“I’m Quinn,” she said, holding out her hand. “I don’t think we were really properly introduced.”
Calder’s mother hesitated a moment, but then accepted Quinn’s hand when she realized she wasn’t going to give up.
“Rose,” she said.
Quinn smiled, the irony of her name not lost on her. She turned back to the dishes, scrubbing the pot that had held the best chicken soup she’d ever eaten.
“Addie’s quite a rambunctious child. Is she always that energetic?”
“She’s just like Andi. I could never keep up with her.”
A dark cloud descended over Rose, storm clouds matching it in her eyes. She looked at Quinn, accusations like darts in those same eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? Do you have children, Dr. Naylor?”
She spat out Quinn’s last name like it was bitter on her tongue. Quinn shook her head, her thoughts immediately jumping to her patients whom she’d always assumed would be the closest she would ever get to having a child of her own.
“I don’t.”
“Then you have no idea what it’s like to spend time raising a child, loving her and caring for her, only to have her snatched away and tortured like she means nothing. Like her life was nothing.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what that’s like.” Quinn set down the pot she’d been scrubbing and rubbed the soap bubbles from her hands before leaning back against the counter to face Rose. “What that man did to your daughter was horrific.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I saw the police reports, read the autopsy reports. I read what they believed was done to her.”
Surprise flashed across Rose’s face. “Where would you get a copy of those things?”
“The district attorney sent them to my father when Wallace petitioned him for a pardon. He was hoping it would keep my father from doing exactly what he did.”
Rose stepped back, this information clearly new to her. “The district attorney did that?”
“He did. He even came to the mansion and begged my father. I remember sitting outside the room, listening to their argument. The district attorney called my father a sadistic bastard.”
“I’ve called him that a few times myself.”
Quinn bent her head in agreement. “So have I.”
Rose tilted her head as she considered Quinn. “You saw the report? My husband . . . it drove him out of his mind when the detective showed it to him.”
“It was bad, Rose. Really bad.”
She nodded, tears flooding her eyes. “I told Angus that it would have been better if we didn’t know. Knowing was more torture than what our meager imaginations could conjure.”
“I’m sorry for what my father did to your family. If I’d been older, if I’d had any sway over him, I would have tried.”
“You were, what, fifteen when that happened?”
Quinn nodded. “I was a year younger than your daughter.”
“You were his only child. And he looked at those things, saw what he did to my baby girl, and he still let that monster out of prison.”
“My father is a monster in his own right, Rose.”
Rose looked up, stared at Quinn as if she were seeing her, really seeing her, for the first time. “He was cruel to you, wasn’t he?”
Quinn was caught off guard by the tears that suddenly burst from her eyes. She turned away, trying to hide them, overcome in a way that had never happened to her before. Rose moved closer and laid her hand on her shoulder.
“You’ve had to be strong for a long time, haven’t you?”
Quinn nodded, turning slightly as Rose pulled her into her arms. For a second, Quinn resisted her, but then allowed herself to be held. Rose stroked the back of her head, smoothing her hair down against her skull. No one had ever done that for Quinn before.
She closed her eyes, sobs coming so quickly that she couldn’t give voice to them. No one had ever believed her when she told them about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. Even when she showed them the scars, when she lifted her shirt and showed them how he was so careful to keep the marks to her torso so that they couldn’t accidentally be viewed by outsiders, they didn’t believe her. Her father—even her mother—made up fantastic stories that explained the marks away. Who would believe a child over the governor and his wife?
But Rose believed her.
When Quinn regained some control over herself, Rose led her to a chair and fixed her a cup of tea.
“We all have our burdens to carry. Some are larger than others, some more painful than others. I carry the burden of guilt in the fact that I let my daughter down. I let her walk home alone from school that day even though I knew Calder wouldn’t be with her. I was too busy. I had a bridge game with the girls from church.” She brought the tea to the table. “While I was laughing with my friends, kicking butt at bridge, my daughter was stolen from a safe neighborhood and taken to that man’s house and tortured unimaginably.” She sighed. “I won’t let Addie out of my sight whenever we leave the house. And you bet I always make myself available to pick her up after school even when I know Calder is going to pick her up. I’ve followed the two of them home dozens of times just to make sure he arrived when he said he would. Not because I don’t trust him, but because I don’t trust anyone.”
Quinn held the hot cup of tea between her hands and let the warm aroma drift over her face. The pictures from the autopsy file filled her mind as they often did during her nightmares. She looked at Rose, thinking how much she looked like her daughter.
“She’d be an adult now. Married with children of her own, probably.”
Rose nodded. “She wanted to be a pediatrician. Isn’t that funny? The daughter of two working class people and she wanted to be a doctor.”
Quinn smiled softly. “I read that in the paper somewhere.”
“Did you?”
She nodded. “I stole the newspaper from my father’s office for months, found everything I could about your family. And then I went to the library and printed out every article they ever published about her. There were a lot.”
