It wasn’t guilt or reevaluation of the past that had him picturing that thick, wavy red hair of hers and wondering if it would run through his fingers like silk. There was no guilt or reevaluation in fighting to keep from letting the backs of his fingers trace her cheek to find out if her skin was as soft as it looked.
It wasn’t guilt or reevaluation that was going on when he lost his train of thought looking into her eyes and wondering if he’d ever seen a green so beautiful.
Or looking at those delicate lips of hers, thinking they were ripe for kissing, and wanting to do that kissing until she begged him to stop.
He wasn’t remembering that she was someone he’d treated badly. He wasn’t even recalling that she was someone who had a grudge against him that she was right to have. She wasn’t even Mac’s daughter.
She was just a delicately stunning, feisty little spitfire who was churning up things in him at a rate no one had ever done before, with an impact no one had ever had on him...
And for no reason he could even figure out...
But she was Mac’s daughter, he reminded himself. He didn’t really know if that should make her off-limits, but it seemed as if it might. It seemed like there should be some kind of code against it.
Especially when his thoughts about her went beyond kissing. Which they tended to do as he was trying to get to sleep the last few nights...
Mac’s daughter...
Over the years—like a father encouraging his son to find a wife—there had been any number of times when Quinn and Mac had been in a bar and Mac had jabbed him with an elbow to draw his attention to a pretty woman whom the older man thought he should chat up. There had even been a few times Mac had arranged for him to meet someone he thought Quinn might hit it off with. But never had Mac suggested Quinn take an interest in Clairy.
“Could be he didn’t want you fraternizing with his daughter,” Quinn told his reflection. “Could be he saw your lousy track record with women and didn’t want her in line for that.”
Not that Mac had ever seemed protective of Clairy.
“You probably weren’t, were you?” he asked his absent mentor, his own disillusionment with Mac coming to the forefront suddenly. As did Clairy’s comment last night that it had felt good to be heard...
It had taken Quinn weeks after learning Mac put women marines in jeopardy to force them out of service—or at least out of his command—to decide what to do with that information.
Mac was dead—he wasn’t harassing or endangering any more women, he’d told himself. Maybe what he’d done didn’t need to be known.
But then he’d also begun to analyze his own actions toward women, his relationship failures, and it was the women Mac had wronged who started to haunt him. Those women and the idea of sweeping them under the rug along with what Mac had done to them.
It had ripped him apart to realize that his loyalty to Mac, guarding Mac’s reputation, couldn’t be all he took into consideration. If it was, if he ignored those women and whatever damage might have been done to them and their careers, then he really wasn’t any better than his mentor...
So he’d called a friend, an attorney in the Judge Advocate General’s office...
His guilt over what still felt like betrayal of the man who had shaped him and his life dogged him. But since that phone call, Jill had been doing a preliminary investigation to decide how far to take what Quinn had reported. Nothing could be done to Mac posthumously—although it was Mac’s reputation and the mark against him that was difficult for Quinn to feel responsible for—but one of the main things that would come out of looking into Mac’s misdeeds now would be to give those women a voice. To let them be heard...
“So maybe if that happens you’ll understand?” he asked the also-absent Clairy, hoping she would.
Which was something else new.
He hadn’t loved the idea of telling Mac’s daughter any of this, but now it ate at him to think that Clairy might turn even more against him when he did, when he had to confess that if her father’s reputation was tarnished, it would be by him...
He shook his head at his reflection in the mirror. “One more reason to keep the brakes on with her,” he said, thinking that it went on the list that also included his poor relationship track record and the point he’d reached since Camp Lejeune, when he’d realized he needed to reassess the way he viewed women himself and where they fit in his life, if they fit in. Or if they should be kept on a strictly R & R basis, the way his mentor had.
One thing he already knew was that, when it came to women from now on, the only ones he was going anywhere near had to be either in the military themselves—which was preferable—or be 100 percent on board with the fact that, for him, the US Marine Corps came first.
And Clairy McKinnon didn’t fit either of those categories.
Add to that the fact that she was someone he’d already hurt, and he knew he shouldn’t get involved with her.
“So no kissing,” he reminded himself, as if saying that settled it.
Which it did—he wasn’t going to kiss her.
Then, in his head, he saw her again—soft waves of red hair, alabaster skin, those green eyes.
He saw again the look that had been in those eyes at the end of last night, when all of a sudden they’d softened somehow, when a new sparkle had come into them that had been sexy as hell. When her glance had fallen to his mouth for a minute in what had read as a sign and had put him completely in the mood to kiss her...
“You still can’t do it,” he ordered his reflection.
And he wasn’t going to.
So why did he reach for the beard oil that was supposed to make the stubble kissably soft?
* * *
By six o’clock Tuesday evening, Clairy had her living-room furniture arranged the way she wanted it and was ready for company.
For Quinn’s company. In order for them to work tonight on his family’s contributions to the library. Not for any social kind of thing.
