by G. K. Brady
Mom darted daggers at him. “Quinn Anthony Hadley! Jar!”
He returned an eye-roll, grabbed his wallet from the kitchen desk, and stuffed a bill into his mother’s idea of the perfect cure for swearing: a three-foot-high glass cylinder she lovingly called the “swear jar.” So what if the container was already half-full?
“Wow, dude,” Nelson chuckled. “Is that all you?”
His mom nodded and gave Nelson a smug smile. “I keep telling him he’s going to go broke.” Her eyes then riveted on Sarah. “Is your nose pierced?”
Sarah had been wearing a smile since she’d set foot in his house, and now that smile widened. “Yep. It’s a recent addition. What do you think?”
“Oh, girl, I love it! Is that a diamond?”
Oh girl? Quinn took a step back. Who was this woman in the wheelchair, and what had she done with his mother?
“Yes, it is. It was a recent splurge.” Sarah twirled her index finger.
“Celebrate a birthday or something?” Quinn asked.
She turned and looked at him for the first time since she’d walked in, and that brilliant smile slid from her face. “No. Just a whim.”
His mother whooped and clapped her hands. “I want one!”
“I’ll take you to get one, if you like,” Sarah offered. The smile was back in place as she addressed his mom. Her jacket had parted, giving him a look at a different T-shirt from yesterday’s. This one said, “I Do What the Voices in My Head Tell Me.”
Quinn stared at the scene in front of him. Since his mother had come to live with him—correction: since he’d traded in his awesome condo for this leviathan of a house just to accommodate her—she hadn’t been so lively.
Nelson jarred him from his woe-is-me wallowing. “Hey, Hads. Can I check out your home theater? I’m trying to get ideas for what I want to put in our new place.”
“Yeah, sure.” Though Quinn didn’t want to, inviting Nelson’s sister was the polite thing to do. “Do you want to come with us, Sarah?”
“No, she’s going to stay here and keep me company,” his bossy mother tossed out.
He arched his eyebrows in question at Sarah.
“I’ll stay here and chat with Liz,” she said with warmth directed at his mom.
Relieved, he led Nelson to the theater room. Nelson whistled softly. “Wow, Hads. This place rocks. You must love living here.”
“It’s okay.” Truth was, he missed his condo. A lot. It had spanned the top two floors of a stunning building—an architectural marvel with endless walls of glass. Perks of the building had included a rooftop gathering area complete with a heated infinity pool that drew lots of eye candy.
Clinging to the hope his mother’s unexpected presence in his life was a temporary setback, he couldn’t bring himself to put his one-of-a-kind bachelor pad on the market. So he’d let the building’s rental staff fill it with strangers who enjoyed it while he languished in suburbia.
He realized Nelson was staring at him, and he felt the need to elaborate. “Living here wasn’t my first choice, but I needed to rent a one-level quick, which meant slim pickings.”
Nelson nodded. “Your mom …”
“She’s got Parkinson’s. She doesn’t usually need the wheelchair, but with the way the disease progresses, it’ll become more and more of a necessity. She was living with my brother, but when his third kid arrived, she needed a more relaxed environment.” Quinn left out the part that she’d become more dependent on the wheelchair, and that he suspected it was amped-up stress caused by living with him. Damn, he didn’t want her to backslide, especially on account of him.
“So how does that work when you’re gone? Do you have someone come in?”
Quinn smiled at the irony. “I’ve been trying. She’s gone through three caregivers in a month. Last night, she called me at the bar to tell me she’d fired the latest one.” Seeing his mom’s number pop up had scared the ever-loving shit out of him. But after he took the call, he’d been royally pissed off.
Nelson nodded. “That’s gotta suck.”
Quinn puffed out a breath. “Yeah, it slowed me down for a hot minute. Somehow, though, I still got hammered enough to need a ride home.” He’d pounded down a slew of rum and Cokes before switching to tequila shooters. Bad idea. He hadn’t had an abundance of brain cells to spare as it was, and the partying had disabled the few he did have—as he’d proven when he wound up in the backseat of his Ram truck with the blond fish. Dory. They’d steamed up the windows fucking each other stupid. Not his smartest play, but the drunker he’d gotten, the better she’d looked, and lust mixed with frustration had given logic a swift kick to the curb.
