“You, too, asshole,” Chris grumbled.
Nick walked him to the door. “Ignore him. She was way out of his league.” Nick shook his head. “Come see us for dinner when you feel up to it. Michelle would love to see you, and so would the kids.”
“I’ll be there.” Quentin squeezed his buddy’s arm and then jogged down to his SUV.
He was eager to see Haley again and already missed her face and her smile. And so what if he was out of his league, too? After losing Abbie, he wasn’t in any rush. Hell, this was the first time he’d even considered seriously dating anyone in five years. One step at a time.
He didn’t know if what they’d felt for one another would stand up to real life. And after everything he’d been through with Abbie, he needed to hold onto what was left of his heart if he was to keep functioning as a human being. Then he realized what he was doing—loss aversion. Where people were so scared about a potential loss they gave up on the chance of riches.
He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. Who was he trying to kid? He was already in too deep emotionally. Punching his old friend should have clued him in on the spot but he’d been in denial.
Now he had to figure out what the hell to do about it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Since confronting Wenck in Darwin and then arriving home that morning, Haley had been mentally and physically exhausted. She’d spent most of the day asleep at Mallory and Alex’s newly renovated Quantico home. When she’d woken, she’d rocked the baby, changed her first diaper, and doted on the tiny bundle. Then little Georgina had started screaming to be fed, and Haley had passed her back to her parents with a sigh of relief. It had been the perfect way to decompress after her adventures.
Before heading to Quantico, they’d dropped into the office in Woodley Park, and she’d been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support, impressed all over again by the hard work and ingenuity they’d employed to help get her home.
She had an idea for expanding their business, but she didn’t know if Alex and Dermot would go for it. There probably wasn’t a lot of money in it, but helping to find missing people might fit their ethos better than guarding mines or palaces. She was going to do some research and put a proposal together. Maybe they could create a non-profit arm of their company.
Haley had showered and changed into clothes Mallory had collected from her house in Georgetown. The other woman had even packed sneakers and workout gear. She and Alex obviously thought Haley was staying for a while. But now she was here, she wanted to be with Quentin. It was pathetic, and she was trying to resist the persistent urge. They weren’t teenagers, and he’d probably resent her being too needy or eager or whatever the hell people called it.
It was less than a week since her entire world had shifted, so maybe she needed to slow everything down, but she missed him, and now he was here to take her out to dinner, like a normal person on a normal date. She stood impatiently waiting for Alex to open the wrought-iron gate of his house. Rather than letting Quentin drive inside, she ran out to meet him. Thankfully, he had the window rolled down, and she leaned in, grabbed his head and kissed him until neither of them could breathe.
“I thought it might be different back here,” he admitted when they finally broke apart, staring into each other’s eyes.
She kissed him again with zero finesse until he groaned and broke away again.
“Get in the car before I embarrass myself.” The heat in his gaze made her want to find the nearest bed or secluded spot where they could park and try out the back seat of the SUV.
She ran around the hood and jumped in.
“What are you hungry for?” he asked.
She sent him a suggestive smile.
“I want to feed you something more enticing than deep fried crickets before I get you naked again in a real bed.”
Those crickets had been disgusting, but they’d helped them stay alive. “I don’t care what we have as long as there are French fries on the menu.”
He reversed out of the drive. “A woman after my own heart.”
His words hit her in the solar plexus. Was she after his heart? Was this love? This horrible mix of excitement and anxiety fighting for dominance in her bloodstream?
“Think I have any chance of getting it?”
Oh, for god’s sake.
What possessed her to ask that? She wanted to squirm and hide. She was putting herself on the line here, and what if he wasn’t interested?
He stopped the car, put a hand around her nape and pulled her closer. “What do you think?”
That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. She took a deep breath and plowed on. “I think whatever is going on between us feels unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, and I don’t know what it means.”
A shadow flitted across his eyes, and he let her go. Put the car in gear. “Let’s go eat.”
She sat back in her seat and had the terrible feeling she’d said the wrong thing. She’d come on too strong. Been too demanding. But she didn’t know how to do this, not when everything she did and said felt so consequential. She knew how to seduce and how to flirt. She knew how to fuck strangers she met in bars. She didn’t know how to have a normal relationship with the expected slow progression of feelings and expectations.
She hadn’t been normal since she was fourteen. Since before her uncle had moved in. She clenched her hands in her lap. Maybe this whole thing was one giant mistake. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to be involved with anyone in a committed, monogamous relationship. Sure, they’d needed each other for survival in Indonesia but here? They didn’t need each other here. They could part ways and both go on living. The question came down to what did they both actually want?
And why, after everything they’d been through together, had Quentin suddenly stopped meeting her gaze? What exactly was he afraid to tell her?
* * *
Dinner was awkward. It wasn’t the food or the atmosphere. It was him.
Quentin tried to shake the feeling that he was betraying his dead wife. Every time he looked at Haley, every time he thought about her mouth on him or how incredible it was to be inside her, it felt as if someone had stuck a spade in his chest and started digging.
