As if the reality was beginning to sink in, after another moment of thought, Quinn said, “But now that you say it, I do remember you trying to tag along sometimes on my days with him—training and whatever. I remember that he was a bear to you. But he was a bear to me—that was just part of it. I thought that if you wanted in, you needed to take what he dished out the way I did. Since you always went away...” He shrugged. “I figured you didn’t want in, that you had other times with him.”
“Other times when he wasn’t turning you into his mini-marine? Other times when he wasn’t devising his next test to see if you’d pass it? Other times when he wasn’t busy setting up your obstacle course for the next day? He was always only here on leave—there were no other times!”
“Okay. Okay...” Quinn finally conceded. “You can blame me for the time I did take up. But I’m not sure there’s blame for me in working so hard for him that he talked about it. And is it really my fault that he did talk about me when I wasn’t around? My fault that he still wasn’t paying attention to you?” Quinn asked in his own defense.
Clairy had that answer at the ready because it was the answer she’d clung to since early on. “Oh, believe me, my father gets plenty of blame! I never accepted Mim’s excuses for him then or now, and maybe the best I could have hoped for was that he would have eventually gotten bored enough to toss me a few crumbs of attention, a little bit of acknowledgment. But instead, he had you to keep him from even the chance of that! He didn’t go looking for you...and he wouldn’t have. If you had stayed away from him period, then I might have been able to have the time with him that you took up. He might have gotten bored enough to notice me. And then maybe—even if it was just by default—we might have come to have a relationship! If you had stayed away from him, there wouldn’t have been anything for him to talk about and plan for and compare me to! I might never have been able to be the son he hadn’t had, but he might have come to know the daughter he did have!” she stressed. “Instead, he had you to be that son he wanted! And I was just left being incidental to the glory that was you!”
She’d really let Quinn have it. They’d both stopped eating, and now that he was leaning on his forearms clasping his beer bottle between both big hands and looking very serious, she waited. And wondered.
Was he really as sorry as he’d claimed to be last night? Or would he do some version of what he’d done in the past when she’d aired her resentment—would he use what she’d exposed against her? Would he goad her with it? Would there be some version of tough luck...
Quinn sat back and met her gaze squarely. “When it started I was just a kid, too, and no eight-year-old thinks they’re doing something wrong to go after what they want—especially not if they were raised by Raina Camden. But later, when you asked me to stay away... You’re right. I should have. You didn’t hide how important it was to you, and it was pure selfishness on my part to ignore it.”
He paused, arched his eyebrows at her and added, “I know I treated you rotten. Like I said, I was so jealous that you were Mac’s kid, that you had him and I didn’t have a dad at all... And...” He sighed with some heavy self-disgust, shook his head and seemed reluctant to go on, then admitted, “I thought you were just a girl...”
“So I was incidental. Not as important as you—you are cut from the same cloth as my father,” she said snidely. “I was only incidental to him, too.”
Quinn frowned at his beer again for a few minutes before his eyes returned to hers. “I can apologize again—and now, knowing even more, I am even sorrier and feeling like an even bigger horse’s ass—”
“But all the apologies in the world can’t change anything,” Clairy said.
“Which is why we agreed to a new beginning last night... Did you decide there’s too much water under the bridge for that?”
She’d had a full head of steam. But when she considered whether or not there was too much water under the bridge for them to move on from here, she realized that it actually had felt good to let off some of that steam. She’d finally had the chance to say her piece. And she’d said it.
Okay, maybe she’d said it loudly enough, stubbornly enough, angrily enough for him to think there was no going on from here, but the truth was that she felt as if letting off that steam had cleared the way to go on from here.
She took a deep breath, told herself to dial it back and said, “Honestly, it’s good to be heard for once.”
He nodded. “I’m learning more and more how important that is,” he said quietly before his dark eyebrows arched up and he let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “And I definitely heard you,” he assured her. “I heard more things for me to know now that I didn’t know before. So are we...okay? I mean, are we at least no less okay than we were before?”
“We’re the same amount of okay,” she decreed, unwilling to let him know that she might be slightly better than that.
Not that she’d forgiven him, but now that he was taking accountability for what he’d done, now that he’d genuinely listened to her side and recognized what his actions had cost her, it did help.
“All right, then...” Quinn said tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure he could trust that things weren’t worse between them. “I guess this is part of getting to know you? Of getting to know what makes up Clairy McKinnon?”
“That was my childhood,” she said.
“And now we can keep going?” he asked.
“Think you can take more?”
“I don’t know. You’re tougher on me than your father ever was,” he joked.
“You asked for it from him. You earned it from me,” she said.
“I know I did,” he admitted with a mirthless laugh. He stood to gather their dinner dishes as Clairy noted another thing that made Quinn unlike her father—an ability to acknowledge he’d done something wrong.
