Quint studied her face. She hardly looked twenty-six, but he knew that some women looked younger than they were, like his almost-sister-in-law. Hank’s fiancée, Fiona, looked barely old enough to vote, and she was also twenty-six.
Still, he felt compelled to comment, “You hardly look old enough for that.”
Ginny laughed softly to herself. Throwing her head back until her hair brushed against her back, she looked up at the sky. She sought out a cluster of stars. Orion’s belt. Seeing it seemed to ground her, the way it had when she was little. A librarian had given her a worn book on astronomy to keep as her own, and she had read it over and over until the pages had to all be taped back in.
She waited for the peace to come. But it didn’t, not completely. He was standing much too close. “Oh, but I am. At times I feel a thousand years old.”
Quint didn’t doubt it. Responsibility could be a very heavy burden if you didn’t receive any gratitude in compensation.
“Well, you’ve held up well for a thousand-yearold lady. Must be that newfangled Super Glue they have.” He didn’t allow his natural humor to veer him from the course of the conversation. “Have you always had this trouble communicating with Jenny?”
Ginny could deny that she was having any trouble, but what was the point? He’d already heard them. Leaning forward on the railing again, she clasped her hands before her.
“No, not always, we were pretty close once, despite the age difference. I’m nine years older. I was seventeen when my mother finally found her end at the bottom of a bottle.” That had been the indirect cause, but to Ginny, it was alcohol that had killed her mother. Just as it was alcohol that had driven her father away. He’d preferred the company of a bottle to his wife and daughters, never giving a thought to what would happen to them if he left. Without parents in any sense of the word, Ginny had grown up very quickly. “She was a passenger in the car her boyfriend was driving. They were both drunk out of their minds. I don’t think she even felt the impact or knew what was happening.”
The smile on her lips was bitter. “I knew she wouldn’t have any regrets about leaving the two of us on our own. She’d never had any regrets doing that when we were younger. She was always out partying. First with my stepfather, then without.” And despite her mother’s ties to him, she’d been nothing if not relieved. It meant no unwanted hands groping for her in the night. “My real father left when I was six. Sometimes my mother would take off, too. When she thought of it, she’d leave us with her friends. And there were foster homes along the way, when she couldn’t or wouldn’t be bothered with us.”
“It must have been rough on you, being on your own so young.”
She had no idea what to do with sympathy. She wasn’t accustomed to hearing it. So she ignored it, not giving in to the desire to absorb it. That would only make her weak, and she couldn’t afford to be that for the next five or six decades or so.
“I think I was born being on my own.” At least it felt that way. “Jenny and I knocked around foster homes for almost a year and then I turned eighteen and was out of the system.”
Quint saw her jaw harden as she silently relived that time.
“But Jenny still had eight years to face. Eight years of going from place to place, never belonging.” Or worse, she added silently.
“So you took her in.” Quint made no effort to hide his admiration. That had to be one hell of a burden to take on at eighteen. Since she was a lawyer, that meant she had to work, go to school and take care of her younger sister on top of that.
For a split second, Ginny fairly beamed as she remembered the triumph of being awarded custody. “First court battle I ever won. And the most important.” Her eyes met his, and she realized that she’d gone on far too long. What had been in that beer? She was talking more than she ever did.
“Did you tell her that?”
Restless, she moved away from him as she shrugged. “She knows.”
That was the problem, Quint thought. People assumed too much about the other people in their lives.
“Did you tell her?” he asked again, more persistently this time.
The emotion behind the words penetrated. Ginny turned to look at him. “That’s a very sensitive question for a man to think of.”
Quint had his answer in her evasion. “Haven’t you heard? I’ve got a tender side.”
Ginny was beginning to believe that. “Your mother raised you right—” Envy took another little nibble. What was wrong with her tonight? She wasn’t behaving like herself at all. “My mother didn’t raise me at all.”
“Maybe not directly,” he allowed.
She looked at him accusingly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, she made you independent, resilient and, from what I can see, tough.”
She wasn’t about to stand for her mother getting any credit. Her mother had done what she could to lose them. “Not because she consciously tried.”
“No,” he agreed, “but the results are the same, anyway.”
Her annoyance faded in the face of his expression. Maybe it was the single bottle of beer—although she was accustomed to holding her own when it came to that—because she was feeling unusually magnanimous toward the man who was detaining her and her sister unnecessarily in a town the size of a canceled postage stamp. “Maybe you should look into enrolling in law school. You seem to have the knack for bandying words around.”
Quint shook his head at the suggestion. “Too much to memorize. I like keeping a clear head.”
Ginny had a hunch there was a great deal going on in that head of his. She sighed, turning away. Clouds had moved in, obscuring the constellation. She wondered if that was an omen.
“So what now?”
“What do you mean?”
“After the dishes are finished?” she prompted, but saw he wasn’t quite following her. “Are you taking us off to jail again?”
She was indirectly hinting at his letting them go. Quint thought it might be a little premature for Jenny. Besides, he still had the general-store owner to talk to. He couldn’t just release Jenny. Ginny was another matter, but one he wasn’t going to mention just yet.