In the end? It hadn’t been nearly as hot as his dick had led him to believe it would be, but that seemed to be the way with all his hookups lately. In this case, he’d been left with a twanged butt muscle and buyer’s remorse.
He glanced over at Nelson, who was inspecting the screen. “So you and Lily. Things good with you being crowded together in that tiny little house? Wedding’s still on for August?”
A shit-eating grin spread all over Nelson’s face, followed by a look Quinn could only call blissful satisfaction. Wonder what that felt like?
“Wedding’s definitely still on,” Nelson said, “and we’ll be settled in the new place and able to spread out before that. Sarah and Archer will move into the guesthouse.”
This brought to the fore a question that had been spinning in Quinn’s head. “So what made your sister move all of a sudden?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. But I plan to drag it out of her today.”
“Well, good luck with that, Nelsy.” Judging by the glimpse Quinn had had of Sarah Nelson’s prickly personality, she wasn’t the type to do anything she didn’t want to. Just like his mom. They could have been peas hanging out in the same pod.
Chapter 3
I Wasn't in Line the Day God Handed Out Smarts
"Okay, Sis. Time to spill.”
Trying to ignore Gage jabbing at her for answers, Sarah intently stared out the passenger window as they streaked along the freeway toward Denver’s sawtoothed skyline. The flat browns and grays brought to mind the homespun clothing worn by characters in a favorite period series she’d watched. Dull. Different from Seattle’s cityscape. And yet the sky here, unlike the treeless late-winter terrain it spanned, was so vivid it practically shimmered. Big Sky Country. Or was that Montana? Not that it mattered because she’d see it every day going forward. Her stomach clenched with the recognition that this was her new reality.
“What do you mean, Little Bro?” She put as innocent an inflection in her voice as she dared.
“What I mean, Big Sis, is what the hell happened in Seattle?”
“Who says anything happened?”
He chuffed. “This is me you’re talking to, Sar. If you showing up on my doorstep isn’t evidence enough of some epic disturbance in the Force, I don’t know what is. Plus, you were pretty cold to my teammate, and that’s not like you.”
“He’s a ladies’ man who reminds me of someone I don’t like.” Shit! My kick-ass self has devolved into a whiny teenager.
Gage side-eyed her. “Quinn may have a reputation as a fuckboy, but he’s a good guy.”
“What you perceive as a good guy and what a woman perceives as a fuckboy are parts of the same man that are in two entirely different universes.”
His brows puckered. “I have no idea what you just said.”
Neither did she, which pissed her off. She was speaking in tongues she couldn’t understand. Get a grip. Somehow she couldn’t. “He’s full of himself. Just look at his flow.”
“You’re judging the guy by his hair?”
“It’s just part of the same deliberate package.” She flung her hand out. “Everything he does—the easy lines, the two-day stubble, the ridiculous dimples—is contrived. It’s so he can schmooze women into bed.”
Gage blew out a breath as he took an exit. He rolled to a stop a
t a red light and turned toward her. “We’re getting sidetracked. Quinn isn’t the reason you’re here, so let me ask my question a different way. What’s really eating you? And don’t give me any lame excuses or Mom-like dodges.”
Her brother was absolutely right. She wasn’t mad at Quinn. Frankly, she couldn’t have cared less what the guy was into. If anything about Quinn made her mad, it was what he represented. He was the poster boy for the type of guy she told herself she’d never fall for. Spending time around Gage’s hockey buddies had taught her what sort of man to steer clear of, yet somehow she’d let herself be hoodwinked by the humdinger daddy of them all, with a tongue made of solid sterling. Not only had she parked her brain, but she’d unlocked her judiciously guarded vault and thrown it wide-open for him. Then she’d handed him the key and watched him bash her heart in with it.
