The compliment might have been a little late, but she was still happy to have it from him. So much so that it was impossible for her not to smile. “Thanks, but I have to be the worse for wear by now,” she said.
“No, you still look great,” he assured her in a way that seemed as if he genuinely thought so, his gaze more intent on her face than it had been as they were talking. “I keep going back through my memories of you years ago. You were kind of a gawky, geeky-looking redhead then—”
With blotchy, pale skin that she was abundantly grateful to have outgrown.
But she didn’t say that. Interrupting him, she said sarcastically, “Thanks so much.”
“You were kind of a gawky, geeky-looking redheaded kid,” he began again, “but growing up gets the credit for improving on that, too. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you tonight.” Then he tempered the appreciation with a crooked smile and said, “From Saturday to this, definitely an improvement.”
“I wasn’t expecting company Saturday. I was packing and unpacking boxes. What do you wear to do that?”
“Full dress blues,” he lied.
Clairy laughed, then found a way to return the compliment. “It was strange to see you in civvies. But you do them justice.”
So much justice...
“I feel okay in jeans, but this kind of thing is like wearing someone else’s clothes. Maybe because these are someone else’s clothes, since I borrowed them from Tanner. But still...” he said, not taking the flattery too seriously. Then he returned to talking about the party. “My only gripe with tonight was that I didn’t get any time with you. I kept trying, but Mr. Rayburn wasn’t the only interception—there was one after another.”
So she hadn’t been imagining that he’d made attempts to touch base with her all night.
“Did you need something?” she asked, playing innocent.
“To say hello, to tell you how great you looked, to just have a minute with you.”
Their previous conversation had done much to quell her thoughts of kissing him last night and repeating it tonight. But hearing him say that was all it took to bring back those thoughts.
“So you didn’t just stay to take out the trash and have cheesecake?”
“That should have been why. But it isn’t...” he said, as if something had gotten the better of other intentions.
Between the two of them, Clairy realized that he was being more straightforward than she was and decided he might have earned some of that from her, so she said, “Whatever the reason, I’m glad you stayed.”
He smiled and his oh-so-handsome face relaxed into a pleased expression. “Wow, you said that out loud.”
“Did I?” Clairy said in mock surprise.
He laughed. “Maybe I just imagined it. Don’t worry, I won’t hold you to it,” he teased.
So much for being straightforward with him. It just wasn’t easy for her to admit or accept that when it came to him, things she was thinking, feeling and wanting were heading in directions she’d never thought possible.
“Isn’t this strange for you, too?” she asked quietly, all joking aside. “You didn’t like me any better than I liked you.”
“And now things are changing,” he said, moving his hand from where it was resting on the swing’s back to take a strand of her hair between two fingers. “It’s definitely strange,” he confirmed with some confusion and awe in his tone. “But it’s happening...”
Was he resolved to that? Giving in to it?
Was she?
Clairy didn’t know. Or give it much more thought as he leaned in to kiss her.
She just instinctively responded to the kiss she’d been longing for, the kiss that made her feel as if the last twenty-four hours had no purpose but to get her back to that.
Just phase one, she told herself as the kiss almost instantly evolved to where they’d left off the night before—lips were parted and every moment deepened it.
Had she ever liked kissing anyone as much as she liked it with him? she wondered, astonished and swept away by how good he was at it, by just how much she did like it.
His other hand rose to the side of her face as mouths opened wider and the kiss took a detour into something even sexier, something erotic. Something that gave her goose bumps...
She placed both palms on his chest. The chest that looked so phenomenal in the tight T-shirts he usually wore, the chest that felt even better—strapping, brawny, solid.
Then his broad shoulders and his biceps came to mind, and on their own, her hands followed that same course, upward to his shoulders, down again to those biceps, where she dug her fingers in, testing the power there.
And every inch of that path made her sizzle even more inside, amping up what was already mounting between them.
Until a car drove by, reminding Clairy that they were on her front porch, in plain view. And this had become far, far more than a kiss suitable for all audience members.
Her next thought was that maybe she should take Quinn inside to continue it.
But was she ready for the message that could send?
Yes!
But, no, not really...
Still, she didn’t want this to end. She wanted hours and hours of just kissing him until she couldn’t kiss him anymore.
Except the car had pulled into the driveway of the house next door and the engine had been turned off.
Hating herself for it, she forced her hands up those glorious biceps and over his shoulders again, drawing them down to his chest, where she pushed against him just enough to let him know it was time to stop.
He got the message, because a small groan of complaint came from his throat as he put the kiss in Reverse until she lost his mouth altogether.
“I know... Neighbors,” he grumbled.
Clairy eased away, and he took his hand from her face, his other hand out of her hair and added a few more inches of distance himself.
“I should probably get going, anyway,” he grumbled. “It’s late...”
“And we should be able to get into the library tomorrow, so I thought we should get to work going through my father’s things—”
Clairy had no idea why that brought a fleeting, but very dark, frown to Quinn’s face before he nodded somberly and said, “Mac told me where to look for things in your attic. We’ll need to do that, and there are other things he’s given me, things I cleaned out of his office and house in Jacksonville...”
