by Joss Wood
Wren just cocked her head when his curse bounced off the wall. Quinn swiped his palm across his face and sent her an apologetic look. “Sorry. Frustrated.”
“Sure you are, but I don’t think it’s the article that’s the true source of your frustration.”
When he didn’t ask her what she was implying, Wren shrugged. “So, I made reservations at Sylvie’s for eight tonight for you and Cal. After Sylvie’s, you are going dancing at Beat. Try to look like you are having fun, like you are in love. We need the press to believe that.”
Beat? He’d never heard of it and he thought he knew all of the trendiest clubs in the city. “Is that the new club we invested in, the one in Sandy Cove?”
Wren shook her head. “That’s Cue, as in billiards. No, Beat isn’t a club. I suppose it’s more of an old-fashioned dance hall, sexy music, low lighting... It’s very romantic.”
Yay, romance. Exactly what they needed because they weren’t sexually frustrated enough already.
Oh, this just got better and better. Quinn rubbed the back of his neck. He understood Wren’s need to do some damage control after the ball—he and Cal had looked like anything but the newly married, blissfully happy couple they were supposed to be—but was a romantic dinner and dancing really necessary? Surely they could just hit a club, let the press take a couple of photos of them looking happy and the balance of the universe would be restored. If they went to a club, then they wouldn’t have to talk much and that could only be a good thing because talking to Cal had suddenly become hard work.
For twenty-plus years conversation had flowed between them easily. One kiss and a hot grope and they were tongue-tied, desperately awkward.
He hated it. They needed to resolve it, and quickly. He couldn’t imagine going through the rest of his life, this marriage, this week not being able to talk to Cal. Cal was his sounding board, his moral compass, his reality check. Although she was living in his house, it felt like she was back in Africa and they had no means to communicate.
And when he wasn’t thinking about all the things he wanted to discuss with her, then he was thinking about their kiss, the way she tasted, the softness and scent of her endlessly creamy skin. He wanted to kiss every freckle on her face, wanted to see if her ridiculously long eyelashes could tickle his cheek, how her hands felt wrapped around his...
“You two need to look like you’re in love. Sylvie’s is romantic and Beat is a sexy, sexy place.” Wren’s cool voice interrupted his little fantasy.
“I’ve given a few of my more trustworthy press contacts the details. They’ll be there to snap you looking hot and happy. Do not mess it up,” she warned, drilling a finger into his thigh.
“Why do you automatically assume that I’m the one who’ll muck it up?” Quinn grumbled.
“The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior,” Wren replied, her voice tart. “You threw the first punch in that bar two years ago. You BASE jumped off that building and got arrested for trespassing because you had no right to be there. You were caught flying down the highway on your Ducati. You—”
Quinn held up his hand. “Okay, point made. I will be a good boy and act like a besotted fool.”
Wren cocked her head and frowned at him. “Is that what you think love is? Foolish?”
Quinn looked at her, caught off guard by her question. “Sorry?”
“I’m just curious as to why you think that love is foolish. You make it sound like a waste of time, like it’s boring, almost annoying.”
“You get all that from one word?” Quinn lifted an eyebrow, hoping that his expression would dissuade her from pursuing the subject. Unfortunately Wren wasn’t, and never had been, intimidated by him.
“The definition of foolish is lacking good sense or judgment. Pretty fitting coming from the man who has sold a million papers thanks to his lack of judgment. I find it interesting that you’ll take physical risks but you won’t risk your heart. That you think bailing off a building with just a parachute to break your fall is acceptable but falling in love is dangerous.”
“I never said it was dangerous. I said it was foolish.”
Wren snorted. “Because it’s dangerous. Because your heart could get hurt.”
“This is a ridiculous conversation,” Quinn muttered, standing up. “And it’s over. Will you email Cal the details about tonight or should I?”
“It’s your date. You do it.” Wren crossed her legs and smiled. “Feeling a bit hot under the collar because I mentioned love, Rayne? It’s not so bad, you know—your buds seem to be stupidly happy as they go about creating their families.”
Creating their families... Quinn hauled in a deep breath, hoping the air would blow away his resentment. He couldn’t have what everyone else did—not in the way they had it—and he was trying to do the best he could with what he did have. Why couldn’t anyone see that?
Ah, maybe because you’ve never told a soul about what you’re missing?
“Are you done?” he asked Wren, his voice tight with annoyance.
“I just want you to be happy, Quinn,” Wren told him, her voice soft but sincere.
Quinn stood up and jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “The thing is, Wren, I am happy.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Wren muttered as he left the room.
Six
Sylvie’s was a luxurious, upmarket restaurant serving traditional Italian cuisine in the fashionable Gastown area of Vancouver. It had been a while since she’d eaten at the award-winning restaurant and on any other night she would be looking forward to the evening in the steel-and-glass, exposed-brick restaurant with its incredible wine selection and innovative dishes.
Before the ball, Quinn would’ve been her favorite person to dine with. They would spend ages discussing the menu and deciding what they would eat, arguing about who ordered what because they would, inevitably, end up swapping dishes halfway through. Or she would eat a third of her meal and Quinn would polish off the rest. But that would be dining with the old Quinn, her best friend, not the Quinn who’d pinned her to a wall and kissed the hell out of her, who’d stroked her to the point of overheating and then backed away.