In Indonesia it had been easy to separate himself from who he was back in the US. Now, on his own turf, his axis had shifted again, and his world felt off kilter. He wasn’t sure of anything except the fact the tension was growing between him and Haley, and the widening chasm made his chest ache.
He didn’t want to lose her.
The emotions churning inside him were unlike anything he’d experienced before. He’d been in love. Thoroughly and completely in love. And it hadn’t felt like this. That’s why Haley’s words earlier had rocked him.
Did she have a chance of claiming his heart? He didn’t know.
What he felt for Haley was volcanic and molten and hastily constructed on unstable foundations. Nothing like the rock-steady devotion he and Abbie had shared as soon as they’d met.
What if all he was feeling was simply lust? Haley was extraordinarily beautiful—with or without the makeup she liked to wear.
Were the cosmetics armor? It didn’t matter. If she liked it, he was all for it. If she didn’t, he was all for that too. He did know she’d been hurt before and had trusted him with deeply personal confidences.
But he still hadn’t told her about Abbie.
He hadn’t shared the single most important part of himself, not even when he’d thought they were both going to die.
And he wasn’t sure how Haley was going to react to that.
How did he explain that if he’d still been married, he would never have looked at Haley twice? And yet, now, he could barely keep his hands to himself even though they were eating in a public restaurant.
Haley had said she was ready to try for a real relationship with him, but how could they move forward until he’d told her the truth about his past?
And wh
at about everything else that separated them? He wasn’t a rich man. His FBI position was his only income, and he wasn’t ready to switch to the private sector to earn more.
“What is it?” Haley’s eyes pinched with worry.
He was distracted as hell, and he could see her start to withdraw, to protect herself from the potential for hurt. Loss aversion was a very real thing. Emotional risk for those who’d already suffered could be paralyzing.
The difference in wealth was something they could figure out over time. The truth about his dead wife and child was something he needed to deal with right now. He reached out and put his hand over hers. “I need to show you something.”
“That sounds ominous.”
He shook his head, unable to speak. He couldn’t joke about this. Abbie had meant everything to him, and her death still hurt. It would always hurt.
He paid the bill, and they left the restaurant and climbed into the SUV without saying anything. Haley bit her fingernail in a way that told him she was nervous. Shit. He was screwing this up. The most important negotiation of his life, and he was turning it into a goddamn fiasco.
It wasn’t a long drive, but it took about a thousand years to get there.
He pulled into a parking space outside a cemetery and got out, walking around to open Haley’s door. It was full dark although there were some lamps lit inside the grounds giving the place a ghostly feel.
“If this is where you reveal some weird graveyard kink, I think I’m going to have to disappoint you before we even start.” She laughed nervously. She knew this was important. She often made a joke when things got serious.
He took her hand and led her through the large stone-flanked gates, shutting them with a painful grind of iron against iron. They walked along a gravel path, the smell of the Atlantic on the breeze.
Haley shivered, and he took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders with a symbolism that wasn’t lost on him.
Gravel crunched under their feet. Finally, he wound them between white marble markers until he came to the spot he’d chosen for Abbie and their stillborn child.
This area of the cemetery was lit brightly enough to read the inscription chiseled into the stone in an unalterable, permanent truth. The grass around the grave was neatly trimmed—he’d come out to tend the plot before he’d left for Indonesia. Hell, he spent more time here than going on dates. Rather than flowers, he’d placed a couple of Abbie’s favorite plants in ornate containers she’d purchased for their home—a lavender bush in one pot, a camellia bush in another.
Haley stared at the grave, clearly trying to make sense of why he’d brought her here, even though it was right there etched in stone.
Abbie Savage. Beloved wife.
He cleared his throat. “My wife, Abbie, died five years ago while giving birth to our son, Thomas. He died too.”
Haley was quiet for a long time.
What was she thinking? “She’d quit her job as a sales associate and was ready to devote her life to raising our kids, but, hmm,” he swallowed the old grief and pain, “it wasn’t to be.”
“This is why you went all quiet when I said I’d never experienced a feeling like this before.” She took a step back, crossed her arms over her chest. “Because you have.”
The band around his own chest constricted. “Abbie was sweet and beautiful and the kindest person I ever knew. She meant more to me than anyone I’ve ever met. I loved her to the center of my being.”
Tears began running down Haley’s cheeks. “I’m so sorry you lost her, Quentin.”
She reached out and took his hand. Her empathy unlocking the pressure in his ribcage, because he should have known Haley wouldn’t be jealous. She was better than that.
She shook her head slowly from side to side. “But I don’t understand why you didn’t mention her before.”
Gravel shifted in his throat. “There never seemed to be a good time, then when we had Darby with us, I didn’t want to say anything that might exacerbate her sadness.”
“What about when we were alone? Or after we were rescued?”