She’d always thought herself too sharp and independent to give up control to a man. The takeover had been incremental, but why hadn’t she seen it before it was too late? Mom and Grandma had raised her to be smarter than that. And for a while, she’d nailed it. A rising star who was always professional, always put together. With double engineering degrees, she was a Spanish-speaking consultant brought into prestigious resort projects in Mexico, earning her more feathers in her already crowded cap. She’d wowed them all—herself too. Where was all that confidence now?
Gage’s voice startled her back to the interior of his car. “I’m waiting.” He said it in a Princess Bride Vizzini voice, and she let out a chuckle.
Before she could formulate her careful answer, they glided to a stop in front of Lily’s house. “We’re home,” said Captain Obvious. “Looks like she’s not back yet. And, Sar? We really are happy to have you here.”
The way he said it made tears suddenly surge, and she swallowed them down. Kick-ass women do not cry. Clearing her throat, she willed the kick-ass girl to come through in her voice, and not the wimp who’d taken up space in her psyche. “It’s oddly nice to hear you say ‘we,’ Bro.” He’d always flown solo, like her—until recently. And irony of ironies, until four days ago she’d been part of a “we” he knew nothing about. Funny how quickly your life could transform from idyllic to total shit.
Gage headed up the walkway, and she led Archer out of the Range Rover. “And while I appreciate your hospitality, I still have to find another place so you have some breathing room. I’ve gotta say I never thought I’d see the day you’d go back to living in a cramped house with multiple females.”
A goofy grin sprouted on his face. “Some things are totally worth it.” He opened the front door and held it for her and Archer. “You’re doing an awesome imitation of Mom by avoiding an obviously unpleasant subject, by the way. But you’ll need a little more practice to be as evasive as she is.” He chuckled, completely oblivious to how deeply the comment cut, and a frightening thought slammed into her like a fully loaded freight train. “I haven’t told Mom. You didn’t say anything, did you?”
His keys landed with a clink in a bowl on a side table. “Absolutely not. Bro code.”
She heaved a sigh of relief. Yeah, she’d always been able to count on him to keep her secrets and mistakes to himself—not that she’d let him see many of the latter. Worse, the doozy she was currently fighting to forget outweighed all her other blunders combined.
Gage started rifling the fridge. “Something to drink?”
She shot him a backward glance as she let Archer into the backyard. “Got any bourbon and Coke?”
“That bad?” He hauled down two glasses and a bottle of Blanton’s. He poured the tawny liquid into the glasses, doctoring one with ice and Coke before handing it to her. He pointed at the kitchen table. “Sit.”
Moment of truth. Maybe he’d be satisfied with the incomplete version of the story. Yeah, she’d go with that. He sat, and she plopped her butt into a wooden chair and took a deep breath. “First I need to back all the way up and tell you the real reason I moved to Seattle.”
“It wasn’t for the structural engineering job?”
“Yes. No. That was part of it. It was also for a man. Named Wolf.” Damn it! She practically flinched from saying it aloud. Not only had she been bricks shy of a full load to uproot herself for him, but the precious job was one he’d arranged for her—after grooming her for it, so he’d said. All without her knowledge. She tried to convince herself she could have landed it on her own, but the notion was hard to swallow.
Though his eyebrows climbed his forehead—the only note of surprise in his expression—Gage remained quiet and sipped his bourbon.
“I first met him in the Bay Area. He’s an architect who designed one of the buildings our firm was hired to engineer. He told me he was Swedish and that he split his time between Sweden and here.”
Ice-blue eyes in an angular face. Fair hair graying at the temples. Sophistication. Intellect. Style. The images had conspired against her, and she’d fallen ass over teakettle.
Marshaling the force of her anger, she tried to herd the pictures into a box and slam the lid, managing to cram everything inside but those haunting glacial eyes.
“I was on the project team, and we worked long hours together. All of us did. He and I started spending more time alone. That is, until the project ended and he returned to Sweden.” She paused, and Gage gave her an encouraging nod. “He stayed in touch. Then he announced he was traveling to Seattle to check out an opportunity and asked if I would spend a few days with him there. I thought, ‘Why not?’ He bought my plane ticket, then wined and dined me. He pulled out all the stops.”
