But he hadn’t followed. And there she’d sat in the bathroom, alone and confused, wondering if she’d ever find the courage to leave the room again.
The knob turned again and the door opened inward.
Dulcy saw the familiar hands and the key they brandished, and was instantly on her feet. Why wasn’t she surprised that Esmerelda had a key?
The old woman entered the room and stood there for a moment. She glanced behind her and closed the door. She shook her head slightly, eyeing Dulcy.
“Everyone has arrived,” Ezzie told her quietly.
Dulcy leaned against the wall.
If Esmerelda expected some sort of response, she didn’t indicate so. Instead, she stepped to the sink and picked up the brush lying on the tiled countertop. Without saying a word, she stood in front of Dulcy and began brushing her hair.
Dulcy’s throat closed so tightly she couldn’t draw a breath.
“There, there.” Esmerelda’s hands stilled, and she gently pressed Dulcy’s cheek against her slender stomach.
Dulcy gave herself over to the windstorm of emotions ripping through her, not having known that’s what she was going to do and distantly scolding herself for doing it. Why was she crying? Because of Brad? Because it appeared that everything over the past five months had been a lie? Because she had ultimately found him in the arms of another woman when she’d been afraid for his life?
No. She knew that wasn’t what was at the root of her grief. It was the uncertainty of what existed between her and Quinn.
As unreasonable as it was, she realized she had been hoping that their time together would stretch indefinitely—although logic dictated that eventually, even soon, it would come to an end. Aside from Brad’s reappearance, there was the fact that the nature of their relationship would have come into question with the coming and going of her wedding date this Saturday.
Still, so long as Brad was missing, and she had the excuse of staying with Quinn to look for him, well, all had been right with the world. In a strange sort of way.
Finally, her crying jag slowed. Her breathing began to even out. And the dampness on her cheeks began to dry.
The fabric of Esmerelda’s gold lamé jogging suit was at odds with the woman’s softness and compassion. She began to gently smooth her hands over Dulcy’s head. Dulcy was so grateful for the human touch that she nearly started crying anew.
The old woman didn’t appear in a hurry. She merely stood there patiently, saying nothing, holding Dulcy, not demanding an explanation, but merely showing quiet acceptance.
Dulcy finally found the strength to pull back.
Esmerelda put her fingers under Dulcy’s chin and lifted her face to get a better look. Without a word, she reached for a washcloth, wet it, then began running the cool, cleansing cotton over Dulcy’s hot cheeks.
Five minutes later, under the careful, gentle attentions of Esmerelda, Dulcy’s face looked somewhat normal, her hair was back in her usual French twist, and her blouse and skirt appeared as though they were fresh from the cleaners.
Dulcy began to step from the room, then hesitated. She reached out, took the old Native woman’s hand in hers and squeezed, saying nothing for a moment. She offered up a feeble smile. “Thank you.”
She tried to tug her hand free, but Ezzie held tight. “All this…the reemergence of your fiancé, this changes nothing,” she said so quietly Dulcy almost didn’t hear her.
Dulcy looked down to where their hands were joined, not trusting herself to hold her gaze. “You’re wrong, Ezzie. It changes everything.”
QUINN FELT AS THOUGH his body were bound with rope from neck to foot, preventing him from moving in the way that he’d like, stopping him from doing what he wanted.
When Dulcy finally reentered the room, his stomach tightened to the point of pain. It was obvious that she’d been crying. And the way she refused to meet his eyes worried him more than Brad’s disappearance ever had.
A short time before, Beatrix had shown up at the ranch, her trusty bodyguard Bruno in tow. But more surprising was the presence of Dulcy’s senior partner Barry Lomax. Quinn couldn’t be sure, but he’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Barry’s interest in Beatrix wasn’t solely professional.
Beatrix was crooning to Brad as if he’d just survived an awful car crash. If she ignored the woman standing next to her son, Brad appeared not to notice. Or care.
