The Major Gets it Right

by Victoria Pade

  Her own misunderstanding made her laugh. “For a minute, I thought you were asking something else...”

  Quinn smiled. “You thought I was asking how things were in bed...”

  “To answer the real question—yes and no. Jared wasn’t sexist in terms of believing that women couldn’t be more than homemakers. There were women he worked with whom he trusted, respected. But he definitely put me in one role and left me there. He even saw my job with the Jenkins Foundation more as a little hobby that could occupy me when he wasn’t around. I was The Wife and he didn’t want me playing any role but that.”

  “And you still didn’t bolt when you figured that out?”

  She shrugged. “The whirlwind had made me fall in love with him,” she reminded Quinn. “So when everything I tried failed, I spent a lot of time just working at accepting that things were the way they were. Plus, I did have my job—I was free to put in a lot of extra hours and Jared was great for fundraising. I had the best list of the moneyed elite in the state and access to all of them. His connections also gave me inside pipelines to things for my vets that no one else had—”

  “The good with the bad?”

  “That was how I tried to look at it. I also told myself that after the way I grew up, I was kind of uniquely qualified for what the marriage turned out to be. Plus,” she added somewhat sheepishly, “I didn’t want to be the story where I was swept off my feet into an instant marriage that ended as fast as it started. And there was my father... I didn’t want to look impetuous and flighty and add a divorce to the rest of what a disappointment I was to him. So I just tried to take the marriage for what it was and be content with it while I held on to the hope that it would somehow get better—”

  “Like Laine,” Quinn said somberly. “Only Mr. Whirlwind didn’t get any better, either. So what made you reach your limit like Laine did and decide enough was enough?”

  “It was last Christmas. It was the same as every Christmas had been since we were married. Nice, very formal and stuffy because Jared didn’t like homey—that’s what he called what I wanted and he said it as if I was embarrassingly out of style. As always, we had invitations to A-list parties and dinners, concerts, plays, the ballet, and Jared would fit in a few that had business connections...” She shrugged once more. “It was nice enough,” she repeated. “But I was so homesick I was miserable. It all seemed superficial and empty, cold and impersonal. I wanted to be with Mim. I wanted a Merritt Christmas with the ice sculptures and the Christmas Festival. With the cookie competition and exchanges. With the caroling and the church choir. With Marabeth. With all the hominess. And with a husband who was actually enjoying it with me, not sitting in the seat next to me at the symphony engrossed in what he was doing on his phone.” Clairy sighed. “And I realized that I also wanted kids...”

  “For the first time?”

  “I always saw myself with a family, and I assumed we’d get there, even though we never really talked about it—Jared’s friends had kids and that seemed to be what he took his cues from for a home life. And last Christmas it just hit me hard that I wanted that next step—”

  “Even with the way things were?” Quinn asked, as if he doubted the wisdom in that.

  “I guess I tapped into my old habit of trying to somehow make it better. I started to picture becoming a family and that family engaging Jared. I saw us getting out of high-rise living, moving into a house, having the life I’d thought I was going to have. So on Christmas night I cornered him in the bathroom on his way to taking a shower so he didn’t have anything that could take his attention away. And I told him what I wanted for the New Year.”

  “It didn’t go over well,” Quinn said.

  “Jared was calm. He took it in stride. He said he wasn’t thrilled with the family idea, but if I wanted to have a baby, it was up to me.”

  Quinn laughed mirthlessly. “Was he planning to be the father?”

  “More like the sperm donor and sponsor. He said if I had to do it there was a bigger penthouse he had his eye on that could probably accommodate a nursery, but that I should know he wasn’t changing anything beyond that. He definitely wasn’t moving outside of the city or working any differently or any less. He said I could hire a nanny, but there was no way he was doing bottle duty, diaper duty, or getting up in the middle of the night for anything. He said he wasn’t pushing a stroller through a park or going to Little League games—in case I had any illusions about that. He wasn’t going to play Santa or the Easter Bunny, birthday parties would be my thing, not his...” Clairy realized her tone had begun to mimic Jared’s the way Quinn’s had echoed his former girlfriend’s, so she cut herself off.

  She merely did what she’d done with Jared—she got as calm as her ex had been.

  “And that was it for me,” she said resolutely. “I looked at him while he dictated his terms and it occurred to me that somewhere along the way my feelings for him had fizzled. I wasn’t even angry. I realized how much Jared was like my father, and that after my father, after seven years with Jared, I was done accepting, adapting, trying to change anything with that kind of man. I was done being with that kind of man—the kind of man I hadn’t wanted in the first place.” Clairy sighed again. “I said no to his terms, that it was over between us. The day after Christmas, he rented the bigger penthouse to try it out and accommodate a separation. He moved there by New Year’s. I filed for divorce the week after that.”

  “He didn’t look for a middle ground to keep you? He didn’t get upset?”