Rose smiled, too. “Calder did that. But you and your family were his subject of choice.”
“He told me.”
“He was obsessed with your father. He told me that he was going to find him someday and kill him for what he’d done to us. I told him it was nonsense, but I was afraid he’d actually do it.”
Quinn shook her head. “Calder’s too good a man to do something like that.”
Rose sighed. “Yes, well, before Addie, he was different. Angry all the time.”
Quinn sipped the tea and set it carefully down on the table. She studied Rose’s face, her thoughts all over the place. “My father really screwed us all up, didn’t he?”
Rose touched her hand lightly. “What did he do to you, Quinn? How did he hurt you?”
Again, no one had ever asked her that question before. There was such kindness in Rose’s voice that she couldn’t breathe for a moment for the lump of tears that lodged in her throat. When she could, she took a deep breath and stood, slowly unbuttoning the front of the dress Calder had dressed her in—for reasons she didn’t want to consider at the moment—revealing some of the scars that marked her body.
“It wasn’t just him. His wife would hold me down, whisper in my ear that it would end faster if I just lay still.”
Anger burst in circles of red on Rose’s cheeks, just like the buds of the flowers she was named for.
“A mother is supposed to protect her children!”
“But I’m not her daughter.” Quinn dropped back into her chair. “I was adopted. She wouldn’t even allow me to call her mother unless there were reporters around.”
“My Lord,” Rose hissed under her breath. “I don’t know who the true monster was, your father or that woman!”
Quinn shrugged.
“Does Calder know this?”
Quinn shook h
er head. “He might suspect.”
Rose sighed. “I guess evil does come in many forms.”
They talked for a while longer, all the distrust and hatred gone from Rose’s eyes, replaced with something like pity that wasn’t as degrading as that. And affection. Quinn didn’t recognize it at first, but she was beginning to move into a place where she did.
She’d seen it in Calder’s eyes. And she definitely saw it when they both looked at Addie.
To be loved the way they loved that child must be incredible. It was something Quinn had always assumed was not meant for her world. But maybe . . .
Rose went up to bed after a while, claiming Addie would be up bright and early and someone needed to be downstairs to keep her corralled. Quinn finished her tea, now cold, and rinsed the cup before setting it in the dishwasher with the others. She was curled up on the couch, wrapped in her own blanket, her thoughts full of the unbelievable events of the day when Calder walked in.
“Hey, what are you doing still up?” he asked, coming to her the moment he spotted her there.
“Waiting for you.”
He bent to kiss her before sliding onto the couch beside her. “Was it completely unbearable, being alone with my mom and child?”
“It was nice, actually. Really nice.”
He rubbed his thumb against her cheek, a little concern lighting in his eyes. “Have you been crying?”
“It was a good kind of crying.”
“There’s a good kind of crying?”
“Sometimes.”
He drew her face toward his, kissed her like it was the first time, his lips so gentle and kind that it almost broke her heart. She scooted into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck as she returned the kiss, loving just the taste of him, the feel of him. She almost wished they could just sit there like that for the rest of their lives.
But then he was slipping his hand under her skirt, his palm hot and callused against her thigh, waking things deep inside of her that she assumed had been fully satisfied earlier in the day. But, apparently not.
His mouth moved from hers, down along the curve of her jaw to the hollow of her throat. She sighed as he drew a piece of skin between his lips and sucked gently, not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to make her nipples stand up and pay attention. She ran her hands over the top of his head, her fingers digging into the elastic holding his hair, pulling it loose so that his hair flowed all around his head.
“Sampson, huh?”
He chuckled softly against her throat. “It was a book I read to her once. It stuck in her head, I guess.”
“Why is your hair long?”
“I like it this way. Do you?”
She pulled back a little, studying it. “I do, surprisingly enough.”
“Why is it a surprise?”
“Because I used to think guys with long hair were feminine. But this is as far from feminine as you can get.”
He grunted. “I can show you just how far from feminine I am.”
She laughed and then groaned as he buried his face against her breasts, drawing a nipple into his mouth through the layers of her clothing. He nibbled on it, sending waves of both pain and pleasure through her body. She wrapped her arms tighter around his head, her own head spinning from the intense sensation.
And then he stood up, his mouth moving to her shoulder as he carried her to the stairs. She bit back a moan or two, afraid of waking Rose or Addie, but then they were behind the closed door of his bedroom, a large room with definite masculine influences, but all that mattered to her at that moment was the king-sized bed against the far wall. He lay her there, careful to control her fall, his mouth sliding down the center of her body until he was between her legs, pushing her skirt up, his mouth pressed against the center of her panties the moment they were exposed. He bit down, gently, doing things to her that she couldn’t even begin to put words to.
Every nerve in her body seemed to scream as he tugged her panties down over her hips, his mouth moving to her inner thigh, to that warm, moist spot in the crook of her leg that seemed to hold every nerve nature had placed in her body. She gripped the comforter under her, biting down hard on her lip to keep a scream in her throat.
