by Lily Everett
Captain nudged at Marcus with his muscled shoulder, gently bumping him back a step in the direction of the gate. Marcus laughed a little, lifting his head to find Quinn watching them with that happy smile still lighting up her face.
Hell, that smile could light up the whole world.
“Now I’m alive again,” Marcus muttered as emotion rushed through him, painful and aching and intense and invigorating. “And it’s all her fault. Come on, let’s go kick her in the shins.”
But of course, nobody kicked anyone. Instead, Captain followed along behind Marcus as docile as a dog on a leash, and waited patiently while Quinn exclaimed over how well they’d done. Captain knew the drill.
Sure enough, once Quinn was done praising Marcus, she reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie full of irregularly shaped white lumps. “The horse gets sugar,” Marcus said, crossing his arms over his chest as Quinn held her flat palm over the gate for the treat to be licked up by the long, rough tongue. “What do I get?”
Quinn unconcernedly wiped her hand on her hip and gave Marcus a flirty look. “You can have some sugar, too, if you want.”
Just to be a dick, Marcus held out his hand. But instead of dropping a sugar cube into his palm, Quinn stepped up onto the lowest rung of the gate and leaned over it to plant a kiss on the corner of Marcus’s mouth.
“There’s your sugar,” she said, in a throaty voice that went straight to Marcus’s groin. “And there’s more where that came from. Unless you’re going to tell me this morning was a mistake.”
Marcus felt his throat tighten up, but he shoved the words out anyway. “It might be a mistake. But I want you.”
For as long as I can have you, he amended silently while Quinn threw her arms around his neck and hung on tight.
I know it won’t be forever. But I’ll take what I can get. And deal with the pain when it comes.
In the meantime, he’d have this. Quinn in his arms, her soft, lush mouth against his, her agile fingers flexing in his hair.
This is worth a lot of pain, he mused as he sealed their lips together in a fiery kiss.
Chapter 13
Paul didn’t know what changed between his daughter and her fiancé that day she took him with her to the barn, but something definitely had. They were … easier with one another, somehow, and yet at the same time, the air between them crackled with a kind of electricity that made Paul clear his throat and hide behind his newspaper.
He wanted that happiness for his daughter. Of course he did. He just didn’t want to think too hard about what all those smoldering stares and glancing touches were leading up to.
And if he were honest, it all reminded him too much of the heat he missed between himself and Ingrid.
It had been years since they couldn’t bear to be out of arm’s reach. It was natural that time would mellow the intensity of that first flush of passion, but Paul still missed it sometimes.
These days, the closest he and Ingrid came to matching the heat of their early relationship was when they argued over Dr. Ron’s ridiculous stone circle. Should they do it at all, and if so, where would it go and what kind of stone would it be made of? How big would it be?
“I just think, if we’re going to do it we might as well go all the way,” Ingrid argued. “And yes, we’re going to do it, you already agreed. I don’t want to have that fight all over again.”
“I agreed under duress,” Paul grumbled, staring up at the stacks of stone samples out back of Hackley’s Hardware on Main Street. It was where he and Quinn had bought the paving stones they’d used for the front walkway, and the Hackley brothers had agreed they could source the larger stones Ingrid had in mind. They’d barely even smirked, in spite of their reputation as the town pranksters and resident bad boys.
His wife tended to have that effect on people, Paul thought. She was so earnest, even in her goofiest beliefs, that it took all the fun out of mocking her. Not that Ingrid ever seemed to notice. She tended to assume everyone agreed with her wacky outlook on life.
Paul had always admired that ironclad sense of self, but these days, he envied it, too. Ingrid knew exactly who she was and she never faltered from that vision of herself and her life. Nothing seemed to shake it.
He flipped over the price tag taped to the wall above a stack of slate in varying shades of blue and gray, shaking his head. “I just can’t believe we’re spending money on this.”
