Although thinking about that reminded Clairy of when he had made it to her side. “Thanks for those two assists with Mrs. Rayburn. She was determined to get something juicy out of me.”
Elsa Rayburn was the elderly town gossip, and on the two occasions she’d been grilling Clairy, Quinn had prematurely broken off his own nearby conversations and come to her rescue.
“I was trying for that third time, but I think she sent in Mr. Rayburn to block me, because that old bugger either couldn’t hear me trying to excuse myself or just ignored me and kept talking—”
“His hearing is just fine—he probably had been given orders to nab you and not let you go.”
“Well, he did a good job—he literally had me cornered. I would have had to knock him down to pass him,” Quinn said with a laugh. “So I was stuck listening to his army reserve stories for half an hour.”
“Marabeth saved me from that third one or I might still be stuck,” Clairy said, laughing, too. “Thank goodness the Rayburns wore out early and left!”
They’d both finished their dessert and Clairy motioned with her dish. “Want a second piece of cheesecake?”
“No. It’s good, but rich—one is enough,” Quinn said.
If only that was true of that kiss last night...
Maybe it would be if you’d just stop thinking about it! Clairy chastised herself.
Pushing off the porch railing, Quinn came to take her plate. He set both of the small dishes on a small table near the front door.
Clairy was a little afraid he was segueing to leave, but then he turned back to her. Retracing his steps, he joined her on the swing. He angled in her direction, one arm resting atop the swing’s back just behind the cap sleeve that covered her left shoulder.
Glad he hadn’t been gearing up to go home yet—and not unhappy to have him seem to relax more by sitting with her even though it made not thinking about kissing him again impossible—she relaxed a bit more, too.
But when she did it created a minor problem—in order to keep her hair contained and off her neck tonight, she’d twisted the thick waves into a knot in back and held it there with a chopstick-like brass comb. As she leaned back, that brass comb got lodged in the chain holding up her side of the swing.
“Uh-oh... I’m stuck...” she said, forced to pull the comb from the knot and chain at once and leaving her hair to spill.
Without anything coy in mind, when her hair came out of the knot, she shook her head to loosen the thick strands so they could fall free.
That done, for a second time she caught Quinn steadfastly watching her.
But once more, the instant she noticed it, he stopped abruptly.
“Am I wrong or are you not a hundred percent thrilled that your friend is marrying mine?” he asked without preamble.
That was not such a light topic...
Was she going to admit to the truth or not?
She hadn’t decided when he added, “I thought there was a little anti-Brad under the surface when you asked if I knew they were engaged last night and told me about the party. Then tonight—don’t get me wrong, you were the perfect hostess—I still thought there might be a whiff of you liking Marabeth better than Brad. Even your toast was slanted toward Marabeth, with barely a mention of him.”
“Marabeth is my best friend, so I do like her better. Brad is...just the guy she’s marrying,” she hedged.
She’d thought her voice had been completely neutral, the same way she’d thought she’d covered up her dislike of Brad all evening. But something about what she said caused Quinn to frown and shake his head, as if he saw through her and wasn’t going to let this slide.
“You still don’t like him,” Quinn mused. He stalled for a moment and then said, “I was recently reminded of an incident...” He was silent again, as if he was treading lightly into this subject. “That day in the cafeteria when you tried to persuade me to stay away from Mac.”
So he remembered it.
Clairy had wondered.
“Is Brad on your hate list, too? For backing me up?” Quinn asked.
“My hate list? I don’t have a hate list.”
“You do—I’m at the top of it, and unless I’m mistaken...” he said, as if he was putting things together as he spoke. “Is Brad next on the list?”
Clairy rolled her eyes as if he was delusional.
But that didn’t deter him, either. “You have some reason for being down on him, too—Tanner reminded me that he and Brad were there when it all went down, that I gave you a hard time and that Brad piled on.”
“Your brother didn’t,” she said, apropos of nothing except that she’d always given Tanner Camden some amnesty for that and it seemed worth noting.
“But Brad was almost as bad as I was,” Quinn said, still piecing things together.
Clairy let silence, and the stiffness of her spine, speak for her while she thought again of why she should resist any attraction she might have to Quinn—phase one of her postdivorce life or not.
“Looking back, that whole deal was pretty bad, wasn’t it? And it was worse when Brad got into it. It pitted you against both of us. And you were younger and outnumbered, and it was ugly and only got uglier when Brad chimed in and we started to one-up each other on the smart-ass snarkiness.”
And clearly, Quinn didn’t recall it without working at it, while it was one of the worst moments of her life and something she’d never forgotten.
Clairy only answered with an arch of her eyebrows.
“So Brad is second on the hate list,” Quinn concluded. “And now he’s marrying your best friend, and you’ve moved back to town, and that means that to be in Marabeth’s life again, Brad will be in yours... You aren’t thrilled with that.”
“I’m more worried about the kind of person who will be Marabeth’s husband,” Clairy said frankly.
