CHAPTER 8
Kaitlyn pulled her vehicle onto the packed-dirt front parking lot of Donnie’s Diner. Her father and brothers loved to come there for lunch. She was hoping to catch a late breakfast and get out before she ran into her father and had to muster the nerve and disrespect not to speak to him in person. Kaitlyn honestly didn’t think she could pull that off.
And that’s why when her niece occasionally spent the weekend with her, she purposefully avoided Kadina’s tricky moves to get her to show up for one of their ritual Sunday dinner at her parents’.
She didn’t spot any of their vehicles, so she made her way inside Holtsville’s lone diner and put in her order for takeout.
“Here you go. Two specials for my two favorite customers. Enjoy, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.”
Kaitlyn looked on and smiled as she watched the waitress hand the elderly married couple glasses of iced mint tea and two plates of breakfast from her tray.
“Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson,” Kaitlyn said with a little wave.
They waved back. The Johnsons lived not very far from her parents’ house, and the rear of their properties connected. Growing up, before she realized that she was not to do everything her elder brothers did, she and her siblings—excluding the hyperallergic Kaeden—had snuck onto the Jacksons’ apple orchard. There they ate the juicy fruits from the trees until they all felt ready to bust.
They thought they were sneaky, but the Johnsons would always laugh about it with their parents when they crossed paths.
“You look especially pretty today, Kaitlyn,” Sally said as she sipped her tea.
Kaitlyn batted her lashes. “Well, thank you. Thank you very much,” she said playfully.
“How are your parents?” Clarence asked, a portly, dark-skinned man with low-cut hair as white as snow.
“They’re good,” she lied.
“I saw one of your brothers at the horse auction the other night. For the life of me, I don’t know which one,” he said around a bite of his food. His free hand was locked on his wife’s ample thigh. “Hell, they all look alike.”
Sally laughed and leaned back in her chair. “All good-looking,” she said.
Kaitlyn smiled as he pretended to look offended, causing his wife to lean over and plant a kiss on his cheek.
“I heard you were sick recently. Are you feeling better, Mr. Johnson?” she asked as the waitress signaled that her to-go order was ready.
“I’m all better now,” he said, looking at his wife with a twinkle in his eye. “Sally liked playing nurse.”
The woman’s caramel complexion shaded with a pink blush. “Clarence, you talk too much.”
“And you love it.”
“That I do.”
Kaitlyn smiled as the couple, nearly ninety years old, leaned in for a firm kiss. She waved and left them alone, moving to the counter to pay for her order of French toast and bacon.
That would be her parents in another twenty years or so. In love with the same person for well over sixty years.
Was she ready to lock it in with someone for the next forty years? Hell to the no. Those “will I find love” questions weren’t on her mind: Would she have someone to grow old with? Cherish memories with? Laugh and still play with? Build a family with?
Uhm. No.
But . . .
Kaitlyn could appreciate those who wanted it and found it.
And the Johnsons are cute. Too cute.
Maybe one day. But not now. Definitely not.
As she left the restaurant, she glanced back at the elderly couple one last time.
Maybe if I meet the right man, though . . .
“Take out?”
Kaitlyn stopped as Quint walked into the restaurant and stood before her. Close. Too close.
“Yeah,” she said, moving past him to push open the door to the restaurant.
She felt his hand lightly touch her back, and she looked over her shoulder at him in question.
“No smart comment? No snappy comeback?” he asked.
As she looked into his eyes—those dark and deep eyes always seeming to brim with intensity—she remembered their interaction in her kitchen. It was her turn to run scared.
“That’s it,” she said, turning to leave.
Kaitlyn left the restaurant and climbed into her car. When she eventually pulled into her parking spot at the complex, she had absolutely no desire to spend her day—the entire day—just cooped up in her apartment.
Sliding on her shades, she lowered her convertible top, reclined her driver’s seat, and said a silent prayer that the bird’s aim was off as she chewed on a piece of bacon and enjoyed the feel of the sun.
“Can I join you?”
Kaitlyn looked left and then right before looking up. Over the rim of her shades, her eyebrows dipped to see Mr. Hanson smiling down at her. He was in nothing but his pajama bottoms.
“Call your wife and ask her,” Kaitlyn called up to him before pushing her shades back down. “Or you can come downstairs and ask your girlfriend.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know what you talking about.”
“And I don’t care about what I’m talking about,” she offered in an uninterested tone as she reached for another slice of bacon to chew on and closed her eyes.
She opened her eyes behind her shades a few moments later and was glad to see he was gone. It took everything she had in her not to tell him that his chest hair was so sparse and so prickly that it looked like a connect-the-dots sheet in a puzzle book.
He didn’t work. He was barely cute. And he was cheating on his wife while she worked the late-night shift.
“Nope. Not even cute. No, thank you. I’ll pass,” she said aloud as she kicked off her patent leather spiked heels and kicked her feet over the side of the car.
The slight breeze felt good as she wiggled her toes and considered just hitting the highway and driving until she was ready to turn around and come back.
