“I hear it’s much smaller than what she’s used to.” Penny pushed open a heavy wooden door and the floor switched from marble to carpet. “And she expected Hayley to live with her.” Hayley was Quinn’s cousin and had been the only one at first to welcome Vivian’s arrival in Wyoming. “But that was before Hayley and Seth got married. Naturally they wanted a place of their own.” She was still telling him things he’d naturally know about his own family.
What was wrong with her?
She knew what was wrong with her. If she kept talking, then he wouldn’t have a chance to. And if he didn’t have a chance to talk, then he couldn’t bring up the wedding ring. Or the wedding certificate. Or anything else at all.
“Vivian still wouldn’t have needed this much space,” Quinn said. Not about their wedding. Not about anything to do with Penny at all. “Ten bedrooms? What’ll she ever use them all for?”
“Well, Montrose has one.” The carpeted hallway was very wide, easily allowing him to walk alongside her. She walked a little faster, trying to take a lead. “Then there’s a bedroom for the housekeeper if Mrs. Templeton ever finds someone to replace Britta since she quit. We can thank Montrose for that, too. They were constantly fighting. Another bedroom in the guesthouse. I don’t know who Vivian is hoping will ever use that—but it feels like she’s holding out hope for someone in particular. Someone who’ll use it more or less permanently.”
“You?”
She laughed nervously, because he had more than matched her pace with his own. “Hardly.” Even though the hallway was wide, his arm still brushed against hers.
Was he doing it deliberately?
“Why hardly?”
“Because she’s never offered and I’ve never asked. I rent a bungalow in town that is smaller than the guesthouse. That’s far more my style. More likely, she’d be thinking about you.”
“There isn’t anything permanent about my being in Wyoming.”
The reminder that he’d be gone soon enough ought to have been a comfort. She wasn’t sure, exactly, why it wasn’t.
“And the rest of the bedrooms are upstairs,” she concluded swiftly. She wasn’t going to let herself think about Quinn’s staying or going. It was a pointless exercise. “Mrs. Templeton’s master suite is one of the rooms, of course. Your grandmother expects that when she has guests, the house will be quite full.” She stopped next to an open doorway and gestured, a la Vanna White. “Here you go.”
The second he passed through the doorway, she turned to go.
But he caught her wrist, stopping her. “Wait.”
She pressed her tongue hard against the back of her teeth and resisted the instinct to yank away. “You don’t know how to find the conservatory,” she surmised.
“It’s a house. Pretty sure I could manage to find the conservatory.” His fingers tightened and she felt herself being tugged into the spacious bathroom.
Which meant he was going to bring up the ring. The wedding.
“Quinn, this isn’t the place to—” he pushed the door closed and let go of her “—talk about it,” she finished, unconsciously rubbing her wrist.
So much for spaciousness. With him looming over her, she felt positively hemmed in.
“Vivian isn’t bugging the bathrooms for sound, Penny.”
She couldn’t help backing up until her rear end hit the door behind her. “No, but that doesn’t mean we should be here like this.”
He gave her a look. “This?” He tossed his hat on the counter and turned on the water taps above the hammered copper sink before plucking one of the sea shell-shaped soaps out of a crystal bowl. He thrust his hands beneath the water and the soap shot out of his grip.
It flew straight at Penny, hit her in the chest and bounced onto the floor, coming to a rest next to her sandal.
It all seemed so ridiculous, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
She leaned over to pick up the wet soap, then dropped it in his outstretched palm and wiped her hand down the side of her sundress. “If she sees us spending any time together she’s going to think she’s on to something where we’re concerned.”
“And she’d be right. But if she sees us avoiding each other, she’ll think the same thing.” He lathered up his forearms and awkwardly rinsed them in the sink. The copper bowl was definitely pretty. But it wasn’t exactly user-friendly when it came to a man of his size.
“Marvin Morales filed the paperwork.”
He bent over and sluiced water over his face, then the back of his neck. He didn’t seem to care that he was splashing water on either the copper-framed mirror or his T-shirt.
She, however, had a lightbulb moment of understanding why a wet T-shirt contest held so much appeal to some people. “Who’s Marvin Morales?”
He turned off the taps and gave her a strange look. “The guy who married us.” He snatched a thick hand towel off the stack of folded towels and swiped it over his face.
“Oh. Right.” She couldn’t feel more idiotic. “I’m not sure I knew that was his name.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He started drying off his arms. “The point that does matter, though, is that he filed the paperwork. Which means it is official.” He tossed the towel down on the gleaming black quartz surface next to his hat. “Like it or not, darlin’, you and I really are husband and wife.”
The bathroom was suddenly a swirl of black and copper. She could feel her knees start to go. Could feel herself sort of sliding down the door behind her back and felt helpless to stop it.
Quinn leaped forward and stopped her before she landed on the ground. “Hold on there.” As if she weighed nothing at all, he lifted her and set her on the counter. “Put your head between your knees.”