The Quinn she still wanted and couldn’t have.
Cal, dressed in a thong and a tiny strapless bra, glared at her bed and the pile of clothes she’d tossed onto it. What was she supposed to wear on a date that wasn’t a date with a husband who wasn’t actually a husband, with a man who was your best friend but whom you really wanted to get naked with?
Did that make any sense at all?
Cal placed her hand behind her head and groaned. Should she wear the fire-red shift dress with cowboy boots for a country-chic look? Or should she pair it with heels for an urban-chic look? But the long sleeves might be too hot for dancing. Designer jeans and a bustier? Nah, too sexy. Maybe the halter-neck, vintage 1950s, black-and-white, floral dress with her cherry-red stilettos? She had to make up her mind sometime soon—Quinn would be knocking on her door and she still had to do her makeup and her hair.
All she wanted to do was pull on a pair of yoga shorts, her Feed Me Ice Cream T-shirt and veg in front of the TV, eating pizza and drinking red wine. She wanted to watch a horror movie with Quinn, both of them mocking the special effects and providing commentary throughout. She wanted to put her head on his shoulder, or her feet in his lap, have him swipe the half-eaten piece of pizza from her hand.
She wanted him to pick her up and lay her on her back, lean over her and slide his mouth over hers, have his hand drift up her waist and encounter her breast, his thumb swiping her nipple. Cal closed her eyes, imagining him pushing her pants over her hips, exposing her to his hot gaze. His finger sliding over her, testing her, groaning when he realized she wanted him as much as he wanted her...
“Red, have you seen my wallet?”
&nb
sp; Cal’s head snapped up as her door opened. It took her a moment to realize the object of her fantasies was standing in her doorway, athletic shorts riding low on his hips, his broad chest glistening with perspiration. He’d been for a run, Cal remembered. They’d passed each other on the dock as she’d arrived home. He’d been wearing a shirt then and hadn’t bothered to talk to her except to snap out a brief “See you soon.”
Cal bit her bottom lip, her eyes traveling over those long, muscled, hair-roughened thighs; up and over that ridiculously defined abdominal pack; across his broad chest. God, he was hot. When she reached his face, she realized his eyes were still south of the border. Cal lifted her hand to touch her chest and encountered the soft lace of her strapless bra, the warmth of her breast spilling over the top.
She wasn’t exactly wearing much, just a brief pair of panties that matched her bra. And Quinn seemed to like what he was looking at. Should she pick up her dress and cover herself or just stand there? Before their kiss, before the madness, she would’ve mocked him, told him that he looked like a goldfish with his open mouth and sent him on his way.
The only place she wanted to send him was into her bed, to get naked under her covers.
God, she was in so much trouble.
Cal watched as Quinn placed his hands on his hips and closed his eyes. Her eyes looked south again and, yes, there was a ridge in his pants that hadn’t been there before. “God. This, you...”
Cal cocked her head, intrigued. Quinn was never disconcerted, was never at a loss for words. He always had a witty comeback, a way to diffuse tension, a smart-aleck comment. Right now he looked as flustered and, judging by the steel pipe in his pants, as turned on as she was.
“Uh... I’ll find my wallet and I’ll see you downstairs.”
Cal released the breath she was holding as he spun around and walked away. She forced her legs to move across the pale floor to shut the door he’d left open.
When she’d proposed this marriage, she’d thought Quinn to be a safe bet, someone who wouldn’t disturb her calm, orderly life. How could she have been so wrong? He was supposed to be the one man in her life, the one relationship that was stable, solid and unchangeable. Platonic, dammit.
She’d never believed that she would spend her nights—and a good part of her days—flipping between imagining what making love to Quinn would feel like and reminding herself that sleeping with Quinn would not be a good idea.
Having sex with Quinn would make their situation even more complicated; it would be another layer to disassemble when they split up. They were risking their friendship, something that was incredibly important to both of them.
When she felt brave enough to be very honest, she knew she was also terrified that if she slept with Quinn, she could open the portal to feeling something deeper and more intense than she did right now. Those emotions had the potential to be too powerful and if she surrendered to them, she felt like she was granting someone else—Quinn—control over her heart, her life.
She couldn’t do that, not again. Not ever. No one would have control over her again.
Until something changed, until they managed to navigate their way back to friendship, they were caught in sexual purgatory, Cal realized. Unable to be lovers but definitely more than friends. It was, she noted, a very short walk from purgatory to hell.
* * *
“Let’s talk about us sleeping together.”
Cal had been concentrating on her fritto misto di mare, thinking that the food at Sylvie’s was utterly delightful, when Quinn dropped his bombshell statement. She swallowed her half-chewed prawn, washed it down with a sip of fruity white wine and leaned back in her chair. Quinn carried on eating, slicing into his roasted monk fish and lifting his fork to his mouth. He chewed, looked pensive and went back to his dish to prepare another bite.
“After an hour of laborious conversation, how can you toss that across the table and then continue eating?”
