“Neat and tidy.” Quinn shifted in his chair, his own words a fresh reminder of the pain this had caused Tess, as he forced down another surge of anger. “Except for what was spray-painted on the side of my trailer.”
“Wade’s confessed to that, too.”
“Did you ask him what it meant?”
Reed glanced up. “No.”
“Ask him. If he knows what it means, ask him how he heard about it, where he got the idea in the first place. Press him for the details.” Quinn stood, wincing as he straightened. “You and I both know Wade’s too stupid to plan things through like this. He had a fairly strong motive for cutting that board on the scaffolding. He didn’t have any reason to cause that spill or start that fire. He came looking for a job—he wouldn’t have wanted to destroy the job site that might have given it to him.”
“There’s one motive you haven’t mentioned,” Reed said. “Revenge.”
Quinn stopped in the doorway and glanced over his shoulder. “It’s a sorry testament to my life to admit I can consider that as another possibility.”
TESS KICKED OFF her shoes and stretched out on the plush sofa in her grandmother’s blue parlor the evening after the fire. They’d shared a quiet dinner in the kitchen, allowing Julia to cluck and fuss over them both and soothe them with asparagus bisque and steaming sourdough baguettes fresh from the oven. The thought of returning alone to her house, of waking in her empty bed and beginning again in the morning was overwhelming. “I’m too tired to move, Mémère. Maybe I’ll stay right in this spot for the rest of the week.”
“Nonsense. We’ve more to do—and more reasons to do it—than ever.” Geneva poured herself a cup of tea. “Although I must admit this project has turned out to be more of a challenge than I’d expected.”
Tess laughed sourly. “Your talent for understatement never ceases to amaze me.”
“And your capacity for passion has never failed to disappoint me.” Geneva continued. “So why do I get the feeling you’re not as angry over what has happened or as determined to see this through as I thought you’d be?”
“I don’t know. It’s the shock, I suppose.” Tess rolled her head more comfortably against a pillow and closed her eyes. “I’m just so tired.”
“I’ve heard depression can sap one’s energy.”
“I’m not depressed. I just—I haven’t had much sleep lately.”
The clock on the mantel chimed its deep, metallic bong, marking another hour of her life. Tess had always loved that sound, but tonight it seemed…
Depressing.
She shifted on her side and studied her grandmother. “Did you love Grandpa, Mémère? Always? Even toward the end, when he was so sick?”
“Not in the same way. He wasn’t the same man at that point.” Geneva sighed and smoothed a hand over the soft throw on her lap. “And anything I may tell you about my relationship with your grandfather has nothing at all to do with you and Quinn. You’re two different people.”
“He’s an alcoholic, Mémère.” Tess rolled to her back and stared at the beamed and plastered ceiling. “I swore I’d never get involved with a man who had that problem.”
“Had is a word in the past tense. And it’s another convenient excuse.”
“Why are all excuses convenient?” Tess’s eyelids drifted shut. “Why can’t they be excellent, or justified, or brilliant?”
“I suppose I should sit quietly and be supportive,” Geneva said impatiently, “or serve as a sounding board while you work your way through your quandary. But I’ve never enjoyed that particular role in any relationship.”
“This isn’t just a relationship,” Tess said. “I’m your granddaughter.”
“And that’s why I’ve tolerated your foolishness for as long as I have this evening.”
Tess sat upright and faced her grandmother. “I’m trying not to be foolish. I’m trying to consider everything that could possibly go wrong.”
“And looking for reasons—or excuses—to back out of the first serious love affair you’ve had for years.”
“Maybe that’s what I want to do, deep down inside.” Tess stared at the clock, unable to face her grandmother’s stern gaze. “Back out of this.”
“Would that make you happy?”
“No. Not now. But maybe, in the future, I’ll be glad I took some time to think about this.”
“You’ve had several months to think about this,” Geneva said as she lifted the cup to her lips.
“I haven’t been thinking about marriage.”
“No. But you’ve been thinking about the man.” She paused for a sip. “What do you think of him, Tess?”
“What do you think of him, Mémère? And please, don’t tell me it’s none of my business. Or that this is none of yours. I want to know. Why did you hire him to do this job?”
“Because I believed he’d be strong enough to stand up to you.” She set the tea aside. “And because on the surface, he appeared to be exactly the wrong man for you, so I didn’t worry you’d be suspicious about my real motives.”
