by Jill Shalvis
Quinn let go of her and the cat turned in a tight circle in Quinn’s lap three times and then plopped down with little to no grace and closed her eyes.
“So if I’m sabotaging my happiness with Boomer,” Lena said, “maybe you’re sabotaging Mick’s happiness by getting in our way. You ever think of that?”
“You know, I liked it better when we didn’t speak,” Quinn said and Lena let out a low laugh in clear agreement.
To Quinn’s surprise, she laughed a little too. Like Tilly, like the damn café and the people in it, like everything in Wildstone, everyone and everything here had all become little strings on her heart.
And she had no idea what to do with that.
Chapter 25
How come being fifteen isn’t nearly as fun as it is on TV?
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
After Lena left, Quinn took the bottle of moonshine and walked down the hallway.
The cat followed her around like a puppy. Lena had been right, the one droopy eye gave her a distinctively inebriated look. Her fur was still all clumped and matted, like maybe bathing herself took too much effort, and Quinn wanted to bathe and groom her badly, but one problem at a time.
She eyed the bedrooms and stretched the kink out of her neck. “I’m not sure how long I’m staying,” she told the cat, who seemed interested in all she had to say. “But I refuse to sleep another night on that couch.”
The craft room was smaller than the closet in her condo. Her first choice would be to take Carolyn’s bigger room, but she didn’t want to do that to Tilly.
Taking another sip of moonshine for fortification, she rolled up her sleeves and went to work, moving the sewing and boxes of craft stuff all against one wall so that she could move the old twin bed she’d seen in the garage into this room. There was a tiny desk with two drawers, one locked, one not. In the unlocked drawer was only one item.
A key.
It unlocked the first drawer, where she found a small journal. She opened it up and recognized Carolyn’s writing from the letter she’d received. Another sip from the moonshine bolstered her courage as she opened the book and began to read.
Was told I was terminal today. Didn’t see that coming. When I was little, I used to pretend I was Superwoman, with powers to transport myself from place to place. Right now I’d settle for the superpower to go back in time and make some badly needed changes.
I know I’m contractually barred from searching out the daughter I gave up for adoption. I get it. But what are they going to do? I’m dying, for crap’s sake.
It was a mistake to agree to stay away from her but I can’t regret anything I did back then as it was all for the sake of my baby girl. I wanted her to have a better life than I could give her. At barely eighteen, I wasn’t equipped to handle myself, much less an infant. Hell, I couldn’t have committed to a dentist’s appointment, much less to raising a kid.
But oh how I wish I’d been stronger. That I’d not let her go. That I’d not signed away all my rights to her.
When Tilly came along so many years later, I expected some of the guilt to dissipate. Instead, it got worse. Because in spite of all my concerns about raising a child, Tilly and I did okay.
Better than okay.
All of which only makes the ache for Quinn worse. I failed her, and I can’t live with that.
So . . . I searched for her, and what I found was far more than I deserved. I found a smart, kind, generous woman, and I couldn’t be more proud of what she’s made of herself and who she’s become, in spite of her dubious beginnings.
The sound of Quinn’s cell phone ringing from the kitchen where she’d left it had her jerking back to the present. Realizing her cheeks were wet, she swiped at the tears and stood up, reeling.
The journal echoed what Greta had told her. What the letter from Cliff had told her. There was a lot more, but she carefully slid the journal into the drawer, relocking it.
Then she took another sip of the moonshine—or two—before running into the kitchen to grab her phone.
The ID screen read: THE-GUY-I-LIKE-I-REALLY-REALLY-LIKE. In spite of herself, she had to laugh because damn, Tilly was good. That girl was way too smart for her grades and her own good. “Hello?” she asked, breathless from the journal, her mad dash to the kitchen, the moonshine . . . her life.
There was a beat of silence. Then Mick’s deep, familiar voice, the one that made her nipples hard, said, “You okay?”
“You ask me that a lot. I might look fragile but I’m not.”
“I already know that. And I ask because I like to know.”