“We can take it all to the library, go through it, sort it, spread it out there,” Clairy said, fighting to pay any attention to that subject, when what she wanted to do was kiss Quinn again, even though her neighbor was taking his sweet time at his curbside mailbox, going through his mail there while really sneaking peeks at them.
“Okay,” Quinn agreed, taking what seemed to be a steeling breath that got him to his feet.
Clairy stood, too, and walked along in her bare feet as he went to the porch steps. “Thanks for taking out all the trash,” she said.
“No problem,” Quinn assured her, catching sight of her still-curious neighbor.
She had the sense that Quinn was fighting the urge to kiss her again when he cast another glance in the neighbor’s direction, but he didn’t do it, much to Clairy’s disappointment.
“Text me in the morning when you’re ready for me to come over,” he said, then reached a hand to her upper arm and squeezed it meaningfully.
“Good night,” she whispered with as much voice as she could muster when just the feel of his big warm hand on her arm was tempting her to ignore the nosy neighbor and initiate another kiss anyway.
Or take Quinn inside after all...
But he let go of her and the option went down the porch steps with him.
“Night,” he said with some of her disappointment ringing in his voice as he headed out to his truck.<
br />
Clairy stood there watching him until he was behind the wheel. He started the engine, then gave her one last wave that she returned.
Even after his truck disappeared down the street and her neighbor finally gave up his snooping to go in, Clairy stayed there on the porch as if it prolonged her time with Quinn for just a few seconds more.
And right then, she would have given just about anything if Quinn had driven around the block and come back.
Chapter Six
“If you don’t want to hold Miss Poppy here, Quinn, then I’m taking her to sit on the porch—she loves it when we go outside and rock in the rocking chair, and I’m not passing up the chance to have a minute with my great-grandbaby.”
Quinn held up both hands, palms out in surrender. “Have at it, Pops. I’m liable to break something that small.”
“Coward,” Tanner joked.
“Not denying it,” Quinn answered with a laugh. “But I don’t have to be insta-dad—you do.”
“Yeah, you learn fast when you have to,” Tanner said as they both watched Ben leave the kitchen with the three-month-old.
Tanner and Quinn were sitting at the table having coffee at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday morning. Tanner had shown up just to visit. His fiancée, Addie Markham, was having a spa day, and he had the baby on his own.
“So you’re settling in to being a civilian just like that?” Quinn asked when they were alone.
“Yeah. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Tanner answered.
“It is,” Quinn confirmed emphatically. “I mean, we knew Micah always had a time limit on his service. He wasn’t going to be a lifer—he was going to stay in as long as it felt right to him, then resign so he could open his brewery. But you, me and Dalton...”
Tanner shrugged. “The road just forked.”
“And you took the other route,” Quinn confirmed for him.
But was it as simple as Tanner made it sound? “Did you take the other route happily?” he inquired then.
“Shocks me, too,” Tanner said, as if he knew what Quinn was thinking. “But, yeah, I took it happily. Willingly. Eagerly. In fact, it was all my idea. Addie is...everything. I wake up every morning and can’t believe my luck. And Poppy is mine—once that sank in, it took the blink of an eye for me to know that there was no way I could pack up and leave her behind for months at a time. No way I could miss even a day with her or being around to raise her, protect her. I just knew that not only was that what I had to do from now on, it was what I wanted to do. So my papers are in, I’m talking to a security company under government contract about a job I can do mainly from here, and what can I say? I’m buying civvies that you can borrow when you come to town—like you did last night.”
“But I just saw you in Camp Lejeune five months ago, after Mac’s death,” Quinn commented, voicing more of his astonishment over the speed with which his brother had made such a huge decision. “Five months ago you were planning to go the distance, just like me, just like Mac.”
“And if you had told me I’d be where I am now, telling you what I’m telling you, I would have said you were losing it,” Tanner said, unflustered by Quinn’s incredulity. Then he laughed and said, “Hell, that would have been the case even one month ago. For me, the marines were...I don’t know...a calling, I guess. I thought I’d have that calling forever, stay in forever. Then I found out about Poppy, got to know Addie, and I started to hear a different call—”
“Out of obligation to them?” Quinn asked, trying to understand.
Tanner shook his head. “I’m not with Addie out of obligation. I’m with her because I want to be.” He shrugged. “Something just happened. Something I didn’t think would—or could—ever happen, and I wanted her more than I wanted to go on being a marine. I didn’t want us to have a life where we’re only together between missions or deployments or trainings or assignments. I wanted to be with her, with Poppy, day in, day out, through the good and the bad.”
“I’m just having trouble picturing you like this,” Quinn confessed.
“Maybe that’s because for guys like you, and Mac, the marines are even more than a calling—they’re in your blood, they go bone-deep. Mac died with his boots on. I’m sure you will, too.”