She’d been reminding herself of that all day long. Reminding herself that seeing him was not her preference. They were working together for a short time and that was the extent of it. She couldn’t explain why seeing him kept ending with the sense that they were socializing. Socializing in a way that could end with her thinking about him kissing her. As if the socializing they were doing was dating...
But that was not what was going on, and as she’d worked, she’d lectured herself about it.
If it hadn’t been for her father’s will asking that Quinn oversee the memorial and that his family contribute to the library, she and Quinn wouldn’t be having anything to do with each other.
And once his part of the job was finished, Quinn would disappear into the marines the same way he had years ago. If they ever saw each other again, it would only be by accident, when he came to Merritt to visit his family.
So by no stretch of the imagination was their being together under the current conditions dating, and she told herself firmly that she had to stop having any illusions about that.
It was all very clear in her head when she went to the kitchen at the end of the day. But even so, as she reheated a bowl of last night’s beef bourguignon to eat standing at the counter, she went over it all again to make sure there wasn’t and wouldn’t be any question. There was absolutely nothing going on between her and Quinn Camden in which kissing would ever occur.
Then she hurried upstairs to the shower—again, not because she was getting ready for a date, but because she’d worked on the house all day and needed one. As well as a quick shampoo.
After that, an upside-down hair drying put waves, volume and shine into her hair before she applied evening-level makeup—only thinking of lighting and not wanting to fade into the woodwork, not considering who would be looking at her, she assured herself.
Then she chose a cream-colored
crocheted top that she wore over a simple tank for modesty’s sake, and a pair of denim jeans hemmed with embroidery and lace that matched the crochet pattern of the top.
Altogether it wasn’t quite a sitting-around-alone-doing-nothing outfit, but it also wasn’t anything she would wear for an evening out, either. So not-date-clothes for not-a-date, but still feminine and presentable.
And it was also in keeping with her goal of never feeling as if Quinn had an advantage over her again, she decided.
Which she felt like he’d sort of had when she’d drifted into wondering what it might be like to kiss him last night. An advantage she thought she’d gone on giving him when she had continued thinking about him—and kissing him—long after he’d left and right up until she’d fallen asleep.
But not tonight! Not after also reminding herself today of every problem he’d caused between her and her father, every single thing he’d ever done to cause her to dislike him.
And between forcing herself to recall his mistreatment of her and those reminders of what was really going on, as she slipped her feet into a pair of cream-colored fancy flip-flops, she felt sure that there was no chance of him getting to her tonight.
At least, she felt sure of it until she descended the stairs and, through the open front door, caught sight of him through the screen getting out of his truck.
He had on jeans and a white polo shirt, the short sleeves stretched firmly around those biceps making them impossible to ignore.
His off-duty military wear was simply serviceable attire, but the jeans and that polo shirt? They might not be dressy, but they weren’t workmanlike, either. They were clothes he’d put some thought into. The kind of thought that went into socializing...
“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered to herself as she watched him take boxes out of the cab of his truck. “This is still strictly business—from the beginning to the end!”
Sticking with that, she went out the screen door and said, “I can take some of that stuff in.”
“Hi,” he said, for the second time giving the greeting she had omitted because to her it seemed too friendly.
“Hello,” she responded with a touch of aloofness to once again send a there’s-nothing-personal-to-this message.
She offered no other pleasantries, and merely picked up one of the boxes he’d unloaded and set on the lawn, and returned to the house.
She did hold the screen open for him once she got there, though, reasoning that it was a simple courtesy since he’d loaded himself up with the remainder of what he’d brought and his muscled arms were full.
“You got your living room set up,” he observed when he went in.
“So we could work in there, maybe spread things out on the floor to get a full picture of what’s here,” she said, following behind him and hating herself for checking out how his rear end looked in jeans.
And judging it much, much too good...
Quinn deposited his boxes on the oval coffee table.
“I have iced tea if you’re interested,” she said, having already decided not to offer beer or wine in order to keep the tone not-date-like.
“Thanks,” he said, his own attitude tonight seeming a bit more formal, too.
Clairy went to the kitchen and returned with two tall glasses of tea, setting them on coasters on the oak end tables that bookended the overstuffed sofa and matched the coffee table. Then she got right to the task at hand. Standing over the boxes, she said, “Let’s start with the most recent stuff.”
“That would be in those two small boxes.” He pointed to two boxes sitting atop a larger box. “One is from Micah, the other from Tanner—”
“And from you and your other brother?”
“For now I’m only handing over a few pictures of me and your dad—they’re in this file folder.”
The file folder was in a second box. He took it out and handed it to her.
Clairy opened it, finding inside three photographs and a magazine article with a fourth picture included in it.
The article was on a conflict in the Middle East and the picture was a candid shot of Quinn and her father at a desert campsite. They were studying a map on a table outside an enclave of tents, both outfitted in heavy combat gear and paying heed only to what they were so seriously discussing, seemingly oblivious to being photographed.