Quinn shrugged. “I’ve tried ignoring it, but it isn’t going away so we need to discuss it. And I’m still hungry. And this fish is delicious.”
Cal leaned across the table and kept her voice low, not wanting to take the chance that there was someone in the restaurant who had brilliant hearing. “It? Are we talking about sex in general or you and me in particular?”
“Both.” Quinn gestured to her plate and leaned across, jabbing his fork into a piece of her squid. “Your food is getting cold.” He ate her squid and pointed his fork to her plate. “Damn, that’s good. Do you want to swap plates?”
“No, I want you to explain your comment.”
Quinn reached for his wine and wrapped his big hand around the bowl of the glass. Candlelight cast shadows across his face and turned his hair to gold, his eyes to a deeper shade of green. The skin of his throat and his forearms, exposed by his open-collar gray shirt and rolled-back sleeves, was tan. He looked fantastic and she wanted to jump him...
The urge just kept growing in intensity.
“What we did, that kiss...it’s changed us,” Quinn quietly said.
She couldn’t argue with that. Of course it had.
“The question is, what are we going to do about it?” Quinn took a sip of his wine. “Are we going to do what we’re both thinking about?”
Cal felt the need to protest, to hold her ground. “What makes you think I’m thinking about sex with you?”
“The fact that you stare at me like you want to climb all over me and do what comes naturally.” Quinn looked impatient. “C’mon, Red, we’ve always been honest with each other, brutally so. Let’s carry on doing that, okay?”
Cal wiggled in her chair, ashamed. “I know. Sorry.” She bit her bottom lip and placed her forearms on the table. “I’ve always known that you were a good-looking guy. I’ve known that since you were thirteen and Nelly Porter grabbed you and dragged you behind the gym to kiss you senseless.”
Quinn smiled. “She shoved her tongue in my mouth and I nearly had heart failure. She was my first older woman.”
“She was thirteen and a half.” Cal’s smiled died. “But the point is that I know that women like you, that they are attracted to you, that you’re hot. Intellectually, I understood it, but it never translated.”
“Translated?” Quinn frowned.
Cal tapped her temple. “I got it here, but lately—” she placed a hand on her sternum and stumbled over her words “—I get it, physically.” Cal dropped her head and felt the heat creep up her neck, into her cheeks. “I never expected to be attracted to you, to feel that way about you.”
“I didn’t either, Red, and it’s growing bigger and bolder. I don’t think we can carry on the way we have been living. It’s driving me crazy.” Quinn tugged on the open collar of his shirt. “I keep telling myself that you are my best friend and that our friendship is too important to mess up. But you have no idea how close I came to tossing you on the bed tonight when I saw you in your sexy lingerie.”
Cal saw the heat in his eyes, the desire. Nothing more or less, just pure attraction untainted by manipulation or punishment. “But how could one kiss, one grope change everything?”
“Who knows?” Quinn drained his glass. “But I know that I’ve relived that kiss a million times, wanting and needing more.
“Aren’t you curious?” he asked after a short silence. “If that kiss was so good, don’t you wonder how good we’d be in bed?”
Cal felt hot...everywhere. The heat pooled between her legs. “I’m crazy-curious,” she admitted.
“Of course, that could be because I haven’t had sex since Toby,” she added. Oh, how she wished she could blame her current obsession with Quinn’s body—with Quinn—on the fact that she’d been in a long, dry spell.
It took a moment for those words to sink in. “You haven’t had sex in five years?” he clarified.
“Let’s not.” Quinn lifted their joined hands and nudged her chin so she had to look at him. “Five years since you last had sex tells me that you could take or leave it. That suggests your experiences in the bedroom weren’t that great. Not surprising since you were married to the biggest asshat on the west coast.”
“It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead,” Cal told him, eyes flashing.
“I spoke ill of him when he was alive so I can when he’s dead. So, am I right? Okay, I know you won’t answer that, but I’ll take your nonanswer as a yes.” Quinn shook his head. “What an idiot.”
“Can we go back to talking about risking our friendship for sex?”
“And it is a risk,” Quinn said, his chest rising as he pulled in a huge breath. “I want you, but every time I think about losing you because of sex, I start backpedaling like crazy. I want a guarantee that if we sleep together, we won’t let our friendship get weird.”
“It’s weird right now, and we haven’t even slept together,” Cal pointed out.
Quinn leaned back in his chair and looked stubborn. “I want the sex and I want my friend.”
“There is only one thing I’m sure of when it comes to relationships, Quinn, and that’s there are no guarantees. It is never how you think it’s going to be.”
“Is that what happened with your marriage, Cal? Did it not turn out to be as great as you expected?”
Cal forced herself to meet his eyes.
“Every time I refer to Carter or your marriage, you shut me down. You don’t talk about it and you talk about everything. Especially to me. Which means that you’re either still mourning him because you were crazy in love with him or you had a really bad marriage.”
Cal couldn’t help the shudder and she winced when Quinn’s eyes sharpened. “That’s it. It was bad, wasn’t it?”
Oh, he saw too much, knew her too well. “Maybe I don’t talk about it because I know you never liked him, because you never wanted me to marry him,” Cal protested, voicing the first excuse she thought of.