Quinn clamped her molars at the mention of that disastrous night.
As if he could sense her tension, Wilder stroked his fingertips down her upper arm. The touch lit a fire under her skin, and if he'd intended to comfort her, it'd had the complete opposite effect.
"She's a star, isn't she?" Wilder asked his aunt. His mother was looking down at her cell phone, frowning at something she was reading there.
"She is," Ruby said. "I've been especially impressed with the relationship advice you give, Quinn."
"Oh. Ah... thanks." This was what Quinn hated. She wasn't famous by any stretch, though she did have a loyal local following. There was a reason she was in radio and not another profession. Her awkwardness was certainly part of it. What were you supposed to say when someone complimented you on doing your job? It was like a bank teller getting a pat on the head for counting money correctly.
Aunt Ruby didn't seem to mind her awkward answer, though, as the older woman had turned an eagle-eye on Wilder. "You could learn something from listening to her show, you know. Maybe find a way to keep a relationship for longer than ten minutes."
Quinn couldn't help the twitch of her lips. His great aunt sure called it like she saw it.
But Wilder didn't seem fazed. He was staring down at her, his gray eyes blazing in a way that made her want to squirm. "Oh, I'm definitely trying to learn something from Quinn."
Ruby made a disparaging noise, and Quinn broke the gaze to give the woman a shrug. "I think it's a hopeless endeavor."
Mrs. Caine looked up from her phone. "Quinn," she said. "We confirmed with the florist, didn't we? They were supposed to be here a half-hour ago."
At the mention of potential trouble, Quinn's inner organizational guru emerged. She reached into her tote, digging for the wedding planner notebook. "Let me check. Just a min—"
Wilder stalled her with a squeeze to her shoulder. "Mom, let Quinn get settled in for two seconds. She just got here. Maybe she could take her bags upstairs before you kidnap her and drag her into wedding chaos."
Quinn was ready to snap at him that she didn't need his high-handed maneuvering, but he was already steering her toward the check-in counter, where a chalkboard emblazoned with Mr. and Mrs. Caine was displayed in swirled handwriting.
Wilder picked up her key from the counter and placed it in her palm, letting his hand linger there.
Andrew was still lurking. He'd probably witnessed the whole thing.
And she hadn't decided whether she was going to shake Wilder off or keep up his ruse.
"Hey." Andrew had one hand in the pocket of his expensive, tailored slacks. Unlike Wilder, who wore jeans and a T-shirt that bore the logo of his moving company.
She smiled tightly at her ex.
"I thought you’d have been here hours ago," he said. "Organizing everyone half to death." As insults went, it was a mild one, coming from Andrew.
She didn't respond.
Andrew's gaze ping-ponged between Quinn and Wilder. Wilder still hadn't let go of her, though his arm across her shoulders was beginning to feel more like a vise than an embrace.
Andrew wasn't going to buy it. She saw the way he dismissed Wilder's presence at her side. "You know, you might've dressed a little nicer for an event like this."
At first, Quinn thought he was talking to Wilder. She opened her mouth to tell him that there was work to be done this afternoon, and why did it matter if Wilder was wearing jeans anyway? But she quickly realized the jab was directed at her. Andrew was looking disdainfully at her wide-legged slacks and blouse.
His words hit their mark like a physical blow. He'd never been complimentary about her wardrobe. It hadn't bothered her so much in the beginning, but as their relationship had progressed, each verbal slight had piled on top of the other, creating a mountain of self-doubt.
One she was still buried under.
She didn't realize she was looking down at herself, staring really, until Wilder let go of her.
The sudden loss of contact was a shock.
Before she knew it, he’d taken her hand and spun her in a quick pirouette. It was so unexpected that she lost her balance, wobbling awkwardly. He was there, though, and he caught her. Her garment bag was still slung over his shoulder, and, with his free hand, he'd somehow managed to guide her smoothly to his chest. She blinked and found herself looking into his eyes, yet again.