She couldn’t do anything but, considering his hand holding her in place. With his other hand, he turned the water on over the towel he’d just used. Then he squeezed it out and placed it against the back of her neck. “Do you get light-headed a lot?”
She could feel water crawling down her shoulders. “No.”
“Never fainted before?”
Once. A long time ago. When she’d answered the door to find an army officer wearing his dress uniform standing there. A chaplain had been with him.
And she’d known. Without either man having to open their mouths, she’d known that Andy was gone.
“Never,” she lied. She pushed aside the cold, wet towel and sat up.
“Slowly.”
She ignored him and slid off the counter, tugging the knee-length skirt of her sundress down where it belonged. “I’m fine.” That was a lie, too. Because she wasn’t fine. She felt like the world was turning sideways and that gravity no longer existed. “Your grandmother’s waiting.”
“And she can wait a little longer. We both don’t need to go off half-cocked in our own directions trying to resolve this marriage thing.”
“Right.” She sidled backward toward the door.
“We need a plan.”
“Absolutely.” She blindly felt behind her.
“Once we know you’re not pregnant.”
“I’m not.”
“How do you know for certain?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it again.
“That’s what I figured,” he murmured. “If and when we know you’re not, then we’ll hire an attorney who can handle things. An annulment or...whatever.”
She nodded quickly. The doorknob turned in her hand. “Yes.”
“I have two cousins who are lawyers. Archer and Rosalind. Either one would—”
“No!” The door she’d been opening accidentally bounced against her backside and slammed shut. “I told you I don’t want anyone here knowing about this. That includes your cousins!”
“They’re lawyers, Penny. Confidentiality would apply, whether w
e’re related or not. I know Arch would be happy to do it. It’s his house where I’ve been crashing.”
She shook her head adamantly. “It has to be someone else.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” he said calmly. “You do know that, right?”
“I want someone different. Someone who doesn’t know me from Adam! If you won’t find someone, then I will.”
Chapter Six
Quinn couldn’t ignore the panic filling Penny’s eyes. If there was one thing he was accustomed to dealing with, it was someone in the throes of panic. And God knew focusing on her was better than the way he’d been dwelling on the thorny conversation he’d had that morning when his commanding officer tried to force a promotion on him.
It was always that way.
Save someone else.
No matter what.
Only she wasn’t a mission. She wasn’t a job.
She was Penny.
His wife.
Something twinged inside him. Something that had nothing to do with his job or his injuries or the regulations that were still keeping him from being placed back on flight status.
Something that had everything to do with her.
“Okay,” he soothed. “I’ll find someone else. Someone who doesn’t know either one of us from Adam.”
But she seemed beyond listening. “I don’t want anyone we know learning about this! Not your cousins. Not friends. Particularly not your grandmother. Can you imagine what she’d think of me?”
He lifted his hands peaceably. “Considering she’s had quite a few marriages of her own, I doubt Vivian would be as judgmental as you think, but I understand. I’ll handle it. When was your last period?”
Penny had fisted the sides of her sunny yellow sundress in her hands, and her vivid eyes that had been clinging to his immediately shied away. “A, uh, a little while ago.”
“How little?”
Her lips pressed together.
“Penny?”
She huffed out a sigh filled with frustration. “A couple weeks ago.”
No wonder she hadn’t wanted to tell him.
They couldn’t have timed it better if they’d been planning to conceive.
Which they weren’t.
He was too well versed in examining every possible angle of a situation before letting the pucker factor get too high, though. There were worse things than an unexpected chance at fatherhood. Or, he reminded himself, a CO who wanted to push Quinn into a position he didn’t want.
They weren’t dead. They had all their body parts intact and functioning.
He looked away from the swell of her breasts. Definitely functioning.
“Is your cycle pretty regular?”
She flushed and gave a reluctant-looking nod. Her gaze bounced around the bathroom, hitting every corner but where he stood two feet away from her.
“So we should know something in another few weeks?” She didn’t answer right away and he shifted slightly until he caught her gaze with his own. “Penny?”
She finally nodded again. “Your grandmother will be wondering what’s keeping us.” She reached behind her to open the door again. This time she successfully navigated the doorway as she hurried out into the hallway.
He let her escape. How could he not, when it was so obvious that she wanted to get away from him?
He waited until she was no longer in sight before he wrung out the wet towel and hung it over the edge of the sink to dry.
Then he took his time wandering back through the house and by the time he made it to the conservatory, Penny was already there and sitting in one of the cushioned iron chairs situated around a low table. A silver tea service was arranged on the glass surface, along with a plate of scones and fancy-looking little desserts.
“So this is a conservatory,” he said as he walked into the room. Vivian smiled at him. Penny jumped as if she might have actually hoped he wouldn’t have found his way there. “Fancy name for a sunroom, if you ask me.”
“Old habits die hard,” Vivian said, unperturbed. She gestured at the chair across from Penny. “Make yourself comfortable, dear.” She picked up the silver pot and began pouring tea into a china cup.