Quinn’s gaze slid to his ex-girlfriend. Yolanda had always been an incredible-looking woman. Born in Mexico, she had the sleek, Latin features of an Aztec goddess. The biggest problem he’d had with her was that she’d wanted to be treated like a goddess. She was great in the sack, but awful when it came to intimacy. Near the end of their relationship he’d also realized that she was bitter to the core. Bitter about her poor upbringing. Bitter about the life she had to live. Bitter about those who had, when she had not. He hadn’t blinked at Ezzie’s dislike of her when she moved in. Hadn’t even put two and two together when random items began disappearing from the ranch house while new pieces of jewelry began appearing on her person. What had opened his eyes was seeing Yolanda slap Ezzie across the face while in one of her infamous fiery rages. But that rage was nothing compared to what he saw when he confronted her.
He’d immediately packed up her stuff, stuck her into the truck and driven her into town, but not fast enough to avoid hearing her flaunt all the wrongs she’d inflicted on him without his even knowing it.
Then, apparently, she had set her sights on her next victim. Brad.
Suddenly, Beatrix appeared to reach her capacity for concern and stepped back, her expression instantly changing. “How could you do this to me? And who in the hell is this?”
Quinn crossed his arms. Here it comes.
Brad grasped Yolanda and hauled her to stand in front of him. Quinn squinted, finding his behavior interesting.
“Mother, I’d like you to meet Yolanda Sanchez. Yolanda, this is my mother, Beatrix.”
Yolanda held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mizz Wheeler,” she said in her thickly accented voice.
Beatrix kept her eyes focused strictly on her son ignoring Yolanda’s proferred hand. The smile she gave him was decidedly deadly. “Your fiancée and I have been very worried, Bradley.” With an ease provided her from years of training, Beatrix put her arm around Brad and skillfully maneuvered him away from Yolanda and toward Dulcy.
Quinn instantly snapped straighter. He glanced at Dulcy to find the blood draining from her face, her eyes as large as saucers.
“But all’s well that ends well. Isn’t that how the saying goes?” Beatrix said.
“Mrs. Wheeler,” Dulcy said, shaking her head and taking a step back.
“Mother,” Brad said simultaneously, trying to work himself free from Beatrix’s death grip.
Quinn cleared his throat, gaining everyone’s attention. “Beatrix, I think there are some other matters you might want to hear about surrounding the reason behind Brad’s disappearance.”
Beatrix raised her chin. “I need to know nothing except that my son is all right.”
She knew. Quinn wasn’t sure how she knew, but he was one-hundred-percent certain that Beatrix was aware of the financial trouble Wheeler Industries was in.
Beatrix half hugged her son. “And that this wedding we’ve all been looking forward to will take place.”
“Wedding?” Yolanda circled Brad until she was standing between him and his mother.
Quinn rubbed his chin with his forefinger, waiting for the inevitable explosion.
“What wedding?” She pointed toward Beatrix. “Tell her there izn’t going to be no wedding, Brad.” She ran her hand down the front of Brad’s shirt and smiled. “The only person you’re going to marry is me. Isn’t that right, miho?”
The moment of truth. Quinn crossed his arms and waited.
Brad looked from his lover to his mother. Then opened his mouth and said, “That’s completely right, baby.”
Quinn
stared at his friend as if he’d gone insane. Yolanda grinned. Beatrix looked ready to throttle someone, and she didn’t appear to care who.
But Beatrix wasn’t done. Taking Brad by the ear, she led him away from Yolanda. Despite Dulcy looking decidedly uncomfortable, Quinn couldn’t help but be amused.
“Brad, we have an agreement,” Beatrix whispered. “Your part is to marry Dulcy.”
Dulcy dropped her hand. “What? What did you mean by that? What agreement?”
Quinn hated that an entire room and five people separated him from Dulcy. He wanted to place a reassuring arm around her shoulders and pull her to his chest. He wanted to erase the tension from her brow.
Quinn cleared his throat. “Tell her.”
Dulcy finally looked at him, and in the depths of her hazel eyes he saw a pain so deep it made him wince. He began to shake his head, to tell her he hadn’t known—had only suspected what was going on. But she looked quickly away from him and back to Brad and Beatrix. The pain disappeared from her eyes and she stepped more confidently forward.