There’d been a part of her, deep, deep down, that had gone cold when she’d learned about being given up at birth. She was coming to terms with it, all of it, she really was. But that spot inside her had remained cold.
But ever since she’d met Mick, he’d been slowly defrosting it, warming her from the inside out.
“How about dinner tonight?” he asked.
“Like a date?”
“Unless you can figure out how to have dinner over the phone, yeah. A date.”
She looked at the cat, who’d followed her into the kitchen.
“Mew,” the cat said politely but definitely with a question on the end of it, like “Are you going to feed me or what?”
“Quinn?” Mick asked.
“Dinner sounds good,” she said, and then remembered she’d have Tilly at home later, after her AP course at a local city college. And she wasn’t sure she was ready to try and handle both him and Tilly at the same time. “Can we make it an early dinner? Or a late lunch?”
“Sure. When?”
“Now?” she asked. “And maybe it can be the kind of late lunch/early dinner you bring here to the house?”
“Okay,” he said, easy as always. “What would you like?”
“Mew,” the cat said politely.
Quinn looked down and met her one good eye. “Something a cat would eat.”
There was a beat of silence. “What?”
“Don’t ask.” She disconnected and looked at the cat, who came closer, walking in a way that seemed like she might be tiptoeing. Dust danced away from her fur, floating through the air like . . . “Tinkerbell,” she said.
The cat didn’t seem impressed.
“Too girly?” Quinn asked.
“Mew.”
“Okay, how about just Tink? It’s a perfect name for such a beautiful cat.”
Apparently the cat agreed because she wound herself around Quinn’s feet and then nudged the empty milk bowl for more.
MICK AND COOP arrived twenty-five minutes later with a bag of groceries. “Hi!” Quinn said enthusiastically.
Mick gave her an odd look.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, hoping she didn’t have the same inebriated expression that Tink did.
“You’re all flushed.” He looked around and saw the moonshine, now missing a third of its contents, and burst out laughing.
“In my defense,” she said, lifting her chin, “I was left unsupervised.”
He ran a finger along her temple, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, giving her a delicious all-over body shiver. “Want to talk about it?” he asked, voice silky. Sexy.
She closed her eyes and leaned into him, pressing her face into his throat, inhaling the sexy, comforting scent of him. “I don’t know.”
And here was the difference between him and . . . well, everyone else she’d ever known. He didn’t push. He didn’t poke or prod. He didn’t cajole, demand, question.
He just let her be.
“I’m worried,” she finally admitted.
“About?”
“Everything!” She sighed. “There’s a boy . . .”
“I’m hoping the rest of that sentence is ‘and his name is Mick.’”
She laughed. “I’m talking about Tilly. I’m stressing over how much a fifteen-year-old old knows about sex. I went online and tried to research—”
She stopped talking when she felt his chest and arms shake.
He was laughing at her.
“How is this funny?” she asked. “I mean, do I have The Talk with her about boys being one big walking, talking blob of testosterone or not?”
“You’re asking me? I’m one of those blobs of testosterone.”
No kidding.
“You’re doing great with her,” he said. “Just have a frank talk, let her know you’re there for her, and tell her to try to hold off at least another year before she goes for it. Guys don’t know what they’re doing when they’re that age.”
She gave him a speculative look. “Do you know now?”
“Come here and I’ll show you.”
She hesitated, not because she didn’t want to jump him, but because she did want that. Bad.
He must have seen that all over her face because he gave her a slow, wicked smile and a finger crook.
When she just returned his smile, he reached out and snagged her by the hips, hauling her into him.
No longer hesitating, because after all, she’d just gotten exactly what she wanted, she snuggled in.
He fisted a hand in her hair and gently tugged her head back, studying her face.
She did her best to look one, sober, and two, like the best thing he’d never had but wanted.
Again he gave her that slow smile, the one that melted her bones away.
“You want me,” he said.
She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? Quinn, the last time we were together, you climbed me like a tree.”
“I did not.” She totally had. “Maybe I just don’t remember because it was over so fast . . .”
He laughed and then kissed her until she was breathless and clutching at him. “You’re going to take that back when I’m done with you,” he promised and she shivered with anticipation.
