw me against the wall. After that, he hauled off and slapped me, grabbed me around the throat. I went down for the count.” She paused, remembering the nightmarish scene.
Reese flinched. Just thinking about Cade having his hands around her throat had him wanting to rearrange the man’s face. And he’d never considered himself to be a violent sort, had never been the jealous type either, but now he had to admit this might be a different facet to his personality.
He didn’t believe in hitting a woman, couldn’t imagine doing so. He’d seen too many bruised and battered faces at the women’s shelters early in his career when he’d counseled wives and girlfriends who were hiding there trying to find the legal means to leave behind a violent home life.
Quinn went on before she lost her nerve. “I tried to hit him back. He pushed me down face first on the bed. I was wearing a short skirt at the time. He ripped off my underwear, started to…” She shifted gears.
“Because I had an idea of what he planned to do, I kicked my legs out, caused him to fall back enough to let go. As soon as he hit the floor, I got up and started running. But he caught me by the hair and dragged me backward. He threw me around some more, knocked me into a wall face first. Before I knew what was happening, I was on the floor again and his hands were around my throat. I guess I’d been screaming down the house because one of his cousins, Adam Gatz I think it was, came running in and pulled Cade off me. I got out of there and never looked back.”
“This is the first time you’ve shared those kinds of details with anyone except the police, am I right?”
Her mouth dropped open. “How did you know that?”
“Doesn’t matter. Go on, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“I’m convinced if Adam hadn’t shown up when he did, Cade would have killed me. I pressed charges. And yes, I told the police everything. Later, the son of a bitch tried to butter me up with flowers and presents for several weeks afterward. I sent the gifts back, threw the flowers in the trash.”
“Jesus, Quinn.” Reese reached across the table and took her hand in his. For the second time in as many hours, she left it rest there.
“It took me about six months to stop remembering how it felt when he had his hands around my throat, about how he might have finished me off right then and there if Adam hadn’t shown up to stop him. That’s why I got a restraining order against him.”
“Was he prosecuted?”
She looked away, dropped her eyes to the floor. “Sumner Boyd talked me out of going through with it.”
Reese cocked his head. “You know that’s never the answer.”
“Of course I do. But I have to admit, I was scared of him. I told Sumner if I dropped the charges I wanted assurance Cade would never come near me again.”
Reese lifted a brow. “And? How could Sumner Boyd make that kind of assurance and have you of all people believe it?”
“Maybe because I refused to cancel the restraining order. I wanted it to remain in effect. Plus, I demanded Cade make a deposition to a police officer with no ties to the Boyds that could be kept on file in case he got—any ideas about revisiting our brief time together.”
Impressed, he said, “Smart girl.”
“The strategy worked until recently. “
“What about taking out another TRO?” He put up a hand in a gesture that said he knew she’d object. “I know it didn’t work for Kit and Baylee. But getting one makes it official. You already know it’s the one thing that makes the authorities aware of the situation through proper channels. I’ll take care of it.”
She put her head in her hands. “Thanks. Since this afternoon, my life went from normal to this mess thanks to Cade. Up until today I was pretty much concerned with Kit and Baylee’s situation, not mine. But Cade has a way of weaseling himself back into my life whenever he finds a crack in the door.”
“Then we need to weasel him right out.”
Amusement flickered in her
eyes. “Aren’t you going to offer to beat him up again? I could seriously get on board with that.”
“I could, but I’d rather see him in San Quentin for about twenty years.”
“I can’t say I haven’t dreamed about that myself. God, Reese, you’re so calm, cool, and collected all the time, like you’ve never had a hair out of place before. I envy that.”
Just to show her he wasn’t as calm as she thought, he reached over, grabbed her chin, and covered her mouth.
He meant the kiss to be light and feathery and quick. Yet at the first taste he realized nothing about Quinn’s mouth made him want to rush. Instead, he teased her lips open, deepened the kiss. In no time, the light press of lips became a ball of heat that punched a hole in his system.
Caught up in the warmth, Quinn simply surrendered to his onslaught. She whooshed out a breath. “Is that mouth legal?”