“I thought you could spend the night here.” He nodded at the house. “There’re a lot of extra bedrooms now that we’ve all moved out. Nothing my mother likes better than to hear the sound of voices in the morning—as long as they’re not arguing, although I suspect that, at times, she gets a little lonesome for those, too.”
So his parents’ ranch was what—a way station for lost souls in his book? She didn’t know whether to be offended or charmed. In either case, she was mystified.
“Is this the normal way you operate?”
“Different circumstances dictate different actions. Your sister’s not a hardened criminal, just someone who’s confused and might just go off in the wrong direction if someone doesn’t take an interest in her.”
Ginny bristled. This man just couldn’t help butting in where he didn’t belong, could he? “Are you saying I don’t?”
“I’m saying that maybe she needs to see and hear that once in a while from you. I get the impression that your job keeps you away a lot.”
“My career,” Ginny clarified with gritted teeth, “keeps food in her stomach and designer clothes on her body.” She’d worked far too long and hard getting her degree and landing this choice position against huge odds to have it dismissed like that.
“Maybe she doesn’t care about designer clothes.”
Who did he think he was, Ginny thought, telling her what was important to Jenny? She knew her sister, not him. “Yes, she does. Because almost all we could afford until I came to work at the firm were secondhand clothes—something Jenny was very, very embarrassed about. Now she fits right in.”
“Takes more than clothes to feel like you’re fitting in. Takes someone who’s happy with themselves and their surroundings.”
She wasn’t going to get angry, Ginny told herself. If she started ye
lling at him, his parents would hear and she wasn’t going to allow him to embarrass her like that. “I was wrong, you wouldn’t make a lawyer. You sound more like a psychiatrist.”
Quint laughed, wondering if she was trying to get his goat. “Hey, lawyer, psychiatrist, preacher, bartender—they all come under the same heading. A sheriff’s got to be a little of everything.”
She raised a brow at his last choice of occupation. “Bartender?”
“Sure, a bartender hears things that sometimes even wives don’t hear.” Benjamin, the bartender at the Dewdrop Inn was an old friend of his father’s and Quint had been privy to a lot of secondhand stories to support his feelings.
“I would imagine that wives are on the last rung of that food chain you just went through.”
Did she realize how caustic that sounded? He had a feeling she wasn’t really as hard as she tried to be. “Not necessarily.”
If he was trying to be nice on her account, he needn’t bother. Ginny had no illusions about the institution of marriage. “I don’t know about that. Most husbands and wives don’t communicate at all.”
“Are you a divorce lawyer?”
“No.” She didn’t think she could stand to be part of that kind of infighting and bickering. “Just seen a lot of unhappiness in my time.”
Quint had no doubts that she had. It seemed a shame. And a waste.
“Well, before I asked a woman to do me the honor of becoming my wife, I’d have to feel that I could tell her anything and not lose her.”
He’d used the word honor, Ginny noticed. Do him the honor of becoming his wife. When had she heard that last? Honor had ceased to have a place in relationships a long time ago, from what she’d seen.
He was probably full of hot air. She decided to call him on it. “And would the reverse be true?”
“Yes.”
She blinked, ready not to believe him yet not quite managing it. “You didn’t even hesitate.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have to.”
Maybe he was on the level. “That would make you a very rare man.”
Quint thought of his family. “Not where I come from.”
“You mean your father.” She supposed Jake was the exception to the rule.
“To begin with, yes,” Quint agreed. He let his instincts take over, moving him closer to Ginny. “But my brothers feel the same. All three of them are getting married soon and the lot of them feel just the way I do. If you can’t talk to your wife, if she’s not your best friend, then there’s no point in getting married.”
“Then I’d say the Cutlers of Montana are very, very special people indeed.”
He smiled into her eyes. He liked the way she rolled the word very around on her tongue. He had no idea why he thought it was so sensual, but it was.
Beside her now, he ran the tip of his thumb along her bottom lip and could have sworn he saw her eyes grow huge. “That’s for you to decide, Geneva.”
Unable to help himself any longer, Quint lowered his head and brushed his lips along hers, satisfying a curiosity, an itch he’d had since she’d stormed into his office like a dark-haired hurricane on the loose.
Maybe it wasn’t very sherifflike on his part, but he knew it was pure Cutler all the way, and he was a Cutler first and foremost.
Surprise came to her riding a lightning bolt, as did the pleasure. The exquisite pleasure that she surrendered herself to before she ever realized that there perhaps should have been the slightest bit of resistance on her part.
Before she ever realized that there was even an encounter.
5
Ginny sighed as his mouth moved slowly, patiently, coaxingly over hers. She felt as if she was falling into a fiery bale of cotton and being consumed by it—and not doing a damn thing about saving herself.
She didn’t want to save herself; she wanted to go on enjoying this forever.
Uh-oh.
The two small syllables beat like a prophetic tattoo over and over again in Quint’s head. It was that part of his anatomy that he was in over. In over his head. Way over.