She tapped nervous fingers against her glass. “We did the long-distance thing for a while. Sometimes we saw each other in Seattle, other times in Chicago or New York. We went to museums, shows, and we walked the cities and looked at the older buildings. Then we’d talk for hours about the architecture and the engineering behind it. I ate it up. Eventually, he told me he was seriously considering taking the opportunity in Seattle, but only if I’d move there too.”
Little did I know he was dangling his business like a carrot in front of the firm’s owner. In return, the owner had to hire me. The pain in her heart was so sharp she swore she’d been struck by shuriken—the proper word for ninja stars, Wolf had instructed her.
Gage sat back. “So you did.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, I did. I mean, the job was fabulous.” Her words came out in an odd mixture of defensive and sad.
Wolf had been an expert salesman, and she’d been as overwhelmed as a sapling in a gale-force wind. She’d heard “beautiful” often enough, but Wolf took it way beyond her mere physical appearance: he admired her independence, her intellect, her ability to see the world in 3-D, her accomplishments, her sophistication—which she’d never before thought she had. He was masterful at pushing all the right buttons. She was a woman rising to her full potential, he’d smoothly said, and if she let him mold her, groom her, she’d soar to her pinnacle even sooner. He became her mentor, her lover, her lavisher. Her everything. In turn, she inspired him, made him feel youthful again, fascinated him. Yes, she’d fed his ego too, but at the time she hadn’t cared because she’d wanted to.
“I stayed at his place in the beginning, intending to get my own apartment. His house had a beautiful yard and a view of Puget Sound, and I just … never left. It made sense to stay there, especially after I got Archer.
“Then Wolf started traveling for long stretches. He said he was having problems with his business in Sweden. I missed him, but I wasn’t worried. I had my amazing job, and he reassured me that once he got everything straightened out, he’d be around more.”
She took a slug of her drink.
“But something happened,” Gage murmured.
Sarah nodded. “Yep.” She kept her eyes averted from his. “I found out the reason he was gone so much wasn’t because he was in Sweden. It was because he had someone else. Might’ve been more than one, for all I know, but I didn’t stick around to find out.”
/> “Aw, shit, Sar.”
When she raised her eyes to Gage’s, she only saw concern, and it broke free the tears she’d been holding back. He placed his hand on the table between them, palm up, and she rested her hand in his.
“Guy’s a total douche,” Gage said softly. “You know this, right? He didn’t deserve you.”
“He sure as shit didn’t. But I fell for him, damn it. I’m usually smarter than that.”
He squeezed her hand. “We can’t always control who we fall for.”
She laugh-sobbed. “God, you sound just like Grandma!”
Releasing her, he grinned. “Right? I’ve been practicing.”
Sarah rolled her watery eyes. “Does Lily appreciate what a rare breed you are?”
“All the time.”
“Thought so. She’s a smart cookie.” Unlike yours truly. “So how come there aren’t more of you—unrelated to me, that is?”
He stood, passed her a box of tissues, and let Archer inside. “There are lots of us. You just have to look a little harder. We don’t all flash signs that say, ‘Your perfect man standing right here!’ In fact, steer clear of those guys.”
“I think ‘perfect’ and ‘man’ together equal an oxymoron.” She plucked a few tissues and dabbed at her eyes. Archer laid his head in her lap and wagged as if to say, “How ’bout me? I’m perfect.” She stroked his soft fur, inwardly agreeing.
Gage chuckled. “All I’m saying is don’t judge a book by its cover. You never know what’s written in those chapters until you crack the spine.”
“Omigod, listen to my little brother! You’re like Dear Abby and Yoda rolled into one.” She let out a snort.
“I thought you were Yoda.” He cocked a brow.
“I think I lost my title. Damn, you’re four years younger. How’d you get to be so much smarter? I’ll need to earn my place back and lord it over you again.” Some of the tension drained from her shoulders, and she rotated her neck.
“Ha! It’s taken me a long time to get here, and I’m not giving up my Yoda throne that easily,” he joked.