“It’s not about the money. Why does everything come back to money with you?” Ingrid wrung her hands together in distress. “You worked long hours for years and years so we wouldn’t have to worry or be a burden to Quinn when we got older, but now here you are, still worrying! Can’t you enjoy the moment?”
Paul manfully didn’t point out how little there was to enjoy in a moment spent standing in the packed-dirt yard behind Hackley’s Hardware, contemplating hunks of rock. At least they’d managed to ditch Guru Ron and come alone.
Instead, he said, “We have enough savings to keep us comfortable for whatever time we have left, but not enough to throw money away on senseless extravagance. We have to be sensible.”
Glowering, Ingrid said, “I hate that word. Sensible. It exists solely to suck all the joy out of life. You didn’t used to be so sensible all the time. So staid and conventional.”
“I was, though.” Paul looked away, his jaw hardening. “I really was. Maybe you didn’t want to see it, but I was always the sensible one. Somebody had to be.”
The bitter little sentence hung in the air between them, poisoning every breath, until Ingrid finally choked out, “Oh? And how’s that working for you? Are you happy?”
“Happiness isn’t all that matters in life.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong. It’s the only thing that matters.”
They stared at each other, lost in the moment. Ingrid looked at him like she either wanted to shake him or kiss him, and Paul heard the blood pounding in his ears. He’d always loved the way she went toe-to-toe with him over the things she wanted. Right now, it felt as if she were fighting for him, for them, for their life together.
Paul’s gaze dropped to her mouth, those lips he knew so well. He’d be able to tell her kiss in the dark, distinct from hundreds of other women. He’d kissed her so many times, the act had all but lost its meaning.
Right then, standing under the open sky and surrounded by slabs of cold, featureless stone, Paul remembered exactly what it meant to need to kiss his wife.
He leaned in, savoring the way Ingrid’s eyes widened then creased with delight as she moved closer to meet him. But before their mouths could touch, Luther Hackley called from inside the store, “Hey, how are y’all making out? See anything you like?”
Ingrid jolted back a step, a pretty pink flush heating up her cheeks. Gritting his teeth, Paul held back a comment on exactly how he and his wife had been about to make out before they were so rudely interrupted. But it was for the best, probably, Paul rationalized with a sinking heart. They weren’t kids. They couldn’t solve all their problems by falling into bed.
“We’ll take the limestone,” he said, looking away from his wife’s bright blue eyes to dig through his pockets. “I’ve got a page with the measurements we need. Here.”
“And we’ll need help loading it into the truck,” Ingrid put in, raising her chin defiantly at him as if she expected Paul to argue the point.
But he wasn’t stupid. He knew he wasn’t a young man anymore. He was old and past it—past everything.
He handed the paper with the stone measurements to Luther, his fingers gnarled and skinny next to the strapping younger man’s broad, work-callused hands. Shoulders hunching, Paul turned away from his wife and headed back through to the cash register inside the store to fork over hundreds of dollars for the chance to make his backyard the laughingstock of the island.
Not that he cared. What did it matter if people thought they were nuts for building a standing stone circle in their garden? If Ingrid actually we
nt ahead and left him, they’d give the town something a lot juicier to talk about.
The breakup of a marriage after thirty years.
*
Over the next few days, things at the Harper house settled into a comfortable, if unconventional, routine. Quinn’s father made breakfast every morning, then he and her mother went outside to argue over the placement of the stones while Ron looked on with an anticipatory gleam in his flat, shark’s eyes. On the days when Marcus didn’t tag along to Windy Corner with Quinn, he served as the muscle for the stone circle project, digging foundations and heaving waist-high rocks around.
It was a good outlet for his excess energy, which tended to build up over a night of sleeping with Quinn in his arms. By mutual, unspoken agreement, they were taking things slower this time around. Which meant plenty of heavy petting, kissing until her mouth was swollen and red, but that was it.
They’d done everything backward so far, Marcus thought. They started sleeping together before they really knew each other, then they broke up before getting engaged, and now here they were. Not engaged for real, but together for real, even if everyone around them thought Marcus was her fiancé and not her boyfriend.