He wanted to explain. He wanted Haley to know everything but couldn’t minimize what Abbie had meant to him. He wasn’t sure how to start. “I didn’t know how to tell you that I’d been married. Happily married. Blissfully married. And when she died a piece of me died too.” He dragged his hand through his hair. “But what I felt for Abbie isn’t anything like the way I feel about you.”
Haley flinched.
He opened his mouth to tell her that he was crazy about her, but the cell phone work had given him that day began to ring stridently, destroying the peacefulness of the setting. He fumbled to turn it off, but the next thing he knew, Haley was sprinting for the gates.
“Haley! Wait. Please wait.” He called out, but she kept on running. Goddammit, the woman had legs.
Considering words were his business, he couldn’t believe how badly he’d messed up that conversation.
Okay. He drew in a long deep breath. She’d wait for him by the SUV, and he’d explain exactly what she meant to him. That he was falling for her. That it terrified him as much as it did her.
Halfway to the car, he found his jacket in a heap on the ground. He picked it up and heard a car engine start and the car drive away.
When he got to the entrance, he looked around, but Haley wasn’t there. He circled the vehicle. She wasn’t anywhere. “Haley?”
Dammit. She must have caught a ride with whoever had just left.
Quentin’s temper spiked. He was terrified she was going to get killed by some psychopath only hours after arriving back in the States following their nightmare ordeal and all because she didn’t have the patience to let him take a breath or turn off his cell? To gather his thoughts? To figure things out?
Who did that?
He drove slowly to the Parkers’ home, working on calming his temper. When he arrived, he pressed the intercom button. “Is she here? Is she safe?”
“She’s safe, but she doesn’t want to talk to you.” Alex Parker. Gatekeeper.
Quentin narrowed his eyes at the camera. “She hitched a ride alone at night with a stranger rather than have a conversation?” He pulled in another deep breath. He wanted to wind up his window and turn his car around and go home to get some sleep.
Except, without all the facts, Haley wouldn’t make a balanced decision. She’d just keep on trying to outrun the potential for hurt. So, he put his heart on a platter because he already knew life was short and opportunities like this did not happen every day. Pride was a cold and lonely companion.
“Can you pass on a message for me?” The intercom remained silent, but he knew she was inside. Listening. “I needed to tell her about Abbie and the past I shared with my late wife so that perhaps Haley and I could start a relationship like we discussed back in Indonesia. When I said I didn’t feel the same way about Haley as I did about Abbie, I didn’t mean that I didn’t…” Shit, was he really going to do this with a frickin’ intercom?
“Tell her we need to talk.” He strove for patience. Losing his temper wouldn’t do anyone any good, especially when they were all tired and overwrought. “And tell her she needs to work on her listening skills.” And he needed to work on his delivery.
He reversed out of the drive and drove away. Being angry would get them nowhere. And maybe they both needed a little space. Space to figure out if what they’d found in that Indonesian hellhole was worth fighting for back on home ground.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Darby walked quickly from the bar back to her dorm at the FBI Academy, clutching a small box of pizza. The whole time she was aware of eyes watching her, trying to figure out who she was in her civilian clothes and visitor badge. They probably thought she was a visiting lecturer or police officer.
She liked that idea.
Worst was when someone recognized her. Some of the agents who’d been on the ship were around campus and when they smiled at her, there was pity in their g
azes. She’d put her head down and run.
Footsteps rang out behind her. Fear spiked every nerve in her body, and she sped up. The pursuer did too. She was a half-second from sprinting in blind terror to the small room they’d given her when someone called out.
“Darby. Wait up.”
Her heart gave a little flutter of relief. Eban. Eban Winters. They’d spent a lot of time together over the last few days but rarely alone since the victims advocate had arrived.
Darby had relived that soft, gentle kiss a million times since that day on the ship. Thinking about it had kept her sane when she’d woken screaming.
“Eban.” She whirled and smiled. “How are you feeling?”
His brown eyes twinkled. “I thought that was my line?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted to check on you before I headed home for the night.”
It jolted her a little that he lived nearby. That he was back in his normal world while she was still in this weird limbo where she didn’t really know what was going to happen in the future and wasn’t ready to think about it. She had to tell her father what had happened. Her advisor too. The idea made her want to huddle into a tight ball and rock.
They kept walking.
“I was hungry so I popped out for something to eat. The only place open was the bar, but they let me take some pizza away.” She held up the box like an idiot. She shook her head at herself and kept walking. At her door, she juggled food and a can of soda while she found her keys.
Eban waited patiently and then picked up the keys when she dropped them. She flinched when he reached past her to unlock the door, and he pretended not to notice.
She hated herself for being so jumpy. It wasn’t like anyone could hurt her more than she’d already been hurt. Physically, she was almost healed. Mentally, she was up and down like a rollercoaster.
Once in the small dorm, she put everything on the desk and took off her shoes and set them by the door. “Come on in.”
She forced a big smile so he wouldn’t think she was worried about being alone with him.
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