He chuckled. “Tyler, I’ve wanted to do that ever since the Sunday afternoon you walked into Kit’s hospital room. But you were too busy railing on me.”
“That day I could see through your veneer, Reese. You didn’t approve of Kit, it showed. And it pissed me off considerably. You were a…”
“Lawyer,” he concluded.
“A horse’s ass,” she corrected, her lips curving in playful scorn.
He poured her another glass of merlot. “I’ve taken a lot of crap from you these last few weeks. And yeah, I was skeptical about Kit at the time. If you’d known the money-hungry Claire Boston, you’d have felt the same way about any woman a friend was obviously falling for—and fast. Way too fast.”
“In your opinion it was fast. Doesn’t mean it was. You do know those two have known each other since she was a kid.”
“Sure, but I didn’t know the grown woman. For all I knew she could’ve turned into a top ten most-wanted grifter.”
Quinn shook her head. “You thought Kit was after Jake’s money? Get real. Kit loved the guy before he took his company gold, before he made a fortune. She cared for him, loved him for who he is, not for what he has.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t know it then. Besides, I’ve seen you cynical plenty times yourself, holding that cool veneer together in your own way. At least you were that day.”
But there was a time she hadn’t known to project a cool veneer or perfect her cynical nature. Her early years had been chaotic and pathetic. “Now maybe, but it wasn’t always like that. Let me ask you something. What were your parents like growing up, Reese? Did you have a stable home life? Were you able to eat regularly? Did your mother read to you at bedtime?”
He lowered his eyes for a moment before meeting hers again. “Yes to all that.”
“That’s what I thought. People who’ve lived Norman Rockwell childhoods like you couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to grow up the way Kit, Baylee, and I did. Never knowing if that instability you faced everyday might get worse with just one little reaction on your part, the wrong response. Never knowing if you might get a backhand for a slip of the tongue. Suffice to say the three of us have had our―challenges over the years.”
She looked into those piercing gray eyes. “You think you know most of it because of the last two months, but you don’t know a thing about it. Don’t presume to know.”
He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Kit. She’d given him the short story about Quinn’s parents. Like the fact she’d never had a real relationship with her father, Nick Tyler, the rock legend and the lead singer for the Irish band Shatter. Not only that, but her mother, the flakey artist Ella Canyon, had pretty much come and gone in her life without sticking around for very long, either.
Reese picked up his wine glass, motioned for her to go on. “So tell me. No one’s stopping me from knowing the real Quinn Tyler but you. Remember, I listened to Kit have to go on record about her abuse—in detail. Listening to her take me through the cruelty she endured in that Beverly Hills horror chamber Alana called a house was painful. Was living with your stepfather as traumatic as Kit’s living with Alana Stevens?”
She eyed him over her glass. “I see Kit’s infamous loose lips have been flapping in the wind again. What else do you think you know about me, Reese? Because I can assure you there are varying degrees of trauma.”
He sighed. Sometime during the last two minutes the prickly pear had shown up. “Look, Kit simply took five minutes to try and explain to me why you hate my profession so much. I know Tyler’s lawyers pretty much handled any communication you tried to have with him over the years. And that your mother was never around much. Don’t beat Kit up because she was trying to explain away your rude behavior at the time.”
She took another sip of wine, set down her glass. “Okay, that’s fair enough.” She put a fist under her chin as if contemplating whether or not she should tell him anything. She never talked about those neglectful childhood years before she came to live in Beverly Hills. Ever. After all, what was the point?
Kit and Baylee were the only two people on earth who knew her life story. But even they didn’t know a hundred percent because she’d locked those memories away so deep down she didn’t like going there, especially with a lawyer, and particularly not tonight after the kind of day she’d had.
But staring at the man sitting next to her, she supposed he did deserve some type of explanation.
“I was a financial responsibility to Nick Tyler, nothing more. Look, my early years were kind of messed up. When life finally settled down for me, everything I needed, everything I wanted from my sperm donor father had to go through a ridiculous array of tedious channels. The stuffy barristers obviously had their client’s best interests at heart, certainly not that of a child. I got sick and tired over the years of listening to their excuses. At some point, he eventually started owning up to his responsibility and sent the checks each month. At least I assumed he did. I certainly never saw much money floating my way aimed just for me.”