It seemed like getting together for real should have made their lives less complicated, but it hadn’t. At least they weren’t talking about it all the time. They were letting things be, and planning to reassess their relationship on her parents’ anniversary, the original end date for their fake engagement. Which either wasn’t fake, or wasn’t an engagement.
Complicated.
Marcus sighed and squinted his tired eyes against the late afternoon sun. Mrs. Harper’s garden was a riot of spring color: cheerful scarlet and gold striped tulips waved their heavy heads in the salt breeze, shaded by flowering lilac bushes. The air was sweet with the scent of everything in full bloom, the tender, green smell of grass mingling with the mineral tang of limestone dust and sandy dirt.
For once, he was alone in the garden. Paul and Ingrid had gotten increasingly icy with each other over the angle of the northernmost stone, until finally they’d retreated to their separate corners. Paul was in the kitchen, and Ingrid had closeted herself in their room with Dr. Ron for some kind of psychodrama gestalt aura work.
Marcus leaned on his long-handled shovel and scrubbed the back of his wrist over his sweaty brow. It came away gritty with rock dust that he wiped on his jeans.
He was fantasizing about the giant glass of lemonade he planned to guzzle as soon as this final rock was set in the ground when he heard Quinn’s car pull up in front of the house. Without meaning to, Marcus felt his lips curl upward in a smile.
Sue him, he was happy she was home.
Reminding himself it was okay to enjoy this while it lasted, he waved at Quinn when she stuck her head around the side of the house to see who was still at work in the garden.
The way her eyes lit up when she saw him made Marcus feel like he’d swallowed the sun.
“They left you all alone out here!” Quinn hurried over, already rolling up her shirtsleeves. He loved the way she never hesitated to get in there, get her hands dirty, get involved.
“I don’t mind. I like the quiet,” he told her.
A shadow crossed her face, but her voice was light and playful as she teased, “Oh, is that so? I can go, if you want…”
She laughed when he snagged her by the elbow and reeled her in for a slick, sexy kiss that tasted like sweet tea. Marcus dropped the shovel to get both his hands on her hips, flexing his fingers against her firm curves and aching to drag them up, under her shirt and bra, to find the soft round globes of her breasts.
But they weren’t in her bedroom. They were in her parents’ yard, in full view of the house. So he reluctantly opened his hands and let her go.
“Mmm,” Quinn said, touching her fingertips to her bottom lip as if it were still tingling. “I think you missed me.”
That was more than Marcus could admit to aloud. He bent to pick up the shovel and get back to work.
Luckily, Quinn was getting better at reading his silences. “Yep, you missed me,” she said with satisfaction, although it faded when he glanced at her.
“So, you were enjoying your quiet solitude when I came home.” Quinn glanced over her shoulder toward the house. “Does that mean my parents were arguing again?”
“Apparently they both care—deeply—about whether the north stone is exactly parallel to the south stone at the bottom of the circle.”
Quinn’s mouth twisted unhappily. “I’m afraid this whole project is pushing them further apart instead of closer together.”
Marcus couldn’t disagree. It was ironic that the fake relationship they’d created to help the very real marriage was flourishing, while the marriage was halfway over the cliff now.
“You’re doing everything you can,” he finally said, because he could see that Quinn was working herself up into a fit of guilt.
“I guess. It’s all Ron’s fault, honestly. He’s poison! I don’t know why Mother can’t see that.”
Ron’s presence definitely wasn’t helping. Anytime it looked as if Paul and Ingrid might be making strides, Ron jumped in with another suggestion or criticism of their relationship, and Paul shut down like someone hit his kill switch.
“I wish we could get rid of him somehow,” Quinn was saying, glaring fretfully at the house. “But Mother thinks he’s some kind of genius. I don’t understand it at all.”
Marcus wasn’t ready to set himself up as an expert in what unhappily married women found appealing, but he couldn’t believe it was slimy, bloated Ron Burkey, with his florid face and blank, emotionless eyes.