Or maybe she could call an ex-lover for a steamy rendezvous. If DJ Jean from Paris called, she might just answer his call to amuse herself.
Or she could go and watch The Young and the Restless with Mrs. Harper and pretend a stuffed dead dog wasn’t sitting in a dog bed. Staring. Not living. His physical form was locked in the crazy world of a little old lady who refused to accept that the dog was dead. And stuffed. And not listening to her.
“Man, bump this shit,” she said, sitting up to pull on her shoes before she climbed from the car.
Quint pulled up and parked in the empty space next to her.
Kaitlyn spared him a glance as she gathered her purse and take-out container before raising the roof.
“You really like chancing it with the birds,” he said as he came around the front of his truck.
Kaitlyn shrugged. “Bird shit woulda broke up the monotony.”
Quint eyed her. “Is it okay to ask you something?”
Kaitlyn leaned against her car and eyed him from behind her shades as she pretended not to feel her pulse and her heart and stomach fluttering. He really looks good in dark blue.
“No insults. Not today,” she advised him. “And last night never happened.”
“No, you wished last night never happened.”
Kaitlyn crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s not a question.”
“Okay. A’ight. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Quint eyed Kaitlyn as he asked the question. He saw her visibly stiffen. “Seriously,” he added.
“I am grown . . . or can’t you tell?” she asked.
He allowed his eyes to travel along the length of her body. How could he not see that? And when he left her apartment in the wee hours of the morning, he found he couldn’t release all the nervous energy he felt. He couldn’t forget how being so near to her had made him feel.
He couldn’t get past how soft her skin was to his touch.
The glazed look in her eyes.
The slight parting of her lips.
The
shiver that raced across her body.
All of those moments came back to him until he did feel horny and frustrated, as she had accused.
He had meant to taunt and tease her; and instead, she had turned the tables to taunt and tease him.
“Say you want me, Quinton.”
Caught up in that energy-filled bubble they had created, he realized that the words had almost tumbled from his lips. It took everything in him not to lift her up and press his body between her legs as they wrapped around his waist and he buried his head in her cleavage.
Quint blinked away an image of caressing her breasts and rubbing them before his fingertips brought her nipples to life.
“Uhm, physically . . . yes. But on other levels—”
Kaitlyn frowned. “What other levels?” she snapped.
Quint opened his own take-out container and lifted his cheeseburger to take a huge bite of it as he shrugged one shoulder. “Since you moved in here, I’ve seen you constantly on the go, partying it up, dressed like an A-list celebrity, but what else is there to know about you?”
Kaitlyn raised her shades. “Why do you care?” she asked, eyeing him.
“I don’t.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because you should care,” he said frankly before taking another bite.
“Who says I don’t?”
Quint set his container on the hood of his pickup. “Not ‘who says’ it. What says it. And what says you don’t are your actions. That’s what.”
Kaitlyn pulled her tote up higher on her arm as she walked past him. “You are the most judgmental person I think I have ever met. Thing is, you really need to find somebody who gives a damn what you think,” she told him over her shoulder as she climbed the stairs.
“It’s your life,” Quint called over his shoulder as he picked up the container and made his way across the parking lot to his office. He didn’t spare her another glance as he unlocked the door.
He had more important things to concern himself with than trying to stop a woman from making a train wreck of her life. He only had one daughter to raise—he didn’t need a second project.
Their little convo just reaffirmed for him that his physical reaction to Kaitlyn was just that—purely physical. She was another Vita in the making, no matter how much that offended her.
Hell with it.
He checked the answering machine for messages and shot his boss an e-mail updating him on the property. Through the window he saw the FedEx truck drive onto the property. He rose to his feet and looked out the door as the deliveryman made his way to his apartment’s front door.
Quint made his way across the parking lot as the man knocked. He was holding a sizable box in his arms. Quint’s eyes shifted up to take in Kaitlyn sitting outside her door in one of the chairs from her kitchen table. He ignored her.
“That’s for me?” he asked the man.
The tall, fair-skinned redhead turned. “This your apartment?” he asked, his accent more Texas twang than Southern drawl.
Quint unlocked the door to prove it and then digitally signed for the box before looking down at the label.
“Have a good one,” he called out to the man before backing into the apartment to set the box on the oversized coffee table.
It was from Vita.
Quint shook his head as he reached for his cell phone to call her. He ended the call before it connected when he remembered the five-hour time difference. It was just a little after 7:00 A.M. in Hawaii.
Lei’s birthday was next week, and Vita had promised their daughter she was coming to visit. He hoped her sending this box wasn’t because she wasn’t coming anymore. That’s what it had meant in the past. Big boxes filled with gifts would arrive a week before Christmas, birthdays, and other important events and milestones in Lei’s life.
Quint walked the box into her bedroom and set it on the middle of her made bed. He spotted her Teen Nick calendar open to the month of October in the center of her wall of posters. She had placed a huge star around her birthday on the twenty-first and a circle around the seventeenth with MOMMY!!! written in pink Magic Marker.
He eyed the box as he left the room and closed her door securely.