“You’re so young,” Clairy observed of Quinn in the photo.
“It was the first mission Mac recruited me for,” he said, his tone ringing with reverence and the flattery he’d felt at being chosen.
Clairy set aside the article and picked up one of the photographs. It was of Mac pinning a Medal of Honor on Quinn—Mac’s stony expression still somehow managed to convey the pride that Clairy had never seen from him for herself. It raised envy and resentment in her that prevented her from commenting. She merely set the picture on top of the article.
The second snapshot was of Quinn and Mac in a bar, arm wrestling, the camaraderie of their relationship, their affection for each other, clear even as they competed.
That fierce-competitor facet of her father was yet another thing he’d relished having Quinn around for, another thing she couldn’t participate in, and Clairy felt a second twinge of old umbrage as she saw evidence of it again.
Once more, she said nothing as she moved on to the third photograph. It was a posed picture of her father, Quinn and his three brothers, the five of them in dress blues.
“Wow, this was something,” she observed, looking at Quinn in particular in his formal uniform, doing it justice to such a degree she couldn’t take her eyes off him. “I didn’t know there was a time when you and your brothers were all with Mac...” She pointed to Quinn and his older brother. “You and Micah...” Micah had attended her father’s funeral, so she recognized him. “But I haven’t seen the other two triplets since they left Merritt the same time you did. Plus, you all resemble each other so much—which is Tanner and which is Dalton?” she asked, needing to force her gaze from where it wanted to stay on Quinn’s image.
Quinn told her, then explained, “That was the White House dinner honoring Mac. I’d come into DC especially for it, but Micah, Tanner and Dalton just happened to be in Washington at the same time. When Mac heard that, he pulled strings to get them on the guest list, too. We were surprised that you and Mim weren’t there, but he said it was too soon after you’d lost your grandfather.”
Clairy couldn’t help bristling again. “I think he just didn’t want us there. Grampa had been gone six months and Mac didn’t even tell us about the dinner until it was over. Mim and I were both upset by that—I’ve never seen her so hurt and angry. But when we complained, he told us to quit squawking like two hens, that if Grampa would have been alive he would have asked him, but that Mim and I would have just been out of place with military men and politicians.”
“God, Clairy, I’m so, so sorry...” he said, as if he’d genuinely been struck by the information.
“Did you have something to do with him not telling us?” she said suspiciously.
“No! That was lousy of him!”
Was Quinn actually admitting that? Clairy was shocked.
“Some military women and female politicians were included, too—” he said. “Of course the honoree’s mother and daughter should have been asked to a White House honor presentation before me or my brothers...” He cut himself off, as if once the words were out he’d reconsidered the wisdom in saying them. Then, seeming to search for something to vindicate Mac’s actions, he said, “Is it possible that he honestly did think you and Mim were still grieving?”
“I think he just didn’t want us there,” Clairy repeated. “I don’t know if he thought we’d embarrass him in some way, or if he was ashamed of us... I don’t know,” she said with an echo of anger.
“I think it was just Mac being Mac,” Quinn said almost under his breat
h but with an edge of disgust she wouldn’t have thought ever to hear from him in regards to her father.
But that didn’t seem possible and she decided she had to be misinterpreting something.
Then he said, “I didn’t know he hadn’t even invited you. I believed what he told me...”
There was definitely disgust in Quinn’s tone this time, but she couldn’t tell if it was disgust for Mac or self-disgust.
Quinn started to say something but stopped himself, seemed to change course, and as if falling again into his loyalty to her father, he said, “It was all military and political talk...”
“Excuses, excuses, excuses,” Clairy muttered, wondering how many slights and old wounds would be reopened for her before this project was accomplished and she could move on to what she wanted to do—her own work through the foundation.
“But I’m sure my father would want all of those pictures included, so thanks,” she said somewhat begrudgingly, replacing the article and pictures in the file and setting it aside.
Unable to keep some additional stiltedness out of her voice, she backtracked. “So that’s all you want to contribute now?”
“Dalton and I agree that this seems like what you do when you’ve resigned or retired, when the last chapter has been written,” he explained, as if he was glad to move on. “Micah and Tanner sent medals and ribbons they were awarded, decorations, some photographs—mainly pictures of them with buddies they want remembered—but they’re both out of the service now... Well, Micah is—Tanner’s paperwork is filed and he’s burning off leave time, but essentially he’s done, too. Dalton and I are ongoing, so it isn’t time to tell those stories.”
“And your brother Dalton is—obviously from the picture—a marine, too.”
“He is. There are a couple of things he’s sent to Big Ben that he said could start the ball rolling on him—they’re in here, under Tanner’s and Micah’s things. It’s a place to start on him...or maybe a placeholder for him. But other than that—”
“It isn’t time to tell his story,” Clairy repeated, thinking that Quinn was talking more than usual to fill the awkwardness left by the reminder of the White House dinner.
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