He moved in with me when Annabelle was a baby, to help out.”
When Annabelle was a baby...
So the little girl had been with her dad from the first? What had happened to the mother, the one Quinn said Annabelle would most likely never meet?
So many questions.
But Chloe had such a good feeling about the man beside her. She trusted him to tell her everything in his own good time.
He said, “When I decided to retire from the Octagon last year, Manny was already taking care of Annabelle full-time.” Chloe knew what the Octagon was: the eight-sided ring in which Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed-martial-arts fighters competed. During the rough years when she was still married to Ted, she’d watched more than one of Quinn’s televised UFC fights. It had lifted her spirits to see how far the wild, angry boy from her hometown had come. He continued, “I asked Manny to stick with me when I moved back home. He agreed right off, said he supposed it was about time he settled down. Annabelle’s a handful, but so far he’s managing.”
“From what I’ve seen, he’s great with her. He’s patient, encourages her to express herself and make some of her own decisions—but he stays in charge, too.”
“Yeah. He’s a champ with her, all right...” Quinn’s voice kind of trailed off and there was another silence, one somehow not as comfortable as the first.
She glanced over at him again and found him watching her. “Whatever it is, you might as well just say it.”
“I got a question, but I don’t want to freak you out.”
An unpleasant shiver traveled down the backs of her arms and she thought of Ted again. Because if her freaking out could be involved, it probably had to do with Ted.
Then again, how would Quinn know that? She’d mentioned her ex once, on the night that Quinn came to her bed. What she’d told him had been far from flattering to Ted, but she’d said nothing about how thinking of him made her want to crush flowers and break expensive vases.
“Ask me,” she said. “I can take it.” The words came out sounding so confident. She was proud of them.
“All right, then. Does your mama know you’re going out to dinner with me?”
Her mother. Of course. “No.”
“It’s Justice Creek, Chloe.”
“Meaning she will know?”
“I’d say the odds are better than fifty-fifty, wouldn’t you?”
Chloe kept her gaze steady on his. It was no hardship. Looking at him made her think of hot sex. And safety. And that combination really worked for her. “That girl—the mama’s girl I was in high school?”
“Yeah?”
She slanted him a teasing glance. “You’re not even going to argue that I was never a mama’s girl?”
“Hey. You called it, not me.”
And she made a low, rueful noise in her throat. “Yes, I did. And I was. But I’m not anymore. I tried living my life my mother’s way. It didn’t work for me. I’m all grown up now and my mother doesn’t get to tell me what to do or whom to spend my time with.”
One side of his beautiful mouth curved up then. It was a smirk, heavy on the irony, more like the old, dangerous, edgy Quinn from back in high school than the one she’d been getting to know lately. “Whom. Always so ladylike.”
“Don’t tease me. I’m serious.”
His smirk vanished. “So you’re admitting that your mother’s not gonna like it, you and me spending time together?”
“What I’m telling you is that she doesn’t have a say, so it doesn’t matter whether she likes it or not.”
He reached out his hand between their chairs. She put hers in it, and he lifted it to that wonderful mouth of his. Hot shivers cascaded down her arm and straight to the core of her, just at the feel of his soft lips against her skin. Then he rubbed his chin where his lips had been, teasing her with the rough brush of beard stubble, reminding her of their one night together, making her long to jump up and drag him inside.
But she didn’t.
A moment later, he let go of her hand. He started talking again—about his plans for Prime Sports. She told him how much she appreciated the chance to rework the interiors at his house and then she shared with him some of the ideas she and Manny had discussed for upgrading the kitchen and opening up the living-room space.
A couple of hours passed as they sat there talking quietly under the waning moon. She even told him a little about her failed marriage—no, not about the flowers, and not about the times Ted had struck her. This thing with Quinn was so new and sweet and heady. Sharing ugly stories about her ex would definitely dim the romantic glow. Instead, she tried to explain how disappointed she was in the way things had turned out.
“It hurts so much,” she confessed, “when something that should have been so right somehow goes all wrong. And I feel... I don’t know, less, I guess. Shamed, that I didn’t make better choices.”
He regarded her for several seconds in that steady way he had. “You said the other night that the guy was abusive...”
She held his gaze as she shook her head.
He frowned. “I’ll need more than a head shake to get what you’re trying to tell me.”
She let out a hard sigh. “Oh, Quinn. It’s a beautiful night. And you’re here beside me. It’s good, you and me, talking like this.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I probably shouldn’t even have brought up my divorce.”
“Yeah, you should. Whatever you want to tell me, that’s what I want to hear.”
“That’s just it. I really don’t want to go into any of that old garbage right now.”
He gave her another of those long, thoughtful looks. And then, “All right.”
And just like that, he let it go.
How amazing. He let it go. She’d grown up with a mother who never let anything go. And Ted? He would hound a person to hell and back to find out something he wanted to know.
But not Quinn. She said she didn’t want to talk about it—and he just let it go. He said, “Whatever that story is, whatever happened in the past, you’re going to be fine.”
She made a low, rueful sound. “You’re sure about that, huh?”
And he nodded. “You’re brave and beautiful, Chloe—and not only on the outside. You’re beautiful in your heart, where it matters. I admire the hell out of you.”
Tears burned in her eyes at such praise. She blinked them away and whispered a soft, sincere “Thank you...”
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