Marina sighed and tapped her forehead lightly against his chest a couple of times. “Are you sure the guy you found for me knows what he’s doing?”
“I swear. He used to be a contractor. Gave it up to go to law school. He could use the cash.” Donny picked up the occasional bar shift with Quinn. Nice guy. Had a wife and a baby at home.
“And he’ll be here tomorrow? Do I need to put him through his paces, or—”
“Stop worrying, baby. He’ll be tomorrow in time to meet the plumber for the hot water heater installation. And nah, don’t worry about it. If you don’t think you’ll have anything left in your tank to interact with him, I’ll fill him in tonight when I see him. He’ll just show up tomorrow and do what needs to be done. I’ll tell him to call me if he has any questions, but I think he’s intuitive enough to figure stuff out.”
“Thank you.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it.” He glided his thumb across her lips and tipped her chin up. “Do I get a kiss goodbye?”
“You really don’t want me to drive you to the airport?”
“Nah. If you go, I won’t want to leave you. I’m going home to pack right after leaving the bar, and then my roommate will drop me off on his way to his manservant gig.”
He locked the house door, handed her the key, and then hooked her arm around his to get them moving. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Have I lied to you yet?”
“Well…no.”
“And I don’t intend to start.”
At her car, he opened the driver’s door for her then pulled the seatbelt across her body once she’d climbed in. “Be careful, okay?”
“That should be my line to you.”
He shrugged. Even with Donny handling business for her, Quinn was going to worry. She had a tendency to take on too much, and he saw how all the work wore her down. He didn’t know what the end goal of her non-stop real estate speculation was, but he regretted ever thinking a woman like her didn’t know what it meant to be busy.
He gave her the kiss he needed and cringed when her shoulders drooped.
“Maybe one of these days, I’ll get smart and will find a job that won’t require human interaction,” she said.
“Hire the right folks and you’ll never have to see them. That’s where we’re trying to get you.”
She pulled him down for one more kiss—lips, chin, and cheeks—before saying quietly, “Okay, I’m going now. Let me know when you’re boarding the plane.”
“I will.” He started closing the door, but at the last minute, pulled it back and added, “Just so we’re clear, I’m not going to allow you to outsource your human interaction with me. You’re still on the hook for that.”
There might have been jest in his tone, but he’d meant every word. He may not have been working for her anymore, but he still had value. Lover, confidant, defender—he wanted be those things, and more than anything he dreaded that she’d turn him away.
“I wouldn’t outsource that,” she said, smiling softly. “I guess I’m like you. I’ll share my money, but not my man.”
Her man. Good.
That placated him enough to close the door, and as soon as he did, he missed her.
It was going to be a long few weeks.
___
Marina’s mood was one half “take this job and shove it” and one half “I’ll be able to build a vault for all my money when this project is done.”
The money was the only reason she was frustrating herself with a New York City flip. She’d been at the right place at the right time. While visiting her downstairs neighbor in her old building, the elderly woman told her she needed to offload the unit quickly before the bank foreclosed.
Quinn had been gone a couple of weeks, and had warned her that his stay in Montana might go longer. It’d been a month, and he thought the earliest he’d be able to leave wasn’t for another three weeks. She’d made the trip to New York so she’d stop obsessing about him and her flip properties back in Miami and…their baby.
They were going to have a baby.
And now she had more things to obsess about.
The former condo owner Mrs. Kravitz was happily settled in with her sister in Arizona with a little bit of a financial cushion, and Marina was the owner of a condo that hadn’t been updated since Mr. Kravitz had died…which had happened when Marina was still wearing training bras.
The condo board was giving Marina hell about the contractors “monopolizing” the elevators and all the noise they were making, but Marina was going to suck it up and bear it. She had to. It’d probably be her last flip for a while and she’d already earmarked the profits for a charity donation. The organization was hurting bad for money. The fact that Marina had given away more money than she’d actually earned that year hadn’t dawned on her until her accountant called screaming at her.
She’d hung up on him. She’d been hanging up on a lot of people lately.
Hormones.
She leaned against the wall near the open front door and rubbed her bloated belly. Muscles low down were stretching and pulling to make room for her little peach, and sometimes the temporary pain took her breath away.
She’d found out she was pregnant a week after Quinn left and hadn’t figured out a way to tell him. The story of their love was such a short one, and they were going about things in the wrong order.
She was trying to make up for it. She talked to him every night and about almost everything under the sun, starving for knowledge about him. His voice had become a balm to her at the end of every frantic day. She loved how he explained to her all about the ranch chores he’d taken on during his temporary residency, and worried that maybe he’d want to stay—that he’d decide he was happy there and not want to leave when she needed him back.
He was the partner she desperately needed and the person she was falling more and more in love with every night. They’d tried to keep their relationship from getting complicated, but…it just was.
“Wish you were here,” she whispered to the skyline view out the picture window. “Or me there.” She’d never been to Montana. It seemed like a place she should visit at least once.
