he said gently. “Come on, now, angel. Whatever she did, she is your mother.”
Chloe pursed up her lips and stuck out her chin. “Don’t even remind me.”
“I’m only saying, whatever happened with her, give her a little time. She’ll come around.”
“Oh, you don’t know her, Quinn,” she insisted. “You don’t know her at all.” She sounded downright pissed off.
Which wasn’t so bad, he decided. He’d take pissed off over brokenhearted and out of control any day of the week. “Hey.” He stroked her hair some more, brushed a quick kiss across her sweet, trembling mouth. “You gonna talk to me? Really talk to me? Because I need a better idea of what happened before I can do much more than hold you and tell you it’ll be okay.”
“It was awful. We went at each other. She was like one of those crazed, jealous girlfriends on The Jerry Springer Show.” Chloe shut her eyes and sucked in another slow, careful breath. “And I wasn’t much better.”
Now, there was an image. Chloe and Linda Winchester going at it on The Jerry Springer Show. “Come on. Make some coffee or something. You can tell me what happened.”
A few minutes later, they sat on the sofa. Chloe sipped the hot tea she’d made for herself. “She was waiting on the front step when I got home from work, and she was furious.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. “Someone told her about you and me.”
“That’s right. She...” Chloe met his eyes then. “I don’t even know how to tell you how awful she was.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to give me a blow-by-blow. She’s never thought much of me or of my family and we knew that from the first.”
“I, well, I want you to know that I didn’t back down, Quinn. I didn’t evade, either. For the first time in my life I stood right up to her. I told her I was seeing you and I intended to keep seeing you and that she’d better accept that.”
“But she wouldn’t accept it.”
“No. We yelled at each other. I realized it was going nowhere and I asked her to leave. That was when she let it slip that she’s been in touch with my ex-husband.” Chloe’s gaze slid away. “I hit the ceiling and threw her out.” She fell silent, and she still wasn’t looking at him.
He waited. When she didn’t volunteer any more, he said, “It’s probably about now that you should tell me whatever it is you’re not telling me about your ex-husband.”
She did face him then. And she looked stricken. In a small voice, she said, “I don’t even know where to begin.” He took her mug from her and set it on the low table. Then he hooked an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. She crumpled against him. “Oh, God...”
He pressed a kiss into her sweet-smelling hair. “It doesn’t matter where you start. I’m not going anywhere until you’ve told me everything I need to know.”
She let out a small, sad little sound. “All my life, all I wanted was to be my mother’s good little girl. And look where that’s gotten me...”
Quinn said nothing. He held her close.
Finally, hesitantly, she told him the story. “I met Ted Davies at Stanford in my sophomore year. He was four years older than me, in law school. And he was everything my mother raised me to want. Handsome and charming, already rich, from a powerful California family, bound for a successful career as a corporate lawyer. I saw him as perfect husband material, and he saw me as exactly the right wife to stand by him as he climbed to the top. We got married in a gorgeous wine country wedding at the end of my senior year and I went to work being his wife, which both of us considered a full-time job. It was all going so well until Ted lost his temper. He’d decided I’d been too friendly to one of the partners at his office Christmas party. We had a fight. We’d been married for a little more than two years. That was the first time he hit me.” She tipped her head up and looked at Quinn then.
He knew that look. She was checking to see how he was taking it. He met her eyes and stroked her hair and didn’t let her see what was going on inside him. He was a simple man, really, especially when it came to stuff like this. A simple man who wanted to track down that jackass she’d married and beat his face in for him.
Chloe lowered her head again and tucked herself against his chest. “I left him.”
“Good.”
She glanced up again. He was ready for that. Playing it easy and accepting for all he was worth, he kissed the tip of her elegant nose. With a sigh, she settled again. “Ted...wooed me back. He went into counseling for anger management to prove to me that he was a changed man.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“I’ll say this. He didn’t hit me again for a long time, though his scary temper was increasingly in evidence as the next four years went by. Three years ago, I found out he was having an affair with a college student, an intern at his firm. I confronted him. When he couldn’t convince me that he was totally innocent and that I was only being a small-minded, jealous wife, he lost it. He punched me in the face hard enough to bloody my nose and blacken both eyes. I left him. And after that, I was done. No cajoling or high-powered charm offensive or promises that he’d get more counseling could sway me. I sued for divorce. As it happened, he was still seeing the other woman—and she wanted to be his wife. So I got my divorce and a nice settlement. And Ted got a new, younger wife. And except for how I still feel guilty that I didn’t press assault charges against him, that should have been the end of it, right?”
He rubbed a soothing hand up and down her arm. “But it wasn’t.”
“I tried to keep going in Southern California. But then Ted started coming around again, talking reconciliation, as if I would even let him near me, as if he didn’t have a wife waiting at home. I decided I needed to make a new start—or rather, I realized what I really wanted was to come back where I began and try to get it right this time.”
He tipped her chin up then and kissed her.
She said shyly, “I do feel like I’m finally getting it right, Quinn. Getting it right with you.”
Those fine words dampened his carefully masked fury against the abusive loser she’d married, enough that he kissed her again. And then he asked, “So you’re sure that your mother’s been in contact with this guy?”
“She wouldn’t admit it straight out, but yes. I’m sure she has. She told me how he wants to get back together with me—and my mother’s all for that. That was when I finally threw her out. I’m done with her, Quinn. Finished.”
Quinn blew out a slow breath. He was no more a fan of Linda Winchester than Linda was of him. And it turned his stomach that the woman would go behind Chloe’s back and encourage the man who’d hurt her.
But there had been deep and painful rifts in his own family, especially back in the day when his father refused to choose between Sondra Oldfield Bravo and Quinn’s mother. It wasn’t all roses now, but it was better. Since returning to Justice Creek, he’d discovered he actually liked his half siblings. That couldn’t have happened if they’d refused to give each other a chance.
“Still,”