Mention of Mac, of Mac’s death, sobered Quinn considerably. Not only did it bring up the guilt he felt over his mentor’s death, but Jill, the JAG attorney, had called just before Tanner’s arrival this morning to tell him the results of her preliminary investigation and that the list of women with complaints about Mac was growing.
“Mac and I did see the marines mostly in the same way...mostly...” Quinn said, more to himself than to his brother, suffering all the heaviness brought on since his final visit with the General.
“Mostly?” Tanner caught that qualification and laughed again. “Since when?”
Quinn didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Tell me truthfully what you thought of Mac.”
That turned Tanner’s humor into a confused frown. “You know what I thought of him—he was a great man. A great marine.”
“You and Mac crossed paths a time or two... What did you see from him?” Quinn persisted.
Tanner’s frown deepened. “Are you kidding with this? I saw the toughest bastard in the corps. You know Micah and Dalton and I thought you were a glutton for punishment to go after him to whip you into shape when we were kids—experiencing it for myself when the time came made me know you were a glutton for punishment!”
“Living up to his standards, meeting his expectations, made you better, though, right?”
“Or else,” Tanner said with another laugh, this one a pained comment on what had been required to meet the General’s criteria.
“And that was true of everyone he commanded? Did you ever see him be harder on one person than another?”
“I did,” Tanner admitted. “I was in a training with him about three years ago and he didn’t think one of my guys was up to par. Mac rode him until he was. I almost felt sorry for the guy, but Mac did make him up his game, and believe me, we were grateful for it a couple of missions down the road.” Tanner narrowed his eyes at Quinn. “Why? Was Mac losing it at the end? Getting soft?”
Quinn shook his head without hesitation. “Oh, no, not Mac.”
“Why the questions, then? You want to make sure he lived up to his reputation right to his last breath?”
“Saw that for myself at Camp Lejeune,” Quinn answered. He paused a moment, but felt compelled to press the matter, so he asked, “You ever think he went overboard? Hear secondhand that he had?”
It took Tanner a moment before he answered that question. “I don’t know...” he said. “He demanded more than anybody I’ve ever known. I heard plenty of complaints about him, but I can’t say it was from anyone I ever wanted to have to rely on. And you know what it’s like in the trenches—you don’t want to be there with somebody who couldn’t pass muster with Mac when your life depends on it.”
“So no matter how rough Mac was on anybody, you would have rather had him weed them out than not? Even if he went against protocol, regulations?”
“Protocol and regulations? Wasn’t Mac about as by-the-book as it was humanly possible to be?”
“What if he wasn’t? What if he thought it wasn’t for the greater good to be strictly by-the-book when the book got changed?”
Tanner was staring at him, frowning, obviously puzzled by what Quinn was pressing him for.
Then Tanner said, “I don’t know. I’m not even sure what you’re getting at. I do know that I’ve butted up against new regs, new protocols here and there. Not a lot, but...” He shrugged. “I’ve had occasions. It isn’t always easy to just swallow changes.”
Quinn nodded his agreement. “Yeah, I’ve been there, too. But...” But what? Quinn asked himself, unsure where he was going as he struggled to wade through what his last visit with h
is mentor had left him with.
Rather than find a way to finish this line of inquiry, he turned more philosophical and said, “You think we ever know everything there is to know about anyone?”
“Will there ever be anyone who you let know everything there is to know about you?” Tanner asked without skipping a beat.
“Spoken like somebody who’s seen and done some hard things himself. Things he’ll never be open about,” Quinn said with an entirely humorless chuckle.
“Spoken to somebody who’s seen and done some hard things himself,” Tanner countered.
“For the greater good,” Quinn added, repeating his own earlier words.
“So will I ever want—or let—every bit of me to be known?” Tanner said. “No. And so also, no—no one will ever know everything there is to know about me.”
Quinn conceded that point with arched eyebrows, then focused his eyes on his coffee mug.
“But it seems like something pretty big is weighing on you...” Tanner commented. “We can keep it just between us if you need to get it off your chest.”
Quinn shook his head. “Thanks, but...not yet...” It was all going to come out, but he thought Mac’s family needed to be the first to know. “I have to pack up a ton of Mac’s stuff to get to Clairy today—”
Tanner laughed yet again, this time the laugh of a prodding brother as the tone between them took another switch. “And the voice gets softer when you say her name.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Quinn said, spurning the suggestion of what Tanner was implying.
Tanner narrowed his eyes at Quinn. “Are you getting some comeuppance for how you treated her all those years ago? Maybe you’re a little sweet on somebody who could pay you back hard?”
“Hey, you may have been bitten by some kind of fierce lovebug, but don’t put that off on me,” Quinn warned.
“Wouldn’t think of it. I’m sure you’re above that.”
“Yep.”
“Even with a little redheaded beauty who could give you a run for your money,” Tanner said sarcastically.
“Yep,” Quinn agreed again, as if that statement was so true it didn’t deserve to get a rise out of him.
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