“O-o-h...that’s even worse than you just not liking him,” Quinn said, as if light was dawning. “You think she’s marrying someone who showed a bad side of himself to you, and you’re afraid that’s how he could end up treating Marabeth when she’s married to him.”
“I was where Marabeth is now—freshly courted, newly engaged... It’s great. Everything is rosy. But I was also married for years and I know what can happen when the bloom is off the rose. If the person you marry was different before meeting you, before they were on their best behavior and putting their best foot forward for you, that’s the person they become again.”
“Ouch!” he said, as if she was referring to him.
And certainly he was included in what she was leery of, and on the lookout for, because she wasn’t convinced that underneath his current agreeable behavior, that mean, insensitive beast wasn’t just waiting to come out again.
“Does Marabeth know where you stand?” he asked then.
“She says Brad grew out of that teenage big-man stuff, that he isn’t the same person.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I’m skeptical,” Clairy said honestly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Quinn said, as if he’d just taken a bit of a blow himself. “That has to mean you don’t have much faith that I grew out of that stuff, either.”
“Are you less driven than you were? Less bound and determined to go after what you want at any cost? If there’s an obstacle in your way, is there anything you won’t do to trample over it?”
“Yes and no—it depends on the circumstances now. Not letting anything stand in my way still sums me up as a marine. It’s what’s gotten me where I am, what makes me good at what I do. But I’ve learned that it isn’t always the way to handle things—in fact, I’ve just lately seen that same philosophy in someone else go really wrong and learned a whole new lesson when it comes to that.”
His voice had gone quiet at the end, into that mysterious tone he’d used when he’d
told her that he knew some things now that he hadn’t known before.
To Clairy, it seemed as if his mind had wandered into more than answering her questions. But he didn’t give her a chance to delve into it before he came back to the moment and went on. “And, yes, that’s all a part of me because my mother wouldn’t have it any other way. It was how my brothers and I got what we wanted—it was at the core of your father, too.”
“Who just added to it in you,” Clairy said fatalistically. “It didn’t make him a nice guy, either. Or someone really successful at relationships—especially with women.”
Quinn closed his eyes, his brows arched, and Clairy wasn’t sure what button she’d pushed, but it seemed as if she’d pushed one. He appeared to have contained it, though, when he opened his eyes again. “No argument—your dad didn’t die with a lot of friends,” he said morosely, as if that admission brought some kind of remorse to him personally. “And he also didn’t have a woman in his life...well, except you and Mim.”
“And it couldn’t be said that we were very much in his life,” Clairy pointed out.
But rather than go on, she returned to what he’d said tonight, and last night, too, in reference to his mother—actually, what he’d also said on Monday night, when Clairy had aired her complaints against him and he’d said that going after what he wanted the way he had was a result of being raised by Raina Camden.
“Did your mother want you to be like the General?”
“My mother didn’t know much about Mac, so it wasn’t that she aimed me in his direction hoping I’d end up like him—although when she found out that I was hounding him to teach me to be a marine, she was all in favor of that because anything I wouldn’t let up on got her approval. My mother wanted strong sons and she had her own method of getting us there.”
His mother had encouraged her son to hound an adult for his attention?
That seemed odd to Clairy. “Her own method...” she repeated, trying to understand.
“I told you my father died piloting a private plane for the other side of the Camden family—”
“The Superstore Camdens.”
“And like I said, the Superstore Camdens came from H. J. Camden, my great-grandfather Hector’s brother. Not only did my mother hold my father’s death against the other Camdens, but she also took an old family story about the Superstores being Hector’s original idea and decided that if it was Hector’s idea, he should have been in line for half of what the other Camdens made with that idea.”
“It seems like there could be something to that... You don’t think he should have?” she asked, interpreting Quinn’s tone.
He shrugged. “It’s one point of view, I guess, but she was the only one of my family who ever held it. She could never get Hector—when he was alive—or Big Ben or my dad on board with it, or with going after the other Camdens for what she thought was owed us all. And because they wouldn’t fight for it, to her, that made them weak. She loved them, but she thought they let themselves be doormats to the other Camdens, and it made her hell-bent on not letting her sons be like that.”
“And she accomplished that how?” Clairy asked, fearing something harsh.
Quinn must have seen that, because he chuckled wryly, then said, “She didn’t do anything bad—she was a good mom, but she was a strong woman and she had a game plan to make her sons strong, too.”
“And the game plan?”
“She made us compete with each other over everything. With four boys, that meant some fierce competition—over who got the last biscuit when more than one of us wanted it, over who got to choose what we watched on TV, over who had to do the worst chores. Every single thing that involved more than one of us became a contest.”
“How?” Clairy asked.
“She set up obstacles we had to overcome or ways to earn what we wanted or to prove we wanted it most, and whoever came out on top won out. And if she had so much as an inkling that we’d backed down from any challenge—at home or anywhere else—we were in more trouble with her than whenever there was a report of any one of us being too aggressive.”
