So why had she run away?
Maybe she was married, the thought occurred to him, but he didn’t recall seeing a ring on that delicate third finger of her left hand.
Ah, well. Quinn wasn’t the sort to cry over spilt milk. He took a deep breath and headed for the baggage claim. Nothing to be done about it now. He tried to push her from his thoughts.
But despite his best intentions, he couldn’t help feeling he’d lost out on something pretty darn terrific.
“KAY, COME HERE, you’ve got to see this.” Her editor, Judy Nessler, stood in the doorway of Kay’s office on Monday morning, grinning from ear to ear and crooking a bejeweled finger at her.
Kay frowned and glanced up from the piece she was working on about finding love on the Internet. She’d gone to Chicago to interview a couple who’d met in an online chat room, and she had her notes spread out on the desk around her. Included in the pile were copies of the spicy messages the couple had posted to each other during their courtship. Reading the sizzling missives had her feeling oddly cranky.
“What is it, Judy?”
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”
She wasn’t in the mood for Judy’s guessing games. It had been almost twenty-four hours since her plane ride with Paul Bunyan, but she couldn’t seem to stop spinning fantasies about him. How could the thought of one man make her ache so badly?
Nor had she been able to locate Lloyd in order to pin him down for a dinner date to discuss his marriage proposal in person, and he hadn’t yet returned the call she had left on his answering machine.
“I’m in the middle of something,” Kay said.
“Just come with me.”
Sighing, Kay pushed away from her desk and followed Judy down the corridor to the advertising department. As usual, the room was abuzz with activity. But atypically, all the activity seemed concentrated in the middle of room. Centered, in fact, around a skyscraper-size man who had his back to them.
A man clad in red flannel and blue denim. His head was cocked to one side and he was laughing at something one of the blushing assistants had said. Kay’s pulse momentarily stuttered to a stop. She raised a hand to her throat.
No. It couldn’t be.
Judy leaned in close and whispered, “You don’t see guys like him traipsing up Fifth Avenue every day of the week.”
Please, don’t let it be Paul Bunyan, Kay prayed, but in her heart she knew.
Judy took her by the elbow and dragged her across the room like a reluctant puppy on a leash.
“Quinn,” Judy said. “I’d like you to meet Kay Freemont, one of our top writers.”
Slowly he pivoted on one booted heel, an insouciant gleam in his eye. Then recognition hit. His brows sprung up on his forehead and the grin went from free and easy to downright seductive.
It was Paul Bunyan! What an awful coincidence.
Of all the magazine offices in Manhattan, he had to walk into mine.
Why was he here? Was this some kind of a sign, him showing up so unexpectedly? Was the universe trying to tell her something?
“Kay, this is Quinn Scofield from Bear Creek, Alaska.”
She stared at him.
He stared back at her.
Neither of them spoke.
The air around them seemed to vibrate with heat and energy and overpowering awareness.
Quinn. From Alaska. The Mighty Quinn. She should have known he would have a macho moniker. The name fit him like the mackinaw he wore.
Puzzled, Judy watched them watching each other. “Have you two already been introduced?”
“Actually, no.” Quinn didn’t even wait for Kay to offer her hand. He simply took it, and her blood puddled like melted butter in the pit of her stomach. “I’m very honored to make the acquaintance of such a lovely lady.”
Pul-leeze. Enough with the flattery. I just saw you flirting with that assistant.
And yet, a small frisson of pleasure spiraled through her body and lodged with stunning acuity in her most feminine parts. If anything, her attraction to him was even stronger than it had been the day before.
Scary.
When Kay finally tore her gaze from his face, she realized that all the single women—and more than a few of the married ones—in the room were looking at her as if she’d snatched a prized morsel of filet mignon from their mouths.
“Quinn’s come to New York looking for a wife,” Judy said.
A wife? Kay took a step backward.
She jerked a quick glance in Quinn’s direction and saw he was observing her reaction to Judy’s news. Oh, boy, and here she’d been dreaming of having a redhot fling with him. Well, certainly not now!
She’d just about decided to give old Lloyd the heave-ho and to tell her parents she was tired of living her life to suit them. She was ready to stretch her sexual wings and fly. She was not getting involved with a man who was looking for a commitment. No way. No matter how sexy he might be.
“He wants to place this full-page color ad with us.” Judy took the advertising copy from an assistant and handed it to Kay.
Full-page color-ad space in Metropolitan magazine didn’t come cheap.
“The four of us pitched in,” Quinn said, as if reading Kay’s mind. “The bachelors of Bear Creek.”
“Doesn’t that have a great ring to it?” Judy’s eyes glistened. Clearly she was enamored of Quinn, his buddies and their ad.
Kay stared down at the photograph in her hand and sucked in her breath. Pictured were four of the most gorgeous men she’d ever laid eyes on, one of them Quinn. They looked sexier and far more masculine than anything Madison Avenue could have dreamed up. The men wore blue jeans, devilish grins and nothing else, their hunky, well-muscled bare chests on prominent display.
In the photo Quinn was lounging on one end of a black leather couch. He was bigger than she’d even imagined, with the buffest biceps on the planet. Draped across the other side of the couch was a coal-haired, blue-eyed Adonis with a dreamy, angelic air about him. On the floor, perched atop a bearskin rug, sat a dishy blond man with more charisma than a movie star, and another dark-eyed man with a lantern jaw and deep-set brown eyes. All four men were looking straight into the camera as if staring into the eyes of a beautiful woman.
Her gaze went from the one-dimensional, bare-chested Quinn to the fully three-dimensional Quinn standing beside her, and she gulped.
“That’s Caleb Greenleaf,” he said, leaning over her shoulder and pointing to the Adonis. “He’s a naturalist for the state of Alaska. And that’s Jake Gerard and
