still causing no small amount of mischief.
Could that marriage certificate actually be authentic?
He closed the door to the suite and found the piece of paper—badly wrinkled now—on the counter in the bathroom.
Their signatures were plain. Recognizable.
Nothing about the document suggested it was a fake.
Which meant that until he could prove it was, he had to assume it was not.
He lifted his gaze to his reflection. He had more gray in his beard than he used to have. There were lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and lines in his forehead. His body had more aches and pains than he wanted to admit to.
In some circles, thirty-six wasn’t all that old.
In his line of work, though, it didn’t exactly make him young.
He was a member of the United States Air Force. Proud of it.
But no matter what his age, certain behaviors were frowned upon whether he was on duty or off. Finding yourself married after a night you couldn’t even remember didn’t exactly qualify as responsible behavior.
And now, regardless of Penny’s refusal to acknowledge it, he found himself apparently married.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing he could will away the throbbing pain inside his head. Instead, he turned away from the certificate and flipped on the shower before stripping off.
He wasn’t particularly concerned about pleasing or not pleasing his grandmother by being late for lunch. He hadn’t met her until he’d come home on leave a month ago. Until then, he’d only known the stories his father and uncle would occasionally tell about the dragon lady who’d been their mother.
Far as Quinn was concerned, the old lady was eccentric, for sure. But he had no gripe with her the way his dad did.
Of course, if Quinn hadn’t let himself be talked into coming along for this damn Las Vegas trip, he wouldn’t be in the situation he was in now, either. His triplet cousins—or the trips, as everyone referred to them—thought they’d maneuvered him into it. But really, he hadn’t agreed until he’d learned that Penny would be there.
Still, he could just imagine the case his father would make out of the mess. David Templeton was a pediatrician. But for all of his peaceful attitude when it came to dealing with his patients and their families, he’d still find some way to lay the blame for Quinn’s current predicament squarely at Vivian’s door, even though Quinn was a fully capable and functioning adult.
Maybe he was getting soft. But he didn’t want to be the cause of more dissension in his family. Not if he could help it, anyway. It wasn’t as if his grandmother was going to be around forever. She’d moved to Wyoming a few years ago to make peace with her estranged family. Only she’d had a lot more success with her grandchildren than she’d had with her two sons.
He stepped under the steaming shower spray and groaned a little as the heat penetrated. It’d been three months since he and the rest of his unit had woken up to grenades exploding right outside their quarters. Three months since his life had been thrown into chaos.
Three months since his closest friend had died in the attack. Three others had been badly injured. Men, good men, who reported to Quinn. Their lives had, fortunately, moved on. Two were already headed back to the Middle East. The third was due to head out to Japan in a few weeks.
Quinn’s status, however, was less certain.
Technically, his injuries were supposed to be healed. But that didn’t mean he didn’t still feel a gnawing ache every time he lifted his arm, courtesy of the shrapnel he’d taken during the attack. He’d spent an entire month in the hospital while the surgeons put together his shredded insides. Another month in physical therapy while the powers-that-be decided whether or not to give him the leave he’d requested.
Ultimately, he’d gotten the leave, as well as orders for ongoing therapy. The leave was supposed to last another month, if he wasn’t called back up—even for light duty—because of some new disaster.
And whether his leave lasted or not, a huge question remained. What role would he be called back to?
Which was another reason to have a throbbing pain inside his skull.
Quinn was a PJ. A Pararescueman. It was what he loved. It was where he excelled. “These things we do, that others may live,” was the PJ motto, but it was more than that for Quinn. It was a way of life. If a service member was in need of rescue on sea or on land, Quinn and others like him recovered and returned them to safety. They were commandos and they were paramedics. And they were equipped to handle anything and everything they encountered in order to complete their mission whether it was military or humanitarian in nature.
But if Quinn couldn’t stand up to the physical rigors of the job, he wasn’t going to be cleared for flight status. Which meant he wouldn’t be going back as a PJ.
And if he couldn’t go as a PJ, he wasn’t sure he could stand to go back at all.
Which left him with what?
There were too many questions circling his head, not the least of which was the matter of Penny Garner.
He ducked his head beneath the shower spray, feeling the hot water sluice down his shoulders. Even after a month Stateside, he hadn’t tired of the luxury of taking a shower that lasted as long as he wanted it to last.
Finally, though, aware of his grandmother’s expectation, he shut off the water. He pulled on clean jeans and shirt and left his room to join his grandmother and the others for lunch.
Even before he reached the double doors of Vivian’s suite, he could hear peals of laughter coming from inside.
One thing Quinn could say about the women in his family—they did know how to laugh.
He knocked on the door and a moment later, it was pulled open.
Only instead of facing his sister, Delia, or one of his cousins, it was Penny.
Like him, she’d obviously showered. Her wet hair was pulled to the back of her head into a ponytail. She’d also changed into a gray skirt that skimmed her ankles and a scoop-necked white T-shirt that lured his attention toward her lush curves.
Her eyes shied away from his as she backed out of the doorway so he could enter. “Everyone’s in the dining room.”
“I didn’t think you were going to be here.”
“Neither did I.” She toyed with one of her tiny gold stud earrings. “But when Mrs. Templeton says jump, it’s my job to ask how high.”
“Quinn, darling.” Vivian appeared in the archway leading to the dining room. She’d been widowed four times, and all of her husbands except the last had had money. Not as much as her, though, because her first husband—Quinn’s grandfather—had been a steel magnate. As a result, not even a regular hotel suite was good enough for her. Nope. For his granny, it was the presidential suite. Complete with two stories, four bedrooms—three of which were going empty—a full kitchen and butler’s pantry, and a formal dining room, all surrounded by an encompassing terrace