“How’s Montana?” she texted, suspecting he wouldn’t immediately answer. He was always so busy.
“Cow-riffic. Been pitching in at a ranch nearby. The work is shit, but the money’s okay. Miss you. Tell me stuff.”
“Hi. Didn’t think you’d respond so soon.”
“What’s wrong?”
She chewed on the inside of her cheek and pondered what to tell him. There were so many things wrong at the moment—things too serious to divulge in text messages.
“Nothing. I just miss you, too. Maybe when this project is done, we can go out on my boat for a while. A getaway.”
“I’d love that. Just tell me when. I’ll stock up on Dramamine. A trip’ll give me something to look forward to. Haven’t had a real vacation since… Shit. Spring Break during my freshman year of college.”
She rubbed her throbbing temple with her fingertips and willed the unsettled feeling in her belly to quell. “You’ve got a lot to look forward to, Quinn.”
He sent, “By the way, I got a weird call from Wallace.”
She dropped her hand from her face, panic-stricken. “Bruce Wallace? The Roosters’ team manager?”
“Yep. The one and only.”
“What’d he want?” She had a sinking feeling that she already knew, and that her father was to blame.
“Offered me my spot back on the team.”
“Really?” She pounded the wall, and spat, “Fuck.”
“Like I said, it was weird,” he texted. “Stipulations, of course. I’d be benched for about half a season before I could get back on the field. They’re making me promise to be on my best behavior. It’s as if they doubt I can be good, LOL.”
“If you actually behave yourself, they might wonder if some alien is walking around in your skin.”
“Tired of all the fighting. Too old to keep gett
ing dragged into that shit.”
“Do you want to play?” Please say no. Things would be so much easier if he didn’t want to. He wouldn’t be crawling back to the franchise with his tail between his legs as if he weren’t good enough to be anywhere else. He was so good. The Roosters just hadn’t been the right team for him. Had it been any other team, she’d want him to go back, baby or no baby, but it wasn’t her decision.
“Hell, I miss playing. They’re probably just hard up with all the turnover in the roster, but I’m excited they asked.”
“Yeah. I know,” she whispered, then texted, “Let me call you in a bit, okay? I need to deal with a guy.”
“Okay, baby. Give ’em hell.”
“Oh, I will,” she muttered.
She dialed her father, and he answered on the third ring.
“Marina! Pumpkin!”
“Don’t pumpkin me, Daddy. What did you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you make Wallace take Quinn back? I told you to stay out of my business. Do you remember me saying that after Lena rooted that pregnancy test out the trash can in my bathroom?”
“Don’t be like that. She was just concerned about you, is all. You hadn’t said anything about there being anyone in your life, so I guess she made assumptions. She wanted to make sure you knew you had options.”
Marina stifled a laugh. “I’m a grown woman. I know all about my options. The only reason I told you who the father-to-be was so that you’d know that I know how your wife spends your money when you’re not paying attention. I trust Quinn. I don’t trust Lena. Never have.”
“Marina, you should be kind. She’s your stepmother.”
“That’s right. She’s my stepmother. She’s a woman I can choose to, or not to, have a relationship with. Given how her relationship with you started during your marriage to Mom, I choose not to. I reminded her of that before she started up with the crocodile tears and went into my bathroom to fix her face. You think she’s a nice person, but she’s not. But whatever. She’s your arm candy. You can do what you want with her, but keep her out of my business. You stay out of it, too. What the hell were you thinking, calling Wallace? How many people know about this, huh?”
“You’re overreacting, and I’d even say you’re out of line.”
“You know what? It’s fine that you think that. Think what you want, but let me tell you this—baseball was important to him. Don’t dangle the carrot in front of him unless you’re serious about giving him a shot.”
“What difference does it make to you? The guy needs to work, and Wallace is giving him a job.”
“He does work. What you’re trying to do is keep an eye on him.”
“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, given who he is.”
“Says the man who can’t even keep an eye on his own wife?”
“Don’t go there, Marina.”
“Same to you.” Marina pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation. You’re judging him for how he earns money, but you don’t cast any blame back to Lena for how she’s spending it. Maybe Quinn wouldn’t put out for her, but who knows how many men didn’t have his standards and figured it wouldn’t hurt to give a pretty lady what she’s asking for.”
Daddy didn’t say anything, and that probably was worse than him yelling at her. When he was quiet, that meant he was thinking, and whatever he had to say next would probably cut right to the bone.
Marina was tired of holding her tongue, though. She wasn’t going to have him putting Lena up on some pedestal while he tried to knock Quinn off Marina’s.
“I could cut you off. You know that, right?” Daddy said low.
“Go ahead, Daddy. Do what you have to do.” Like Quinn, she was used to hustling, so if push came to shove, she’d find a way to eke out a living.
