leaned forward and crossed her legs, linking her hands over her knees, her expression thoughtful. “I wish you weren’t joking, Cal. Quinn marrying you would be excellent PR for him.”
Mac and Kade laughed, Quinn spluttered, but Cal just lifted her eyebrows in a tell-me-more expression.
“You’re PR gold, Callahan. You are the only child of a fairy-tale romance between your superrich father and Rachel Thomas, the principal soloist with the Royal Canadian Ballet Company, who is considered one of the world’s best ballerinas. You married Toby Carter, the most elusive and eligible of Vancouver’s bachelors until these three knuckleheads came along. The public loves you to distraction, despite the fact that you are seldom in the city.”
Could she? Did she dare? It would be a quick, convenient solution.
Cal gathered her courage, pulled on her brightest smile and turned to Quinn. “So, what do you think? Want to get married?”
Cal called a final good-bye to Quinn’s friends and closed the sliding door behind them. She walked through the main salon, passed the large dining table and hesitated at the steps that would take her belowdecks to the sleeping cabins below. Quinn had hurried down those stairs after she’d dropped her bombshell but not before telling her that her suggestion that they marry was deeply unamusing and wildly inappropriate.
She hadn’t been joking and the urge to run downstairs and explain was strong. But Cal knew Quinn, knew that he needed some time alone to work through his temper, to gather his thoughts. She did too. To give them both a little time, she walked back into the kitchen and snagged a microbrew from his stash in the fridge. Twisting the top off, she took a swallow straight from the bottle. She’d been back in Vancouver for less than a day and she already felt like the city had a feather pillow over her face.
Being back in Vancouver always did that to her; the city she’d loved as a child, a teenager and a young woman now felt like it was trying to smother her.
Cal pulled a face. As pretty as Quinn’s new yacht was, she didn’t want to be here. A square inch of her heart—the inch that was pure bitch—resented having to come back here, resented leaving the anonymity of the life she’d created after Toby. But her father needed her here and since he was the only family she had left, she’d caught the first flight home.
Cal ran the cold bottle over her cheek and closed her eyes. When she was away from Vancouver, she was Cal Adam and she had little connection to Callahan Adam-Carter, Toby’s young, socially connected, perfectly pedigreed bride. Despite the fact that she stood to inherit her father’s wealth, she was as far removed from the wife she’d been as politicians were from the truth. The residents of her hometown would be shocked to realize that she was now as normal as any single, almost-thirty-year-old widowed woman who’d grown up in the public eye could be.
She’d worked hard to chase her freedom, to live independently, to find her individuality. It hadn’t always been easy. She was the only child of one of the country’s richest men, the widow of another rich, wildly popular man and the daughter of a beloved icon of the dance world. Her best friend was also the city’s favorite bad boy.
To whom, on a spur-of-the-moment suggestion, she’d just proposed marriage. Crazy!
Yet...yet in a small, pure part of her brain, it made complete sense on a number of levels and in the last few years she’d learned to listen to that insistent voice.
First, and most important, marrying her would be a good move for Quinn. She was reasonably pretty, socially connected and the reporters and photographers loved her. She was also so rarely in the city that whatever she did, or said, was guaranteed to garner coverage. In a nutshell, she sold newspapers, online or print. Being linked with her, being married to her, would send a very strong message that Quinn was turning his life around.
Because nobody—not even Quinn Rayne, legendary bad boy—would play games with Callahan Adam-Carter. And, as a bonus, her father and Warren Bayliss did a lot of business together, so Bayliss wouldn’t dare try excluding Cauley’s son-in-law from any deal involving the other two Mavericks.
Yeah, marrying her would be a very good move on Quinn’s part.
As for her...
If she wanted no part of Toby’s inheritance, then she needed to marry. That was nonnegotiable. And in order to protect herself, to protect her freedom and independence, she needed to marry a man who was safe, someone she could be honest with. She knew Quinn and trusted him. He lived life on his own terms and, since he hated restrictions, he was a live-and-let-live type of guy. Just the type of man—the only type of man—she could ever consider marrying.
Quinn wouldn’t rock her emotional boat. She’d known him all her life, and never thought of him in any way but as her friend. The little spark she’d felt earlier was an aberration and not worth considering, so marrying him would be an easy way out of her sticky situation. No mess, no fuss.
And if she took over the management of the foundation for a while and found herself back in the social swirl, being Quinn’s wife would assuage some highbrow curiosity about her change from an insecure, meek, jump-at-shadows girl to the stronger, assertive, more confident woman she now was. Nobody would expect Quinn—the Mavericks’ Bad Boy—to have a mousy wife.
This marriage—presuming she could get Quinn to agree—would be in name only. Nothing between them would change. It would be a marriage of convenience, a way to help to free herself from Toby’s tainted legacy.
It would be a ruse, a temporary solution to both their problems. It would be an illusion, a show, a production—but the heart of their friendship, of who they were, would stay the same.
It had to. Anything else would be unacceptable.
Provided, of course, that she could get Quinn to agree.
* * *
Was she out of her mind? Had she left the working part of her brain in... God, where had she been? Some tiny, landlocked African country he couldn’t remember the name of. No matter—what the hell was Cal thinking?
Quinn had been so discombobulated by her prosaic, seemingly serious proposal that he’d shouted at her to stop joking around and told his mates that he was going to take a shower, hoping that some time alone under the powerful sprays of his double-head shower would calm him down.
It was the most relaxing shower system in the world, his architect had promised him. Well, relaxing, his ass.
He simply wasn’t marriage and family material. God, he was barely part of the family he grew up within, and now Cal was suggesting that they make one together?
Cal had definitely taken her seat on the crazy train.
But if she was, if the notion was so alien to him, why did his stomach twitch with excitement at the thought? Why did he sometimes—when he felt tired or stressed—wish he had someone to come home to, a family to distract him from the stresses of being the youngest, least experienced head coach in the league? And, worst of all, why, when he saw Kade and Mac with their women, did he feel, well, squirrelly, like something, maybe, possibly, was missing from his life?
Nah, it was gas or indigestion or an approaching heart attack—he couldn’t possibly be jealous of