  She shook her head. “Like my father, the only way was his way. Lawyers worked everything out—there was a prenuptial agreement because I’d come into the marriage with so much less than he had. We didn’t have kids to battle over, so it was all pretty simple—”

  “When was it final?”

  “Not until last week—Jared apparently liked the structure of having The Wife, because by March he had someone new—”

  “Did he do the whirlwind deal again?”

  “No, he actually wooed that client he’d lost when he’d refused to date the client’s daughter—”

  “Oh, jeez, he hooked up with the daughter to get the client back?”

  “And cemented that business relationship in the process—two birds with one stone. They were engaged in May and he needed the divorce to be final, or he’d still probably be too busy to sign the papers.”

  “What about you?”

  Clairy shook her head. “I was kind of surprised that there weren’t even enough feelings left to make any of it hurt. Jared had been gone so much, he’d been so distant when he was around, that it was hard to tell when he wasn’t living there anymore. Nothing much changed except that I didn’t have to cater to him.”

  “So it was more like putting in notice to leave a job you’d had for seven years?”

  “I never looked at it like that but it sort of was,” Clairy said with another laugh. “I wish I would have thought of that earlier. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so guilty for not being more upset. And as for The Wife Number Two, I just hope she has more idea what she’s getting into than I did.”

  Quinn’s expression became reflective. “I guess you could say that Mac was a bad influence on both of us when it comes to our personal lives.”

  “I guess you could,” Clairy agreed.

  “But now I’ve woken up and will be more careful, and you won’t make the same mistake again,” Quinn said.

  “Uniform or no uniform,” Clairy said firmly.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Quinn said compassionately. He leaned forward and reached across her to put his half-full wineglass on the table with hers, and when he straightened up again, he was nearer than he’d been before.

  Looking more raptly into her eyes, he added, “I think the guy did have feelings for you, though—even if he didn’t show it or beg you not to end it or try to find a compro
mise to keep you.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He may have made the decision to find himself The Wife Number Two so he could get his client back and avoid the nuisance of fix-ups again, but I don’t think he would have put so much into the whirlwind with you unless there was something else there at the start...on his part.”

  “He might have been infatuated, I suppose.” That was as far as Clairy would go, because in analyzing it, she couldn’t see that there had been more than that from Jared.

  “Or maybe he just loved you as much as he was capable of loving anything outside of what he did,” Quinn suggested.

  “You think that’s how it was with my father,” Clairy returned.

  “I do. Because I don’t think Mac didn’t love you. I think he just loved you as much as he could love anything or anyone other than the marines. Maybe it was the same with this guy and his work.”

  “Then I’d say that I need someone who can love me more than that,” she said.

  “I’d say you deserve that,” Quinn said quietly.

  And there they were, both of them at junctures in their lives that left the future up in the air. Clairy newly divorced, armed with a lesson and resolutions but no assurance what would happen from here, and Quinn undecided about where to let his own personal life go.

  But to Clairy it seemed as if they’d arrived at a moment in time, a place, that felt like a haven, suspended between their pasts and the futures that hadn’t yet begun. And it was as if what had been happening between them since Quinn had arrived in town was coming awake once more in his cobalt blue eyes scanning her face, peering into her eyes, his focus solely on her...

  All thoughts of the past really did fade away now.

  Quinn raised a palm high on the back of her head and leaned in far enough to kiss her forehead—a kiss that consoled, that said everything was going to be all right, better.

  Then, just when Clairy thought he would go on to a more potent kiss, he took his hand back, sat straight and put distance between them.

  In a voice that was slightly gravelly, he said, “It’s dangerous for me to stay, so I should probably take off.”

  Take off your shirt...take off your pants...

  “You’re afraid of me?” Clairy challenged.

  “Yep,” he answered without a qualm. “Afraid of how much you make me want you. Afraid of what I might do about it.”

  “Because you’d rather not?”

  “Oh, I’d rather,” he said emphatically. “But last night—”

  “Was last night and tonight is tonight...”

  She hadn’t thought this through. She hadn’t made a decision. So why was she flirting with finishing what they’d started the previous evening? Flirting with him?

  It was because she wanted him.

  Still, she reminded herself that it was Quinn who had ended things—even if she might have somehow conveyed hesitation, he’d been the one to cut it short.

  “But last night what?” she asked, repeating what he’d said before she’d interrupted him.

  “Last night I was on the verge of no return and I didn’t want to do anything rash. And that’s still true.”

  “Except that now we’ve lived with the idea for twenty-four hours...” she pointed out in a temptress’s tone she hadn’t planned.

  “So it wouldn’t be rash?”

  Everything in her was crying out for exactly that—being rash and impulsive and just giving in to what her own body was demanding of her.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to admit that out loud, so she answered only with a smile and a small shrug of one shoulder.

  Quinn turned his head partially to the side and gave her a suspicious glance out of the corner of his eye. “Where’re we going with this, Clairy?” he asked, insisting on candor.

  “Upstairs?”

  “Don’t make it my call because I’ll say yes.” Another warning. “So be sure,” he commanded.