She forced a swallow down her tight throat and closed her eyes. “I think you’ve forgotten, though, that I have my own assets. I haven’t touched my trust fund payments in probably five years. They’re sitting in high-yield savings gathering interest. Go ahead and revoke the rest if you want. Your prerogative. If you paid attention to any of the reports from your accountant, you would have seen that I haven’t drawn from the allowance account Mom had set up for me during your divorce. So you can threaten to not give me anything all you want. If you taught me anything, it’s to always assume an income source will dry up. I can make money. I know that. All this means is that without that generous cushion, I’ll be giving less away.”
“You’ll be giving plenty away, if you plan on keeping Quinn as a lover.”
Marina pulled the phone back from her ear and poised her finger over the End Call button. Her father had no right to disparage Quinn that way, and she didn’t want to listen to it. At the same time, she didn’t want him to think he had the right to decide who she supported or didn’t support.
“If I want to give him money, I will, and I’ll do it gleefully.” She already had. Quinn just didn’t know it yet.
“Yeah? So, you’ve told him he’s gonna be a daddy, then? Or are you still hiding out in one of your work sites because you know he’s not going to stick around when you do?”
She ended the call. She’d had enough.
Her father was just like the contractors who treated her like her logic wasn’t sound and she wasn’t capable of making good decisions. It was just like she’d told Quinn: she was damn good at making big decisions. She’d decided she’d do whatever it took to build something steady with Quinn.
The smaller decisions were harder. Like when she’d tell him about the bills she’d paid for him while he was in Montana. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t have faith in him. She did. But she recognized that him being the proud man that he was, he might not see it that way.
She wished she could be brazen and confident about what she had to do, but she simply wasn’t programmed that way. That was why she’d hired him in the first place.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Finally back in Florida after eight weeks being up to his ankles in cow shit and missing his girl like crazy, Quinn leaned against the console table in his apartment. With his phone pressed to his ear and his car loan statement clutched in one hand, he glared at his roommate Gary, and Gary glared right back.
“Still on hold?” Gary asked, and looked down at the wax strip he was about to yank from his leg. The guy swore up and down that he got more manservant assignments than anyone because he apparently serviced an untapped segment of clientele—ladies who liked their help smooth as the day they were born. Quinn didn’t buy it.
He groaned. “Yeah. Going on five minutes—”
“Client services. How can I help you?” came a chipper voice from the phone.
Quinn straightened up and started to pace. “Oh, hi. Listen. I’m calling about my loan. I’m just trying to make sure everything’s all right with it. I called to make a payment and the automated system wouldn’t give me a balance. You haven’t sent the account to collections, have you? I know you might not be able to tell me, but—”
“Let me put on hold for just a moment.”
“Oh, shit.” He rolled his eyes. He shouldn’t have tried to coast the bill to his next payday, but there were more pressing expenses he’d needed to cover first. His student loan payment was probably going to open its huge maw and swallow him whole soon.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Gary asked. “They’ll repossess it? Big deal. You can get another car anywhere.”
“My credit is already screwed six ways to Sunday as it is.” God, if Marina had any idea just how bad it is…
Well, she wouldn’t want him. She’d want a guy who had his shit together.
He tried so damned hard not to bring up the money stuff, but somehow, conversations kept drifting that way. Maybe Marina would mention she caught an athletic event on television with a team from his old school, and the conversation would turn to tuition costs and such. He always managed to di
sentangle himself from the discussions as quickly as he could, but he worried she was going to get impatient with him for his lack of candor. She was probably used to being courted by men who didn’t live paycheck to paycheck, and Quinn anticipated that it’d be a long time before he stepped into that economic tier.
“Don’t let it eat you up,” Gary said. “It just happens sometimes.”
“Has it happened to you?”
Gary muttered an oath and yanked the wax strip. He rubbed his leg vigorously, swearing all the while. “No, but came close a time or two. I was able to hustle and get the cash at the last minute.”
“Isn’t hustling what got you thrown out of minor league baseball?”
“Yep.”
Gary’s exploits were legendary. Quinn hadn’t yet figured out why he’d played baseball at all. He was an excellent outfielder, sure, but he spent far more time on the bench than he did on the field because of his troublemaking shenanigans.
Thinking about Gary on the bench reminded Quinn of Wallace’s offer. He could earn a little money just from riding the pine for half a season, and then he could tighten up his cleats and step up to the plate again.
A year ago, he might have been too prideful to take the offer. He was tempted at the moment. He still held out hope he could make something out of baseball. It wasn’t like he was anywhere near retirement age. His body was in okay condition and his reflexes were still sharp. If he were lucky, he could still play a couple of years in the Majors. He’d get that debt monkey off his back, for sure, then. Marina wouldn’t have that as a reason to be ashamed of him.
“Are you there, Mr. Hathaway?” the rep asked.
“Yep, I’m here.” He rubbed the burn over his heart and forced down a swallow. Go on and give me the bad news so I can figure out what to do next.
Designated Hitter (Reedsville Roosters Book 4) Page 8