“Someone had better tell me what’s going on. I don’t care who.”
Barry was the one who looked uncomfortable now. “Dulcy, Wheeler Industries is in trouble. Deep financial trouble.”
Dulcy looked confused. “I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with my marrying Brad.”
Brad looked at her, an apologetic expression on his face. Quinn wanted to sucker punch his best friend again.
“I’m sorry, Dulcy. Really, I am. If not for Yolanda, I would have loved to spent the rest of my life with you. You’re a great girl. Witty. Beautiful. Funny.”
Incredibly sexy, amazingly responsive, with an infinite capacity for love, Quinn silently supplied.
Dulcy’s cheeks reddened. “Well, thanks, Brad. I’ll sleep easier knowing that,” she said quietly, sarcasm lacing the words. “Now tell me about this agreement between you and your mother.”
Yolanda was the one to step forward. Quinn clenched his fists, wanting it to be anyone but her to tell Dulcy the truth.
“Tell her, Brad,” Quinn ordered.
His friend glanced at him and frowned. “Dulcy, it was your family’s money that was going to make Wheeler Industries solvent. As soon as we were married, I was going to tell you of our problems. Then, of course, you and your family would step in and take care of things.”
Dulcy stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. Then something happened that not even Quinn expected. She laughed. Out of the corner of his eye, Quinn also noticed Barry cover his own smile with his hand.
“Let me get this straight. You were going to marry me, Dulcy Ferris, of the Albuquerque Ferrises, for my family’s money?”
Beatrix hiked up her chin. “Why else do you think my son would be interested in a woman of your questionable morals?”
Rather than seeming insulted, Dulcy finally gave in to the laughter shining in her eyes. “That’s funny. Because I was marrying Brad for his money.”
Quinn narrowed his eyes. Her comment went against everything he knew about Dulcy. Never could he see her being as shallow as his best friend apparently was.
Barry folded his hands behind his back. “Perhaps Wheeler’s changing of hands is for the best,” he said carefully. “Because if either of you had bothered to check, you would have discovered that the Ferrises lost their family fortune over two decades ago.”
“What?” Beatrix said, staring at him malevolently.
Barry shrugged, smiling at Dulcy. “Sorry, Trixie. If you had been up front with me, I could have told you that. The only asset of worth Dulcy’s parents own is the house they live in. And even that is mortgaged to the hilt. Their net worth is well in the red.”
“Trixie?” Brad repeated, eyeing his mother and the older attorney. “Did he just call you Trixie?”
“Oh, shut up, Brad,” Beatrix said. She turned to Dulcy. “Is this true?”
Dulcy nodded. Then let loose an unintentional, inelegant snort so loud that even Quinn grinned. She put her hand to her mouth, murmured a quick “pardon me” then said, “Oh, yes. Very true. Exceedingly true. It puts the T in true.”
Barry grinned. “I think you’ve made your point, Dulcy.”
“Why you lying little no-good excuse for a bride,” Beatrix said from between tightly clenched teeth.
“I take offense,” Dulcy said. “While you might be right about the second part, when have I ever lied to either you or Brad? Did you sit me down and ask for a net worth accounting? Did you ask me whether or not my family had money?”
While Quinn found what was happening intriguing, he couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t guessed that Dulcy’s family wasn’t wealthy. From what Brad said, to the vibes Dulcy herself gave off, you would have thought she was raised in the same type of environment as Bradley Wheeler III.
Beatrix stared at her for a long moment, then turned on Yolanda. “I don’t suppose your family has money?”
“I have enough money to pay someone to bust your kneecaps, if that’s what you’re asking,” Yolanda said, her expression warning that she was a breath away from taking on the job herself.
“Whoa,” Brad said, grabbing Yolanda.
“Speaking of kneecap breaking,” Quinn said, “you might want to check into Bruno’s background.” Coincidentally, the Neanderthal had disappeared the instant he confirmed that Brad had, indeed, been found. An associate of Tucci, the flower deliveryman? Quinn suspected so. “I think he’s connected with the nonaffiliated people to whom you owe money, Brad.”