He wasn't smiling, though the crinkles at the corners of his eyes said he was thinking about it. For the second time, she was caught in his tractor beam, unable to look away. It was becoming a disturbing pattern.
"I think you look beautiful," he said.
His words were like a bucket of cold water dousing her. She couldn't have been more shocked. Or dismayed.
She looked away, flustered, and her gaze bounced off of Andrew.
She stepped away from Wilder, but he didn't seem content to let her go, even though embarrassment was flushing her skin now.
"See ya later, Andy." Wilder threw the farewell over his shoulder as he followed Quinn, too closely, up the staircase. Somehow, he'd picked up her suitcase and stayed right with her.
"What a jerk," he said under his breath when they'd climbed halfway up.
Maybe he was right. Certainly, Quinn shouldn't have put up with Andrew for as long as she had. But—
"Why'd you say that?" she demanded, voice shaky.
"Say what? See ya later?"
"No. The other thing." She swallowed against the rising ache in her throat and clutched her room key as they reached the second-floor landing. She'd been so distracted by Andrew, and then Wilder, that she hadn't noticed what room number—or name, rather—she was supposed to be in. She made her way down the hall anyway and saw a second staircase descending at the end of the narrow corridor. A back entrance, no doubt. Maybe she'd keep going. All the way out to her car. All the way back to Austin.
Except she couldn't. She was Claire's maid of honor, and she would never abandon her friend. No matter how much embarrassment she'd have to suffer this weekend.
"What other thing?" Wilder asked.
Why couldn't he give her some space? His presence was larger-than-life, and she found it suffocating.
"When I said you're beautiful?"
"Oh, my stars! Yes!" The words burst out of her at a volume she hadn't intended. She rounded on him, lifting the hand that wasn't clutching her tote bag. "If you had to say something, why would you pick that?"
Facing him in the tight hallway had been the wrong choice. He only had to shift slightly to be closer than ever. His voice was low and gravelly. "Because it's true."
She had to look away. There was nothing true about it.
She knew what she was. Tall. Lanky. Awkward.
Never beautiful.
"This is—we're not doing this." She spun on her heel and looked down at the vintage key in her hand. No markings to indicate which door she should look for.
"Quinn." Wilder's rich baritone drifted toward her.
She closed her eyes briefly, then turned back to face him. At least from several feet away, his presence would be muted somewhat.
Very little, apparently.
He'd leaned his shoulder into a doorjamb. One corner of his mouth tilted up. He jerked his head to the side, indicating the door.
"My room?" she asked.
He nodded.
She'd marched right past it.
Her feet stayed rooted in place. It was safer to keep her distance.
"Not doing what?" he asked.
"Not pretending…" She lowered her voice, realizing that if anyone were in the rooms to either side of them, they might be able to hear the conversation. "That we're dating for the weekend."
He shrugged, but his eyes weren't so casual. He looked at her so intently, it sent a shiver down her spine. "Your choice. It'd give you an excuse to avoid The Jerk."
"I don't need an excuse," she muttered. Not when that excuse came with a heart pounding wildly out of control. A heart that didn
't recognize it was all make-believe.
"It'd give me an out with Aunt Ruby. And my mom, too. You saw how much they both like you. If Aunt Ruby thought you and I had something going on, she'd stay off my case about finding someone to settle down with."
Ah. So here was the real reason behind his overtures. He had some skin in the game, after all.
What was wrong with her that she felt a pinch of...something...that it wasn't completely altruistic on his side.
"You're thinking about it," he said, smirking. "C'mon. It'll make the weekend a lot more fun for both of us."
She started to shake her head, then remembered Andrew in the lobby downstairs. And his insolent comments. If she were with Wilder all weekend, she could avoid her ex without seeming pitiful.
She stepped closer to him. She had to get into her room anyway. Mrs. Caine was expecting her downstairs to help with some wedding disaster.
Sliding the key into the slot, she tried to ignore the hulk of a man at her elbow. She needed space to make a decision like this. Quinn never did anything impulsively. She was too afraid of getting it wrong.