“What do you mean, your real motives?”
“I may be an old lady, Tess dear, but I’m not blind. Quinn is a handsome, virile man. A caring father who values family, from what I’ve observed.”
“Mémère.” Tess fell back against the cushions, shocked to her core. “You hired a stud for your own granddaughter.”
“I’m glad you agree about the stud factor. I told you, I have a great deal of experience reading people. Close your mouth, Tess dear. It’s unattractive to let your jaw hang open like that.” Geneva flapped a hand in Tess’s direction. “As you told me yourself, I can be one hell of a scary lady.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll get the results you want,” Tess told her steely spined grandmother with a grin. “You always do, Mémère.”
QUINN SAT on his sofa that night, cushioned by pretty pillows, his daughter tucked beside him.
“Dad. Talk to me.” Rosie pulled the remote from his hand and switched off the television. “You can say anything. You can’t say anything worse than stuff I’ve already said to myself, a dozen times.”
“That sounds familiar.”
She shrugged. “I probably heard it on TV. On one of those sappy family shows. The ones with the perfect parents and the perfect kids.”
“No one would watch a show like that.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“That sounds familiar, too,” he said. She pinched him, hard. “Ow,” he said, rubbing his arm.
“You’re upset about Tess, right?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “How’d you know?”
“Lately, everything is about Tess.”
“That’s not right,” he said, frowning. “Everything is supposed to be about you.”
Rosie shifted away with a disgusted snort. “No wonder you’re having problems.”
They sat in silence for a while, and then she began to twist the ring Tess had bought for her on one of their afternoon shopping trips. “Maybe this is about me,” she said. “About me and Tess. And you and Tess. About the three of us.”
“The three of us?”
Twist, twist, twist. “Do you love her?”
“Yeah,” he said with an unhappy sigh. “I do.”
“Does she love you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know why she would, but—yeah.” He shrugged away the hurt. “I’m pretty sure she does.”
“Dad.” Rosie shifted to face him. “This is awesome.”
“It is?”
“Of course it is. Now you can marry her, and we can go live in her house, and I can get a dog, and she can pick me up every day from school and—”
“I haven’t asked her to marry me yet.”
“Well, are you going to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dad.”
“Rosie.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, fuzzy with exhaustion and humming with nerves. “This is important. I can’t just ask someon
e to marry me so we can live at her house and get a dog.”
“So ask her because you love her.”
It sounded like a good idea, but maybe sleep deprivation and stress were twisting his thought processes like warm taffy. Tess might turn him down, but what did he have to lose by asking, except a chance to be with her forever?
Tess. Being with Tess forever was worth just about anything he’d have to do to get her to say yes.
“What about you?” he asked his daughter.
“Don’t worry. I love her, too, Dad.”
God, he was getting tired of this tendency toward hot, dry lumps in his throat. Unable to speak, he lifted his arm and dropped it around Rosie’s shoulders to pull her closer.
“Dad.” Her voice was muffled against his shirt.
“Yeah.”
“Let go. You’re acting like one of those sappy dads on TV.”
He gave her one last squeeze before releasing her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t think we’re ever going to be one of those sappy families.”
“Not while Tess is around.” Rosie gave him what looked suspiciously like a sappy grin. “She won’t let us.”
QUINN STOOD outside Tess’s office the next day, a bouquet of long-stemmed blue flowers in one hand and a cup of syrupy coffee in the other. He wished he had a ring, but he wanted to get the proposal out of the way first. Besides, Tess would be so picky about what he put on her finger he was safer letting her choose it.
The lady had great taste. Whatever she selected would likely bite a pretty big chunk out of his savings, but he had no doubt it would be the prettiest ring in the shop. He’d enjoy seeing it sparkle on her long, slender hand when she pointed to something on her computer monitor or clacked the keys on her keyboard or gestured as she told a tale. He’d like knowing it was on her hand when she walked down Main Street as if she owned the strip, with all the men watching and admiring and knowing she belonged to him.
And to Rosie.
Tess opened her door and stood with one hand on the knob and the other at her waist. “Are you going to stand out there all day?”
“No.”
“Are you going to come in?”
“Yeah.”
She turned and headed toward the back of the room. “You brought me coffee?” she asked over her shoulder.
“And flowers.” He extended his arm. “Here.”