“She wanted you to be aggressive?”
“Yep. The more aggressive, the better,” Quinn confirmed. “To her, that showed strength, and strength was what she wanted to see in us.”
“So if you wanted my father’s attention, you’d been taught to do whatever you had to do to get it...and it was something that made your mother proud?”
“Yes and yes. But there are a couple of things I’m getting at,” he said, as if he didn’t want to go into any more of this at the cost of why he was laying that groundwork. “Like I told you before, as a kid, I wanted Mac to take me under his wing and I just did what I thought I was supposed to do—anything it took to get what I wanted. By the time I was a teenager...well, we’ve already established that that time of life, on top of living up to my mom’s expectations, didn’t make me a nice guy. But I did grow up, and now I know when to use my powers for good and when to put them on the shelf,” he said, injecting some humor into a serious subject.
Then he went back to what had gotten them into this conversation. “When it comes to Brad and that day with you that put him on your hate list, he was just doing the obnoxious-teenage-boy thing and following my lead—he was jumping on my obnoxious, bad-behavior bandwagon because that’s what teenage boys do to show off and prove they’re tough and cool and all that teenage stuff. Sure, sometimes it sticks with some guys who never grow up, but that isn’t me and it isn’t Brad, so I know you don’t have to worry about what kind of husband he’ll make Marabeth.”
That had been a long and winding road to make his point, and it had said more about Quinn than it had about Brad, so Clairy just responded, “I hope you’re right.”
“I know I am,” Quinn added confidently. “Brad isn’t just on his best behavior and putting his best foot forward. What you see of him now is what he honestly is now—grown up and a good guy. He’s a veterinarian, for crying out loud—he delivers puppies and kittens.”
“And you?” she challenged, reserving judgment on her friend’s fiancé and hoping her fears were as unfounded as Quinn thought they were.
“I have never delivered puppies or kittens. I did deliver a human baby once—under combat fire in a small village while my unit held off insurgents, if that gets me any leniency.”
“Or are you just on your best behavior and putting your best foot forward for now?”
“If I was aiming for pulling the wool over your eyes, wouldn’t I be swearing to you that I never tap into that part of me that burned you when we were kids?” he reasoned. “Instead, I’ve been honest. I haven’t lied or pretended that I don’t ever tap into that part of me. What I’m telling you is that when it’s necessary, when it’s called for, I do use it, but not otherwise, because I did grow up.”
“Meaning that you can accept that you don’t always get what you want?” she said, doubt in her voice.
“Yes,” he answered. “Despite what my mother taught me, I know when not to trample over people to get what I want, no matter how bad I want it.”
“And you can just do that—set aside what your mother ingrained in you? What works for you? What’s gotten you what you want since you were a little kid?” Clairy said dubiously.
“H. J. Camden was an underhanded, ruthless cutthroat. There wasn’t an ethical bone in his body and that’s why my great-grandfather didn’t want anything to do with the building of the empire that those tactics created. Am I a hard-nosed marine when I need to be? Absolutely. Has my personal life suffered from the single-mindedness I’ve had when it comes to my career?” His eyebrows arched again, this time with something that looked like remorse. “It has—but in the form of neglect, not because of anything like what I did to land on your hate list. But the thing is, Clairy, time has taught me that being a marine is more than I thought it was as a kid, more t
han using what my mother ingrained in me. I guess you could say that the marines took what she trained me to be, what Mac trained me to be, and added the code of values that were lacking in my teenage brain—”
“Your mother didn’t give you values?”
“Sure, the basics—don’t lie, cheat or steal. Big Ben was our moral compass, but when you’re a kid and strength, persistence and never backing down no matter what are first and foremost to your mother and only parent... Well, as a kid I saw the other things as...fluid, I guess you could say.”
“The marines taught you to back down?” she challenged.
“It was in the marines that I was taught and held to higher standards. Where I had to learn there was more value in earning respect than in getting what I wanted. It was where I had to learn about uncompromising integrity and unselfishness. Where I had to learn that achievements needed to come with honor, that honor was everything. So, yeah, now I can just set aside what my mother ingrained in me as a kid—what I was when you knew me before—to be the man the marines made.”
He inclined his head slightly as he admitted, “Sometimes it’s tough. But that’s usually when it’s the most important...”
Clairy couldn’t deny the ring of truth to what he said, or the conviction in his voice, so she decided to let up on him. It also occurred to her that—like the timing of his father’s death—the way Quinn had been raised was something she hadn’t known about and it explained his actions, giving her a more complete picture of what had gone into making him who he was.
He sighed then and said, “How did we go from partying to all that?”
“You started it,” she accused justifiably, since he’d initiated the talk about her not liking Marabeth’s fiancé.
“I did, didn’t I? Let’s go back... It was a nice party.”
Clairy laughed and repeated her earlier answer. “It seemed like everyone had a pretty good time.”
“Seemed that way to me, too.” But after that, he went on in a more serious, intimate tone. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you how great you look.”
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