When he turned his attention on her clit, she was lost. Her thoughts were just a jumble, her body a ball of nerves that were all centered on that teeny button at the center of her body. She moved her hips to encourage him to touch the places that felt the best, then moved so that he wouldn’t concentrate on those incredible spots for too long, so he wouldn’t drive her out of her mind. But then she wanted it again, unable to keep her hips still. It felt like heaven, like all the pleasure God had ever intended a single person to experience. She’d never known anything like it, never known anyone who could worship her body in this way.
He kept at it for so long that she had to beg him to stop. She wanted to see him, wanted to feel him inside of her. She wanted his weight against her body, wanted his arms to hold her in his embrace. She wanted everything they’d shared before, but more, wanted everything he had to offer. And she wanted it as quickly as he was willing to offer it. Sooner.
She laughed almost giddily when he stood and began to strip himself of his clothing, his eyes burning with desire as he studied her. She sat up and, without thinking it through, ripped her dress off over her head. Her bra came next, his eyes already wide with surprise. He pushed her back against the mattress, his fingers tracing scars he shouldn’t have seemed so familiar with, his eyes never leaving hers.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered softly.
For the second time that day, tears fell from her eyes without warning, without the potential of control. She wrapped her arms around him, held him as close as she could for a moment. And then she reached between them, worked almost frantically to free him from his jeans.
She needed him then more than ever.
He was inside of her, his jeans still clinging to his ass, their bodies locked together for a long moment before she pushed him to rock his hips against hers, to build that friction that was so delicious that it had the power to make a grown person lose their mind. She wrapped her legs around him, relaxed her body as he took her for a ride. And what an amazing ride it was. His face red, his need written everywhere, he studied her face as he approached that jump off the high cliff.
“Thank you,” she whispered just as that tightening sensation hit, just as she fell over the cliff, as the waves of pleasure burst through her body over and over again. He joined her, pressing his mouth to her shoulder to dull the sound of his screams. It seemed to last forever, that moment, that shared dive into the ultimate source of pleasure. She never wanted it to end.
But when it did, he rolled away from her, but pulled her back into him, holding her tight against his chest.
“Will it always be that good?” she asked after a time, half joking, but mostly serious.
“I hope so,” he said against her ear.
He nibbled at her ear, his mouth moving down to her shoulder, his tongue sneaking little tastes of her skin there.
“Not to ruin the mood,” he said a few minutes later, his hands slipping over her body, her belly, his erection still pulsing against her hip, the promise of more pleasure in the immediate future impossible to ignore. “But I need to ask a few questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like, can you tell me about Dr. Morgan?”
That was a name Quinn didn’t like hearing. Just the sound of it sent waves of anger through her, the memory of seeing her hit a child who’d just endured six hours of painful surgery burned into her head.
“She’s a cut-rate doctor who works on the pediatric floor. I was about to testify at a disciplinary hearing against her when the accident happened. The next day, actually.”
“Did you testify?”
“No. It was postponed to sometime next week.”
“Do you remember seeing her at the party that night?”
Quinn nodded. “She c
ame up to me and suggested I not drink in case the committee found out about it and disregarded my testimony. I told her to go to hell and walked away.”
Calder kissed her shoulder again. “And then what did you do?”
“I spoke to Dr. Petrov for a moment. He wanted to know about a surgery I was scheduled to perform the following day. He wanted to scrub in, but I’d already chosen another fellow to do so.”
“Was he angry?”
“No.” Quinn looked over her shoulder at him. “He was disappointed, but Dimitri understands how things work. And he knew that I’d invite him on another surgery that would be just as interesting.”
“And that’s when you had the drink?”
“Yes. But I only took a sip or two.”
Calder rolled onto his back and rested his arm over his eyes for a moment. She rolled toward him, tugging at his arm so that she could see his eyes.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking it looks more and more like Dr. Morgan was behind this. I’m just not sure how to prove it.”
“Dr. Morgan?”
“She had to discredit you.” He studied her face, brushing her hair back so he could see her eyes in the dim light. “She’d had multiple complaints against her before, but this time not only was there an eyewitness, but a respected doctor who was the witness. She would have been fired.”
“How do you know that?”
“I spoke to a couple of members of the disciplinary committee. They explained the process to me, and what would have happened if you were to testify before the accident.”
“But why choose Kaden?”
Calder stroked her cheek with his thumb, hesitating for reasons she didn’t understand.
“Do you know a man about five-foot-four, gray hair, a—”
“Why are you asking me about him?”
“You know him, then?”
“I do. He’s my father’s chief of staff. Julien Simpson.”
“He’s pretty distinctive, yes?”
“Definitely. He looks like a child playing dress up.”
Calder nodded. “Do you remember seeing him the night of the party?”
Quinn shook her head, even as she strained to try to remember details of the party that were lost to her forever. “Why would he have been there? It was a hospital thing.”
Mastiff Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 36