She took another sip of wine. “His lawyers must have hit the stall button plenty of times. And then when he did cough it up, what money Ella didn’t use to snort up her nose, she spent shopping on Rodeo Drive like a crack whore, which she was, by the way.
“But if I happened to need something extra for school or if I’d outgrown my two pairs of jeans, those extra requirements had to be put in writing—and justified. Hoops had to be jumped through. When I was younger, around ten or so, I was still in the hopeful stage, that naïve kid daydreaming about the rock star they said had fathered me, thinking he might be curious enough to want to come see his daughter.”
She snorted. “Instead I got letters from the lawyers making up excuses why he couldn’t come for a visit. I’d make him a card on Father’s Day and Christmas then wait for him to get in touch. At the very least I thought he’d respond with a card, write a one-line sentence.”
She set her glass down. “What I got was a big fat nothing for my trouble, nada from Nick-fucking-Tyler.
“Then when Ella married his record producer I was about eight. Our lives changed dramatically after that. We moved to Beverly Hills after years of living in the car or whatever rundown cheap motel she could find where she could pick up a few extra dollars cleaning out rooms or hustling johns. Sometimes she’d be so strung out from the snow, she couldn’t function. When that happened…”
She threw out a sigh. “You see, Reese, before Beverly Hills, Ella hooked, with some regularity, too. I was never sure exactly where we’d spend the night. We might crash at some friend’s house in the valley, or maybe on the couch somewhere in Riverside, or maybe sleep in the car near the beach. I never knew what to expect until it got dark.”
Reese looked at her as if she might be making this up just for him, maybe playing him. But gauging her demeanor, her huge chocolate eyes said it all. She was serious. Kit hadn’t mentioned any of this to him. Then he realized Kit, by her own admission, knew nothing solid about Quinn’s life before she’d arrived in Beverly Hills.
“Why in the world
would Nick Tyler’s daughter be living hand-to-mouth with a hooker if she were getting monthly checks of support from his lawyers?”
“Good question, lawyer Brennan, and if you happen to find out that answer from Mr. Rock Star Legend, you be sure and let me know, okay? Because I always suspected it was during his stall session fully supported by his lawyers. But I’ve wondered that very thing for most of my life. I even fired off a letter once asking. I was about fifteen then, rebellious as hell. I asked where all the bastards had been those first eight years of my life when I was lucky to get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for supper.”
She tossed back her head and laughed. “Naturally there was no response.”
She sucked in a breath. “Those early years were the worst though. After we came to live with Ross Jennetti at least I got to go to school regularly. No more going hungry at night either.”
She picked up her glass and made an air toast. “I’ll say one thing for good old Ross, he always kept a damn fine cook on staff that could and did make delicious food. I used to hoard the food just in case I ever had to get out of there in a hurry.”
Reese shook his head, mortified. Something wasn’t adding up. “Why would you have to leave in a hurry?”
She whooshed out a laugh. “Spoken like a man who has never lived amidst daily turmoil.”
“That’s unconscionable for Nick Tyler’s daughter to be living such a precarious existence. The man’s worth millions.” Not for the first time Reese realized how much Kit, Baylee, and Quinn had overcome in their lives.
Living in Beverly Hills hadn’t afforded any of them with stability or the luxuries associated with the address. “You and your friends have managed to rise above all of that.”
That was an understatement. She wondered if he realized just how much. “That’s right. And the Boyds are just one more thing the three of us have to conquer—together.”
“You can’t do it by yourself.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve been doing things by myself my entire life. With the help of the only family I’ve ever really known, of course. My sisters, maybe not by blood, but by choice, our choice. Kit and Baylee are my family, my true family. And we’ve been on our own for a long time now, Reese. The three of us moved in together at sixteen. Even before that we were a tight unit. And I’m not used to being a unit with anyone else.”
Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set Page 77