Beatrix looked around, sighing in exasperation. “Brad, what is he talking about?”
The man had the decency to look abashed. “We can talk about that later, Mother.”
Quinn’s guess was that the conversation would come sooner rather than later. One thing Brad had working in his favor was the remoteness of the ranch. If Bruno was contacting Tucci, it would take the other guy a while to get out there, which gave Brad plenty of time to disappear again—until he was ready to face the rest of his problems.
Actually, Quinn wondered how the knowledge of Brad’s penniless status would affect Yolanda’s interest in him. More than likely she didn’t believe that a man of Brad’s caliber could ever actually be broke. And perhaps she was right. People like the Wheelers always managed to find their way out of tight spots, emerging all the wealthier, and smelling like roses.
He glanced beyond the threesome to where Dulcy had gone suddenly quiet again. She stepped toward Barry, who lowered his head to hear something she had to say. Then she walked toward the door.
Quinn’s stomach tightened and he moved to go after her.
“Quinn, ole chum, ole buddy, ole pal of mine,” Brad said, patting him on the arm and stopping his progress. “I owe you one.”
Quinn squinted at him. “You owe me nothing.”
Barry said something to Beatrix, who in turn slapped him across the face. Strangely, the action merely served to broaden Barry’s grin as he followed Dulcy out the door.
“Oh, but I do,” Brad insisted. “Not only are you the one who brought Yolanda into my life, though in a roundabout way, but, because of you, I no longer have to hide out in that shack behind your house.”
Shack? Quinn’s muscles suddenly ached to do some more hitting of his own. He eyed his ex-lover and his ex-best friend. “I hope you two are very happy together. You deserve each other.”
With each step he took toward the door, his heartbeat thumped more heavily, until he finally stood in the open threshold watching Barry drive away, Dulcy in the passenger’s seat staring stalwartly forward.
“Damn.”
14
HOURS LATER Dulcy sat curled up on her overstuffed sofa in her apartment, a pillow crushed to her chest, late-night talk show host Craig Kilborn springing his five questions on an actor she vaguely recognized. Not that she was paying close attention. Mostly—between well-planned attacks on her refrigerator—she sat staring at the television scree
n without seeing anything.
She blinked and brought the contents of her coffee table into focus. An empty carton of ice cream with a wooden spoon sticking out of it. A ravaged box of a dozen chocolate-covered doughnuts. A bag of Doritos she’d abandoned for something sweet. A tub of soft butter she’d slathered over a half loaf of zucchini bread her mother had sent home with her after her last dinner there.
Dulcy groaned and sank lower into the sofa’s soft cushions. She’d hoped to distract herself from the chaos churning through her, or at least eat her way into a sugar coma. Instead her stomach now felt as bad as the rest of her.
Nothing Barry had said or done on the long three-hour drive back from Quinn’s ranch had helped. Not even her fear that he thought she was devastated by Brad’s actions could jar her from her silence. And while his comment that Viagra was the greatest thing since sliced bread hadn’t earned him any more than a blank stare, the information had sunk in enough for her to decide it fell firmly into the “more information than she wanted to know” category. She hadn’t had the stomach to ask him about “Trixie” after that, but got the distinct impression that whatever had happened between the two was well over.
A tear rolled down her cheek and plopped onto the pillow beneath her chin. She absently rubbed the dampness away. Damn seeping eyes.
Okay, so she’d fallen for Quinn. Hard. Which, she rationalized, should make her feel better about the whole situation. Had she come away feeling nothing, had their relationship been about nothing but the sex, then she would have had something to worry about. What she was going through now was proof that she wasn’t the bad-girl she had feared she was. She was nothing but a simple woman looking for a simple relationship. Love. Commitment. Great sex.
She rubbed her nose and sniffed. Two out of three wasn’t bad.
What had she expected? That Quinn would get down on one knee and propose to her the moment they found Brad? She clamped her eyes shut. One thing did bother her about what had happened. Her entire lack of control over everything.
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