The door clicked open to reveal a lovely room with a dark-rose bedspread, sheer white curtains over the window, and dark-stained furniture. She could just stay in here all weekend and be happy.
Moving inside, she placed her tote bag on the bed.
Wilder followed, leaving the door open. He set her suitcase on the floor near the bathroom and hung the garment bag in the closet.
Then he turned an expectant gaze on her.
"If we do this," she said, "no more kissing like... like that. Out by my car."
He stepped toward her, closing the distance between them. "So we are doing this?" he asked with a pirate grin.
He was too close again. Her brain felt like mush. How did he do that to her? Fluster her beyond all rational thought.
"But no… no kissing." Why was her voice so breathless?
"Not like before," he agreed. But one of his hands touched her waist, tugged her closer. With the other, he brushed the backs of his fingers against her jaw.
"Like this?" He lowered his head to brush his lips across hers. The light touch was completely different from the way he'd kissed her before. Almost like the touch of a butterfly wing.
And yet, it was the same, because her body lit up in response.
"Like this?" This time, he kissed the corner of her mouth, his nose pressing lightly into her cheek.
"Or how about this?" He kissed beneath her jaw, and the rasp of his stubble against her skin elicited a full-body shudder.
He drew back, a smug smile in his eyes. He knew exactly how he affected her.
She shoved his shoulders. Not hard, but that was only because every single muscle in her body was gelatin.
"No kissing. Period." She made her voice as strong as she could.
Backing toward the still-open door, he flashed her a wicked grin. "I can't agree to that, darlin'."
"My name is Quinn!"
The laughter in his eyes said he thoroughly enjoyed irritating her. Ignoring her protest, he continued his backstep out to the hall, winked at her, and shut the door behind him.
Groaning, she sagged onto the bed with weak knees.
What on earth had she just agreed to?
Chapter 2
Later that afternoon, Wilder stood on the B&B's lush green lawn in the scorching heat, moving white chairs into perfect rows and sweating through his shirt. His sister Shelby was supposed to be helping, but she was currently standing in the white-picket gazebo on the other end of the grass, messing with her cell phone.
Their mom had sent the two of them outside with a blueprint of how she wanted the chairs set up. Problem was, Wilder was pretty sure Shelby had been holding the thing upside-down.
He whistled at his sister, who stopped frowning at her phone and turned her frown on him instead. She'd been soaking up the shade beneath the gazebo long enough. He waved her over.
She came with a minimum of grumbling. "What?"
"Hate to tell you, but I think we faced all these chairs the wrong direction."
"No way." She glanced over the sea of white, and then to the map Mom had given them.
"Yep." He pointed to the edge of the paper, where the gazebo was clearly marked. "That's where Nick and Claire are going to stand." Not a single chair was facing it. "Way to go, genius," he teased.
"Oh, it's my fault?" Shelby snapped.
His eyebrows notched upward at her tone. "You were the one holding the map."
Her lips thinned into a frown, but she didn't defend herself. Shoulders stiff, she marched across the aisle and started turning chairs with a little too much force.
Wilder watched her for a few seconds. Something was up with her. More than the usual rockstar I'm too cool for you attitude she always wore like a shield.
He grabbed a chair on his side of the aisle, rotated it, and moved down the row. It was boiling hot out here, and he hated re-doing work. So did Shelby.
"What's going on?" he asked when they happened to meet at the aisle.
"Nothing," she mumbled.
Nothing, his butt. "I can't help you if you won't tell me." Bleh. He sounded like their old man.
She turned another chair and jabbed it into the grass. "I don't need your help."
"You did last August," he reminded her.
She shouted an expletive, startling a bird from the trees behind the gazebo. Whirling on him, her arms flailed in his direction. "If I’d known you'd keep bringing it up, I would've just stayed in jail."
Ha! Wilder would've paid money to see that.
He kept working, turning two chairs at a time, one with each hand. "You promised mom you'd be drama free this weekend."