“Thought you were hungry,” she said, already breathless as she ran her hands down the hard muscles of his back, touching as much of him as she could.
His hands were busy too, sliding up and down her back, making her heart thump.
“I am hungry,” he said, grazing his teeth over her skin, taking a sexy bite of her throat, her shoulder, nudging her clothes aside, baring her to his gaze. “Just not for food.”
His mouth came down on hers and she quivered as he curled an arm around her, nudged her thighs farther apart to fit between them. They moved wider of their own accord as he put on a condom and started to slide into her.
She was already gasping his name as he slid in deep. “Oh my God, Mick.”
“I hope that’s ‘Oh my God don’t stop.’” His low, husky voice washed over her as he drove himself deeper into her.
“Definitely don’t stop,” she managed, crossing her ankles behind him to keep him right where he was.
Don’t stop.
Ever . . .
Which was a terrifying thought for someone whose world had spun out of control and into orbit with no landing in sight.
“Quinn.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him, into his fathomless dark eyes, and suddenly she felt anchored, and she clutched at him, shocked by how much she needed this, needed him.
“Stay with me,” he said, and she knew he meant right now, in the moment. He couldn’t possibly mean more, but she lifted up to kiss him, accepting.
Whatever it was he was giving her, a piece of him, all of him . . .
With a growl, he rolled his hips into hers with purpose, and they came together, even as they fell apart.
AN HOUR LATER, Mick met Quinn’s gaze.
She gave him a dopey smile. “Okay, I take it back. You’re not fast. You’re . . .”
He raised a brow.
“Disturbingly perfect.”
Feeling suitably smug, he sat up on the couch and found a cat staring at him. An old, ratty-looking cat with only one good eye. “Uh, Quinn? There’s a cat staring at me.”
“That’s Tink. Short for Tinkerbell. She’s visiting.”
Okay. Mick cracked his aching neck. “Tell me you’re not sleeping on this couch.”
“I’m working on turning the craft room into a bedroom.” She sat up with a groan. Naked. He loved the view.
“I’ve cleared some space in it for the spare bed I found in the garage,” she said.
Mick went out to the garage to check on the bed and found a family of field mice enjoying the hell out of the box spring. “You’re not using that bed,” he told Quinn, coming back in from the garage.
“Why?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She searched his gaze and then shook her head. “Nope.”
“Give me half an hour, I’ll be back with what you need.” He gestured to the bottle of moonshine. “Maybe save the rest for another day.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve got additional plans for you,” he said, amused to see her bite her lower lip in anticipation even as she blushed.
He was driving his dad’s truck today and he was glad for that as he headed out to the one furniture store in the area that he knew of. He hadn’t been by for years and hoped it was still there.
He got lucky. And it turned out the guy who now owned the place, Tyler Coronado, had dated Mick’s sister way back when. Mick picked out a full-size mattress with a pretty wood frame for a screaming deal. “Good prices,” he said.
Tyler sighed. “Going-out-of-business prices. I’m selling the property. I’ve slashed everything so I don’t have to find storage.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Mick said.
“Wildstone’s circling the drain, man. Not many of the small business owners think they can hold out for much longer.”
“What’s being done?” Mick asked.
“Nothing,” Tyler said with disgust. “Seems certain officials keep getting richer, while the rest of us get poorer. Not that any of us can afford the legal battle.”
When Mick left, he sat in the parking lot and sent off an e-mail to Colin, asking him to look into which specific business properties in town were in the most immediate danger of going under. He couldn’t easily step in, as he was stretched thin now, but neither did he want to stand by and watch someone sink.
Half an hour later he and Coop were back at the house standing at the front door and staring down at Quinn’s newest guard cat.
“Mew,” the cat said, sitting smack in the center of the doorway, making no move to let Mick or Coop get by her.
Coop, normally a lover of people and all other creatures, whined, his ears down in a submissive pose.
Tink stared up at him from her one good eye, clearly in charge here.
“What do you think, buddy?” he asked Coop.