He loved his daughter to death, but marrying Vita and choosing her to mother his child was the biggest mistake of his life. The absolute biggest. Sometimes he felt even more disgusted with himself than he did with his ex-wife.
Life was about choices.
Quint made his way back to his office. He started to look up to see if Kaitlyn was still sitting outside wasting her life away, but then he didn’t. He busied himself going through the small stack of work orders for repairs in the various apartments.
The door swung open and he looked up, surprised to see Kaitlyn standing in the doorway. He leaned back in his chair and eyed her as she stood there glaring at him.
“You don’t know me,” she said.
“I know plenty like you,” he said.
“The hell?” she snapped, stepping inside the building as the door swung all the way open. “It takes more than copping a free feel and getting a semihard to come out of your mouth to me any kind of way.”
“Did I strike a nerve?” he asked.
Kaitlyn placed her hands on his desk and leaned over. “And what if I tell you what I see about you?”
Quint sat up in his chair and pressed his elbows to the desk as he looked up at her. “You taken a moment out of your life to pay attention to someone other than yourself to form an opinion? Then give it to me.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“That’s the best you got?”
“That’s all the effort you deserve.”
Quint’s eyes flew over every aspect of her face. A beautiful woman. An even more beautiful mess. “And you’re a spoiled heiress who is creating a life where she has no choice but to become a trophy wife so that staying pretty and dressing fly is all you have to fill your head with.”
Kaitlyn stood up straight. “So it’s my fault my parents have built a legacy for me.”
“No, but it’s your fault if you do nothing with it but shop and lounge all day,” he countered.
The wind suddenly rustled the browning leaves as fall geared up to reign with the coming of fall. With a swift gush, which raised the corners of the papers on his desk, the door slammed shut.
Kaitlyn jumped and let out a surprised yelp as she turned to press her ass against the desk. “I thought somebody just bust off a round,” she said, her hand pressed to her chest.
Quint caught a whiff of her perfume. It was the same that she wore last night. Soft and subtle. Teasing. Intriguing.
He shook his head to clear it. His thoughts shifted from the sight of her body in those formfitting leggings to the disappointment he just knew his daughter was about to experience. Again.
“Was being a manager of a low-level apartment complex the dreams you had for yourself?” Kaitlyn asked.
He looked up at her. “You are a beautiful mess.”
Kaitlyn frowned.
Quint rose to his feet and came around the desk to open the door to the office. He waved her out.
Kaitlyn turned on her heels and took the few steps to stand before him. “You shouldn’t dish it if you can’t take it,” she said, looking up at him.
“There’s a difference between a low-blow insult and an observation,” he told her, looking down into her eyes.
“Yes, and it depends on the viewpoint of the one being observed,” she said.
He saw her eyes shift down to his mouth, and that made his heart pound as the wind carried her scent to him. His eyes drifted over her face, and it struck him how much of what he saw appealed to him. Excited him.
And he saw that she, too, felt whatever it was brewing between them. It was there in her eyes and in the quickened pace of her breathing.
But as much as something drew him, Quint knew he had to resist.
Kaitlyn Strong excited him too much, and passion like that cou
ld become addictive.
Kaitlyn turned and left the building.
He forced himself not to watch her walk away, but he felt the loss of her presence so close to him. He closed the door and reclaimed his seat, forcing his thoughts anywhere but on Kaitlyn.
He glanced at the time on his cell phone before he dialed his ex-wife.
“Yeah.”
Quint frowned at the male voice. In two years that had never happened.
“Sorry. I was trying to reach Vita,” he said. “Do I have the right number?”
“Who’s this?”
“Quinton, her ex-husband.”
His earpiece suddenly filled with rustling noises and lowered voices whispering before she got on the line.
“What do you want, Quint?” she asked, sounding extra salty.
“I got the box for Lei that you sent, and with you coming next week, I wanted to make sure you wasn’t flaking out,” he said patiently, not at all concerned with whatever relationship drama of hers he had just interrupted. His concern was their daughter.
The line remained quiet. Too quiet.
“What is it this time, Vita? Huh? Your man don’t trust you long enough to leave his sight?” he asked, already dreading breaking the news to Lei. “Hell, bring him along. I just want you here for our daughter.”
“Tell Lei to call me and let me know if she loves her presents,” she said, sounding far too light and bright and jovial.
Quinton rubbed his hand over his bald head and wasn’t surprised at the beads of perspiration that coated his hand. His dome always sweated when he was heated—in sex or in anger.
“You haven’t laid eyes on your daughter in two damn years. He was worth you ruining our marriage, but is he worth you ruining your relationship with your daughter?” he asked in exasperation, slamming his hand on the desk.
“Oh, okay, then. Bye,” she said before ending the call.
At first Quinton could do nothing but stare at the phone. He dialed the number back, but he already knew it would go straight to voice mail.
He turned his chair and leaned back against the wall as he kicked his Timberlands up on the desk. He purposefully thought back to the days they had lived together as a family. Had Vita shown signs then that she could one day become the type of mother to leave her child behind? He couldn’t go so far as to say she didn’t love Lei. He just believed she loved herself more.
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