She stood, too, and joined in the table clearing. “You’re the guest and this was repayment for your work at the library tonight—you don’t have to do dishes,” she informed him.
“It’s late, and if we do it together, it’ll be done quicker.”
She didn’t argue. Instead, while they worked side by side cleaning the kitchen, something new cropped up for her to wonder about. “So this is another way you aren’t like my father—he did not do dishes—”
“Another way?”
Of course, he couldn’t have known she’d been comparing him to Mac...
But after that slip of the tongue, she decided that the differences Quinn had exhibited might have earned him a tiny concession.
“My father wouldn’t have let me—or anyone else—tell him what to do at the library tonight, and he would never have accepted that he might have done anything wrong like you just did. Now you’re doing dishes. That was not something he would lift a finger to help with.”
Quinn accepted that with a nod and made a second trip to the kitchen table for things Clairy was putting in the dishwasher.
“Where has your domestic training come from?” she asked, thinking that—especially with those looks—he was bound to have had a lot of women in his life. That there were likely women—or one special woman—in his life now.
“You can thank my mother for that—she had four boys, so there was no sexism in the doling out of chores.”
That was an answer to what she’d asked, just not the satisfaction to what she’d gone on to ponder.
“Has anyone else benefited from that training?” she inquired somewhat hesitantly, since she had no business going down this avenue and she knew it.
“I’ve done dishes before, sure. And laundry and vacuuming and mopping, and I can even cook a few things,” he answered, apparently oblivious to what she was looking for.
“Which you’ve done for girlfriends? A wife?” she persisted.
“Not a wife—I’ve never been married. Girlfriends, sure.”
Was it the thought of those girlfriends that caused his expression to tense up and some of the glimmer to leave those stellar blue eyes, or had it been brought on by her poking around in this?
Clairy couldn’t be sure. But the possibility that it was caused by her poking around still didn’t stop her. “Is there someone now who you should be doing dishes with?”
“No. And there hasn’t been for a while... I guess for me relationships have been—”
“Incidental?” she goaded with the earlier hot-button word, guessing that—since relationships with women after her mother had not ever seemed to be more than that for her father—that was what personal relationships had been for Quinn, too.
“Incidental is the dirty word for the night,” Quinn muttered. “But, no, my personal life hasn’t been my priority. No surprise to you, I’m sure, but I’ve been married to the marines.”
Clairy nodded as she put the finishing touches on the kitchen and reminded herself that this wasn’t a subject she cared about.
Or at least it wasn’t a subject she should care about, and yet regardless of how much she didn’t want to admit it, deep down she liked that there was currently no one special in his life.
But only, she told herself, because she wouldn’t have wanted him to be successfully in a relationship just as she’d failed out of one.
With the kitchen tidy again, she pivoted from facing the sink to face Quinn.
He was leaning with his hips against the counter next to her, his arms crossed over his expansive chest in a way that accentuated those biceps she’d put to good work earlier. And done no small amount of ogling in the process.
“I can’t say relationships or marriage are my area of expertise,” she admitted, putting an end to the subject.
He seemed to welcome that and offered a new one. “So tomorrow...exterminators are coming in to deal with raccoons in the library’s rafters?”
The cleaning crew had made the raccoon discovery today and had notified Clairy about it. She’d had to take action from there and had filled in Quinn about it as they’d moved furniture.
“Right,” she confirmed. “And until that gets taken care of, we’re not supposed to be there.”
“That works for me. I arranged with my grandfather and brothers to gather Camden military stuff. We’re doing that tomorrow. How about if, once I get it all together, I bring it over here and you can go through it, see what you want, what you don’t?”
“Great!” Clairy heard the overabundance of enthusiasm in that single word. Analyzing it, she realized it stemmed from having begun to think there wouldn’t be a reason for them to see each other the next day, and then learning that there was...
What are you doing, Clairy?
She put effort into toning it down as she followed Quinn’s lead to her front door, where he was obviously going to wrap up the evening. More neutrally, she said, “I need to get my own unpacking and furniture arranging done, so I’ll do that. You can just let me know when you have everything ready for me, and we’ll set a time. I’m glad we won’t completely lose a day,” she added, justifying her own enthusiasm.
“It might not be until later, after dinner even. Big Ben and I will get out my dad’s stuff, but neither of my brothers are sure when they’ll get me theirs. They just promised it would be tomorrow.”
“I’ll be busy, so anytime is fine, even tomorrow night,” Clairy said, actually pleased with the thought of the two of them spending a quiet summer’s evening sitting together looking through some of his family history.
But only because otherwise she’d just be spending a boring night on her own, not because she wanted to be with him.
Right?
They’d come to a stop in the entryway and Quinn had turned to face her, one hand on the doorknob.
It was absolutely, perfectly normal and aboveboard—just any old guest leaving.