“Speak of the devil,” he muttered as Dr. Ron threw open the back door and strode down the steps as if he owned the place.
Quinn wrinkled her nose. “What on earth does he think he’s doing?”
Not appearing to have noticed his audience in the garden, Ron reached into his lavender sport coat pocket and produced a tape measure. As they watched, he walked to the back corner of the house and measured the short distance to the stand of maritime pine between the house and the tip of Lantern Point.
Shaking his head, Ron tucked the tape measure under one arm and made some notes on his phone.
“It looks like he’s surveying your parents’ property. Although I don’t know what that could be about, in terms of marriage counseling.”
“Hey, Ron. What are you doing?” Quinn called.
Subtle, Marcus thought, holding back a grin. Subtle as a wrecking ball, that’s my girl.
Ron stiffened for a moment as if he’d been electrocuted, but in the next breath, his natural sleek poise seemed to reassert itself. “I’m taking measurements. For the stone circle.”
Quinn raised her brows and gestured at the half-finished circle where she and Marcus were standing. “You’re a little lost. The stone circle is over here.”
Nobody did a patronizing smile like Ron Burkey, Marcus had to give him that. “Yes, exactly where I envisioned it. But I must double-check the measurements of the surrounding elements, like the house and the woods. All must be in the correct proportions, at the proper angles, for the best feng shui. Don’t worry your head about it. It’s very advanced metaphysics, but I’ll take care of it.”
Rolling his eyes hard enough to sprain a muscle, Marcus went back to shoveling. He could practically hear Quinn’s back molars grinding down on her annoyance, so he was impressed with the calm, level pleasantness of her voice when she said, “By all means. I’d hate to do all this work and then find out the flow is wrong. But if you’d rather not take the measurements by hand, I think my father had the house and land appraised. All the exact measurements from the county surveyor’s office should be on there.”
The way Ron went still, he looked like a pointer dog scenting prey. “Why, thank you, that would be extremely helpful. I didn’t realize your father had gotten that far with the plans to sell this place.”
He was all but rubbing his
hands together like a miser counting his gold. Marcus smoothed the shallow hole he’d dug to anchor the next stone and contemplated the marriage guru.
“I’ll just go ask your father about it now, shall I?” Ron was already hurrying back into the house, and Quinn watched him walk away with a thoughtful expression on her face.
“Interesting,” she commented, her eyes slitted with suspicion. “Do you buy into that mumbo jumbo about feng shui and flow?”
“No,” Marcus said bluntly. “But I can’t tell if Ron does. He might believe his own bull, or he might be using the latest New Age buzz words to mask some scam or other.”
“I think he’s scamming us.” Quinn tapped her fingers on her chin. “I asked my mom about his fees, and while they’re not tiny, they’re not life-changing money, either. But it seems to be his way into their circle of trust, and once he gets them to sell their house, he’s going to turn it into a big personal payday somehow.”
Marcus leaned on his shovel. “Maybe it’s time to dig a little deeper. When I was with the Secret Service, we worked with the FBI to investigate threats against the First Family and others under our protection. The first step is always to figure out what the perp is after. So what do we know about Ron Burkey, Relationship Expert?”
Taking a step closer, Quinn leaned into his side until Marcus had to drop the shovel and get his arm around her.
“Thanks for taking this seriously.”
Her words were muffled in Marcus’s chest, but he heard them. “I just asked the obvious question.”
“I mean it.” Quinn looked up, shaking her hair out of her eyes to pin him with a serious stare. “Thank you. For not treating me like a hysterical child who’s imagining things and creating a villain so she doesn’t have to face what’s happening between her parents. I worry, sometimes, maybe that’s what’s going on.”
“You know your family better than anyone,” he told her. “If you think something strange is going on here, I believe you. And if he’s trying to fleece them, the sooner we nip it in the bud, the better. So come on, what do we know?”