broken nose,” Dani prompted.
“We didn’t see eye to eye when he first came to stay.” Quinn absently rubbed the bridge of his nose, recalling the mother of all his teenage fights.
“Jake Vance was a foster child?” She sounded disbelieving.
He supposed it was difficult to think of Jake like that when the whole country associated him with immense wealth.
“Not exactly. He had a mother, but there were some problems, mostly to do with his stepfather. He ran away from home, looking for work in the city and things didn’t pan out the way he’d hoped. Ma and Pa got to talking to him on the streets one day so he turned up at home.”
Quinn as a teenager was well used to sharing but liked to be asked nicely. Jake didn’t ask nicely. Quinn wasn’t about to lose his standing as top dog in his own house. The battle was epic, and at the end of it, neither boy could stand. And that was the start of a long and valued friendship.
“He’s my closest friend now. He and Lucy my foster sister. She was abused from the start. Came to us when she was eight and just stayed.” He caught her horrified look. “She and Jake had a thing a few years back, but now she lives in London. Corporate banker,” he finished proudly.
“How awful.” Dani shuddered. “What makes people such monsters?”
“I don’t suppose people start out that way,” Quinn said thoughtfully. “But it’s not that hard to be careful if you don’t want a baby.”
Dani nodded sadly, and he realised that was probably close to the bone for her. “Not these days, anyway,” he qualified, not meaning to suggest her mother and the mystery lover had been careless.
“So have the things you’ve seen and heard put you off having kids?” Her voice trailed off when a shadow passed over his face. “Oh, I’m sorry, Quinn.” Dani looked very uncomfortable suddenly.
“That’s okay. I was married, yes.”
“I remembered as soon as I’d asked. Laura Hartley, wasn’t it? I only know because she was at PLC around the same time as Kim. I was a couple of years after.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “I didn’t know that.” PLC—Pymble Ladies College, a private college on the North Shore—had an excellent academic reputation, but it was strictly for rich kids.
“I’m sorry,” Dani repeated quietly. “I remember now hearing that she’d died.”
Quinn stared out over the waves. “We married when we were still at university. Laura wanted to be a social worker, whereas her parents …” his voice hardened as he continued, “They had other ideas. Sure, they sent her to a nice school and tolerated her going to uni, but they didn’t intend their daughter to get her hands dirty. She was only marking time till the right rich husband came along.” He smiled bitterly. “When she moved in with me on the cheap side of town, her family disowned her.”
“What was the family business again?” Dani’s brow wrinkled. “I remember they had stores all over the country. I think they were friends with Howard.”
“Soft furnishings.” Quinn swallowed, but it didn’t erase the familiar burn of anger that flared up at the mention of Howard’s name. He may not have caused Laura’s death, but he sure influenced how she felt in those last days.
“How old was she when she died?”
“Twenty-six. It was sudden, only a few months from the first symptoms till the end.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said again, her golden eyes pools of sympathy.
“Don’t be. I wouldn’t swap those few years for anything, not a bit of it.” He leaned forward and poured a little wine into a glass, mindful that he was skippering the boat. “She loved our life, my parents. She loved that we took in the unwanted and the street kids.” Some of the good times flooded in, making him smile. “Every time I turned around, she was sitting in a corner, talking to some snot-nosed kid. They confided in her, told her everything.
More than Mum and Dad, even.” He looked down at the wine in his glass, swirled it around before tossing it down in one gulp. “That was the hell of it. She would have gone places, helped so many. Why she had to die is beyond me.”
It was his one taste of true failure. He couldn’t understand how it could happen, how she could be taken.
How could he not have saved her?
He rubbed his chin. Part of him would always love Laura, or more accurately, love that time of his life, when he was young and silly enough to believe in forever, believe he and Laura were invincible.
But Howard Blackstone had tainted the memories. He’d never forgive him for that.
And as he tried and failed to swallow the hard knot of bitterness, he found himself wanting to justify it to Dani. He called himself a swine for doing it, for doing what Howard had done to him. Tainting the memories.
But he wanted her to know. “You want to know why I hate Howard so much?”
Dani blinked at his harsh tone.
“The bastard ruined the last weeks of Laura’s life.”
She visibly paled. “I didn’t know he knew her.”
“He didn’t. But you’re right about him being friends with the Hartleys. After the World Association of Diamonds vote went against him, he did all he could to blacken my name. That was fine, I could take care of myself. Laura always had faith her folks would come around and accept our marriage. But with Blackstone whispering in their ears, filling them full of hate, they turned their backs, even knowing she was terminal.”
Dani’s mouth dropped open in dismay, and she looked away as if she couldn’t bear to look at his face. Yes, it hurts, doesn’t it, he thought bitterly. She’d thought Howard was some kind of saint. Well, now she knew differently.
“When everything went to hell and the tumour came back, I went to them, begged them to come. Not that we ever gave up hope …” Laura would not permit anyone to think for a minute she wouldn’t beat the cancer. “But they tossed me out. They said Howard had told them all about me. How I couldn’t be trusted, how I was after her money, how she was my meal ticket out of the slums.” His head rolled back and he breathed deeply of the warm air. “They couldn’t even give her peace at the end,” he said with disgust.
“I—I didn’t know.”
How could she?
Now that the anger was out, as always, it quickly faded. Time did that. Blackstone had a black heart and that wasn’t Dani’s fault. It seemed even being six feet under was no barrier to hurting people.
“They didn’t deserve her, Quinn,” she said quietly. “You did.”
He sighed, thinking that Dani had her own problems. At least he had great family support. He suspected she’d never felt part of a real family. He’d glimpsed a vulnerability in her, an insecurity. He remembered it from long ago, when he used to notice such things. Loneliness, a need to belong.
Somewhere along the way, he’d just plain stopped