But there Clairy was, with the sense that it was the end of some kind of date.
Of all things.
As she tried to squash that idea, the quiet that came between them—the fact that Quinn didn’t immediately open the door and just go, the fact that he was studying her as if something about her had suddenly struck him—only contributed to that feeling.
And without invitation, Clairy’s gaze went to his supple and oh-so-masculine lips, and she somehow became curious about what it was like to kiss him...
Oh, no, that can’t be.
She drew herself up straighter, stiffer, and stopped that nonsense!
“So just let me know,” she said abruptly, referring to their plan for him to alert her when he was ready to bring his family’s military mementos to her on Tuesday.
He really was lost in some thought that seemed to be about her, because only her words yanked his eyes off his study of her face. “I will. And thanks for the fancy stew—it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.”
Clairy remembered belatedly that she should be the one thanking him. “Oh, it was nothing compared to what you did at the library—I should have had a couple of movers...”
“Nah, no big deal. I’m here to help,” he said as he finally did open the door and step onto the porch.
Clairy went out behind him, needing a hit of cooler night air suddenly—not because kissing was still on her mind, she insisted to herself, only because it was warm in the house.
There was no hesitation in Quinn’s departure as he simply said, “G’night,” and headed for his truck.
“Night,” Clairy called after him, taking in a deep breath and then exhaling in a quick huff of shock at herself.
Kissing Quinn Camden? How could that possibly ever have crossed her mind?
Maybe it was the fumes from the cleaning solutions at the library.
Maybe they’d given her a belated buzz.
It had to be some kind of reaction to something other than him!
Because there was no chance it was just him, she convinced herself.
And certainly no chance that it was anything she wanted to happen...
Chapter Four
“What the hell are you doing?” Quinn asked his reflection in the mirror over the sink in his bathroom early Tuesday evening.
He had his straight razor in hand and he was about to shave the scruff he liked to grow when he was on leave.
And why was he on the verge of shaving it?
Because for the millionth time since he’d come home from the McKinnon place last night, he’d been thinking about Clairy and about the end of the evening. And about how tempted he’d been to kiss her. About how, if tonight should end the way last night did and he did kiss her, it might be better to lose the scruff.
“Where’s your head?” he sneered at himself.
He opened the medicine cabinet and put back his razor, taking out the trimmer he used on the scruff to keep it neat. Then he closed the cabinet door more firmly than it deserved.
He’d spent the day with his grandfather, sorting through boxes of his father’s things to find anything pertaining to Reese Camden’s military service and hauling them upstairs to look over. Tanner and Micah had joined them later in the afternoon with their own contributions to the McKinnon library, and they’d also dug in to their father’s mementos.
When they’d left, Ben had thrown two steaks on the grill while Quinn had loaded his truck with the boxes full of final choices for the library. Then he’d texted Clairy to say he could be there around seven thirty. She’d texted back that that worked for her, too, and Quinn had gone on to eat with his grandfather.
It was after that that Quinn had come upstairs to shower. And shave.
With the towel still tied around his waist, his hair damp, he’d stepped up to the sink to shave and—thinking about other things—grabbed the razor.
“You are not going to kiss Clairy McKinnon,” he ordered his re
flection, his fiercest glare enforcing the directive that no one in any unit he’d ever commanded would have dared disobey. “Not last night, not tonight, not ever.”
But damn, had he been close to it last night! he thought as he turned on the trimmer and went to work with it.
He’d been close to kissing Mac’s daughter...
Mac’s daughter.
That pain-in-the-ass kid he’d always wished wasn’t around. Whom he’d been jealous of. Annoyed with. And hadn’t thought of beyond that.
And now he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. Ever since Saturday...
Despite the fact that her hair had been wonky and she’d been dressed in clothes she couldn’t possibly have thought anybody would see her in, that first glimpse of her since he’d last set eyes on her, when she was sixteen, had stayed with him. And from then on, his attraction had just escalated—in no small part because dressed in better clothes, her hair combed and wearing a little makeup made her such a knockout he couldn’t keep his eyes off her when he was with her, and then he carried every detail of the way she looked home with him.
It was as if—for some reason—she’d set up residence in his head. And not just the mental image of her. There was the sound of her voice, the memory of things she said—even the hard time she gave him. Every minute they’d been together was with him continuously, regardless of how much he tried not to think about her. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before.
Maybe it was guilt?
That was possible, wasn’t it? Especially when learning how Mac had disrespected women had left him wondering if he might have subconsciously done the same thing. He’d come to feel obliged to look back at the way he’d thought of Clairy as well as the way he’d thought of his adult relationships, the way he’d treated her. Maybe taking a closer look at her was part of that.
But that isn’t all you’re doing...
In fact, it wasn’t even the lion’s share of what he was doing.
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