Kissing this woman wasn’t what he expected, and as the seconds ticked away into eternity, he ceased knowing exactly what it was that he had expected, only that this was not it. This was far more pleasurable and dramatic.
Ginny could swear that her heart was going to pop right out of her chest. It was beating so hard and so fast, she couldn’t seem to pull her thoughts together and draw them into a coherent whole. All she could think about was his mouth and what it was doing to her, stirring feelings that she had thought had long since atrophied, or at the very least, gone into hibernation.
Hands braced on his shoulders—his oh-so-strong shoulders—Ginny finally forced herself to push him back and create a space between their lips. A space that most of her really didn’t want.
But the voice of sanity ordered its existence. It was a voice she had paid attention to all of her life. Obeying it was what had seen her through all the oppressively difficult times of her life.
This was the first time a sense of rebellion accompanied her obedience.
It took her a moment to trust her vocal cords to vibrate. Taking a deep breath, she blew it out again slowly, her dazed eyes fixed on his.
“What was that?”
He liked holding her, Quint thought. Liked resting his hands on the slight, gentle swell of her hips. Liked the way she looked at him without meaning to. As if she felt as dazed as he did right now.
Quint grinned. “If you have to ask, you’ve been even busier than I thought you were.” Then, before she could offer a retort, he elaborated. “That was a kiss on a moonlit porch shared between a small-town sheriff and a sophisticated, stressed-out, lovely lady lawyer.”
The man certainly had a way with words, Ginny thought. And a way with his lips.
Still under the influence, she felt herself smiling even though she knew she should at least attempt to appear annoyed. This shouldn’t have happened—should it? No, of course not. But remembering that when her lips were still tingling wasn’t easy.
“Details.” He described what had just happened with details. Another man would have just said they’d kissed, not dressed the deed in flowery words. “You really should have been a lawyer.”
Quint spread his hands in mock humility. “I am what I am.”
His tone was deceptively light and deliberately so, covering the mild confusion that he was still experiencing. Kissing Ginny had been more than pleasant, more than nice. Ever so much more. It had been stirring in a way he didn’t recall being stirred.
This bore, he knew, further exploring. Under the right circumstances.
Ginny had taken in several deep breaths and her mind was no closer to being cleared than before. And she knew why. It was because he was still standing too close. She had a feeling that perhaps if he stood in Seattle, she might have a chance.
Believing that her best defense was a strong offense, she tried to go on the attack.
“Isn’t there some conflict of interest here, the sheriff kissing his prisoner?”
Quint saw the change and said nothing. “Well, you’re not exactly a prisoner, and at any rate, you wouldn’t have been mine, but the town’s.”
“Not exactly a prisoner?” Ginny repeated. Now what was he trying to pull? “Then what am I—?”
She fixed him with a demanding look, willing him to explain.
The look in his eyes, sensual and amused, told her that she’d blundered in her phrasing. “I’ve got a hunch that that would probably take me the better part of the night to tell you.”
Quint saw the flash of annoyance reappear in response, but it didn’t have nearly as sharp an edge to it as before. The kiss had affected both of them, he realized with a touch of relief. Nice to know the lady wasn’t as cool and aloof as she pretended to be. But then, he hadn’t really thought she was.
“But the short of it is that you’re not a prisoner,” he told her only to see her mouth drop open in speechless
surprise. He noticed that for once suspicion hadn’t accompanied the look. “I’ve decided to drop the charge against you. I can understand how your extreme concern for Jenny’s safety might have caused you to talk to me the way you did.”
Flabbergasted at the new twist in the events, Ginny didn’t know whether to take a swing at Quint for stringing her along like some idiot when he had undoubtedly meant to drop the charge all along— or kiss him because every fiber of her body wanted her to.
Struggling, she opted for a toned-down version of the former. “I don’t understand. Why did you bring Jenny and me here if we were free to leave?”
She still didn’t get it, did she? Quint thought. “Oh, but you weren’t and you’re not. At least Jenny isn’t free to leave yet and I figured that you’d want to stick around to help her.”
Just what else was he “figuring”? Suspicion took hold again. Just because the man’s kiss could melt her pantyhose clean off didn’t mean she had to trust him. Quite the opposite. “Is this more of the same game?”
Had he had Morgan’s temper, Quint might have resented the implication. But he was more like Will and let the words and accusation roll right off his back.
He leaned a hip against the railing, arms folded before him as he regarded her. “The only kind of games I play involve a deck of cards. Jenny shoplifted and there’s another party involved in this besides her and the law she broke.”
They’d danced this dance before. “The general-store owner.”
Quint inclined his head in agreement. “The general-store owner.”
In all likelihood, Quint figured it wouldn’t be difficult to prevail on Joe not to press the charges against the young girl. Joe had a granddaughter just about the same age and that tended to soften a man to the situation.
But letting her go wouldn’t really help Jenny in the larger scheme of things. Though she didn’t admit it, he had a feeling that Ginny agreed with him.
Ginny chewed on the inside of her lip, an unconscious habit she’d always had when she circled a problem. “Maybe if I spoke to him—”
The Law and Ginny Marlow Page 6