he abandoned his reverie to answer Dani. “You stopped screaming your delight one minute ago and suddenly you want to talk business?”
She lay with her head on his chest, her hair a riot of curls against his skin.
Quinn turned his head to look at the clock. Seven-thirty. Time he was up. “Yes, I have heard something. You want coffee or are you staying in bed?”
But she was persistent. “Do you think Matt is involved?”
Had she heard something last night?
Matt’s request to sell his shares or support a takeover bid had not surprised him; Quinn had heard he was polling all the Blackstone shareholders for support. He was getting it, too.
But not from him, at least not yet. His fingers rasped over his chin. “What is this inquisition before I’ve had my coffee?”
She kept her face down on his chest, a fact he found strangely worrying.
“I heard you,” she said in a small voice. “Last night at the restaurant. Talking about selling your shares in Blackstone.”
Quinn’s eyes narrowed in the dim room. Scratch all those nice thoughts about waking up with the same woman. He didn’t know whether to laugh or be offended. Who the hell did she think she was? “Eavesdropping, Danielle? If you heard us, you’d know I turned him down.”
She lifted her head and looked him right in the face. And it hit him: she was serious.
The urge to laugh disappeared. “A company takeover,” he said, twisting his finger around a springy red curl, “is very complicated. It needs the support of the board and the requisite number of shares. I’m Little League in Blackstones, Dani.”
That was the truth. He had very few shares himself. But he knew Matt was in for more than the Blackstones knew about—and climbing. And Quinn knew who else had a substantial portfolio.
“But if Jake Vance asks you to sell …?”
Quinn stilled. She had heard everything. And she was right out of line. He was not in the habit of justifying himself to anyone, let alone a woman he’d known for a week or so, even if the sex was amazing.
He injected plenty of cool in his reply. “Yes, if he gave me a good enough reason, then I’d sell.”
Disappointment darkened her eyes, and just the fact that he recognised that pissed him off. There was no room for emotion in business. That was the dictum that Jake Vance, corporate raider, believed in, and Quinn agreed wholeheartedly, damn it!
“Quinn, what hurts the Blackstones hurts me, you do get that, don’t you?”
Time to remind both of them this was just a fling. “Just because we’re sleeping together, Danielle,” he said coldly, “doesn’t give you the right to ask about my business dealings.”
She flinched. He knew that because he felt it in his chest and stomach, which lay under her torso, in between his legs where she’d squeezed her thigh, over his shoulder where she’d draped one of her arms.
But he held her gaze. He wouldn’t negotiate on overstepping boundaries. After a long moment, he nudged her, indicating he wanted to get up. She moved over to her side of the bed. When the hell did they get into his-and-her sides of the bed anyway?
His refection stared balefully back in the bathroom mirror while he wondered what had suddenly happened, what had changed. One minute, he was savouring the delights of a very sexy body. The next, he was wallowing in guilt, thinking about someone else, considering someone else’s feelings. Just how deep was he getting here?
Somewhere out on that boat, she’d stirred up some long-buried need to protect. His parents, his childhood home had always been a port in a storm, a harbour for lost and needy souls. Quinn had forgotten what it felt like, until now. Was that what Danielle saw in him? Was she searching for such a port?
He ran the tap and splashed his face, making sure it was good and cold.
This was supposed to be a brief fling, a bit of fun to while away the heat of the day while he was stuck up here in the middle of nowhere. Wanting her every minute of the day in the limited time they had together was acceptable. Thinking about waking up to her every morning was probably teetering on the edge and would have to be addressed—and soon. It had been years since he’d considered relationships and he was perfectly happy with his life just as it was.
But justifying himself to her was definitely off limits.
Steve called at breakfast to ask if Dani could mind the shop for a few hours; he and his partner had an ultrasound to attend. Quinn went into town with her. She was quiet but not snippy, and he had some ideas for marketing he’d been thinking about. He pushed aside the feeling that giving her some decent advice may assuage his guilt somewhat.
“What are you doing here, Dani?” he asked, after a customer walked out with a very nice pair of pearl earrings that she’d gotten for a bargain, he noticed.
Dani looked up from locking the cabinet. “Making a living. Just.”
Quinn paced out the tiny interior. The display was funky without being crafty; the quality of her jewellery was too high for that. But the premises were second-rate, security was inadequate and the whole place needed a complete overhaul. “Is it success or failure you’re afraid of?”
Dani ran her eye slowly around the shop. “It could use some attention, I know.”
“How did you end up here, anyway? Why Port?”
She scratched her neck and shrugged. “It’s where I stopped.” She picked up a cloth and bottle of glass cleaner and walked out from behind the counter. Today she was almost conservative in below-the-knee tights, high-heeled sandals, a mushroom-coloured tunic with voluminous sleeves and a huge orange silk rose pinned to her lapel.
Why he always noticed her attire was beyond him. He questioned her again. “What were you running from?”
Dani walked to the display cabinet on the other side of the shop and turned her back on him. He heard the hiss of the spray cleaner, saw the sleeves of her creamy shirt rippling as she rubbed and polished. “I was engaged.”
As soon as she said it, he remembered a couple of sketchy details. Actually, what he remembered was watching it on a TV news programme and wondering how it qualified as news.
“I was engaged to someone who was convinced, even though I denied it repeatedly, that I was Howard’s daughter and, therefore, a Blackstone heiress.”
She moved around the cabinet, rubbing intently, but didn’t look at him.
“I remember,” Quinn murmured, noticing two distinct spots of colour on her cheeks.
“You remember the scandal.”
She did look at him then and he saw that it wasn’t so much pain setting her mouth into a thin line and colouring her cheeks. It was embarrassment.
“The media had a field day.” She gave a tight laugh. “There were some really funny headlines. I would have laughed myself if …” Her eyes slid away and she