  She cocked her head and studied him, considering it all before giving another flippant remark.

  Marabeth had advised her to just have fun for this one night. It was an alluring idea.

  But it would be with Quinn Camden. The jaw-droppingly handsome Quinn Camden, who was that kind of man that she was so determined to avoid. That kind of man her father had been. That kind of man Jared had been.

  Tonight Quinn wasn’t that kind of man, though. And he hadn’t been that kind of man since he’d shown up in Merritt last weekend. Since then—and tonight—he’d been attentive, interested in her, not at all self-involved or distracted by anything. He’d been agreeable, understanding, cooperative, caring and compassionate.

  And even if he went back to being the kind of man she wasn’t going to get involved with again, a single night wasn’t involvement. It was just phase one of her postdivorce life. Nothing serious. Just fun...

  As long as she made sure that she did come away from it unaffected and detached...

  Could she do that? she asked herself.

  After her divorce, after her father’s death, after all she and Quinn had just talked about tonight, she was craving something less serious as much as she was craving him. And Marabeth’s idea of just doing this for fun suddenly seemed like the best advice anyone had ever given her. So she swore to herself that she would make absolutely certain not to read anything more into it than it was, and she honestly thought she could keep herself from getting attached.

  “Upstairs,” she decreed.

  Quinn laughed. “That sounded like an order. I’m good at taking orders. I’m good at giving them. But I don’t think that’s how I want this to go...”

  “How do you want it to go?”

  He smiled a sexy smile and looked into her eyes again as if there was no one else on earth. Then he replaced his hand on the back of her head to hold her to a second kiss, this one an enticing meeting of their mouths—a light, lips-parted, sweetly sensual kiss that didn’t say upstairs at all.

  It said relax and let me do the work...

  Which was a relief to Clairy on this first foray out of a lengthy relationship that had been void of any intimate inspiration and left her a bit unsure of herself.

  But not unsure of what she wanted, so she parted her lips more, beckoning his tongue to come and play.

  There was no tentativeness in Quinn’s answer—he instigated a game of cat and mouse that Clairy eagerly joined as her hands rose to the back of his neck, up into his coarse hair, then down again to those splendidly wide shoulders.

  With one hand still cradling her head, his other arm came around her to pull her in closer, and Clairy’s palms glided down to lie flat against his back as their kiss deepened.

  There was something about kissing him that was so natural that it was almost as if he was the only man she was ever meant to kiss and she’d finally found him.

  But the minute that thought came to her, she curbed it, telling herself it was not one-night-stand thinking and could put her in jeopardy.

  Besides, that kiss was too good not to merely enjoy on its own merit. At least for a while longer.

  Until it began to occur to her that she’d never seen him shirtless and that brought back her inclination to relocate.

  She didn’t know if he sensed that, or if he just had the same inclination, but he looked into her eyes again.

  “Still sure?” he asked.

  “Still sure,” she said in a whispery tone she’d never heard herself use.

  Then she took the initiative, and his hand, stood and pulled him to his feet to take him into the house, through the kitchen and up the stairs to her room, where she’d left her small bedside lamp on to come home to tonight.

  But now, standing beside the bed, she wasn’t so sure that had been the best choice—even the faint glow of the single bulb seemed too bright to her when she tho
ught about shedding her own clothes.

  So she bent over and turned off the lamp.

  When she returned to looking up at Quinn, she found a knowing smile on that handsome face that she could still see fairly well in the bright glow of moonlight coming in the bedroom’s windows. But he didn’t say anything. He merely kissed her again, chastely, as if taking a cue from her need for the modesty of darkness.

  It didn’t matter, though. Even a virtuous kiss was still a kiss, and now that they actually were upstairs, in her bedroom, containing what was between them was impossible for more than a fleeting moment.

  Quinn had no problem finding the zipper of her dress, lowering it slowly.

  That was all the encouragement Clairy needed. She rolled up the bottom of his shirt, breaking away from the kiss long enough to take it off over his head.

  She couldn’t sneak the peek she wanted, but it did give her free access to his bare back. From expansive shoulders down to his narrow waist, up his sides and forward to pecs, where the discovery of his tight male nibs made her own nipples kernel even tighter in answer.

  Quinn had an agenda, too. Clasping his strong hands around both of her arms, he brought her up against him before those hands burrowed inside her dress’s opening to her back.

  Thick, adept fingers manipulated her muscles, loosening them, ridding them of tension at the same time he aroused her and made her itch for even more.

  Then those hands went up to her shoulders, snaked under the straps and coasted downward. Her dress dropped to hang on her forearms, leaving her breasts uncovered.

  A brush of cooler air turned her nipples diamond-hard and Clairy let the dress fall from her wrists to the floor around her feet, leaving her only in her lace bikinis...and feeling a bit bolder.

  Bold enough that when she reached out to him again it was to the waistband of his jeans.

  There was a substantial greeting waiting there behind his zipper, and Quinn helped set it free even as he disposed of his shoes.