Shelby shouted again, a wordless one this time, and smiled a saccharine-sweet, totally fake smile at him. "There. I'm done. Got it out of my system." She went back to work, but the line of tension in her shoulders remained.
Across the lawn, the screen door of the B&B's kitchen opened and closed. Mom and Quinn emerged and stood on the porch. Mom had probably heard the shouting and come outside to check on them.
He waved at them, his attention snagging on Quinn. There was something about her that captivated him.
"Almost done," he called. He really hoped his next job was dinner. And that it was inside in the A/C. Whose bright idea was it to have an outdoor wedding in June? Probably Nick's. Where was his brother, anyway? Avoiding the grunt work, no doubt.
Mom and Quinn walked across the lawn toward Wilder and Shelby. Quinn had a massive notebook flayed open. It took one of her hands to hold it and the other to keep the loose pages stuffed in the front flap from falling out. She had a pen tucked behind her ear as she walked down the aisle, talking to Mom. "... supposed to be little swags of roses and lily of the valley on the end of each row. Outside and inside."
As she passed, he tugged on the hem of Quinn's blouse where it'd come untucked in the back.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. He grinned and was rewarded with an adorable blush that colored her cheeks.
She kept moving alongside his mother, their voices getting lower as they walked to the gazebo. Quinn wrote some notes in her book.
Wilder couldn't keep his gaze from straying that direction—Quinn's direction—as he worked on the final two rows of chairs.
"Seriously?" Shelby asked from down the row. "The maid of honor? Isn't that a little cliché?"
He held up both hands. "I wasn't doing anything."
She leveled a look at him. "Please. I know your MO. Don't spend the weekend trying to sweet talk Quinn. She's cool."
No, she wasn't. She was warm, at least when he had his hands on her. He hadn't meant for the first kiss to happen, but ever since it had, she’d gotten under his skin.
There was no way he was giving up the chance to spend the weekend with her—even if he'd sort of had to trick her into it. He could handle his mom and Aunt Ruby. By now, he was used to their snarky comments
about his love life. That didn't bother him.
But Quinn had him all sorts of bothered. He rolled back to earlier when he'd called her beautiful. Her reaction still puzzled him. She'd been embarrassed. Tried to escape. It hadn't been fake humility, either, like he'd seen in other women. A manipulation to coerce more compliments from him.
Quinn flat out hadn't believed him.
What he didn't know was whether her jerk of an ex-boyfriend had harmed her self-esteem so terribly, or if it'd been someone else. But he wanted to find out.
And he wanted to convince her that what he'd said was true. Maybe it was a tall order for just a short weekend, but they both lived and worked in Austin. There was no reason he couldn't keep seeing her if they hit it off—
Aaaaand, he nipped that thought in the bud. Talk about getting way ahead of himself.
Wilder didn't do long-term. Didn't do forever.
"She's way too nice for you," Shelby said, her voice low, knocking him out of his musings.
Quinn was coming toward him, while Mom still stood in the gazebo, looking down at her phone.
"I've been listening to your show," Shelby said to Quinn when she got within earshot.
For a moment, Quinn looked at his sister as if she'd sprouted antennae. "Oh. Thanks." She'd responded in the same awkward manner to Aunt Ruby in the lobby earlier. Was this like the beauty thing? Didn't she think she did a good job on her show?
"There was one episode, a couple weeks ago..." Shelby said. "A girl called in and asked for advice on how to propose to her long-time boyfriend."
Wilder gave his sister the side-eye, but she just kept on talking.
"And by the end of her call, you had her convinced to break things off with him."
Quinn nodded, still looking uncomfortable with the topic. "We only played part of the call on the air. There were a lot of red flags that he wasn't the right guy for her."
"Maybe you could give Wilder some advice," Shelby punched him lightly on the arm.
Quinn had somehow drawn closer to Wilder than she should've. She glanced up at the man to find him staring steadily at her face, waiting for her to respond to Shelby. His expression was blank, revealing nothing.
Someone Borrowed: sweet contemporary romance (Jilted in Sawyer Creek Book 3) Page 2