“‘Here.’” She took them from him and set them on her desk. “How romantic.”
“You want romantic?”
“You tell me. Do I?”
He grew very still and stared at her, watching for some clue as to what he should say or do next.
She sucked in a deep breath and covered her eyes with her hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t snap at you. This time, anyway.” She dropped her hands with a sigh. “And the flowers are very nice. Thank you.”
“You’ll need to put them in water.” Quinn gestured awkwardly toward the bouquet and then let his arm drop. “Or something.”
“I know what to do with flowers.”
“I don’t want to talk about the damn flowers.”
“Fine.” She set her hip against her desk and crossed her arms. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Howard Cobb, for a start.”
She gripped the desk’s edges until her knuckles turned white. “Has he been arrested?”
“Brought in for questioning. Wade couldn’t keep his story straight for long, especially when parts of it never made much sense. He’s a weak man. A coward. He’d need someone like Cobb to spur him on while giving him the idea for a cover.
“And Cobb had plenty of motive, not to mention a public record of fighting Geneva over the environmental angle. So.” Tess dragged in a deep breath and exhaled a long sigh. “I guess this is the beginning of the end.”
The end. Quinn’s nerves hit hard, ahead of schedule. “So to speak.”
An uncomfortable silence filled the space between them. Neither of them moved. Eventually, Tess picked up the coffee he’d brought her and sipped.
“Sweet enough?” he asked.
“Perfect. Thanks.” She sipped again, staring at him over the rim of the cup. “Is there something else you want to talk about?” she asked.
“Rosie.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Fine.” He opened his mouth to say something else, one of the points he’d planned on making, but his spit had dried up along with his train of thought. “You like her, right?”
“She’s okay, for a kid. A kid with a smart mouth and a lot of problems.”
They’re not my problems. I’m not the one who has to live with her.
“She’s…” He cleared his throat. “She thinks…”
The alarms went off, and Tess swore as she circled her desk and grabbed her purse. “Damn meter. I swear, I—”
“Here.” Quinn pulled a jar from his pocket and set it on her desk. “I brought you this, too.”
Tess froze, her gaze locked on the fat condiment jar tied with a crumpled red bow and filled with quarters.
“Rosie added the ribbon,” Quinn said to fill another strained silence. “She said it would look better that way. Sorry I smashed it.” He poked at one of the loops, trying to make it right. “It looked a lot better when I left home.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Tess’s voice sounded funny, and Quinn glanced at her beautiful face. Suddenly it didn’t look quite so attractive. It went all pale and sort of folded up like a slow-motion implosion, and her nose was turning an ugly shade of red. And then her eyes brimmed with tears, and one of them plopped on her shiny black jacket and made an ugly splotch. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Men,” she said as she snatched a tissue from her fancy tissue holder. “What am I going to do with you?”
“You could marry me.”
She blew her nose with a snorty, wet, honking sound.
“Is that a yes?” he asked.
“No!”
“Oh. Well.” He glanced at the jar of quarters and gestured awkwardly toward them. “You can keep the change.”
“Quinn.”
“Yeah?”
She sucked in a deep breath and blew it out again. “You’re supposed to tell me you love me.”
“Telling me how to do my job again?”
“Someone has to.”
“All right.” He took her hand, raised it to his lips and brushed them over her knuckles. “I love you, Tess.”
“A kiss would be nice.”
He lifted her hand higher. “I just gave you one.”
“On the lips, Quinn.”
He stared at her red nose and puffy eyes and closed his own eyes, tightly, before pressing a short, sweet kiss to her mouth. “There.”
“‘There.’ Such a way with words.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t hear any coming from you.”
She moved in close, snugging her curvy front up against his and wrapping her arms around his neck and tangling her fingers in his hair, just the way he liked it. “I love you, J. J. Quinn. With all my heart. And I love your little girl, too. And yes, I’ll marry you. And I’ll—Damn.”
She shoved him aside and dashed out her door, yelling at the officer tucking a parking ticket beneath her car’s wiper blade.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and strolled to the window—his heart as light as his step—to watch Tess rip the ticket from her car, crumple it in her manicured hands, toss it to the pavement and grind it beneath her spiky high heel.
A guy had to love a woman like that.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3484-4
A SMALL-TOWN HOMECOMING
Copyright © 2009 by Teresa A. McLaughlin.
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