He wasn’t sure the chair was exactly meant for comfort, but he sat where she wanted and tossed his cover on the floor beside his chair. Penny’s eyes met his briefly before skittering away. She had a cup and saucer sitting on a tiny glass table beside her chair, but it looked untouched.
“Milk or sugar, dear?”
Given the choice, he was a coffee guy. First, last and always. But he could drink most anything when he had to. “Straight up, thanks.”
His grandmother set down the pot and handed him the cup and saucer. “A scone? Montrose’s really are the best.”
“I’m sure they are. But the tea’s enough.” Feeling like he might break the delicate flowered cup if he wasn’t careful, he took a sip. As he’d anticipated, the hot liquid tasted as appealing as dirt. Gulping it down to get rid of it probably wasn’t the politest course. He forced another sip and set the cup and saucer on his own tiny chairside table. He glanced around at the potted plants artfully dispersed throughout the large, window-lined room. “Does Montrose take care of the plants in here?”
“He’d have a stroke if I even suggested it,” Vivian said drily. “He’s a chef. Anything outside chef-ly duties is out of the question. Right now, since I haven’t been able to find someone regular, I’m taking care of them myself.” She caught his look. “I’m capable.”
“Never thought otherwise,” he assured. It was his dad and his uncle who were convinced Vivian was a menace to everyone, including herself. Aside from a few eccentricities, as far as Quinn could tell, she was harmless. “The palms look good.” Though he considered the exotic, lacy-looking fronds entirely out of place in the middle of Wyoming.
“Thank you. I had this room designed for special lighting when it’s needed.”
It seemed like a lot of fuss to him to grow plants outside their natural environment, but then it wasn’t his money Vivian was spending. And she had more than enough to waste however she wanted.
He leaned forward to snag one of the tiny frosted cakes and popped it into his mouth. The confection melted on his tongue. If it was an example of Montrose’s prowess, it was a good one.
Penny was still sitting there silently, though she’d begun pleating one edge of the white linen cloth spread over her knee.
He wished he could alleviate her tension. But anything he did or said now would be in front of his grandmother, which he knew Penny didn’t want.
He swiped another little cake and sat back, propping his ankle on his knee. “So how is the big political campaign going?”
“Oh, simply excellent.” Vivian looked at Penny. “Go get your computer, dear, so we can show Quinn what we’ve been working on.”
Looking relieved, Penny hopped to her feet and quickly left the room.
The second she was gone, Vivian’s gaze sharpened on Quinn’s face. “I want to know what’s going on between you and Penny. And—” she lifted her hand before he could open his mouth “—don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ I may be old but I am not blind. And she’s becoming a very dear girl to me.”
He’d faced down superior officers who didn’t have the steely-eyed look she was giving him. If he hadn’t promised Penny, he would have just told Vivian the truth.
But he had promised.
And he didn’t break promises.
“Maybe not, but you are imaginative,” he said.
“Please,” she scoffed. “I see the way you look at her. I see the way she looks at you, when she thinks I’m not looking.” His grandmother rose and went over to fuss with the potted palm sitting in the corner of the room. “Arthur looked at me like that, when we first me
t.” She picked up a fancy gold spray bottle and spritzed water over the fronds. “Of course I thought he was being very fresh.” She sent him a quick smile over her shoulder. “At my age, it was ridiculously flattering.” She set down the bottle and wandered closer to the windows. “I do like the view here,” she murmured. “You know, I really didn’t expect to.”
“Like the view?”
“Like anything. Wyoming.” She drew out the word, shaking her head. “Arthur would have loved it here.”
“You miss him a lot.”
She glanced at him again. “Don’t mistake me. I loved your grandfather with all my heart. But Arthur? He was the love of my life.” Her gaze went past him and she smiled. “Ah, Penny, dear. Set up the computer on the table there. Quinn, just finish eating those petit fours. You’ve already had most of them anyway. Then move the tray, please.”
He took the remaining squares and shoved the tasty bits in his mouth. He moved the tray, and Penny set her computer on the glass table.
“Sit there with Penny.” Vivian gestured. “You’ll see the computer better.”
He stifled a sigh and sat next to Penny. She was busily typing on her laptop but she was stiff as a board.
“Show him the campaign poster,” Vivian told her. “Without the purple.”
Penny’s gaze flicked to his for a moment. She’d already pulled up an image of the poster. “No purple,” she assured.
Quinn looked at the computer screen, giving what he hoped was a suitably impressed nod at the Templeton for Town Council display. “Is there a print shop in Weaver?”
Vivian looked at Penny. “That’s all in Penny’s capable hands.” Montrose entered the room and she gave him an annoyed look. “What is it now, Montrose?”
“You have a phone call.” He didn’t look pleased delivering the message. “Mr. St. James.”
Vivian, however, looked very pleased. “Thank you, Montrose. I’ll take it in my office.” She started to leave the room, following her chef. “Penny, dear, make sure Quinn has more tea.”
Vegas Wedding, Weaver Bride Page 7